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General
What is the Coral Consortium?
What does 'Coral' mean?
Is Coral a standards body?
What Companies consititute Coral Consortium's membership?
What is Coral Consortium's mission?
What does Coral Consortium publish?
Where can I find Coral Consortium's published specifications?
Will Coral keep releasing its specs under evaluation agreement?
What is Coral Consortium?
Coral Consortium (officially the "Coral Consortium Corporation"),
is a cross-industry consortium consisting of content providers, service providers, IT companies and consumer electronics manufacturers, that focuses on creating an open technology framework to facilitate interoperability among content distribution channels that use different Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. Coral Consortium addresses usability difficulties currently facing consumers of digital content by enabling interoperability between different content formats, devices, and content distribution services.
Interoperability is the single largest problem blocking the successful and broad deployment of an infrastructure for legitimate content distribution. It is one of the primary reasons that this market has not evolved to its full potential. In order to succeed we need active participation from all members of the value chain to deliver services that meet and surpass consumer needs and expectations.
What does 'Coral' mean?
Coral has no specific meaning; the word is not an acronym.
Is Coral a standards body?
Coral is an open organization that creates specifications through a documented due-diligence process. Membership is open to all who support Coralšs goals. Coral publishes its approved specifications on Coralšs website, under a simple click-through evaluation agreement as well as an agreement for Coral Ecosystem deployments.
What companies constitute Coral Consortium's membership?
Coral has Promoter and Contributor members. A list can be found here: http://www.coral-interop.org/main/membership/index.html. Coral was founded in Fall 2004 by Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Intertrust Technologies Corporation, Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic), Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, Sony Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. New Promoter members include NBC Universal, LGE and IFPI. The group has grown steadily since its formation and is still signing up new members on a regular basis.
What is Coral Consortium's mission?
Our mission is to achieve interoperability among disparate DRM and media format approaches. The goal is to provide consumers with a uniform and, ultimately, more satisfying experience that is independent of details associated with differences in DRM and other content distribution technologies while simultaneously meeting the content protection and management needs of content providers and other participants in the content distribution value chain. If we are successful, consumers will not have to even worry about DRM, will have greater freedom and choice in content as well as devices.
What does Coral Consortium publish?
Coral publishes specifications for interfaces and core services that promote interoperability among disparate DRM systems. These specifications will be made available for evaluation under the aforementioned click-through agreement as well as under an agreement for Coral Ecosystem deployments. In addition, Coral will publish associated conformance and compliance guidelines. The Consortium will also publish some additional, supporting materials, such as guidelines and white papers explaining how to use the specs.
The Coral Specifications include the following:
- The NEMO specifications
- Coral's trusted communication and authorization framework
- The Coral Core Architecture Specification
- Fundamental roles and data structures used to build interoperable solutions
- The Coral Domain Architecture Specification
- Tools for supporting interoperable domains of consumer devices
Ecosystems of devices, services, and content operating under a set of well-defined usage models and supporting a set of DRMs will typically be established by one or a group of companies (the Ecosystem Founders) seeking to establish a specific content distribution solution. Coral licenses its specifications to such Ecosystem entities under a Coral Ecosystem Agreement. Ecosystems are discussed in more detail in the specifications themselves and in an Ecosystem Formation whitepaper that can be found at http://www.coral-interop.org.
Where can I find Coral Consortium's published specifications?
Coral Consortium's specifications are always announced on Coral's website.
Will Coral keep releasing its specs under evaluation agreement?
Coral will keep releasing its specifications for evaluation under a simple click-through agreement. The specifications are also available for implementation under an agreement for Coral Ecosystem Founders, the Coral Ecosystem Agreement.
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Coral Consortium Corp.
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