Rejection reaction sees IBM pull piracy protection plans

IBM has pulled out of an industry consortium, which was developing music piracy protection software, after MP3 manufacturers rejected the technology.

The 4C alliance, which includes Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba, had developed a digital tagging system that prevents recording of copyrighted music on CD and MP3 players. But T13, an industry consortium of hard-drive and MP3 flash memory card manufacturers, has rejected the proposal in favour of software from Phoenix Technologies. The Phoenix offering is less specific than the technology developed by the 4C consortium, and can be used for security purposes other than copyright protection. T13 was criticised for considering the 4C technology due to concerns that IBM and Intel were pushing to include the tagging system as a standard feature on PC hard drives.