IBM introduces ground-breaking rights management and secure payment technology to bring leading commercial content online

Cryptolopes* enable publishers to Plug-N-Publish* safely on the Internet

Plug-N-Publish* toolkits, which will offer publishers the tools to help them securely package their digital content, set up their billing and accounting mechanisms, and customize how content is retrieved and displayed;

Cryptolopes*, an IBM technology which will enable owners of copyrighted information to securely distribute it and receive payment for its use over the Internet; and

A clearinghouse which will enable commercial content providers with the management of content access and payment processing.

"With today's IBM infoMarket service announcements, we have made great strides in advancing the Internet as a secure and profitable marketplace for both publishers and consumers," said Jeff Crigler, vice president and managing director, IBM infoMarket. "We are addressing three persistent problems: how to efficiently find and retrieve precisely what users are looking for; how to protect intellectual property from piracy once it is placed on the Internet; and how to ensure that content owners are paid for the use of their works, even as they are redistributed to others. IBM infoMarket service is the first service to address all of these problems, and provides digital publishers with the incentive to create high-quality content for distribution on the Internet."

IBM infoMarket service allows users to simultaneously search, and retrieve content -- including still images, text, sound and video -- from distributed databases in a wide variety of formats, hosted on a number of popular publishing platforms. This capability gives digital publishers greater control over how their content is presented to potential customers, since they are not limited by the technical requirements and presentation formats of typical commercial online services.

The initial content and technology providers who plan to work with the IBM infoMarket service are:
The commercial publishing capabilities the IBM infoMarket service will be seamlessly integrated with the service's ability to search free content currently available on the Internet. These resources include the full text of postings to 13,000 USENET Newsgroups; as well as leading Internet directories such as Yahoo!, The McKinley Group's Magellan, and Open Text Index. In addition, the IBM infoMarket service will be compatible with IBM's Digital Library content storage and management capabilities.

IBM is working to integrate secure payment and rights management capabilities with state-of-the-art encryption technology to create Cryptolopes, which will enable content owners to control the pricing and rights granted for a piece of copyrighted information.
Through IBM infoMarket service, users who want to purchase, for example, a copy of the latest market research report from an publisher will receive the contents in a sealed container. This secure package can be accompanied by marketing details from the publisher, including a brief abstract of the information contained in the package, the size of the file, its owner, conditions for use, pricing, and any promotions associated with the content, such as coupons. In addition, all such details may be customized based on the publisher's merchandising strategies.
Once the content is purchased, the IBM infoMarket service will transparently provide the customer with a private key to unlock the package; it can then be used according to the terms of the abstract. After content is downloaded, printed or read, Cryptolopes will prevent subsequent efforts to copy or transmit the copyrighted information to others without the appropriate payment for its use.
The metering mechanism being built into Cryptolope technology is designed to support the "superdistribution" of copyrighted content. Superdistribution refers to a new business model which allows customers to legally redistribute a publisher's content while ensuring that the content owner collects revenue from these subsequent users. The publisher incurs no added cost of distribution to reach these additional customers.
With IBM infoMarket service, publishers will have the ability to protect against the unauthorized mass-distribution of their works over the Internet, which has been seen as a serious impediment to the growth of electronic content commerce. With the security to be offered to publishers through the IBM infoMarket service, the quality and quantity of content available on the Internet will vastly improve, as more publishers feel confident that their works will be protected and they will be properly compensated for their use.
These same capabilities will also permit advertisers and marketers to distribute marketing content to users, and issue credits to the users account for viewing and redistributing their materials and providing user demographic information.

The IBM infoMarket service will introduce three Plug-N-Publish Toolkits -- the Interface Toolkit, the Services Toolkit, and the Client Toolkit -- which will enable content providers, technology partners, and customers to customize infoMarket service's capabilities to meet their specific needs. Extensive templates and default settings will be provided to publishers to enable them to quickly and easily make their content available to the Internet's massive worldwide audience.
The Interface Toolkit will enable developers to build their own interfaces to their companies' databases and information repositories. The Interface toolkit provides the ability to specify database access and define pricing rules, offering intellectual property owners the capability to determine how their content is marketed online. For example, the Interface toolkit can be used to support separate pricing schemes for use by different groups of customers. Educational or volume users can receive discount pricing on the use of materials which could bear a different price for retail customers.
The Services Toolkit will help independent software vendors to develop added functionality to the service, such as language translation of documents, document format conversion, data filtering enhancements and customizing how search results are sent to the user's desktop.
The Client Toolkit will allow developers to tailor browsers to meet its customers' specific requirements or create a branded storefront for publishers. Customers can also use the Client toolkit in conjunction with the Interface toolkit to tailor the IBM infoMarket service for use over private, distributed enterprise databases of many different types. In this manner, the powerful search capabilities of the IBM infoMarket service could be employed as the ultimate "systems integrator" of otherwise incompatible content.

IBM infoMarket service will serve as a clearinghouse for its commercial content and service providers. It will manage the access to content, services and payment processing directly, on behalf of providers, or by referring the financial transactions to a clearance center, such as the Copyright Clearance Center. All marketing, editing, conditions of use, and pricing for the use of commercial content will be set by the providers themselves, giving them greater control over distribution and profitability than any other electronic publishing outlet offers.

The IBM infoMarket service is creating the first secure environment for intellectual property owners to reach a worldwide audience of millions over the Internet. This new service will provide digital publishers with the incentive to create and distribute their content electronically, with the knowledge that they will receive compensation from every person who makes use of their work. Additionally, IBM infoMarket service will supply the tools to provide these content owners with maximum control over how their information is presented to their customers.

American Business Information, Inc.

Bill Kerry 402/593-4515

Associated Press

Julie Denny 212/621-1789

BRP Publications, Inc.

Don Hawk 603/433-8731

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts

Bart De Castro 301/961-6727

COMTEX

Jill Falci 703/820-2000

Disclosure

Tim McClean 301/951-1300

ESPN/SportsTicker

Lou Monaco 201/938-4537

Eastman Kodak

Roger Hansen 716/726-7567

Excalibur Technologies Corporation

Judith Feder 914/328-2962

Fielding Worldwide, Inc.

Beverly Reiss 800/FW2-Guide

Folio Corporation

Mike Judson 801/229-6331

Fulcrum Technologies, Inc.

Gillian Brouse 613/238-1761 ext. 251

Gale Research, Inc.

Cheryl McDonald 800/347-4253

I/B/E/S International, Inc.

Ed Keon, Jr. 212/647-5723

Iconovex Corporation

Robert Griggs 612/896-5100

Information Access Company

Steven King 415/358-4683

The McKinley Group, Inc.

David Hayden 415/331-1884

Netscape Communications Corp.

Roseanne Siino 415/528-2619

Newsbytes

Wendy Woods 612/430-1100

Open Text Corporation

Dave Paolini 519/240-5506

Personal Library Software

David Macdonald 301/990-1155

The Reference Press

Jani Spede 512/454-7778

Sedona Systems Corporation

Bruce McDonald 602/970-3786

Simba Information, Inc.

Christa Roche 203/834-7687 ext. 161

SRA International

David Shulkin 703/502-7735

States News Service

Leland Schwartz 202/628-3100

Verity, Inc.

Philippe Courtot 415/960-7740

West Publishing

Gretchen DeSutter 800/778-8090 ext. 77450

Yahoo!

Tim Brady 415/934-3230