This is all about digital rights protection technology. InterTrust hopes to make it’s digital rights management software a standard for media distributed over the Internet. We need digital rights protection so that creative people who produce software, songs or stories can be financially compensated for their efforts. We need this kind of management software to be affordable by individuals not just a few corporate conglomerates who will continue to exploit the creative efforts of individuals.
Interestingly an investment group including Sony and Philips Electronics bought InterTrust for $453 million in 1/04 and now three months later Microsoft is settling their licensing deal with InterTrust Technologies Corporation for $440 million. Sony and Philips created DVD technology.