As the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas reaches a crescendo (a tip of the hat to Rafat Ali's blow-by-blow coverage), the landscape of content-oriented players is undergoing some interesting changes. Hewlett Packard announced a new marketing deal with Apple to distribute their iPod units, giving HP a profile in consumer electronics more similar to Dell, which has launched its own Windows-based tunes player along with a widening galaxy of printers and digital gizmos. But of more overall significance to the content industry is HP CEO Carly Fiorina's strong statements in favor of protecting copyrighted materials via HP platforms and software, as reported by CNET. Fiorina stated that starting this year all HP digital entertainment products will use software that respects the copyrights of artists. Meanwhile, as reported in Corporate Media News, IBM is teaming up with Real Networks to provide consumer and professional digital multimedia services, taking advantage of Real's new cross-format rights-protected content capabilities. Systems and network services vendors are learning quickly that they are an integral part of the publishing business, needing a far broader eye to service the needs of both individuals and institutions for more competent content appliances that act less like under-engineered multipurpose platforms and more like highly reliable and usable vContent machines. As we said in our 2004 forecast, the walls are tumbling down...