Software giants create buzz with DRM systems. (Midem News).

As labels continue their search for the best weapon in the battle against piracy, "digital rights management" became the unlikely buzz-phrase at Midem 2003.

Encryption systems to protect music from piracy and offer consumers access to additional content were at the heart of the convention, with Microsoft and Macrovision providing two of the biggest announcements.

"Throughout Midemnet, there were two hot issues--how do subscription services compete with free services like KaZaA and the importance of copy protection or digital rights management [DRM]," says Macrovision UK sales director Tim Heath.

"DRM is about creating a mechanism for controlling what the consumer can do with a music CD. It is about creating a rule book, where the rules can be adapted according to what the rights owners want."

Both Macrovision and Microsoft announced the launch of DRM systems, promising to improve accessibility of secure music on PCs as well as CD players using "second session" content. Second session content is essentially a compressed version of the original CD audio, stored in CD Rom form and which can be read by a PC.

Last Monday at Midem, Microsoft unveiled a brand new toolkit, which will give companies the means to create secure additional content for a CD which can only be viewed using its new Windows Media 9 Series.

The system, which allows compressed additional content to be held by the disc--including video, pictures and text--closes the gap between PCs and CD players for playback of music ...