UltraViolet: A New Attempt to Make Digital Video Play Nice

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Nearly 60 different electronics manufacturers and media companies announced a cross-industry plan yesterday to improve the ability to share digital video online.

The plan, dubbed UltraViolet, will create an online “locker” that stores your rights to digital video. Purchase the rights to a movie on Netflix (a member of the consortium), for example, and you’ll be able to watch the film on different websites and devices.

The system is designed to remedy the fact that there’s no good way to share digital video that you own. Unlike a DVD, which you can easily swap from computer to computer or device to device, digital video typically lives in one place, protected by one company’s copy-protection schemes. UltraViolet hopes to create an industry-wide standard that takes the rights management out of the hands of any one company.

Notably absent from the UltraViolet group? Disney and Apple. The system is expected to begin testing later this year. (via the L.A. Times)