Re: [rights] rushing the spec out: two questions

[Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu>]

Title: RE: [rights] rushing the spec out: two questions

   Hari,

 Reddy, Hari wrote:

D2BB9D7307EC6F40A32488899B668F3A1CF368@mail2.contentguard.com">

Hi Bob:

"I thought of this when I heard today how badly we need to "take what we have and get it out there" (please correct me if I'm misquoting) because what we have is XrML 2.1, a ContentGuard product."

I think that what was being discussed was the Requirements analysis and not the specification. The discussion was around the great deal of work that has been done in the requirements SC and that the requirements team should produce its output for review. The requirements process will continue to process emerging requirements but this, as was stated in the meeting, should not hinder the publication of the work to date.

 A great deal of work remains to be done by the Requirements SC, particularly 
in terms of documenting a rights model against which requirements can be assessed
either by the Requirements SC or the Rights TC. At this point, there is no
rights model set forth in any document of the TC or SC (note I am excluding 
privately authored documents with an implicit rights model in such documents)
that would allow any judgment to be made about the appropriateness of any
requirement for a rights expression language.   
  
 It seems to me that some model of the rights that are to be expressed is 
a necessity before deciding on a language to express such rights. And I find 
the argument that no one has objected to date to the lack of such a model 
as insufficient reason to simply proceed. Personally I think the group as 
a whole deserves an answer to Bob's question about "what's the rush?" (And 
I think that answer needs to be more than defensive statements about time 
spent on the phone or in drafting analysis that is unsupported by any specified
model.) 
  
 To properly serve all the software vendors who will produce software based
on such a standard, and the content producers and end users who will use
the results of the standard and implementations, we should take the time required
to do it right. Is there some other goal to be served by this process other
than benefiting those three classes of people affected by this standard? 
 
  
 A lot of work has been done to date and I by no means want to make light 
of the effort expended to date. But by comparison to major standards of similar 
reach, SGML for example, this activity is merely warming up for the task of
writing a truly useful standard. That will take as long as it takes and a
good standard, cannot be driven by short-sighted goals or temporary advantages. 
  
  
 Patrick

D2BB9D7307EC6F40A32488899B668F3A1CF368@mail2.contentguard.com">

Regards,
Hari

-----Original Message-----
From: DuCharme, Bob (LNG) [ mailto:bob.ducharme@lexisnexis.com ]
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 10:46 PM
To: ' rights@lists.oasis-open.org '
Subject: [rights] rushing the spec out: two questions

I have two questions about the pro-rushing sentiment voiced by several
people in today's general conference call. Both are based on my
understanding of the argument for rushing being that if we don't move
quickly enough to fill the DRM gap in MPEG, MPEG will fill it themselves,
and people will use their DRM language instead of the OASIS one.

Questions:

1. Who are these people that won't wait? The answer doesn't have to be that
specific; for example, "the consumer electronics industry, the X industry,
the Y industry..." I'm fully confident that the publishing industry would
not, six months from now, jump on an MPEG DRM specification because it beat
the OASIS one to Release 1.0 by two or three months, and I'd like to know
which industries would. If the answer is "everyone using the MPEG standard,"
I'd still like to hear this broken down into a few industry categories. Many
industries that won't be using the MPEG standard still need a DRM language,
and are hoping to see it come from OASIS. If we say that we'll take care of
them in 1.1, it still doesn't address the question of who will use an MPEG
DRM spec instead of ours because we didn't move quickly enough, which is one
of the main justifications given for our rushing.

2. How much of a DRM language does MPEG  have together now--that is, is the
OASIS RLTC's head start as big as I think it is, or does MPEG have a DRM
specification in progress that is on track to be turned into something that
could be released in six to eight months and viably compete with a solid
XrML upgrade?

Those are my questions, and here's my general opinion: everyone agreed that
the OASIS RLTC would not be rubber-stamping ContentGuard's existing work to
turn it into the OASIS RL 1.0. I thought of this when I heard today how
badly we need to "take what we have and get it out there" (please correct me
if I'm misquoting) because what we have is XrML 2.1, a ContentGuard product.
If we add a couple of things and essentially release XrML 2.2 as ORL 1.0, we
wouldn't be fooling many of the people who we originally assured that this
was not a rubber stamp job.

Bob DuCharme
Consulting Software Engineer, LexisNexis
Data Architecture, Editorial Systems and Content Engineering

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-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu