Re: [xml-dev] Principles for an Ethical and Sustainable Internet - XML

["Pete Cordell" <petexmldev@codalogic.com>]

[Maybe off topic?]

Original Message From: "Liam R E Quin"

> Let's see a W3C Business Group for tracking music downloads via Web
> browsers so that ISPs can pay royalties. You know where the door is.
> Stop throwing rotten eggs and come inside.

I'd be interested to know if the W3C is a suitable place for this.  For me 
this process would require a large element of cryptography in addition to 
XML.  Would that be within the W3C's scope?

If I were in the music industry and I were to tackle this I would arrange 
for each label (e.g. Sony, EMI etc.) to develop their own software library 
that supported semantics like "<Download-track>15267438326</Download-track>" 
and  "<Play>15267438326</Play>".  These libraries would be responsible to 
storing the music on a system in a secure way, employing encryption and 
striping the data across multiple files and so on.  Possibly limiting the 
lifetime of the data and re-keying from time-to-time etc, maybe even 
changing the algorithms from time to time.

People developing media player applications would subscribe to the label's 
software libraries and link to them with their code.  The label libraries 
would use challenge-response type exchanges to authenticate that the 
relevant media player wrapper is approved to use the label's library at 
startup.

One big use for XML would be in the cataloguing, along the lines of:

<Track>
    <Id>15267438326</Id>
    <Artist>Bee-Gees</Artist>
    <Title>Staying Alive</Title>
</Track>

(Although Artist would probably use an id.)

Presumably someone supplying the music service (along the lines of Spotify) 
would act as a broker between the user and the label.  The broker would have 
an account with both the label and the user.  When the user asked for music 
to be played, the broker would authorise it, and inform the label to charge 
it to the brokers account (using whatever formula was in effect - maybe 
free).  (I'll confess I haven't dug deeply into Michael Hopwood DDex links 
yet!)

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I think it would require an entire 
architecture rather than a standalone XML vocabulary.  Could the W3C develop 
that sort of thing for either this case, or a similar case in general?

Thanks,

Pete Cordell
Codalogic Ltd
Twitter: http://twitter.com/petecordell
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