Microsoft, Xerox To Create Company

AP Online
04-27-2000
Microsoft, Xerox To Create Company

SEATTLE (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. and Xerox Corp. announced Thursday the creation of a company to produce and market new technologies to protect copyrighted material on the Internet.

The joint venture, ContentGuard Inc., is being spun off from a division of Xerox's Palo Alto, Calif., Research Center. That division developed a new computer language that allows writers, musicians and publishers to determine exactly how their readers and listeners use their materials.

For example, a record label can include code within a digital audio file that would restrict how many times it could be copied, or how long a listener can listen to it. For documents, the language can be used to restrict anyone from printing the file or sending it via e-mail.

The language has enough flexibility for a wide variety of restrictions or freedoms, depending on what the publisher wants, according to Dick Brass, co-chairman of the new company and vice president of technology development at Microsoft.

``It allows you to set the rules however you like, for any piece of content you can think of,'' Brass said. ``We're hoping to make it an industry standard.''

ContentGuard will license the computer language royalty-free and will create software programs using the language for sale. Brass said the language will be submitted to the industry committees that set standards for the Internet.

Xerox will retain majority control of ContentGuard, while Microsoft will have a minority stake. Representatives of both companies will be co-chairmen of the new venture.

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