Sonic and Pioneer announced today that they have begun a
joint licensing program for CSS recording. With this new program, the two companies hope to make it easier to for content distributors as
well as media and drive manufacturers to bring managed recording products to market.
PioneerCorporation, a leading global
manufacturer of consumer and business-useelectronics products, and Sonic Solutions(R), the leader in digital mediasoftware, have begun a
worldwide joint licensing program of patents andother related IP for the encryption and burning of video content torecordable DVD media
for playback on DVD players. To respond to consumerand industry interest in "electronic sell-through" of video content and tofacilitate
the adoption of secure download and burn applications inaccordance with the approved industry specifications for recordingdownloads set
by the DVD Forum and the DVD Copy Control Association,Pioneer and Sonic have established a royalty-bearing licensing program thatwill be
administered by Sonic under the Qflix(TM) name. The program willbroadly license the companies' combined intellectual property that
allowsDVD recording technologies to use CSS (Content Scramble System), which isthe same content protection found on commercially released
DVD movies.
If you'd like to read more, the entire press release can be found here.
