From time to time we see demands from different quarters for cross-platform DRM.  Would manufacturers idly produce their DRM products to run seamlessly and consistently across Windows, Apple and Linux, for instance.  But is it either reasonable or likely?

In some industries, such as video, cross-platform actually means the ability to play a video on any of the players that are manufactured.  (Actually this turns out to be not such a big deal because patents usually cover video playing technology so if you want to build a video player you either build it to spec or the patent owner puts you out of business.  Not very nice but it does go cross-platform!)

If you look at other areas, however, you find things are not just a bit different, but a lot different. 

In the music arena, one of the most active areas, by end 2005 Apple was only supporting FairPlay on PCs, Macs, and iPods.  During the year there were repeated news items that it had been hacked anyway.  Also in the music industry, Sony had a disaster with their attempt to apply copy protection to CDs and ended up removing their DRM products from the market and issuing apologies and refunds to customers.

In the general industry they are still having arguments about MPEG-21DRM and its components, the MPEG rights expression language (or REL) and the rights data dictionary (or RDD).and the (lack of) interoperability with the OMA DRM language ODRL (open digital rights language).  Cross-platform here might mean which mobile handset protects ringtones?

At a more (mundane?) level we have the various computer operating system approaches.

Digital Media Project (DMP) provided the first version of their Interoperable DRM Platform (IDP-1) in May 2005; addressing portable audio and video players to which a PC (or other more powerful connected device) would feed content.  The approach is aimed at authenticating machines rather than users.  Microsoft, arguably masters of the PC, have a separate approach to DRM although they uses a version of XrML (a quite different standard from others so far mentioned) in each of their DRM technologies.  Apple and Microsoft don’t mix, and neither are exactly committed to Linux/Unix.

And that’s before we get into the patent wars.  Big industries have been making sure that they have patents over anything that might just vaguely be argued to be DRM, and especially over anything implementing standards they have developed.  The big gorilla here is Intertrust (owned by Sony and Philips) who got $440 million out of Microsoft in a 2004 settlement.  They obviously aim to clean up on licensing fees which will add costs to all licensing transactions, maybe making the underlying sales models uneconomic?

At the simple level of services offering DRM type controls over things like pdf or html or flash, they are going to avoid the so-called DRM standards with the patent hedged pitfalls and uncontrollable licensing costs.  They will aim at the PC market, simply based on numbers of potential customers.  Unlike the giant corporations who could be argued to be using DRM as much for market control and dominance as they are for anti-piracy, the second tier players are aimed at enabling more immediate markets that pay.  If the external market was 33/33/33 Windows/Apple/Linux then they would take a commercial view.

So it doesn’t seem to matter what you think, cross-platform interoperability, or even within platform interoperability is not something you should try holding your breath for.  The economic miracle is going to be here a lot sooner.