DECE - Lipstick on the DRM pig

Over the past few hours there's been a lot of chatter about the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) consortium that everyone is a member of, except Apple. Is DECE a genuine move to make digital content easier to handle for the end user or is it just a feeble attempt to claw back some market share from Apple?

First, some facts. According to data by NPD, the iPod commands a 70%+ market share (last I heard it stood at 73.4%), and iTunes is the number one music distributor, offering 8.5 million songs, over 125,000 podcasts, over 30,000 TV shows, around 2600 movies and more than 3,000 apps for iPhone and iPod touch. What this means is that all the other players (that is, everyone signed up to DECE) is fighting it out trying to make a sub 30% market share go further. Looking at things this way and it's clear to me that what DECE really represents is a consortium of companies that have banded together in an effort to grab back some market share from Apple rather than fight for the spoils left over.

[poll id=353]

While the iPod is predominantly thought of as a music player, and DECE's focus will be video, you'd think that the two aren't linked. But they are. Every iPod with the exception of the shuffle is video-enabled, and Apple aspires to do big things with movies and TV on demand (think Apple TV). As user bandwidth and the storage capacities of portable devices increase, digital video is becoming a reality for many, and I'm guessing that those signed up to DECE don't want a situation where Apple dominates another market and leaves nothing but crumbs for everyone else.

So does this mean that DECE is little more than a gimmick from the point of view of the end user? Well, so far the grand vision of DECE is "buy once, play anywhere," but beyond the half-hearted attempt at coming up with a catchy slogan, there's little substance to DECE. Will DECE bring with it a new form of DRM? More than likely given that Mitch Singer, CTO at Sony Pictures, is behind DECE (Sony ... *cough, cough* ... rootkits ... Blu-ray ...), it's a fair bet.

Also, what about that whole "buy once, play anywhere" thing? It'll be interesting to see whether this "buy once" bit lives, because as things stand right now, most content providers make it clear that what you are really doing is renting content, not buying it.

I'm pretty skeptical about the idea of "play anywhere" working with any form of DRM. I'm guessing "play anywhere" actually means "play anywhere ... on a selection of specifically branded products," which isn't the same thing.