A range of the large consumer electronics companies have formed the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the idea being that media will be interoperable across all of their devices, and that it can run in an end to end supply chain. The idea is to be an open version of the Apple iTunes content - to - device supply model (in fact when originally mooted it was called Open Market).

As TechCrunch reports, the consortium includes Alcatel-Lucent, Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, Fox Entertainment Group, HP, Intel, Lionsgate, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, Philips, Sony, Toshiba, VeriSign and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Thast a pretty good representation across the supply chain

Clearly there is an attempt to learn the lessons of the music industry.

Thats the good news - the bad news is the backdoor DRM play. The plan also would provide customers a “rights locker” or virtual library where consumers digital video purchases would be stored for retrieval in a manner similar to accessing an email account. It remains to be seen how benign the DRM is.

This is an opportunity to reduce piracy, IF the players can make the tradeoff for users between DRM/Media cost and Piracy seems like a fair fight. iTunes showed that most users will pay for media if its easy to use and at a fair price. But the behaviours of many of the players to date make us think there is a risk it will groupthink itself into a margin-protection model. The problem with that, as has been shown in spades to date, is that the DRM will be hacked, people can access pirated material. The trick is to make it just too much hassle for the mainstream adopters.