XMCL Initiative Q&A

Q) What is XMCL?
A) eXtensible Media Commerce Language (XMCL), an open XML-based language designed to establish industry-wide standards for Internet media commerce.

Q) Why are we supporting this initiative?
A) By standardizing the rules for how content can be played in a way that is independent of codecs, digital rights management systems, and e-commerce systems, XMCL will unlock the potential of digital media commerce over the Internet by establishing interoperability between proprietary DRM systems, leveraging existing investment in backend media and commerce management systems, and offering media companies choices.

Q) Which companies are supporting this initiative?
A) The June 20, 2001 announcement is supported by: Abril Group, Accenture, Adobe Systems, Anystream, America Online, Artesia Technologies, Avid Technology, Bertelsmann, British Telecom's Btopenworld, Clear Channel, Context Media, EMI Recorded Music, eMotion, IBM, IFILM, InterTrust, MGM, Napster, RealNetworks, Rightsline, Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, Starz Encore Group, Sun Microsystems, Tiscali, Viant and Virage.

Q) Will other companies join this initiative later on?
A) Yes, other companies are free to join the initiative and we expect several to join the process.

Q) Is Microsoft a part of this initiative?
A) Microsoft has not yet announced support for the XMCL Initiative but we hope that they will. It would show a serious commitment on their part to the growth of the market for digital media commerce. That said, the initiative certainly stands on its own, with the support of market leaders such as RealNetworks, America Online, IBM, Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, InterTrust, etc.

Q) How will media companies benefit from this proposed standard?
A) The XMCL Initiative proposes a standard business rule definition language providing rights holders the ability to take existing media business models- such as rental, subscription, and purchase- and deploy them on the Internet to generate new commerce opportunities. XMCL will give rights holders the freedom to use multiple back-end systems that interoperate with rights management solutions under a common interchange language.

Q) Didn't RealNetworks announce a product as well?
A) Yes, RealNetworks announced the RealSystem Media Commerce Suite, a platform for the secure licensing and delivery digital media. The RealSystem Media Commerce Suite includes products and services for secure media packaging, license generation and high-quality content delivery to a trusted media player base across all major platforms.

Q) Is XMCL supported in RealNetworks product right now?
A) No. The next step for XMCL is to submit the specification to the appropriate standards body for review and codification. RealNetworks has committed to implement the proposed version of XMCL in their Media Commerce Suite, and will make whatever modifications to that implementation that may become necessary as XMCL moves through the standardization process. In any event, an implementation of XMCL only becomes truly valuable when there are other XMCL-compliant components out there in the digital media commerce ecosystem.

Q) How many products support XMCL?
A) No products support XMCL as of June 20th announcement date, but 25 companies are announcing their support.

Q) Is this initiative really just a way to make RealNetworks' new, proprietary DRM seem like it's standards-based?
A) No. This initiative is an effort on the part of 25 companies to make each of their (often proprietary) trusted media systems comply with a standard that's focused on a particular link in the digital media commerce value chain. RealNetworks intends to offer a very robust implementation of XMCL in their products, but because XMCL is an open, extensible standard, there's nothing that would prevent anyone else in the industry from outdoing them in that regard.

Q) Doesn't this initiative really address just a small part of the problem? I mean, if you standardize business rules, but encryption and formats and all that other stuff isn't standardized, what have you really accomplished?
A) Standardizing specific components of trusted media systems is a very risky proposition, because security is an area where diversity is actually a really good thing. If all trusted media systems relied on a common set of components, and those components were hacked, cracked, or breached in some kind of fundamental way, you'd have a very big problem in terms of content in a wide variety of formats from numerous vendors being vulnerable to piracy or unauthorized use. We believe that it's more appropriate to standardize the elements of the value chain that describe business rules, rather than the elements that enforce them.

Q) Does InterTrust's and IBM's support for this initiative mean that they're not going to make DRM client software anymore?
A) Many of the companies that have joined this initiative will be competing for business in the months and years to come. We hope that XMCL will catalyze digital media distribution into a much larger pie.

Q) How many months or years will it be before this specification gets out of whatever standards body RealNetworks intends to present it to, and is there anything to do in the interim to support the specification?
A) It's always difficult to gauge how long it will take an open standards body to complete its work, but we would expect to have something close to final in about one year. In the meantime, RealNetworks intends to start implementing XMCL in their products, and we would urge other supporters of the initiative to do so, as well. Because it's XML-based, XMCL is very flexible and implementing it as it stands in June '01 should not get in the way of making changes later if that's what the standards body decides.

Q) What are similar examples of standards specifications such as this that truly opened up new opportunities such as those you claim as the benefits of XMCL?
A) SQL to name just one.

Q) Will Systems Integrators lose if XMCL succeeds?
A) XMCL does not, and should not, eliminate the need for systems integrators in the development of digital media commerce systems. Instead, it frees them from the tedious task of mapping business rules from one proprietary system to another, and allows them to focus on areas where their expertise can add real value, such as building out robust delivery infrastructures, implementing mission-critical back-end business applications, or streamlining the consumer experience.

Q) Will MusicNet and the other MusicNet partners support XMCL?
A) MusicNet has announced its endorsement of the XMCL Initiative. RealNetworks' product, RealSystem Media Commerce Suite, is a key underlying component of the MusicNet platform. MusicNet will also take steps to enable XMCL in the other back-end components that comprise its platform.

Q) How does XMCL relate to SDMI?
A) Although SDMI did, at times, contemplate creating a standard set of metadata or a "rights language" that would have been vaguely similar to XMCL, XMCL is really much more broadly applicable to all media, rather than music specifically.

Q) Why is your Media Commerce Initiative better than XrML?
A) XMCL is the right solution for one of the very tough set of problems associated with digital media commerce. XMCL is very focused on a specific pressure point in the digital media distribution ecosystem - the interchange between trusted media systems, like RealNetworks' Media Commerce Suite or IBM's EMMS, and the back-end systems that media companies and retailers use to execute on their business models, such as web sites, clearinghouses, customer relationship management systems, and asset management systems. Companies need to be able to make the necessary big investments in those back-end systems without worrying about whether those systems will interoperate with each of the trusted media systems they may decide to use over time. By standardizing a way of describing the business rules that support those business models, XMCL provides a solution that's very focused on that need.

XrML takes a much broader approach, attempting to describe and define anything and everything related to online commerce, whether it's media, books, or other content that's being bought and sold. While it's an ambitious effort, we really felt that implementing XrML would require very deep integration on the part of vendors of trusted media systems, as well as back-end systems, oftentimes in areas of product functionality where standardization is not beneficial or may even be meaningless.

We also believe strongly in the viability of open standards. XrML has not been submitted to a standards body and is the property of its creator, ContentGuard.

Q) How can my firm lend its support to the XMCL initiative?
A) Send an email to partners@real.com