23-03-2004: Anti-piracy breakthrough (ATTN, Peter,Not on market yet) March 25, 2004 : 10.07 AM By Sharmila Ganapathy
A local MSC-status IT solutions provider may soon create a stir in the international movie, music and software scenes, with the development of an anti-piracy solution for compact discs (CDs).
Malaysian-owned Multimedia Glory Sdn Bhd has completed the development of what appears to be the first-of-its-kind, foolproof anti-piracy solution. It expects to market the patent-pending product soon, which will make it all the more difficult for pirates to carry out their illegal activities by preventing unauthorised copying of digital contents in CDs.
Its target markets include Hollywood and Bollywood filmmakers.
“Even when the content is copied into another medium, it will be rendered useless, the music or video compact discs cannot be played from the duplicated media,” says Multimedia Glory managing director Lalitha Kaleedhass.
The anti-piracy solution has been three years in the making and to date, the company has invested between RM1 to RM2 million on research and development for this solution as well as an anti-virus product being developed concurrently.
“We have completed development of the solution and we have named it,” says Kaleedhass. Previous anti-piracy solutions in the market, though thought to be hacker-proof, have turned out otherwise, with the advancement of piracy technology. Kaleedhass is confident that their product will not suffer the same fate.
“Previous solutions use the conformity and non-conformity status of compact disc drives for protecting the digital content. As a result, the solutions could be bypassed in the drives itself. “However, our solution is an independent layer protecting the contents; hence we are able to ensure content protection,” she says. ( Sounds familiar to me.SB)
She adds Multimedia Glory’s target markets for the anti-piracy product will be movie distributors, production companies, recording companies and off-the-shelf software vendors.
Kaleedhass adds that the anti-piracy solution will be sold in CD form.
She says they are now working with a major local film producer, whom she declines to name, to implement their solution for an upcoming movie.
Kaleedhass says the next step for the company will be moving to the international markets, including Hollywood and the Indian film industry.
She says the Recording Industry Association of America has reported sales of pirated recordings exceeding US$4.2 billion (RM15.96 billion) worldwide in 2003, excluding losses due to Internet piracy.
Multimedia Glory, which was founded in 1999, came out tops at last year’s MSC-APICTA awards, winning both the Best of the Best Prime Minister’s award and the Best of Security System Applications for its airport security solutions.
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