New digital media group formalizes status
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
December 3, 2003 (4:16 p.m. ET)
PARIS — The Digital Media Project (DMP), a new international group organized by MPEG founder Leonardo Chiariglione to propose policies and technical actions necessary for a global digital media market to flourish, has officially registered as a non-profit organization in Geneva on Monday (Dec. 1).
Among the nine DMP founding organizations are British Telecom, MPEG LA, Telecom Italia and the University of Tokyo.
Born out of frustration over the digital media logjam that has held back introduction of commercially viable digital content, the DMP, as part of its genesis, published a Digital Media Manifesto two months ago.
While announcing the formal organization, DMP also issued its first call for submissions regarding traditional rights and usages usually associated with content usage such as fair use, first sale and privacy. The objective of such a call is to "map traditional rights and usages from the analog to the digital space," according to the group.
Chiariglione told EE Times, "The reason why so many have attempted to deal with content in the digital space and have failed is because they have not considered, or not considered with sufficient attention the problem of traditional rights and usages. Unless these traditional rights and usages are considered, it is meaningless to start working on technology."
The DMP plans to break the digital media stalemate by acting on two fronts — technology and policy. For the technology parts, calls for proposals scheduled to be issued soon include: "interoperable digital rights management platforms," "interoperable end-user devices," and "end-to-end conformance assessment."
Besides the mapping of rights traditionally enjoyed by users to the digital media, the group will be asking for policy-related submissions for "phasing out analog legacies applied to digital media," "deployment of broadband access," and "improving development of and access to standards."
Chiariglione said that the DMP plans to come up with recommended action on policy issues within 18 months and on technical issues within 24 months.
The Digital Media Project expects a number of other corporations in the computer and consumer electronics industries — such as Matsushita, Microsoft and Samsung — to join the Project soon. The companies are currently undergoing internal company procedures to become DMP members. Project leaders are recruiting new members as well.
Elected to be on a DMP board of directors include Marina Bosi, MPEG LA, Leonardo Chiariglione, Thomas Curran, the Enterprise of the Future, Jose Neri, Sociedad Digital de Autores y Editores, Richard Nicol, British Telecom and Hiroshi Yasuda, University of Tokyo.
