Content Delivery & Storage Association
(Formerly IRMA, the International Recording Media Association)President's Letter
January 2008
CDSA Officers Elected by Board
Facilities Pass Certification Requirements for CDSA Plastic DVD Packaging Standards Program
Save the Date: 38th Annual Content Delivery & Storage Forum
CDSA Strategic Planning Report
We're About Storage and Service
The New Content Community Hierachy
We're Proud to Protect Your Content
Storage is Finally Part of Our Association's Name
Digital Distribution in a Physical World
The Content Delivery & Storage Association is the worldwide forum advocating the innovative and responsible delivery and storage of entertainment, software and information content
CDSA New Board Members
During their December meeting, the board and membership elected the following to join the CDSA Board of Directors:
- Jeff Bugbee, Content Operations Director, Netflix
- Thomas Costabile, President and COO, Entertainment Distribution Company
- Rodney Jones, Executive Vice President, Operations, Universal Music Logistics
- Joseph Miller, General Manager, SABIC Innovative Plastics
- Spencer Mott, Director, International IP/IT Security, Electronic Arts Swiss SARL
- Donna Murray, Director, Sales & Administration, Carthuplas
- Stephen Scherger, President, CSG Americas, Meadwestvaco
CDSA Officers Elected by Board
- Frank Russomanno, President and CEO, Imation Corporation, (Chairman of the Board)
- Richard Atkinson, Vice President, Global Anti-Piracy Strategy & Operations, The Walt Disney Studios, (Vice President)
- Stephan Corti, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Technicolor Home Entertainment Services, (Vice President)
See the complete CDSA Board of Directors list here
Facilities Pass Certification Requirements for CDSA Plastic DVD Packaging Standard Program
The CDSA Board has approved a standard where we are certifying plastic DVD boxes as being free of hazardous materials. You may not be aware of the fact that there are boxes in the marketplace that do contain hazardous materials. They are not coming through our normal, legitimate channels.Milliken & Company did some very extensive testing on the behalf of CDSA and the marketplace and as a result of these efforts we developed a standard and a procedure to have independent laboratories test DVD boxes and certify them free of hazardous materials. Our job is to identify and communicate to content holders and to replicators those plastic DVD boxes that we certify, through independent testing laboratories, that are free of these hazardous materials. The following plants have received Certificates of Compliance from CDSA after independent laboratory testing of finished plastic DVD packaging samples from their facilities were found to comply with the limits for hazardous materials as set forth in the CDSA Standard:
- AGI Polymatrix, Elizabethtown, Kentucky and Pittsfield, Massachusetts
- Carthuplas, Gaffney, South Carolina
- Nexpak, Duluth, Georgia
VIVA Magnetics, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada has applied and we are awaiting laboratory test results.
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Save the Date
38th Annual CDSA Content Delivery & Storage Forum
March 6-8, 2008 • La Quinta Resort & Club
La Quinta, California (Palm Springs area)
For 38 years, content companies and their technology partners have been meeting every March to explore the latest opportunities for content delivery and storage.
With more channels of distribution than ever, as well as a widening field of physical media options, this year's Content Delivery & Storage Forum program is being developed to attract:
- More content holders
- More digital distribution providers
- More storage system developers
Join these content delivery and storage leaders in a once-a-year opportunity to collaborate on secure, responsible and innovative solutions for home video, interactive media, and music.
Preliminary Schedule
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CDSA Strategic Planning Report
At our recent Media Market Intelligence Summit in New York, I was proud to release, for the first time, the findings of our Strategic Planning Initiative, which involved the most intensive research study to date about our membership, its most significant issues, and how we, as your association can earn the industry's continued trust and participation.
The process involved three Strategic Planning meetings, in Burbank, London and New York, followed-up by an on-line research membership questionnaire, which many of you filled out and submitted. Overall, the results involved the input of over 300 members, representing over 100 companies, and they provided us with unprecedented insights into common issues, concerns, goals and objectives for our changing industry and its association.
We're About Storage and Service
Who are we as an organization? At all three Strategic Planning meetings, and reiterated again via the online survey, it was agreed that CDSA should focus on serving the needs of companies that service content holders. It was agreed that we deliver content.
- We store it.
- We package it.
- We deliver it.
By and large, though, the membership differentiated these roles from actually owning that content and creating it. Other associations do a fine job of representing the interests of the content holders themselves. But the service organizations need their own forum and advocate -- those suppliers and supply chain service providers require a collective, third-party voice.
That's not to say that we don't want content holders as part of our club. Anything but. In fact, a significant number of respondents added that content holders should play an important role in the future direction of the CDSA and its activities.
