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To: BillyG who wrote (35177)	8/13/1998 4:29:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

MPEG-4......................................... irish-times.com Thus, for the first time, MPeg has created, a group to address and find ways of building in protection against such worries, the Intellectual Property Management and Protection group. IPMP is a mix of international researchers, law and security experts, representatives of rights organisations, and content owners like television networks and film companies. Its job has been two-fold: to formulate specifications for uniquely identifying each object used in an MPeg4 work, and to create security "hooks", specifications which will allow companies to develop products which lock into the MPeg4 format and can manage and protect digital content through encoding or watermarking. There have been fears that the Internet and digital television might not achieve their commercial potential because content creators would shun them without adequate protection. "If the author does not receive back the value of their creation, then the author will not create," says IPMP member, Mr Dominique Yon, secretary general and information systems co-ordinator of CISAC (Confederation Internationale de Societes d'Auteurs et Compositeurs), a Paris-based organisation of three million members which oversees 70 societies for authors and composers in 90 countries. The identification system will allow individual objects to be traced on the Web, says Mr Yon. An individual or rights organisation could send out a computerised "intelligent agent" to scour the Net for servers storing or using the object, making it far easier to collect royalties or bring prosecutions. IPMP member, Mr Douglas Armati, British managing director of Net security firm InterTrust, says such a precise tracking system would also enable a range of people who collaborate on a work even the software programmers or hardware manufacturers who designed the system for its broadcast to receive a percentage of royalties.re enhancing the value network,["] he says. ["]Suddenly youre involving all the parties who bring this experience to the user.["] Multimedia developers have been among the first to recognise the potential of the new standard. Mr Kieran Mahon, of Limerick Web developers and MPeg members Into White, says: "We see it as a quantum leap. If you were going to sit down and think what way is multimedia going to go, the answer you'd come up with is MPeg4." MPeg4 will not be without competitors. On the Internet, challengers include Net company RealAudio, which distributes its RealPlayer product that handles online audio and video, and there are other browser-based, proprietary standards intended to handle multimedia, like the recently-approved SMIL (synchronised multimedia integration language). Microsoft already integrates multimedia in its Internet Explorer browser through its Windows Media Player and has said it won't utilise SMIL. The intention of MPeg4, say its supporters, is to circumvent the spawning of multiple standards that become flagbearers for intercompany rivalries and wreak havoc for developers and consumers.