The Coral Consortium was founded in 2004 by Hewlett-Packard Corporation, InterTrust Technologies, Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic), Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, Sony Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. The Coral Consortium has been dissolved in December 2012. Its last specification was available until April 1, 2013.
Contents
Coral proposes an architecture whereby devices using different DRM technologies are able to join a Domain 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 can 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
Contributor members
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.