Sun Microsystems said today that it wants to create an open and free digital rights management (DRM) technology.

The company's president and chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz unveiled the new project called Dream (DRM everywhere available) at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit in Colorado.

Digital rights management technology ensures access to digital content for legitimate users while blocking access to individuals who try to access the data in violation of copyright licences. Many companies have developed DRM technologies, including Apple, Microsoft and Real. , meaning that a song purchased in Apple's iTunes music store can't be played in media players from Microsoft or Real.

However, these technologies aren't compatible

Such an abundance of DRM technologies is holding back the adoption of digital media, claimed Schwartz.

"We must not allow progress to be stifled by clumsy, self-defeating internet tollgates in the form of a monolithic, closed digital rights management system. "

Schwartz expects that by creating an open source DRM technology, he can set a standard that is used across the industry.

"We fundamentally believe that a federated DRM solution must be built by the community, for the community."

Dream had been under development by researchers in Sun Labs since 2002. Sun has made the software available under the common development and distribution licence (CDDL), an open source licence governed by the enterprise computing vendor.

The technology allows DRM technologies to interoperate. It enables licences to be issued to individual users rather than centring protection around devices based on manufacturers.

In additional to the interoperability technology, Dream contains software to allow for video delivery.