Boston, MA, April 4 2002 OASIS, the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) interoperability consortium, announced its members have formed the OASIS Rights Language Technical Committee to advance a common XML rights language standard for the digital rights management (DRM) marketplace.
According to the consortium, the work will provide a universal method for specifying and managing rights associated with all kinds of resources including digital content and Web services. The OASIS specification will support a wide variety of business models, expressing both simple and complex rights and promoting interoperability between systems regardless of platform, media type or format.
"There is a significant need across many industries for DRM standards to assist institutions in managing their digital assets such as content or Web services," said Hari Reddy of ContentGuard, chair of the OASIS Rights Language Technical Committee. "Our work in establishing a standard rights language will address the need for interoperability between the components and systems that manage the creation, distribution and consumption of digital assets within and across different industries."
ContentGuard intends to submit its eXtensible rights Markup Language (XrML) to the 0ASIS Rights Language Technical Committee as a starting point for this work. XrML, recently selected as the base architecture for the MPEG-21 Rights Expression Language, can be used in content-centric and service-based business models.
"The use of DRM technologies for the distribution of content and services holds great potential, and putting DRM-related standards in place is essential for the success of DRM, " said Joshua Duhl, an IDC Contributing Analyst. "The contribution of XrML to OASIS is an important step in establishing a standard rights language for DRM. "
Members of the OASIS Rights Language Technical Committee include ContentGuard, Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft, Reuters, VeriSign Inc. and other OASIS members. Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals interested in advancing a common rights language. Information on joining OASIS can be found on http://www.oasis-open.org/join.
