The Coral Consortium was founded in 2004 by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

Corporation, InterTrust Technologies, Koninklijke

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

Electronics N.V., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

Electronics Co., Ltd,

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

Corporation and

Twentieth Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc., formerly 20th Century Fox, is an American film studio, film production and Film distributor, distribution company owned by the Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios, the film studios division of the ...

Film Corp. The Coral Consortium was dissolved in December 2012. Its last specification was available until April 1, 2013. Coral proposed an architecture whereby devices using different DRM technologies are able to join a

Domain A domain is a geographic area controlled by a single person or organization. Domain may also refer to: Law and human geography * Demesne, in English common law and other Medieval European contexts, lands directly managed by their holder rather ...

that allows them to exchange protected content securely. A device used by a family member wishing to play a music file that is stored on another family-owned device could use Coral to obtain a new copy (or license) in the correct format, with the Coral infrastructure managing the necessary permissions and translation of rights to the new device. In theory this should greatly ease the portability of protected media files between devices.

Membership

Coral distinguishes between Promoter and Contributor members.

Promoter members

Corporation (founding member) *

IFPI The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is the organisation that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. It is a non-profit members' organisation registered in Switzerland and founded in Italy in 1 ...

* Intertrust Technologies Corporation (founding member) *Koninklijke

Electronics N.V. (founding member) *

LG Electronics LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG, LG Corporation, the fourth ...

NBC Universal NBCUniversal Media, LLC (abbreviated as NBCU and doing business as NBCUniversal or Comcast NBCUniversal since 2013) is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that is a subsidiary of Comcast and headquartered at 30 ...

, Inc. *

Corporation (founding member) *

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEC; stylized as SΛMSUNG; ) is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation founded on 13 January 1969 and headquartered in Yeongtong District, Suwon, South Korea. It is curr ...

Co., Ltd (founding member) *

Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (imaging and sensing), ...

(founding member) *

Film Corp. (founding member)

Contributor members

British Telecommunications BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broadband and mobile ...

PLC * Cloakware Inc. *

EMI Music EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), c ...

Gibson Guitar Corporation Gibson, Inc. (formerly Gibson Guitar Corporation and Gibson Brands Inc.) is an American manufacturer of Guitar manufacturing, guitars, other musical instruments, and professional audio equipment from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and now based in Nashvi ...

* Inca Networks *

Kenwood Corporation is a Japanese brand of consumer electronics. Since October 2008, Kenwood has been owned by JVCKenwood as a result of a merger between Kenwood Corporation and JVC. Kenwood has manufactured electronic equipment such as AM/FM stereo receivers, ...

Motion Picture Association of America The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the Major film studios, five major film studios of the Cinema of the United States, United States, the Major film studios#Mini-majors, mini-major Amazon MGM Stud ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

PacketVideo PacketVideo Corporation or PV was a San Diego–based company that produced software for wireless multimedia, including the display of video on mobile handsets. The PacketVideo name wasn't actively used after being acquired by Lynx Technology. H ...

Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...

* SecureMedia Inc. *

Sony BMG Sony BMG Music Entertainment was an American record company owned as a 50–50 joint venture between Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann. The venture's successor, the revived Sony Music, is wholly owned by Sony, following their buyout o ...

Starz Entertainment Starz Entertainment Corp, formerly known officially as Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation and commonly as Lions Gate and/or Lionsgate, is a Canadian-American entertainment company currently headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Founded by ...

, LLC *

STMicroelectronics STMicroelectronics Naamloze vennootschap, NV (commonly referred to as ST or STMicro) is a European multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the largest of such companies in Europe. ...

, N.V. *

Thomson Thomson may refer to: Names * Thomson (surname), a list of people with this name and a description of its origin * Thomson baronets, four baronetcies created for persons with the surname Thomson Businesses and organizations * SGS-Thomson M ...

Universal Music Group Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as Universal Music Group or Universal Music) is a Netherlands, Dutch–United States, American multinational Music industry, music corporation under Law of the Netherlands, ...

Verimatrix Verimatrix () provides cybersecurity products and services that protect video content, streaming media, mobile applications, websites and APIs. The company merged with Inside Secure in 2019. It is headquartered in France and Asaf Ashkenazi is the ...

, Inc. *

VeriSign Verisign, Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the , , and generic top-level d ...

, Inc. *

Warner Music Group Warner Music Group Corp., commonly abbreviated as WMG, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational entertainment and record label Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the "Record label#M ...

Additional information

Much of the Coral documentation requires the reader to agree to legal conditions, so it is not very easy for most members of the public to examine the proposals. However, there is a fairly full FAQ document available
Coral Consortium FAQ Document
.

Possible limitations

While Coral is a novel approach to DRM interoperability, doubts have been raised in some quarters as to whether it is really suitable for all media types. * The approach of obtaining a second file protected under the second DRM system assumes that such a file is available, and also assumes that both DRM vendors (and service providers) will cooperate with Coral. At the time of writing, Apple is not a Coral member company. * The Coral membership leans heavily to music companies; other content types (e.g. video, TV, games) are not so strongly represented. * The bandwidth requirements (and download delay) for obtaining a second copy of a large file such as an HD TV broadcast are considerable. * Some Europeans have expressed concerns over

consumer privacy Consumer privacy is information privacy as it relates to the consumers of products and services. A variety of social, legal and political issues arise from the interaction of the public's potential expectation of privacy and the collection and d ...

and anonymity, if all such content moves involve a "phone home" to a Coral service in the cloud.

References

External links

Coral Consortium - Official Website
{Dead link, date=April 2025 Digital rights management standards International trade associations