In today's world, the fact that digitized music, images or video can be copied without any loss of quality, derived from the popularization of the internet and improvements of its speed with greater performance and the capacity of PCs, has increasingly resulted in the illegal copy and reuse by third parties without the permission from copyright holders.
Digital rights management (DRM) technology has widely been used to protect copyrighted digital content by controlling or restricting copying. In 2005, Sony, Intertrust Technologies, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Philips and Samsung Electronics established the Marlin Joint Development Association (Marlin JDA) to develop technical specifications of DRM for use in consumer electronic (CE) products. Manufacturers can implement Marlin DRM, which supports content distribution over the internet, broadcast or mobile segments, in their products. Marlin compliant content and devices will enable users to enjoy content no matter what device they use and no matter how they acquire content.
DRM for the Consumer Electronics Industry
While DRM technologies have been developed by IT industry players such as FairPlay made by Apple, or Windows Media DRM (WMDRM) made by Microsoft, there were significant demands from the consumer electronics (CE) industry for a DRM technology that would be more suitable for CE products. Panasonic, Philips, Samsung Electronics and Sony together with Intertrust Technologies, which owns basic DRM technologies, developed a CE friendly DRM called Marlin.
Marlin Organizations
The five founding companies take the initiative to run two organizations.
The Marlin Developer Community (MDC) is a forum to develop Marlin specifications together with hosting Community Source Program and promote those activities, while the Marlin Trust Management Organization (MTMO) provides the license of the Marlin specifications together with the certification and compliance program and conducts key management operations for interoperability.
- Marlin Developer Community (MDC)
- More than 15 companies are currently members of MDC and cooperate in developing specifications as well as participate in the Community Source Program. Even non-members are able to download all the completed specifications simply by signing an End User License Agreement (EULA).
For further information, please visit: http://www.marlin-community.com - Marlin Trust Management Organization (MTMO)
- Those wishing to use Marlin technology for commercial purposes must first enter into a licensing agreement with the MTMO. The MTMO has prepared licensing agreements for manufacturers of end-user products, component manufacturers who supply to end-user product manufacturers, service providers and service element vendors who supply to service providers. There are currently more than 25 licensees (as of June 2008).
For further information, please visit: http://www.marlin-trust.com/
In addition to these two organizations, a Marlin users forum has been established to support the smooth introduction of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) in Japan. The purpose of this forum is to study, formulate and provide specific compliance rules and implementation guidelines needed to support commercial use in Japan. It currently has 47 corporate members (as of July 2008).
For further information, please visit: http://www.marlinusers-japan.org/index-e.html
