Leonardo Chiariglione Interview

/. points out a fascinating Scientific American interview from last month with the founder of the Moving Picture Experts Group (responsible for such formats as MP3 and MPEG-2) about the future of digital media. Leonardo bemoans the current issues that have kept digital media from expanding to it's potentials, and his common sense approach is a breath of fresh air.

Don't think he isn't critical of all sides. On the music industry:

"Record labels are reluctant to adopt any new technology that does not guarantee their copyrights and prefer to stick to their old business models. But if nothing changes, many users will continue to steal music. It’s a stalemate in which everybody loses in the long run: industries miss new opportunities for business, and users will not benefit from future technological advances."

on Internet piracy:

"The culture of theft that turns around MP3 is detestable, and I’m very disappointed about that. But neither MP3 nor peer-to-peer are monsters [...] When we approved the standard in 1992 no one thought about piracy. PCs were not powerful enough to decode MP3, and internet connections were few and slow."

The interview is a good read, but skims across the surface of some of the important innovations he's attempting in digital rights management (with projects like the Digital Media Project and MPEG-7.)

posted to Emerging Systems on April 14, 2004