In July, the Commece Department held a workshop entitled UNDERSTANDING BROADBAND DEMAND: DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT WORKSHOP. The list of attendees and speakers is a who's who of government and industry on the subject:
PHILLIP J. BOND Chief of Staff & Under Secretary Of Commerce for Technology
JAMES ROGAN Under Secretary for Intellectual Property
BRUCE P. MEHLMAN Assistant Secretary for Technolog Policy
ARDEN BEMENT Director, NIST
JOHN DUDAS Deputy Under Secretary for Intellectual Property
CHRIS S. ISRAEL Deputy Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy
TED COHEN EMI
DOUG COMER Intel
RHETT DAWSON ITIC
ELIZABETH FRAZEE AOL Time Warner
MITCH GLAZIER RIAA
GORDON LYON NIST
MICHAEL MIRON ContentGuard
ANDREW MOSS Microsoft
PRESTON PADDEN The Walt Disney Company
MICHAEL EPSTEIN Philips Electronics
JONATHAN POTTER DiMA
ROB REID Listen.com
BOB SCHWARTZ McDermott, Will and Emery
ANDY SETOS Fox Entertainment Group
TIM SHEEHY IBM
GRAHAM SPENCER digitalconsumer.org
JACK VALENTI Motion Picture Association of America
STEWART VERDERY Vivendi Universal.

A transcript of the proceedings can be found here:

MR. BOND: Let me begin by saying good afternoon to everybody, and thank you for coming out. My name is Phil Bond. I'm privileged and honored to serve as the Under Secretary for Technology here at the Department of Commerce, and also serve as the Chief of Staff to Secretary, Don Evans. I want to welcome you on behalf of the Commerce Department and the Technology Administration.

Welcome to our second Digital Content Roundtable, really the third event in this subject area that we've done in the Technology Administration. We also had a NIST Roundtable on DRM technical standards that we'll be hearing more about.

Our first roundtable was exactly seven months ago, in December of last year, where we began to address digital rights management and the potential that further deployment of online content might have to stimulate demand for more broadband deployment.

Back then, I think it's fair to say we heard nearly universal agreement that the private sector was aggressively addressing technical solutions. And we heard about marketing approaches that would help deliver high-quality and legitimate digital content to consumers.

Now, seven months later, we convene to look for a report from some of those participants on progress on the effort, and determine what appropriate steps might be taken next.

Specifically today, we hope to accomplish a handful of objectives, including to hear about the progress made in the technical standards processes. We heard about a great deal of activity in December, and we'll attempt to create a status report this afternoon in that space.

Secondly, we seek to define the important perspective of consumers, and how the market is working to meet those expectations. Third, we want to hear about technological developments in business approaches that are shaping the market for online content. And finally, we hope to leave with a better understanding of the proper role for the government as a facilitator moving forward.

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