It looks like Hollywood is finally ganging up on Apple. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a group of major studios— excluding “key Apple ally Walt Disney Co.”—is joining with big-name retailers and consumer electronics vendors to attempt to transform paid downloads into an experience akin to buying a DVD, with the goal being that any video purchased at any outlet can be played on any device worldwide.
If you ask us, that’s simple—cut out all the DRM copy protection crap. But naturally that’s still not abundantly clear to the studios, so what’s happening here is the formation of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), not to be confused with the Doctors for Excellence in Chiropractic Education (DECE.org): Warner Bros. Entertainment, Fox Entertainment Group, NBC Universal, Sony, Paramount Pictures and Comcast Corp., together with Best Buy and Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Philips, Toshiba and Verisign.
