DRM Interoperability Consortium Invites Steve Jobs to Join Coral Consortium Points Out DRM Interoperability Alternative

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The Coral Consortium had posted a letter to Steve Jobs on its website, in response to his letter, "Thoughts On Music", dated February 6, 2007 that asked the music industry to consider abandoning the use of DRM technology. The letter points out to Mr. Jobs that there is an additional alternative to the three described in his letter, namely DRM interoperability. The Coral letter suggests to Mr. Jobs that the best way to achieve a truly consumer-friendly interoperable digital distribution marketplace that balances consumer needs with those of the content industry and in which DRM itself it virtually invisible to the consumer, is for Apple and other key players to join with the existing members of the Coral Consortium in their efforts to deploy the DRM interoperability solution developed by the Coral participants.

Coral Consortium Letter to Steve Jobs:

February 9, 2007
Dear Mr. Jobs,
The directors of Coral Consortium were pleased to hear about your interest in interoperability. We agree with you that this is a big problem for consumers. They should be able to acquire content from a wide variety of competitive service providers and play their purchased content on a range of devices and platforms from different manufacturers. This is an issue that is very important to our membership.
It would appear from your "Thoughts on Music" that you may not be familiar with our organization so we would like to take this opportunity to brief you.
We have been wrestling with the issues around interoperability for some years and have concluded that it is not so much a technology problem as a business problem. We have completed the development of a suite of technical specifications for interoperability and these can be downloaded from our website, http://www.coral-interop.org/. We think that your engineers will find it very straightforward to integrate this framework into your iTunes service. This technology would enable you to interoperate immediately with Microsoft based Janus devices and services, and with OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) based devices and services. Of course the secrets in FairPlay remain safe - adopting the Coral technology does not require you to share them with anyone else.
This does not just address music. The Coral Interoperability Framework works for video as well. We know that, as a major shareholder in a very successful film studio, it is important for you both to protect your film assets, and to provide for their widest possible distribution. Coral can enable that.
Finally, if you are worried about the content industry being comfortable with the Coral solution you should know that many parts of that industry have been involved in the development of these specifications. Though most of Coral's membership comes from technology companies and service providers, the members from the content community include:
- EMI Music
- International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)
- Motion Picture Association of America
- NBC Universal, Inc.
- Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
- Sony BMG Music
- Sony Pictures Entertainment
- Starz Entertainment Group LLC
- Time Warner Cable
- Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.
- Universal Music Group
- Warner Bros. Technical Operations Inc.
- Warner Music Group
We offer Apple, Inc. a warm invitation to join Coral's ranks and help provide interoperability and the increased choice that it will bring to all of our customers.

Yours sincerely,
Jack Lacy
President, Coral Consortium
On behalf of the Coral Board of Directors.

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