FINAL PROGRAM

The Digital Media Project (DMP) workshop on
Traditional Rights and Usages (TRU) of media users
(the Recording Academy, Los Angeles, CA - 2004/04/26-27)

The Digital Media Project is pleased to announce the "Workshop on Traditional Rights and Usages (TRU) of media users" to be held at the Recording Academy's headquarters in Santa Monica on 26th and 27th of April 2004.

The first day (26th) will be based on the following program

The outline of the workshop program on the 26th is

Participants will be encouraged to bring new TRUs, Digital Enabled Usages (DEUs) and Digital Media Business Models (DMBMs) using a standard form. See below for further details.

The second day of the workshop (27th) will be dedicated to integrating the material acquired on the preceding day and to a thorough review of the documents produced.

Please note that

• attendance is open to any individual claiming special knowledge of the topic

• precedence will be given to speakers and DMP members, as the venue has limited seating capacity

• there are no meeting fees.

Text of 2nd annoucement.

Text of 1st annoucement.

On the 28th to 30th the Digital Media Project will hold its 2nd General Assembly (GA02) at Sheraton LAX.

For further contact send an email to project@chiariglione.org.

About the Digital Media Project

The Digital Media Project (DMP) is a not-for-profit organisation, established in December 2003 and registered in Geneva, with the mission to promote continuing successful development, deployment and use of Digital Media that respect the rights of creators and rights holders to exploit their works, the wish of end users to fully enjoy the benefits of Digital Media and the interests of various value-chain players to provide products and services, according to the principles of the Digital Media Manifesto.

As part of its mission the DMP develops Recommended Actions (RA), Recommended Practices (RP) and Technical Specifications (TS). Part of the current DMP work plan is the development of TSs for Interoperable DRM Platform (IDP) and Interoperable End-user Devices (IED), and Recommended Practices for End-to-End Conformance (EEC).

TRUs are the foundational element of the DMP approach to further its goals. It is based on the idea that, if users have been doing certain things in the past - no matter what was the basis for doing that - it means that, at least in the analogue domain, there was a demand for that usage. Note that, in the DMP context, "user" includes individuals and entities who create, own rights in or use/consume digital content, as well as all actors who play a role in making content available for use and consumption, such as distributors, retailers, internet service providers, manufacturers of end-user devices (both hardware and software), and end-users.

The DMP has already begun to identify and describe TRUs. This is not being done with the purpose of building evidence that a "right" to a particular usage existed but simply to identify what users have found useful to do in the analogue domain because they will probably like to continue doing it in the digital domain as well.

The DMP has identified Digital Rights Management (DRM) as the technology enabling a “controlled” exercise of some of those TRUs. Therefore TRUs are currently being used to derived requirements (RQ) to be used in developing TSs for IDP and IED.

In order to make sure that all relevant TRUs are considered and RQs are derived, a number of Media Business Models will also be considered. These can be considered as sets of TRUs that value-chain users balance and assemble in order to implement their business ideas. Digital Media Business Models (DMBM) - their digital equivalent and successors - will likely also make use of Digital Enabled Usages (DEU), i.e. usages that were either not possible or not considered in the analogue domains. DEUs that will be considered acceptable by DMP will be used to further develop RQs.

One difficulty encountered by the widespread use of digital media is the disagreement between value-chain users about which TRUs should be supported in the digital domain and, if supported, to what extent they should be supported. The DMP is not going to enter this debate because its specifications will support the technical exercise of all identified TRUs, on the ground that there are DMBMs that require exercise of some of those TRUs, possibly in a “controlled” fashion.

To complete its job the DMP expects individual jurisdictions to determine which TRUs shall mandatorily be  supported by IDP and IED operating under their jurisdiction and which TRUs shall be left to individual negotiations.

IDP and IED TSs will be used to develop RQs on their use in a practically manageable set of DMBMs and the RQs will be used to develop Recommended Practices (RP) for End-to-End Conformance (EEC). Value-chain users who plan to do business on the technologies specified by the DMP will then be able to reference which EEC RP clauses should appear in their business agreements. 

The TRU workshop is organised as an event to interact with the the community of digital media users. It will be followed by the second DMP General Assembly. The results of the workshop will constitute a major input to the drafting of a Call for Contributions on the same topic. This is planned to be released at the end of the second DMP General Assembly. Responses to the Call will be considered at the third DMP General Assembly on 2004/07/28-30.

There is an ongoing active discussion on TRUs on the dmp@chiariglione.org email reflector. You can join the discussion by sending an email to project@chiariglione.org. Please have a look at the current TRU list. If you feel that there is a TRU that is missing in that table, you can contribute using the TRU template. You can also propose new RQs derived from existing or new TRUs.