Award-winning digital rights management software for copyright licensing and print fulfillment.

The Client

Their Challenge

A startup in Seattle wanted to make it possible for internet users to purchase and download articles from the web by publishers such as Reuters, SmartMoney.com, and the Los Angeles Times. The service needed to take into account different publishing mechanisms, pricing, usage patterns, and licensing terms; deliver the purchased content in various formats, like HTML, e-mail, or PDF; and interact with external professional printing companies.

Our Solution

Ideograph LLC programmers helped design and build what would become the world's first internet content licensing system. To purchase and download an article, users just click on a link on the article they are reading, answer some simple questions via a web interface, and pay by credit card or corporate invoice. Customized Apache webservers running on a suite of Linux machines provide the front-end for users, administrators, and publication insiders; business objects written in C++ and Perl form the middleware; and a custom C++ library uses OCI to communicate with an Oracle database running on Solaris hardware on the back-end.

The service won the Software & Information Industry Association's prestigious Codie Award for Best Digital Rights Management Software in 2001.