Re: call for input on digital rights management

["Reddy, Hari" <Hari.Reddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: call for input on digital rights management

Hello Patrick:
A colleague of mine forwarded to me your email below that was sent to the digital-copyright list regarding the OASIS Rights Language Technical Committee ("RLTC") request for DRM Requirements. I am the Chairperson of this committee and would like to take the opportunity to respond.

For a long time, we have recognized that a Digital Rights standard must enable the wide variety of uses of digital rights management, only one of which is the sale of media and entertainment content to consumers. The standard must also respect all of the entities within the workflows. This is central to our charter (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/rights/#charter).

Accordingly, we agree with your view that a DRM standard should not attempt a one size fits all solution. The basis of the RLTC work stems from many years of research and development resulting from numerous engagements with communities and standards bodies. With regards to the technology, the domain agnostic architecture of the RLTC work supports a wide array of uses of digital rights management including fair use. Through the development of extensions, various communities can also build upon the work to extend functionality further. We also have one Subcommittee that is developing models on how to do this easily to facilitate adoption across many different domains. This extensibility is fundamental to the architecture and to the mission of the RLTC.

Although the RLTC did not initially receive members from the classical academic community during our open call for participation, this does not imply at all that we intend to ignore its needs. On the contrary, the charter specifically includes the need to solicit requirements from "user communities" which includes academia. In fact, a number of us came from the academic community. To support the RLTC charter, we have identified certain communities and organizations and have assigned RLTC representatives to each to act as the initial conduit for requirements. Robin Cover has volunteered to collect some of these requirements from the academic community. I invite input to be sent to Robin (robin@xxxxxxxxxx) who will present the material to the Requirements Subcommittee.

The RLTC also invites liaisons with various academic organizations to develop a closer relationship with our work. I would also like to invite individuals to join the RLTC. Per OASIS guidelines, all technical committee members need to be OASIS members. There are many ways that one may become an OASIS member (<http://www.oasis-open.org/join/>) including joining as an Individual which is relatively inexpensive (250 USD/year). I also invite people to review our work going forward by going to the RLTC Website (<http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/rights/>). OASIS is an open standards process in that all of the work is open for public review.

Finally, let me emphasize that this is not a one-time opportunity to determine academic requirements. As noted above, since the architecture supports the development of future extensions and profiles, the needs of academia (or for that matter, any other community) can be accommodated either today or at anytime in the future. This approach has the benefit of enabling efficient specification development today for areas that have defined requirements, without stranding future needs.

On behalf of the RLTC, I look forward to your input and support. If you have any questions with regards to the RLTC, please feel free to contact me.

Regards,
Hari Reddy
Chairperson
OASIS Rights Language Technical Committee
hari.reddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



>Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 07:51:55 -0400
>From: Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@xxxxxxxxx>
>
>Greetings,
>
>I deeply appreciate Robin Cover's post to the list requesting DRM
>requirements and would urge the academic community to response
>appropriately, even given the rather short deadline for requirements
>(7 August 2002).
>
>In terms of deciding to devote summer hours to this task, please
>consider the membership of this TC:
>
>Hari Reddy, Chairperson ContentGuard
>Carlisle Adams, Entrust
>Bob Atkinson, Microsoft
>Thomas DeMartini, ContentGuard
>John Erickson, H.P.
>Brad Gandee, Secretary ContentGuard
>Bob Glushko, CommerceOne
>Thomas Hardjono, Verisign
>Hal Lockhart, Entegrity
>M. Paramasivam, Microsoft
>David Parrott, Reuters
>Harry Piccariello, ContentGuard
>Peter Schirling, IBM
>Xin Wang, ContentGuard
>
>While I am sure all the members of the TC will try to develop a
>standard that represents the interests of everyone affected by the
>DRM standard, I fail to see any representation of the academic,
>library or other communities. That is not to imply any fault on the
>part of the TC or OASIS, as a community academics have tended to
>absent themselves from such discussions.
>
>The interests of the academic community in issues such as "fair use"
>and allowing free (or at least non-commercial) use of texts and
>research will not be well served by a standard that protects the
>commercial rights in the "Lion King" and similar artifacts. Our
>requirements are different and any standard for DRM should not
>attempt a one size fits all solution. I am sure that the TC would
>welcome academic input that would lead to a more nuanced standard
>that meets a wide range of needs, one of the hallmarks of a
>successful standard.
>
>Note that a DRM standard will eventually find its way into
>hardware/software and it will be too late to complain at that point
>that it does not meet the needs of the academic community.
>
>Please forward Robin's note (and my comments if you think
>appropriate) to anyone you know who is interested in "fair use" or
>more generally access to academic materials, since a DRM standard
>will deeply affect both issues.
>
>Patrick
>