A consortium of Web companies is proposing a simpler method for selling and exchanging online content, a new standard that would eliminate the need for complicated, and often protracted, negotiations.
On Monday, the Information and Content Exchange authoring group, spearheaded by Vignette, a Web publishing-tools company, released the first draft of the specification for review by ICE's advisory council.
In addition to Vignette, the authoring group includes Adobe, Firefly, JavaSoft, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, CNET, Hollinger International, News Internet Services, Preview Travel, Tribune Media Services, and ZD Net.
As its name suggests, the Information and Content Exchange protocol is meant to serve as an automatic agent in the republication of information online. Currently, if one Web site wants to receive and republish content from another site -- a news story, for example -- complicated negotiations must be conducted first.
ICE's answer is to streamline things by letting computers handle the process.
"What ICE is trying to do is create a standard by which companies can exchange information site-to-site," said Oliver Muoto of Epicentric, one of the companies on the advisory council helping to steer ICE's development.
"Some of the applications could be syndication of news, syndication of content; ICE could be a mechanism that could more easily facilitate that kind of transfer and that kind of business relationship."
The draft is just a first step. Following approval, it still must pass muster before an Internet standards body such as the World Wide Web Consortium.
Still, those close to the process were impressed by the spec and expect online commerce applications to start using ICE even before it is standardized.
The protocol uses the eXtensible Markup Language to establish a single method for exchanging data related to online business, such as company information and preferences for the use of content. XML's structured data format would also simplify the method for negotiating reprinting and syndication rights.
"The goals are a straightforwardly usable protocol for the Internet that can fit a variety of applications," Muoto said.
Like any protocol, ICE's success is tied to widespread acceptance. To catch on, companies must make ICE as much a part of their Web-based businesses as HTML and other standard Internet protocols are today.
ICE could also be merged with other protocols seeking to be established as standards. For example, it might fit in nicely with the W3C's Platform for Privacy Preferences, meant to establish rules for the use of personal information between individual Web surfers and the sites they visit. Add a little ICE, and Web-based organizations could not only collect users' personal P3P-based profiles, but would be able to exchange them with each other as well.
ICE might also be used to automate the distribution of the demographic information of a site, transforming its users' data into a new variety of syndicated content.
