Jari Ketola
2 Oct 2003 16:47
MPEG LA, a group representing companies that hold MPEG-4 audio and video patent rights, has asked DRM patent holders to submit their technologies for review. Suitable DRM methods will be gathered into a licensing pool by MPEG LA for all developers to license at one go.
By providing all essential technologies in one place, MPEG LA hopes to make it easier for software and hardware developers, who want to produce copy protected MPEG material, to gather the required licenses for DRM technologies. Until now developers have had to search for appropriate DRM patents themselves, which is extremely time consuming. One of the few alternatives has been Microsoft's products, but content providers are not too keen on giving Microsoft more control than it already has.
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is developing a DRM standard of its own, but MPEG LA wants to act more quickly. A "semi-official" DRM standard crafted by MPEG LA might well serve as a guideline for the official MPEG standard as well.
Read the MPEG LA DRM announcement
Source:
News.com