AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Everyone wants digital rights management (DRM) technologies that protect copyrighted audio, video and broadcast content from hackers, pirates and ordinary file-sharers, but nobody wants to pay for them.

DRM experts convening here Thursday (Sept. 7) on the first day of Europe's biggest broadcast conference, IBC, equated DRM costs to a "tax." Worse, according to Jean-Luc Moullet, vice president for software and technology solutions at Thomson USA, it's a tax that offers few benefits for consumers.

"Who gets hurt?" asked Moullet, adding that Hollywood studios, the music industry and broadcasters are the main victims of electronic content theft.

Moullet said content owners, not customers, stand to reap the rewards and revenues from a broad deployment of DRM security measures. "I'm not sure the consumer has anything to win."

DRM panelists represented companies with various solutions to the security problem, but they agreed that the broader the reach of any DRM solution, the more vulnerable it is—especially when content hits the Internet.

"The Internet is a vector for piracy," said Tom Munro, CEO of Verametrix, a San Diego company that focuses on Internet Protocol content security.

Glenn Reitmeier of NBC Universal offered a modest example of this proposition. His company has counted 675,000 illegal copies of Universal Studios movies available on the Web.

Reitmeier, however, offered some consolation to the panel's otherwise bleak consensus, saying Univeral's approach is to "take the offense" against hacking and piracy by distributing content legally in as many ways as possible. Most consumers, he insisted, will prefer legal movies, music and TV shows if they're easy to access. The "ordinary consumer," he added, can be steered away from illegal content, through simple security measures.