The communication industry's standards-making process has become diffuse and increasingly global. A diverse array of corporate consensus standards alliances, voluntary standards associations, national and regional standards institutions, as well as international governmental and private standards-setting organizations all influence the standards for packet video and networked multimedia services. Unfortunately, the changing dynamics of standardization in the broadcasting, computer, data communications, and telecommunications industries are not well understood. This situation leads to a lack of adequate networking and digital video standards for multimedia support which inhibits the development and deployment of networked multimedia services. Clarification and resolution of non-technical issues such as intellectual property, privacy and security are critical because the confusing array of often conflicting regulations and laws prevent the release of services. The resolution of standards and policy issues improves the quality and lessens the delay of implementing advanced services for commercial, governmental, medical and educational users of the National Information Infrastructure (NII).

Accomplishments

The MIT Center for Advanced Educational Services (MIT/CAES), The MIT Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development (MIT/CTPID), the Dartmouth Interactive Media Laboratory (Dartmouth/IML), the Carnegie Mellon University Information Networking Institute (CMU/INI) and Informedia Project have cooperated to conduct research and articulate standards and policy for multimedia delivery of services on the National Information Infrastructure (NII). The goal of the work has been to create universal, scaleable and interoperable standards for transparent connectivity between telephone, Internet, cable, and satellite delivery systems.

Key achievements of the Standards and Policy component of the NMIS Project have included:

• In collaboration with corporate research partners, MIT/CTPID conducted experiments, identified design problems and facilitated the acceptance of a Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) Header/Descriptor for video content which addressed intellectual property, privacy and security requirements.

• The CMU/NetBill Project used NetBill, an ongoing electronic commerce project at Carnegie Mellon, to demonstrate mechanisms to provide billing, authentication and security for network delivery of video information, and also developed a taxonomy of service models and delivery methods for multimedia products and services. Later in the project, this component of NMIS moved towards a larger focus on Internet Economics.

• CMU/Informedia and MIT/ INTERNET CNN Newsroom cooperated to examine issues pertaining to interoperability by performing an experiment to make the Informedia Library data available to various clients as well as making the Informedia client able to access libraries other than their own.

NMIS researchers also surveyed multimedia standards, institutions, and approaches. The study team monitored standards meetings with cross-industry impact, such as the International Telecommunications Union, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPTE), and the Interactive Multimedia Association (IMA) and other standards bodies. Based upon the survey, policy options were developed which were designed to promote the development and adoption of interoperable multimedia standards.

• 4.0 Standards and Policy

• 4.1 Headers and Descriptors

• 4.2 Internet Economics

• 4.3 CMU Informedia-NMIS Interoperability Study

• 4.4 Future Directions in Standards and Policy