Power players making a bid for standardizing our content

The Content Reference Forum aims to publish standards to allow consumers to play music or other digital content encoded in one format to play easily on any device and in any country while also obeying contractual obligations, such as paying licensing fees and enforcing copyright protections.

Competing technologies result in a lack of interoperability among formats and devices that limit the ways consumers can enjoy digital content, the group's founders say.

The group has published its first set of standards that would use Internet-based references to identify content and the business agreements attached to them. Under this scheme, devices would be sent Internet-based links instead of music files, for instance, and by accessing the link would be sent a song in the proper format and under terms set by the content owners.

The groups behind the effort include ARM, ContentGuard, Macrovision, Microsoft, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Universal Music Group and VeriSign.