CTIA : SanDisk puts DRM on flash cards

IDG News Service - SAN FRANCISCO -- SanDisk Corp. yesterday took a step it hopes will transform the mobile media business, unveiling a storage technology called TrustedFlash that integrates digital rights management (DRM) into a flash memory card.
The addition of DRM will motivate providers of music, games, movies and other content to sell those products for mobile phones, either in the form of cards sold at retail stores or as downloadable content that can be transferred to a TrustedFlash card, said Eli Harari, president and CEO of SanDisk. Currently, most content for mobile devices is locked to a particular device, partly because of concerns about piracy.
TrustedFlash "will enable a whole new world of opportunities in the mobile entertainment market by providing the flexibility that consumers are demanding ... while still meeting the security requirements that content providers need to have," Harari said.
TrustedFlash will be rolled out in the fourth quarter of this year, Harari said. It is available now to original equipment manufacturers in miniSD, microSD and SD card formats, according to SanDisk.
At a news conference at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment show in San Francisco, SanDisk, EMI Group PLC and Virgin Records America Inc. announced that a version of the Rolling Stones' album A Bigger Bang on a TrustedFlash microSD or miniSD card is set to go on sale in some retail stores in November for $39.99. It will include band images and links to other Rolling Stones albums that the consumer could buy, Harari said.
SanDisk also showed off a 4GB embedded flash memory component with the TrustedFlash technology, to be integrated into mobile phones, music players, personal media players and GPS (Global Positioning System) devices. It takes up less than 4% of the space that a microdrive would take up, Harari said.
Consumers will be able to move content on TrustedFlash cards from one mobile device to another because the DRM is built into the card, Harari said. Depending on the DRM settings defined by the content provider, consumers also will be able to copy the content to a PC hard drive or other storage as backup a certain number of times, the company said.
The format is independent of particular DRM schemes, and the providers of existing DRM technologies, such as Apple Computer Inc., Microsoft Corp. and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), have been invited to integrate their formats into the TrustedFlash format, Harari said.

SanDisk announced that Yahoo Inc. will bundle its Yahoo Music Engine with TrustedFlash cards, allowing users to directly subscribe to