MovieLabs' Weinstein: We're Consumer Friendly

Written by R. Scott Raynovich - Light Reading

Monday, June 25. 2007 at 02:00 PM EDT Post a comment

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Recently we caught up with Steven Weinstein, the CEO of Motion Pictures Laboratories Inc. (MovieLabs), which is a joint venture by the six major movie studios -- Disney, Fox, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures, NBC Universal, and Paramount Pictures (Viacom) to fund technology developments.

MovieLabs, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is structured as a non-profit organization that doesn't take equity positions in the companies it funds. Of course, one main point of skepticism is that with the movie studios behind it, it will likely focus on ways to enforce and protect content without really developing solutions to advance the mass-market digital distribution of content. But Weinstein says just the opposite is true -- that MovieLabs is looking for security and authentication technology that is less intrusive for the user.

Weinstein also says the major studios aren't deserving in their reputation that they are risk-averse and not prone to try newer technologies. He sees them recognizing the digital market and starting to move forward rapidly.

"If you told me that Warner would license Bit Torrent to distribute their content I wouldn't have told you it was happening," he says, speaking of the deal the studio recently cut with the P2P distribution platform.

"Paramount did a lot of interesting deals --  they were the first ones to license Joost. Also, you've seen people playing with releasing content. Look at Amazon Unbox, they are doing things you haven't done before -- tying the physical to digital. Nobody knows what consumers really like. It's still a very complicated thing to consume media."

The upshot is that via MovieLabs, the big Hollywood studios may be willing to fund your technology development if it meets certain criteria. The company recently started a grant program to address several major problems with technology that may be impeding mass adoption of digital content.  

MovieLabs has identified certain "technology challenges" in the digital media market and that it will be giving out grants ranging from $25,000 to $100,000 for technology prototypes or full products that may solve these issues.

Here are the big areas it has identified and what it hopes to accomplish:

• Remote access authentication and security: How does the content provider verify the user is a legal user, without being offensive or providing too many technology hurdles? MovieLabs is looking for a technology that might be less secure, then say, a banking application, but more consumer friendly.

• Content management across multiple platforms. For users, managing a library of content -- splitting it up across platforms, devices, etc. -- is becoming more burdensome, especially if DRM is involved. How do you transcode content to decrease the "librarian" factor?

• Content recognition: When somebody alters a content asset, how do the content providers recognize the intellectual property?

• Advanced Projection technology: Current theatrical projection technology is not optimized for both 3D and 2D movie presentation.

• Anti-piracy for camcording: The film industry loses billions of dollars per year to piracy, much of it the result of recordings made in movie theatres with camcorders. Technology could be developed to either detect or interfere with such camcorders

• Hiding Cryptographic keys: MovieLabs is looking for innovative ways to hide asymmetric cryptographic keys in software.

Being based in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's interesting that MovieLabs isn't structured as an incubator or a VC firm. It's purely non-profit organization and it claims it will simply give out the money and fund innovation, rather than meddling in the startups as would an equity player. In other words, the money's free! Go get it.