It's an e-business enigma. PC owners are looking for more and more of their entertainment online, as Napster and its subscription-based successors have shown. And many of the companies that own today's most popular songs, books and movies are eager to sell their content over the Internet-if only they can find a way that's both convenient for customers and profitable for copyright owners. Yet many of the "digital rights management" companies that were founded to provide just such an online marketplace are shrinking or even disappearing from sight.

In the last eight months, a flock of content protection companies, including Buffalo, NY-based Reciprocal, San Jose, CA-based Vyou.com, Maynard, MA-based Digital Goods and Mountain View, CA-based Preview Systems, have been shut down or sold. ContentGuard, a Bethesda, MD-based Xerox spinoff (see "Digital Rights Management," TR January/February 2001), has abandoned its content-publishing business, shrinking to a quarter of its former size in the process. InterTrust Technologies of Santa Clara, CA, the company that founded the digital rights management industry, has slashed its head count by 40 percent.