| Consumer electronics leaders collaborate on DRM spec |
Jan. 20, 2005
Intertrust Technologies, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, and Sony Corp. have formed the Marlin Joint Development Association (Marlin JDA), a consortium tasked with developing standards for content management and protection, for use by consumer electronics (CE) device manufacturers.
The Marlin JDA's specifications will "allow CE companies to build DRM clients for consumer devices that support popular content distribution modes in the Internet, broadcast, and mobile vertical market segments," according to a joint statement issued by the five companies today.
"For consumers, Marlin-based devices will mean that they can enjoy appropriately licensed content on any device they deem convenient, independent of how they originally obtained that content," the statement said. "Convergence across consumer Internet, broadcast, and mobile devices and services over the last few years has been constrained because of often conflicting proprietary DRM technologies and differing standards for each distribution mode, such as proprietary methods of music distribution to hard disk music players from the Internet."
The Marlin JDA specs will enable device makers to use a single technology toolkit to build DRM functions into their devices to support commonly used content distribution modes, in a manner that "promotes interoperability while maximizing efficiency in the device architecture," according to the statement.
Additionally, the statement says that the Marlin JDA's specs will be "fully compatible with the outcome of the previously announced Coral initiative [announced last September], which is aimed at developing a set of DRM-agnostic service protocols for interoperability between DRM systems and standards," and adds, "Marlin-based devices will be able to interoperate with Coral-enabled DRM systems even if those systems do not use Marlin DRM components."
The organization says that it will offer a Licensing and Compliance Program and a Community Source Program, which will offer sample code and licenses for the Marlin DRM specs in a "reasonable and non-discriminatory" manner.
The group plans to release version 1.0 of the Marlin JDA's specification "in the summer 2005 time frame," in conjunction with the associated Community Source and Licensing and Compliance program.
No domain name was provided for the Marlin JDA website in the announcement. However, the URLs marlin-jda.com, marlin-jda.net, and marlin-jda.org were all registered on January 17th by Intertrust Technologies Inc., the one company among the founding group that is not a device manufacurer.
On its website, Intertrust describes itself as a company that "develops and licenses intellectual property for digital rights management (DRM), digital policy management (DPM), and trusted computing," and says that it "holds over 31 U.S. patents and [has] over 100 patent applications pending worldwide [that cover] software and hardware techniques that can be implemented in a broad range of products that use DRM and trusted computing technologies, including digital media platforms and web services, and the enterprise infrastructure."
(Click here for further information)
|
|
|
7 Advantages of D2D Backup
For decades, tape has been the backup medium of choice. But, now, disk-to-disk (D2D) backup is gaining in favor. Learn why you should make the move in this whitepaper.
4 Legal Reasons to Control Internet Access
The Internet is obviously a valuable resource for many organizations. However, many are exposed to legal liability concerns because they fail to control Internet access. Learn if you're safe in this white paper.
Rapidly Resolve J2EE Application Problems
Whether you are in the process of building J2EE applications or have J2EE applications already running in production, you must ensure that they deliver the expected ROI. Learn how in this white paper.
Load Testing 2.0 for Web 2.0
There are many unknowns in stress testing Web 2.0 applications. Find out how to test the performance of Web 2.0 in this white paper.
Build Better Games Online
For the game infrastructure providers, life is complex. Making money from games has become more complicated. Why? Find out in this white paper.
Building a Virtual Infrastructure from Servers to Storage
This white paper discusses the virtual storage solutions that reduce cost, increase storage utilization, and address the challenges of backing up and restoring Server environments.
Gaining Faster Wireless Connections with WiMAX
Welcome to what is quickly becoming the hyperconnected world where anything that would benefit from being connected to the network will be connected. Learn more in this white paper.
Is Your Desktop a Security Threat?
The new wave of sophisticated crimeware not only targets specific companies, but also targets desktops and laptops as backdoor entryways into those business’ operations and resources. Learn how to stay safe in this white paper.
Increasing SAN Reliability by 100 Percent
Storage area networks (SAN) are a strong part of storage plans. Learn how to increase your reliability and uptime by 100 percent in this case study.
|
|
|
|
|
news feed