Grid Meter » Grid and Licensing

May 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Grid and Licensing

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A while back I commented on a plan by Cablevision to offer a digital video recording service in lieu of a piece of hardware. The plan is for subscribers to be able to "record" content to the network as opposed to needing a set top box with a comparatively large amount of computational and storage resources. Although the word "grid" was never used in the article, with distributed resources and a valuable commodity as a service, it is easy to draw parallels.

Not surprising, some of the big players in media aren't too happy about this plan and are looking for special licensing agreements for this type of use of their content.

When grids start moving from small, private quanta to larger wide-use grids and content and services from third parties start coming into play multi dimensional use licensing is going to become increasingly important. This is a topic we touch upon from time to time in the grid arena, then those discussions seem to go quiet for periods of time. I believe that those of us in the grid space need to pop this issue up a bit higher in the stack as licensing and rights management issues in the entertainment industry could be the canary in the coal mine of things to come for grid.

If it quacks like a duck it might just have the same licensing issues as a duck.

Posted by Greg Nawrocki on May 26, 2006 08:38 AM

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