July Meeting Summary

1. Call for Proposals. We continued work on the CfP, concentrating on functional requirements for solutions that enable devices to interoperate, and deferring any action on media interoperability solutions to a later date. We also discussed issues regarding royalties and fees, copyrights and trademarks, and maintenance of the standard. 

2. Strategies. Discussion continues on how to deal with the large legal and legislative issues facing the digital device marketplace. Issues such as the Canadian Copyright Board's proposal for a tariff on recordable media specifically used for audio, as opposed to data, purposes is one of the more egregious examples. DMDA's status as a registered participant in the mediation process was discussed and several options for effective participation were proposed and discussed.

3. Digital Device Summit. We have initiated talks with CMP United Media, the publishers of EE Times and other technology magazines and papers. They have expressed an interest to be the promoters of the Digital Device Summit and we are awaiting their proposal.

4. Marketing. Ross Blanchard, VP Marketing, Gracenote, has volunteered to Chair the DMDA Marketing Committee to explore ways of highlighting the digital device marketplace and generating greater market awareness. The marketing committee will hold its first meeting on Wednesday, August 7th in conjunction with the August DMDA/DMDA-IWG meeting.

5. Presentations. Tim Bratton of Listen.com described their vision for content portability with Rhapsody, and provided some insight on content licensing issues and future business models.

6. DMDA Membership. DMDA is pleased to announce the following companies joined DMDA and/or DMDA-IWG this month: Creative Labs, ARM.

Jim Fleming, Executive Administrator
July, 2002