Purpose

The Digital Media Project (DMP) is a not-for-profit organisation with the mission to promote continuing successful development, deployment and use of Digital Media that respect the rights of creators and rights holders to exploit their works, the wish of end users to fully enjoy the benefits of Digital Media and the interests of various value-chain players to provide products and services according to the principles laid down in the Digital Media Manifesto.

Digital Media includes new emerging experiences made possible by Information and Communication Technologies along with mainstream media experiences such as Compact Disc, Digital Versatile Disc, Digital Audio Broadcasting and Digital Television.

DMP operates on the basis of open international collaboration of all interested parties: corporations and individual firms, partnerships, governmental bodies or international organisations, supporting the DMP mission and the means to achieve its goals. A yearly fee is set every year to a level adequate to reach the goals set for that year. DMP seeks the involvement of creators and end users of Digital Media through appropriate mechanisms.

The goals of DMP are realised through the development of specifications and recommended practices enabling businesses that support new user experiences, and recommendations to appropriate entities to act on removal of barriers holding up exploitation of Digital Media. There is no obligation, however, for DMP members to implement or use specific technology standards or recommendations because of their participation in DMP.

DMP contributes the results of its activities to appropriate formal standards bodies and other appropriate entities whenever this is instrumental to achieve the general DMP goals.

Organisation

DMP has the following organisational structure

• General Assembly (GA) is the supreme body of DMP, chaired by the President, where all members are represented
• Board of Directors (BoD) is the body, whose members are elected by GA and chaired by the President, managing the day-to-day business of DMP
• Advisory Committees (Finance and Audit, Membership and Nomination, etc.) are standing groups performing special organisational tasks for DMP
• Development Committees (DCs) are groups proposed by BoD and established by GA to achieve specific tasks related to the mission of DMP

The purpose of DCs is to carry out the work leading to Technical Specifications (TS), Recommended Practices (RP) and Recommended Actions (RA), collectively called DMP Approved Documents (AD). Their number and mandate depend on the specific goals DMP will give to itself from time to time to achieve its mission.

In the DMP initial phase the following four areas of work, assigned to 4 DCs, are identified (MA= Major Actions, RQ=Requirements):

 

DC	Title	MA	Mandate	Output
DC1	End-to-end conformance	P1	Develop RQ for DC2	RQ
		T3	Develop RP for legal, business and technical conformance across the value chain	RP
DC2	Interoperable DRM platforms	T1	Develop TS of interfaces between DRM components, including end user devices	TS
		T2	Develop RP for end-user device human-machine nterfaces	RP
DC3	DM policies	P2	Develop RA on how phasing out of levy could/should be linked to deployment of DRM (as per DC1 and DC2 output)	RA
		P3	Develop RA based on scenarios analysis of broadband access deployment dependence on legislation, and type and importance of DM services (as per DC1 and DC2 output)	RA
DC4	Sustainable innovation	P4	Develop RA on how innovation can sustain itself, specifically - improvement of workflow of standards development and utilisation	RA

Note: DC2 is likely to be a large DC because of the number of issues to be addressed and may have to be split in two to keep it manageable.

Work plan

The work plan assumes that by 2004/01/01

1. The DMP has been formally established (current proposal is for incorporation to be executed on 2003/12/01)
2. An interim Board of Directors is in place (interim Directors will be selected among those attending the Statutes signing ceremony)
3. A draft work plan has been prepared (of which this document is a first draft)
4. A draft organisation of Developing Committees (of which this document is a first draft) has been agreed
5. A sufficient number of members representing a sufficient range of industries has been assembled.

GAs will be held every 3 months. They are numbered as GAn (n=1, 2, ...).

DCs can have separate meetings from GA as they determine. However, they should meet concurrently with the GA when this holds a meeting.

The table below describes the work and outputs of the first 8 GAs. GA1 should be convened in the second half of January 2004.