Why Digital Video Disks are late to market

http://techweb.cmp.com/eet/news/97/942news/encryp.html

To summarize, the Digital Video Disk standard contains an encryption
standard for copyright and anti-piracy protection. however, "some U.S.
PC and silicon vendors have just about abandoned hope of keeping to
their revised launch schedules for DVD-enabled systems."

... as far as anybody knows, "none of the U.S. PC vendors today has a license
to use the DVD-decryption algorithm" in software.

"We all know the situation; we don't have a license," said Michael
Moradzadeh, program manager of Intel's copy-protection task force.

A solution may be in the offing within days. Some sources said late last
week that Matsushita [who owns license rights] and key U.S. computer
companies may resolve the software-licensing issues by the end of this
week. The PC industry seeks amendments to the licensing-agreement language
that would result in equivalent treatment of software- and hardware-based
CSS decryption.

... there apparently has been some speculation among the U.S. PC community
that Matsushita may be stonewalling on the software-licensing issue so that
it can establish its hardware-based decryption solution in the marketplace.

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Nothing in the article suggests that "national interests" are involved.

Martin Minow
minow@apple.com

> ... there apparently has been some speculation among the U.S. PC community
> that Matsushita may be stonewalling on the software-licensing issue so that
> it can establish its hardware-based decryption solution in the marketplace.

The day it gets published in software is the day someone runs a
disassembler on it.  That's all there is to it.