Stephen Downes

LG has officially gone over to the dark side as it takes out a license for ContentGuard's digital rights management (DRM) 'technology'. What the move more accurately signals, probably, is a desire for closer relations with the companies that own ContentGuard, including Microsoft, Time Warner and Thomson. This article is eager to argue how smart the deal is for both LG and ContentGuard. While it does indeed signal the end of a very long drough for ContentGuard (which has gone nowhere trying to get royalties from the Open Mobile Alliance, which uses the Open Digital Rights Language), it is rather less so for LG, which now needs to convince others to agree to pay for licensing or else work at a disadvantage.