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The Open Media Commons initiative has been set up to create a royalty-free copy protection technology that can be deployed across competing devices, platforms and media.

Sun's COO Jonathan Schwartz argues that the current situation is restricting innovation and economic growth, something that a single standard could overcome but acknowledged that it will not be easy.

'The industry generally falls into two camps: Those who support what we're up to and others who want to collect a fee for using their own DRM standards,' Schwartz told Reuters. By others he can only be referring in the most part to Microsoft,

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whose DRM is widely used by portable music player makers and music downloads stores such as Napster.

In fact there is a third camp, Apple, whose Fairplay DRM is neither open nor licensed for a fee. In fact Apple argues that only by closely guarding its software, which restricts iPod owners who want to buy music downloads to its own iTunes Music Store, can it continue to innovate. As a result Apple has been widely criticised, most loudly by its competitors, but that hasn't stopped those competitors from pursuing much the same business model.

Against such a backdrop the Sun initiative will find it hard to gain a foothold as it will require a broad alliance of device makers, software developers and content providers. They may be attracted to the idea of an open format, but the certainty that by licensing Microsoft's DRM your products will instantly be compatible with hundreds of others may be just too persuasive.

Nonetheless the major movie studios and to some extent the big four record labels could hold the key to the future of DRM, after all it is they whose content will be rights managed, and they may just be swayed by the possibility of a single standard that crucially won't cost them anything.

The Open Media Commons website can be found at www.openmediacommons.org.