[ba-ohs-talk] [Fwd: XrML Spells Out Rights for Digital Assets]
Something of interest wrt the current discussion... (01)
UNIX INSIDER --- May 14, 2002
Published by ITworld.com -- changing the way you view IT
http://www.itworld.com/newsletters
________________________________________________________________________________ (02)
HIGHLIGHTS (03)
* As the world becomes more connected, issues surrounding digital
rights continue to plague the Internet. Can XrML supply the
protection that your digital assets require?
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XrML Spells Out Rights for Digital Assets
By Susan Levi Wallach (05)
Digital rights management is one of the perennial bugaboos of the
Internet world. Once you put a digital asset online, how do you guard
against unauthorized distribution? ContentGuard Inc. has an answer:
XrML. (06)
eXtensible rights Markup Language (XrML) is a general language for
specifying rights for digital assets. However, as Ron Schmelzer, senior
analyst at ZapThink LLC, puts it, "The name of the game for any XML
standard is adoption." To that end, ContentGuard is contributing XrML to
Oasis, the consortium for XML interoperability standards, in the hope of
building a consensus and ensuring industry participation in the
language's development. (07)
The Bethesda, MD, provider of digital rights language technology also
plans to hand over XrML governance to one of the several global
standards organizations with which it is currently in discussions. The
language was originally developed at Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC) as a means to facilitate creation of an open architecture
for management of rights for digital content and services. (08)
"I think it serves a valuable role to specify this rights markup
language," says Schmelzer, "because then any developer can say, without
having to worry about the package that will actually implement it, that
this image can only be shown to the following people three times and
then it must self destruct. Or this text can be shown to anyone anywhere
and can be copied." (09)
Moreover, establishment of a standard, universal digital rights language
would be one step in ensuring that systems for managing digital content
or Web services interoperate, which in turn could push commercialization
of Web Services. (010)
With XrML, says Schmelzer, "I can specify those rights without having a
piece of software in mind, without having to create it with an
InterTrust system or a ContentGuard system or a Microsoft digital asset
server system in mind." (011)
About the author(s)
-------------------
Susan Levi Wallach is an editor and analyst and has been covering
information technology since the days of Babbage. Susan can be reached
at slw@pablo.com.
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (013)
XrML
http://ui.unixinsider.com/GoNow/a14724a58202a76033898a7 (014)
Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML)
http://ui.unixinsider.com/GoNow/a14724a58202a76033898a6 (015)
XrML 2.0 Review
http://ui.unixinsider.com/GoNow/a14724a58202a76033898a2 (016)
eXtensible Rights Markup Language
http://ui.unixinsider.com/GoNow/a14724a58202a76033898a1 (017)