Web and Broadcasting Business Group Charter

Draft Charter

The mission of the Web and Broadcasting Business Group is 1) to study and clarify the influence of Open Web Platform on the professional world of broadcasting, and 2) to help stakeholders within the broadcasting industry to build good and practical understanding on the standardization processes in W3C with the chair-to-chair communication mechanism built into business groups. The business group will create monthly or bi-monthly report to summarize their study on the influence and share the reports internally. Detailed discussion and analysis on the use cases in this area should be done in the Web and TV Interest Group, so the business group will not deal with those items to avoid scope overlap. However, fruitful collaborative works may happen as a result of the chair-to-chair communication between these two groups.

Join the Web and Broadcasting Business Group. You must have a W3C ID to join; Request an ID.

• Start Date: April, 2012
• Confidentiality: Proceedings are limited to group members
• Initial Chair: Yosuke Funahashi
• Usual Meeting Schedule: Teleconferences: as needed; Face-to-face: 1-3 per year (only as needed)

Scope

The scope of the Web and Broadcasting Business Group is limited only by:

• Technology Focus: Open Web Platform, esp. HTML5 and HTML.next.
• Industry Focus: Broadcasting industry.
• Business Focus: The intention is to study business applications and influences of the technology as opposed to the technology itself. That is, although it is possible that the group might discover technical areas that need standardization or gaps with respect to existing standards, such issues would be handed off to appropriate W3C working groups, interest groups or other organizations.

Here are some examples of the viewpoints the Business Group could take:

• Content Ecosystem
• Advertisement
• EPG/Metadata/Personalization
• Broadcast service through the Web
• User data in TV sets and on Clouds
• Copyright
• Journalism
• Disaster preparedness and mitigation
• Regulation

Unlike many industry consortia, we do not expect the primary focus of this group to be on developing an industry consensus on broadcasting technologies. Although it is certainly possible that some agreement on standards of this sort might appear in the work of this group, the W3C might not be an appropriate organization to take on the enhancement and maintenance of such industry-specific standards. So it would presumably be necessary to find an appropriate industry consortium to carry forward any such work.

Deliverables

Here are some of the possible deliverables for this group:

• Notes - these may be public once completed. These could describe:
  • Analysis report on the possible influence of Open Web Platform to existing broadcasting industries.
  • Rough use cases and requirements for business applications
  • Solutions to business problems
  • Documentation of best practices in the context of this industry setting.
  • Documentation of gaps with existing standards or new standardization that would be useful, including rough use cases that illustrate the need

Note that detailed analysis and discussion on use cases in this area should be done in the Web and TV Interest Group.

Value Proposition

T.B.D.

Dependencies and Liaisons

Specific dependencies and liaisons will depend on the areas in which the group participants decide to proceed and those organizations with which it is appropriate for the group to coordinate.

For any notes the group writes as the results of our study, it will create and maintain on the group site a list of appropriate dependencies and liaisons.

Participation

Participation in the Web and Broadcasting Business Group is open to any organization or individual, subject to the requirements of Contributor License Agreement (CLA). Note that unlike a Community Group, non-Members and individuals pay an annual fee to participate. It is necessary to have at least five organizations as members of the groups in order for the group to become and remain fully operational.

Although participation is open to all, the primary targeted organizations are those directly involved with studying the effect of emerging web technologies in this industry. That is:

• Broadcasters
• Industry Service Vendors
• Industry Product Vendors

There are no minimum requirements for participation in the group. Participants are strongly encouraged to attend teleconferences and face-to-face meetings. It is anticipated that there will be monthly teleconferences and perhaps one or two face-to-face meetings per year.

Communication

Discussion Groups

The public discussion group, public-webandbroadcasting, will be used for public interaction and discussion, including discussion of this charter. This group is readable and writable by anyone with a W3C account.

The public-readable group, public-webandboradcasting-contrib, will be used for materials the group wishes to make available to the public, possibly including submissions from group members that they wish to make public.

The internal discussion group, internal-webandbroadcasting, which is restricted to members of the group, will be used for the actual work of the group as well as administrative matters. Note that this is different from a Community Group, in which the work of the group is expected to be public.

The characterization of the three discussion groups above is intended to be consistent with the W3C documentation on Tools and Infrastructure, but there has not been a lot of experience with Business groups and it is not entirely clear that these expectations will prove to be practical. The group may decide to use these discussion groups for different purposes, and if so will document in this charter how they are being used.

Contributions

Contributions (e.g. situation reports, study reports, gap analyses, rough use cases) may be submitted by group members, but the group may decide not to accept the contribution. If the contribution is accepted the group will discuss whether it should be treated in accordance with the CLA and will be made public or not.

Web Site

It appears from the Community and Business Group Process document that documents may either be published in this Wiki or as "Business Group Documents". At this time the Wiki is editable by any group member and all group members are encouraged to contribute directly to these documents, including the charter. At a future time the group may decide to define an editor function, particularly for notes involved with our study or the charter, and request that group members work through the editor to modify the notes. This process is consistent with the practices of most W3C working groups and interest groups.

It is unclear at this time exactly what the format of Business Group Documents will be or where they will be published, but one might assume that the process will be similar to the one for W3C Notes. (Note that the link here to the process for Notes goes to an "interim process document". We have been unable to find a more recent definition of Notes, although the publishing of W3C Notes has been going on for quite a while.)

Decision Policy

As far as we know there are no explicit requirements for a decision policy for a Business Group. However, this group will adhere as much as practical with the W3C Process Document section 3.3 and with W3C tradition by seeking to make decisions that reflect a consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

Intellectual Property Policy

Policy with respect to patents and other intellectual property are covered by the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) and the Final Specification Agreement(FSA). Note that the FSA is voluntary but the CLA sets expectations as to its use. The Community and Business Group FAQ also contains a useful discussion of the differences between the IPR policies of working groups and Business Groups.

About this Charter

As far as we know there is no formal requirement for a Business Group to have a charter, so there are no specific requirements for the contents of this charter. However, this charter is patterned as much as practical to conform with Section 6.2.6 of the W3C Process Document.

Notes on difference between this charter and a W3C WG Charter

• There is no patent policy section; that is covered by the CLA. However, for convenience we have included a section on intellectual property policy
• There is no section on voting since there are no process document requirements on voting in a Business Group.
• A WG charter is voted on by the Advisory Committee, approved by the Director and frozen until it is time to re-charter. Since there is no such process for a Business Group, this charter is kept in a Wiki and can be changed as needed. It is probably desirable, however, to note major changes in the Change Log below.

Change Log

• 4/2013 - Editorial modifications.
• 4/2012 - Initial draft charter edited by Yosuke Funahashi.