We need our customers' input and participation to help us establish the right goals and objectives -- the so-called "burning issues" that our industry needs to address on our customers' behalf. By participating in our events and our activities, content holders can gain a broader perspective on the day-to-day realities and pressures of their most significant budget-line items. Our companies, on the other hand, can gain a more strategic understanding of the forces of change that ultimately are directing our customers' decisions and directions. These types of synergies can only benefit both sides and jointly we must address the "burning issues" of the day.
Burning Issues (In Order of Importance)
What are those "burning issues?" In order of importance, here's what the CDSA rank and file identified and prioritized on our behalf:
I might add that issues one through three were the most significant ones, with the differences between two and three almost indistinguishable.
Not surprisingly, the survey identified a similar, but slightly different, top three burning issues for our customers:
(1) Anti-piracy & content security
(2) Promoting physical media
(3) Digital distribution
The New Content Community Hierarchy
And, yes, you emphasized that you wanted more content holders to participate in our organization moving forward. Interestingly, there is a new hierarchy in place in terms of what companies within that content community are generating the most new business opportunities. In order of priority, you wanted to see more participation from:
(1) Games publishers
(2) Home video studios
(3) Business software
(4) Music labels
I'm extremely proud to announce that we anticipated this shift in customer priorities in recent months. Electronic Arts -- the leading game publisher -- has just joined our membership and just joined our Board of Directors. And they will be working very closely with us to develop a security standard for the digital distribution of media. We will be auditing their digital providers and certifying that they do have the security in place to protect that content. They will serve as a pilot for that particular standard. That standard will then be rolled out to many other content companies who have asked for a similar program.
I would expect to see more content holders on the board as we make an aggressive outreach program.
We're Proud to Protect Your Content
You may have read about the recent launch of a post production security certification program with Deluxe Digital. That particular standard was approved by our Board of Directors during their December meeting and I’m happy to announce that Deluxe Digital Services is the first post production facility to be certified under that program.
You may also have seen an ad for our 100+ certified replication plants in Variety and Mediaware. Expect more to come. If this is what our customers want, this is what we're going to give them.
Not surprisingly, one of the most talked about sessions at our recent Summit was by our new Board Vice President Richard Atkinson, VP Global Anti-Piracy Strategy & Operations, The Walt Disney Studios.
Storage is Finally Part of Our Association's Name
Our association owes its roots to the storage media industry. It began with the advent of the audio cassette nearly 38 years ago and storage companies including Imation, Maxell, Fuji, TDK, Sony, and newcomer SanDisk are vital participants in our activities.
Storage will play an even greater role in our activities in the months ahead. As our new Chairman, Frank Russomanno, CEO of Imation, offered at the recent Summit that five exabytes of new data are created annually, 92% of that data is digital, and 80% of digital data resides on removable media, mostly on tape and optical disc. Consumer applications are driving content growth, built upon the use of magnetic media ($1.8 billion), optical media ($3 billion), flash media ($11.4 billion), and they're expected to grow even further with the emerging removable hard disc drive category. Russomanno was also quite bullish about the global picture for storage products based on the emergence of the so-called BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Digital Distribution in a Physical World
And what about our membership's most burning issue -- probably the one that keeps us all up at night wondering what's ahead: promoting physical media?
This isn't just one move. It's every move. It will underscore all of CDSA's activities moving forward. We will emphasize it with the addition of content holders who share a similar business objective. Your content holders want physical media to survive for the foreseeable future as they ramp up digital distribution of media.
We will emphasize this with the addition of new storage companies from the flash memory and hard disc categories. We will emphasize it as we take a leadership role in the green movement and as we help establish a way for physical media to coexist with digital distribution in the years ahead. Most significantly, we will embrace the objective in the core of our new mission statement.
A New Mission for a New Market
You see, all of those strategic planning objectives need to be organized into a neat and achieveable new mission statement for our organization, one that defines who we are, why we exist and what we must do on behalf of our membership.
Significantly, you’ve told us you want CDSA to take a more active role in promoting our core business. You want us to take on an advocacy role for our industry. This is a major change from previous strategic plans that wanted us to provide more of a forum for information exchange.
You also said that you wanted your association to emphasize the importance of "innovation" to our industry, the priority of providing "safe and secure" storage solutions to content holders, and representing only "responsible" companies that recognize the significance of intellectual property and the value of our global environment.
Your New Mission Statement
"CDSA is the worldwide forum, advocating the innovative, secure and responsible delivery and storage of entertainment, software and information content."
I am proud to represent an industry association with such a mission statement.
For the first time in years, I think it says it all.
Charles Van Horn
IRMA/CDSA President
cvanhorn@contentdeliveryandstorage.org