Standards Body Seeks To Help Content Owners Develop Flexible Business Models

Despite the glut of digital content available on the Internet, a host of barriers--such as the wide array of software formats and device types used to access content--still prevents content owners from developing truly flexible business models. A group of technology vendors and content providers has formed a standards body to solve that problem by creating a technical and business architecture that will support such business models.

The Content Reference Forum this week goes public with its first proposed specifications, and the ultimate goal is to enable the kind of interoperability that will let consumers more easily access the content they want and share it with others--regardless of format, platform, or other preferences. The initial set of specs, which the forum is calling the Baseline Profile 1.0, is focused on distribution of content to Internet-enabled PCs. Eventually, the forum plans to develop standards for distributing content to other devices, such as mobile phones and set-top boxes. The group also will work on standards for business processes such as reporting, payment services, and registration of any parties who hold a stake in the distribution of content.

The centerpiece of the forum's architecture is a data package called a "content reference," which serves as a unique identifier of a piece of content and the context in which it will be used. Those references then trigger "reference services," essentially a set of Web services that check the content reference against contractual agreements related to the content, automatically triggering options to purchase the content, thus preserving the rights of content stakeholders. The way those involved in the forum see it, it's time to overcome the Catch-22 that has prevented mature digital-content business models. "It's hard to create new business models without the technology infrastructure," Dmitry Radbel, VP of advanced technology for forum member Universal Music Group and chairman of the forum's requirements and architecture working group. "On the other hand, there's no motive to create a technology infrastructure if there are no business models."

While a handful of digital-content services have achieved a degree of success, Radbel says, current distribution models often don't take things such as device types or software platforms into account. Making content more abstract will result in services that can be format- and bandwidth-agnostic, he says. Moreover, the forum's architecture of content references and reference services will provide better capabilities for tracking all the participants involved in a content value chain so that even the most minor business agreements can be respected. "Our concern is, how do we capture the business rules related to the content?" Radbel says.

Another area of concern is trying to figure out how content owners can take advantage of the file-sharing distribution channel. "Peer-to-peer networks are here," Radbel says. "We don't like much of what's going on, but you can also look at it as the glass being half full and say, 'How can we use it?'"

In addition to Universal, founders of the forum include ARM Holdings, ContentGuard, Macrovision, Microsoft, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, and VeriSign. The initial Baseline Profile specs are expected to be formally released in mid-2004.