January 22, 2002
Freedom of Expression
Toward Standardization
It's one thing to standardize a language, but quite another for any one language to become a standard. To help legitimize their efforts, the creators of XMCL, ODRL, and XrML have each announced their intent to submit their work to various prominent standards bodies for ongoing development. The extent to which they've followed through on those promises, however, has varied.
In the past, RealNetworks has had a good track record of support for open standards. The company's efforts contributed significantly to the development of the Realtime Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and the Structured Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL). But while RealNetworks's Jeff Albertson announced in June 2001 that the company planned to submit XMCL to the W3C standards body "within a month," so far that promise has gone unfulfilled.
Supporters of the ODRL Initiative have been somewhat more proactive. In November 2001, the ODRL 1.0 specification was submitted to the ISO/IEC MPEG standards body for consideration as the rights expression language component for the developing MPEG-21 media distribution standard. The submission was backed by companies
as diverse as Adobe, IBM, IPR Systems, Nokia, and Panasonic. Surprisingly, RealNetworks also supported it, choosing to merge the XMCL specification into ODRL rather than submit its own language independently.
But in the end, it was XrML, and not ODRL, that was chosen
as the starting point for the eventual MPEG-21 rights expression language. "We think it's a pretty big win in the marketplace," says ContentGuard's Samtani. Even so, the company doesn't plan to stop there. "This is just a first step," he explains. "XrML will be submitted to any standards body that needs a rights language." So far, ContentGuard has already submitted the language to the TV Anytime Forum.
One way or another, consolidation amongst the various rights expression languages seems inevitable. ContentGuard's track record of success, though limited, makes it the current front-runner. Yet the reputation of the MPEG group may draw more attention to its own eventual, XrML-derived language, which will be specified with the input of both RealNetworks and the ODRL Initiative members.
Whatever the outcome, a standard rights expression language is but one brick in the foundation of a viable DRM platform, albeit an important one. True, gaining the support of standards bodies is an essential step. But the long-term goal—gaining the support of consumers and business customers alike—still lies ahead.
Neil is senior technology editor for New Architect.
In December 2001, the United States Patent and Trademark office granted
two patents to Microsoft for an invention it called a "digital rights management operating system." This type of OS, the patent's summary explained, "protects rights-managed data, such as downloaded content, from access by untrusted programs while the data is loaded into memory." Long before the patent was granted, Microsoft had already begun building these features into the core of the operating system that became known as Windows XP.
So is that it? Game, set, and match—Microsoft has the market cornered on digital rights management for the foreseeable future? Not quite.
Microsoft's patents are merely the most recent entries in a history of filings in the DRM arena. Xerox PARC filed the first such claims in the mid-1990s for Dr. Mark Stefik's research in the areas of trusted systems. Among its registered inventions were "Interactive Contents Revealing Storage Device" (U.S. Patent 5,530,235), granted in 1996; and "System for Controlling the Distribution and Use of Digital Work Having Attached Usage Rights Where the Usage Rights are Defined by a Usage Rights Grammar" (U.S. Patent 5,715,403), granted in 1998. Xerox Corporation transferred ownership of those early inventions to its ContentGuard spin-off in 2000, giving the new company a formidable portfolio of patents to back up its work on DRM and the XrML language.
"We don't feel apologetic that the people at PARC were prescient enough to see down the road to patent this stuff," says Rajan Samtani, ContentGuard's director of sales and marketing. That's no surprise, considering that ContentGuard asserts, among other claims, that its patents grant it exclusive license to the very idea of a rights expression language. That claim
will still hold, whether XrML becomes the eventual industry standard or not. By extension, ContentGuard could potentially continue to collect licensing fees on rights expression languages even if XrML fades into oblivion.
ContentGuard isn't the only DRM company that's banking on the value of patent registrations. At least a dozen companies claim patents in the DRM area, including Alchemedia, Digimarc, Digital Goods, IBM, InterTrust, Microsoft, and Xerox/ContentGuard. The language of many of these claims is quite specific. Less clear, however, is the impact that patent registrations will have on the
DRM software industry as a whole.
In June 2001, leading DRM software vendor InterTrust filed suit against Microsoft for infringement of key InterTrust inventions, a filing that it has since expanded to reference seven distinct patents. Although the pockets of the Redmond-based software giant are obviously deep enough to defend itself against such a suit, the action sets a precedent that's liable to have a chilling effect on smaller vendors. Faced with what must seem like a virtual minefield of patent registrations, many software developers are liable to steer clear of the DRM tools market
altogether.
DRM technologies were invented as a means of protecting intellectual property. The irony is that intellectual property law itself may prove to be one of the most significant factors limiting the growth
of the DRM marketplace.
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—NM |
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