Digital TV's War Against Piracy Rolls On

The task of sorting out copyrights in a digital world continues to befuddle participants and observers.

The ongoing puzzlement suggests that the road to pervasive digital television broadcasts, already expected to be a slow one, has an intimidating number of potholes left to fill. Notably, the passions arising over copyright and usage issues related to digital broadcasts and other new media appear increasingly to challenge media companies' efforts to wrest full value from the movies and music they control.

Although the bottom-line impact on conglomerates such as News Corp. (NWS Quote), AOL Time Warner (AOL Quote) and Disney (DIS Quote) is still too early to tell, the confusion points to continuing uncertainties about the value of new revenue streams for the big media firms, or the threats to revenue posed by new technology.

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The latest skirmish in the copyright battle -- hotly contested yet inconclusive -- arises from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group, an industry group primarily comprising content companies and consumer electronics manufacturers. The group came together last fall in an effort to develop standards to prevent "unauthorized redistribution" of "digital terrestrial broadcast content." ...