REAL INVITES YOU INTO ITS SUITE

RealNetworks today announced plans for the technology side of MusicNet, focusing on an elaborate Digital Rights Management package it calls the RealSystem Media Commerce Suite, built on its RealSystem iQ technology.

MusicNet, you may recall, is Real’s partnership with AOLTW, BMG and EMI to provide digital-music services both to consumers and businesses.

With tools designed to enable record labels and other content companies to package, encrypt, deliver and control the license of their media holdings, the RealSystem illustrates the company’s drive to establish an industry standard in the face of heated competition from rivals like Microsoft.

Said one industry insider, "The codename for this project was 'Chalupa.' I'm sure your joke writers can find something in that."

Mmmm, lunch break.

Record companies, long jittery about the copyright nightmares inherent in unprotected digital formats, have eagerly embraced DRM and other online security measures. Real’s approach offers such reassuring tools as the ability to control the number of times a track can be played or for how long before it "times out," so-called "strong cryptography" to prevent unauthorized streaming, downloading and sharing, licensing tools to grant and withhold use rights and restore them in the event of technical failure and integration with some other DRM systems.

Naturally, the Suite in question will help deliver music and other entertainment to RealPlayer users, which the company numbers at around 200 million.

This raises the question of how the most avid online music fans—who have largely shunned Real in favor of the open MP3 format, particularly during Napster’s era of explosive, if illicit, growth—will take to a carefully restricted, Real-specific service. Of course, Napster recently signed on as an affiliate of MusicNet (story, 6/5).

Meanwhile, Real and a bevy of media entities, including Adobe, IBM, InterTrust, MGM, Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment and Sun Microsystems, have joined forces for something called the XMCL Initiative.

No, it’s not the technology to beam movies directly into your brain while you’re sleeping. Microsoft perfected that long ago.

XMCL, which stands for eXstensible Media Commerce Language, is a protocol that allows different technology systems to communicate with one another. Microsoft has, in fact, been aggressive in deploying business services based on such technology. But the partners in the XMCL initiative want to establish standards for online media business—sorta like that ultra-successful SDMI thing.

"The digital media market is growing fast, with incredible breakthroughs in both technology and the quality of content that is being made available," pronounced Real chief Rob Glaser. "Now is the time to unleash the true commercial potential of the medium by establishing standard business rules for online distribution. With the XMCL Initiative, RealNetworks and its partners are stepping up today to help define the standards that will drive this exciting market. And let me say again that XMCL does not stand for ‘eXtraterrestrial Mind-Controlling Liquid,’ no matter what you’ve read in The New York Times."