New and Emerging Specs and Standards (October 2020)

What You'll Need to Know!

New Release of Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement
"Recommended Formats Statement identifies hierarchies of the physical and technical characteristics of creative formats, both analog and digital, which will best meet the needs of all concerned, maximizing the chances for survival and continued accessibility of creative content well into the future. This year marks the sixth anniversary of the first release of the Recommended Formats Statement and one of the most monumental in recent years. With the Statement now an established resource within the creative landscape, we dedicated ourselves to exploring ways in which we can extend its reach and make it even more useful for its many stakeholders.  Ensuring that the Statement is both accurate and useful is dependent on knowing from the stakeholders what needs to be updated and corrected to reflect current best practices. The major revisions involved in what we are calling RFS 2.0 are twofold.  The first is a restructuring of the Statement itself, to represent developments in how works are created in our increasingly digital world.  As a result, in this version of the RFS are included three new categories of creative works: Musical Scores; GIS, Geospatial and Non-GIS Cartographic; and Design and 3D.  Each category represents the remarkable and unique ways in which creation is happening of all three types of works.  The second is the creation of a file format evaluation matrix.  This tool provides our in-house experts a structured way to manage their review of digital file formats as part of the annual revision process of the RFS; and it offers external users of the Recommended Formats transparency in how the Library evaluates digital file formats in the RFS hierarchies."

ISO/IEC 23009-2:2020 Information technology — Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) — Part 2: Conformance and reference software
Technical Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information
"This document specifies the conformance and reference software implementing the test vectors comprising media presentation descriptions, segments and combinations thereof in ISO/IEC 230091 and the corresponding software modules."

ISO/IEC TS 23078-1:2020 Information technology — Specification of DRM technology for digital publications — Part 1: Overview of copyright protection technologies in use in the publishing industry
Technical Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 Document description and processing languages
"This document describes three types of copyright protection technologies in use in the publishing industry:
— DRM free protection, i.e. technologies which does not rely on content encryption but rather use content fingerprinting or watermarking, adequate for use cases where user convenience is the top priority;
— user key-based DRM protection, adequate where user constraints are limited;
— device key-based DRM protection, adequate where the transfer of publications from one device to another is severely constrained."

ISO/IEC TS 23078-2:2020 Information technology — Specification of DRM technology for digital publications — Part 2: User key-based protection
Technical Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 Document description and processing languages
"This document defines a technical solution for encrypting resources in digital publications (especially EPUB) and for securely delivering decryption keys to reading systems, included in licenses tailored to specific users. It also defines a simple passphrase-based authentication method for reading systems to verify the license and access the encrypted resources of such digital publications."

ISO/TS 16175-2:2020 Information and documentation — Processes and functional requirements for software for managing records — Part 2: Guidance for selecting, designing, implementing and maintaining software for managing records
Technical Committee: ISO/TC 46/SC 11 Archives/records management
"This document provides guidance for decision making and processes associated with the selection, design, implementation and maintenance of software for managing records, according to the principles specified in ISO 15489-1. This document is applicable to any kind of records system supported by software, including paper records managed by software, but is particularly focused on software for managing digital records. This document provides guidance to records professionals charged with, or supporting the selection, design, implementation and maintenance of systems for managing records using a variety of software. It can also provide assistance to information technology professionals such as solution architects/designers, IT procurement decision makers, business analysts, business owners and software developers and testers seeking to understand records requirements."

W3C re-energizes process for agile Web standardization and earlier Royalty-Free protection
"The 15 September 2020 W3C Process Document and 15 September 2020 W3C Patent Policy [have taken effect]. At a time when the Web is increasingly essential with the world going more and more virtual, these updates increase the Web Consortium’s responsiveness and strengthen standardization activities by adding a continuous standard development mode and earlier Royalty-Free protection for implementers, among other changes […] Of the changes to the W3C Process Document, the most anticipated ones offer a real boost in helping the Web serve the community: streamlined community review and review for integrity (Horizontal review to ensure accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security); flexibility for multiple work modes, including stability of referenced versions and reflection of the current status in the technical reports list; a continuous development mode that enables specifications to reflect rapidly developing technology –including a living standard approach as a native capability of the W3C Recommendation Track."