[281] in Information Retrieval
news: COPYRIGHT CLEARANCE CENTER AND EPR ANNOUNCE NEW ELEC
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (ganderso@MIT.EDU)
Fri Apr 7 09:04:51 1995
From: ganderso@MIT.EDU
To: libtalk@MIT.EDU, dlicc@MIT.EDU, elibdev@MIT.EDU
Cc: cs-tr@cnri.org
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 1995 09:04:07 EDT
For your information,
Greg
------------------
COPYRIGHT CLEARANCE CENTER AND EPR ANNOUNCE NEW ELEC
Joint Relationship Will Enable Superdistribution of Content on Networks
NEW YORK, April 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), of
Danvers, Mass., and EPR, of Sunnyvale, Calif., today announced a joint
initiative that will enable the secure distribution of copyrighted
materials in a networked environment. The partnership will link CCC's
"one-stop shopping" copyright licensing capability with EPR's DigiBox(TM),
an open, secure interoperable container standard for digital information
distribution and commerce. CCC currently licenses photocopy reproduction
rights for 9,000 publishers representing hundreds of thousands of authors
of some 1.7 million titles to over 7,000 corporations, law firms, academic
institutions, copy shops, and bookstores within the United States. The
DigiBox standard allows CCC's rightsholders to employ a common control
technology for any type of electronic material. Use of this common
technology and CCC's collective licensing systems will result in lower
costs, wider distribution, and greater ease of use of copyrighted materials
in digital form, accelerating the growth of electronic commerce.
CCC and EPR will work with third party developers to establish DigiBox
electronic commerce applications that will protect the interests of CCC's
constituents in the digital environment. CCC, drawing on its 17 years of
experience in meeting the needs of both rightsholders and users, will act
as a "digital rights clearinghouse." By aggregating rightsholders, users,
usage information, and royalties, CCC provides assurances of
confidentiality/privacy, ease of access, and efficiency of administration.
Other participants will be telecommunications companies, financial
transaction processors, and publishing concerns, who will provide the
additional infrastructure needed to drive large scale electronic commerce
in copyrighted materials. The DigiBox standard is a component of EPR's
InterTrust(TM) virtual distribution architecture technology and
intellectual property (see related EPR announcement on InterTrust).
The announcement, which was made at the 1995 Digital Publishing
Symposium, focused on the critical needs of CCC constituents for technology
which will enable secure electronic commerce in a networked environment.
DigiBox and InterTrust provide the first general purpose, trusted
electronic information transport. They allow electronic information to be
launched into commercial CyberSpace with control systems which insure safe
passage of the information through multiple users and points of
distribution. The technology allows content providers and distributors to
participate in an open environment without the constraints imposed by
current applications-based electronic commerce products.
"DigiBox can be used for 'real world' networked communications, which
involve not only use by an initial consumer of digital content, but also
downstreaming of the content to other users on the network," said Victor
Shear, CEO of EPR. "Our technology supports all phases of electronic
commerce, including currency and credit transactions, and can be tuned to
the needs of businesses and their customers. And it provides all of these
functions in seamless integration with operating systems."
"This initiative will lay the foundation for large scale electronic
commerce in proprietary materials on public networks," said Joseph S. Alen,
President of CCC. "CCC has always sought to protect the interests of both
owners and users of copyrighted information. The use of DigiBox in our
collective digital licensing system will provide the security and control
necessary for the protection of the rightsholders' content, even in high
risk digital environments such as the Internet. At the same time it will
provide our users with a flexible method for obtaining digital materials of
the type, and in the amounts, that are needed. The availability of the CCC
digital clearinghouse, the open DigiBox standard, and the applications that
will be created by third party developers should dramatically increase the
flow of digital information from rightsholders to users."
"It is generally accepted that content will constitute by far the
largest revenue generating component of the information superhighway," said
Cliff Freidman, until last week Senior Analyst for New Media Technologies
with Bear Sterns, and now Vice President, Strategic Planning, for NBC. "In
order for the availability of content to be unfettered, the content
producers must be able to maintain control over literary or copyrighted
assets. In our view this will be one of the key bottlenecks in the
implementation and deployment of new media applications. Today's
announcement between CCC and EPR will begin to break the bottleneck by
protecting the content creators' rights, enabling new applications to be
created and generating new revenue streams."
According to electronic commerce consultant Robert Weber, a principal
at Boston's Northeast Consulting Resources, "This announcement marks the
deployment of technology that will fundamentally reshape publishing and
information distribution by simultaneously enforcing both copyright and
user rights while creating opportunities for new business and pricing
methods. The announcement also brings together the leading organization
representing rights management on behalf of authors, publishers and users
(CCC) and the leading developer of information metering and digital rights
protection technologies (EPR)."
About Copyright Clearance Center
The Copyright Clearance Center(R) is a not-for-profit corporation
formed at the suggestion of Congress by authors, publishers, and users.
Over 7,000 corporations and their subsidiaries (including 80% of the
Fortune 100 companies), as well as law firms, document suppliers, libraries
and universities, copy shops, and bookstores utilize CCC's photocopy
licensing services in order to facilitate compliance with U.S. copyright
law.
CCC is the U.S. Reproduction Rights Organization and is a member of the
International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO).
Through bi-lateral agreements with IFRRO representatives in other countries
worldwide, CCC carries out international licensing transactions involving
reproduction of copyrighted materials.
For more information on Copyright Clearance Center and its licensing
programs, call Kelly L. Frey at 508-750-8400.
About EPR Electronic Commerce Technologies
EPR(R) was incorporated in early 1990 based upon pioneering R&D work
started in the mid 80s, and is located in Sunnyvale, Calif. EPR is a
privately held corporation dedicated to the development of technologies for
electronic commerce. EPR owns basic electronic commerce patents and has
substantial bodies of additional patent material pending. EPR inventions
focus on information metering, distributed data security,
superdistribution, and digital rights protection. EPR provides
intellectual property licensing, professional services, the DigiBox(TM)
Digital Content and Commerce Container, and the InterTrust(TM) Virtual
Distribution Architecture.
For more information, call David Van Wie for technology inquiries, or
David R. Bernstein for marketing inquiries, at 408-774-6100, or send
Internet mail to infopr.com .
NOTE: Copyright Clearance Center and the CCC logo are registered
trademarks of the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. in the United States.
EPR Electronic Commerce Technologies, the EPR logo, DigiBox, and InterTrust
are trademarks of Electronic Publishing Resources, Inc. in the United
States.
-0- 4/6/95
/CONTACT: Christina Tavella of Alexander Communications, 415-923-1660,
for EPR Electronic Commerce Technologies; or Kelly L. Frey of Copyright
Clearance Center, 508-750-8400/
CO: EPR Electronic Commerce Technologies; Copyright Clearance Center ST:
California, Massachusetts IN: CPR SU:
Copyright 1995 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
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