Entertainment, Technology
and Consumer Electronics Leaders Unite for DRM Interoperability
"Coral" to Maximize Consumer Choice
in Digital Entertainment: Promotes Devices, Content
and Technologies that Play Well Together
Sunnyvale, Calif., October 4, 2004 -
Seven major media and technology companies have joined
together to form the Coral Consortium™, a cross-industry
group to promote interoperability between digital
rights management (DRM) technologies used in the consumer
media market. Coral's goal is to create a common technology
framework for content, device and service providers,
regardless of the DRM technologies they use. This
open technology framework will enable a simple and
consistent digital entertainment experience for consumers.
Coral's founding members are HP (NYSE:HPQ), Intertrust
Technologies Corporation, Koninklijke Philips Electronics
N.V. (NYSE:PHG), Panasonic (Matsushita Electric Industrial
Co., Ltd. NYSE:MC), Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.,
Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), and Twentieth Century
Fox Film Corp (NYSE:NWS).
The Coral Consortium seeks to ensure interoperability
so that today's digital music and video can be easily
accessed and enjoyed, regardless of the service provider
or the device. While recent innovations in digital
media distribution provide consumers with new channels
to acquire music and video, proprietary differences
still exist in underlying DRM or content protection
technology. At times, these technologies conflict
and prevent consumers from playing content packaged
and distributed using one DRM technology on a device
that supports a different DRM technology. Coral's
focus is a new technology layer that will allow existing
DRM solutions to co-exist, thereby promoting content
and devices that play well together.
"The classic approach to solving the interoperability
problem is to either use a single proprietary platform
for media distribution, or to standardize a common
content protection and management technology,"
said Jack Lacy, Coral Consortium's president and Intertrust's
SVP of Standards and Community Initiatives. "Consumers
typically just want to buy, play, and use content
in an intuitive manner and do not want to dwell on
differences between esoteric technology features.
Coral aims to provide them with such functionality
and ease of use."
Coral's answer is to separate content interoperability
from choice of DRM technology by developing and standardizing
a set of specifications focused on interoperability
between different DRM technologies rather than specifying
DRM technologies. The resulting interoperability layer
supports the coexistence of multiple different DRM
technologies and permits devices to find appropriately
formatted content in the time it takes to press the
play button, without consumer awareness of any disparity
in format or DRM technology. Coral will provide interoperability
for secure content distribution over web and home
network-based devices and services.
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Media Contacts
Leigh Anne Varney
Varney Business Communication
415.387.7250
la@varneybusiness.com
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