Japan's CODA (Contents Overseas Distribution Association) has announced the establishment of a new logo which they think will somehow protect the rights of Japanese content developers from overseas pirates.

Japan's Contents Overseas Distribution Promotion Association (CODA) has announced o­n the 2nd that they have begun the operations of the "Contents Overseas Distribution Mark Project," which is intended to control pirated versions of domestic contents. It will be applied in China, Korea, Taiwan, USA, and various contries throughout the EU. They are seeking approval as soon as next Spring, and o­nce they get this permission, they will begin the application process in each country.

The Contents Overseas Distribution Mark Project will paste a logo designated by CODA o­n legitimate contents, and is said to help control trademark violations by forgery. Up until now, there have been certain efforts made to protect copyrights from pirating in various manners, but since exercising these copyrights required sending an expert to the area, as well as requiring proof, a quick control of the violations was not possible. Enter the Contents Overseas Distribution Mark from CODA. By registering the trademarks in various countries, exercising copyrights in those countries will be based o­n trademarks.

The specified mark contains the "CJ" characters (of "Contents Japan") as a motif, and will be pasted o­n music CDs, video games, video DVDs, and books. Also planned is pasting of the mark o­n digital contents, TV programs, communication, and broadcasts - a total of 94 types of trademarks have been filed.

CODA will be in charge of the Contents Overseas Distribution Mark. A separate organization within CODA will be established to handle trademark violations, and they will also enforce trademarks in the local area, to help control piracy. CODA will license use of the mark to the CODA member organizations, groups, and various contents holders; they will also give certain overseas contents licensees rights to use of the mark. Currently, there is no license fee for use of the mark.

Mr. Tsuguhiko Sumikawa, CODA's representative, identified the current problem by saying that "in recent years, while there has been concern of domestic contents crossing over national borders, a majority of pirating has been in the markets of certain Asian countries." "Using trademarks is quite an idea," he commented. Also, exposing trademark infringement isn't as nearly as complicated as exposing copyright violations, so "just saying 'it looks the same' will get things moving" (Committee Chair Akiyoshi).

According to Mr. Kodama, the circulation of pirated contents represents 84% of the total in China. Though it was pointed out that "Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America are considered the prominent 'Pirate Heavens' in the world," "there was also a time when more than 50% of the contents in Japan were pirated. Nowadays, if you go to 100 rental shops, o­nly 4 of them will carry pirated contents. This improvements was made possible by instruction and education." He stressed that training in each country is a necessity.

CODA has stressed that this countermeasure "is not the final measure against exterminating pirates, but the first step." They also plan o­n introducing technology in the future that will prevent pirates from duplicating the mark itself.



Inspired by:
http://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/news/2004/09/02/4478.html

Regarding the Establishment of the "Contents Overseas Distribution Promotion Association":
http://www.meti.go.jp/kohosys/press/0003017/

I'm not used to Japanese corporations actually caring about something other than development and profit, so I'm reporting o­n the new i-Duck from Solid Alliance - a portion of the proceeds generated by its sale will go to funding the "JaNP+" network, which focuses o­n promoting self-reliance, participation in society, and betterment of the environment for HIV positive individuals.

The way I understood this article, Matsushita has developed a standard platform from which developers can implement changes to AV products all across the board, rather than having to integrate functionality into each product individually.
Let's say, for example, a company decides they want to include OGG decoding in their line of products. The process they follow would be like "develop firmware for CD player, develop firmware for MP3 player, develop firmware for DVD player"... o­n and o­n for each product they want to add that functionality to.
With this new Matsushita platform, however, you can supposedly use the same software (thus firmware?) from o­ne product to the next - so said company could instead release a generic firmware upgrade for all of their products introducing OGG support. That would be

Matsushita has announced o­n the 1st that they have developed the "UniPhier" digital consumer electronic unification platform, and will begin its introduction into their products as early as first quarter 2005.

The UniPhier platform consists of system LSI containing both CPU and video codecs, middleware, and OS platform software. Products containing UniPhier will be introduced in the first quarter of 2005, and Matsushita plans to finish its introduction by the end of 2006.

To start, a core platform for TVs, DVD recorders, home server, mobile phones, and car AV will be developed. Matsushita has said that they have intensified the high level of AV functionality, low power consumption, realtime processing technology, and security technology offered by each product genre.

With the use of the UniPhier processor (containing both CPI and media processor), the structure is scalable - it will be packaged so to contain the optimum functionality of different fields and products. Because the software of each product will be relatively similar, functions can also be added by enhancements to middleware.

The main goal of the introduction of UniPhier is to improve upon software development efficiency. Up until now, hardware has been prepared for cellular phones, DVD recorders, home services, digital TVs, et. al - then the microcode, OS, middleware, and applications were developed separately.

In the UniPhier integration platform, companies/individuals need o­nly develop software to go o­n top of each product's base hardware; Matsushita has said that this allows for a more than 5-fold increase in software development efficiency. Also, o­nce a platform has been developed, this not o­nly increases authenticity, software used in other products can be used again.

Three types of fundamental hardware organizations have been prepared: cellular phone-related, personal AV-related, car/home AV-related. Each of the devices features a common platform, and unification of products in these different genres is said to be simple.

For hardware, either an ARM-related or Matsushita CPU can be chosen. The newly developed UniPhier media procossor supports the C/C++ programming language as well. Also planned for expansion is the current parallel command processor optimized for AV uses; a data parallel processor, and MPEG-2/H.264 hardware engines are also planned.

Furthermore, the "PEAKS processor" image improvement engine currently contained in the VIERA line is also planned for integration in the UniPhier platform.

UniPhier stands for "Universal Platform for High-quality Image-Enhancing Revolution."



Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20040901/pana1.htm

Press Release:
http://matsushita.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/jn040901-1/jn040901-1.html