co-Area Director for Applications, Ted Hardie, published a letter indicating that the IETF MARID (MTA Authorization Record In DNS) working group has been closed. The final blow came from Microsoft's IPR licensing requirements, but there had been other issues as well.

"From the outset," wrote Hardie, "the working group participants have had fundamental disagreements on the nature of the record to be provided and the mechanism by which it would be checked. Technical discussion of the merits of these mechanisms has not swayed their proponents, and what data is available on existing deployments has not made one choice obviously superior."

VeriSign's Phillip Halam-Baker, in a message commenting on the MARID closure, said "Before MARID my preference was to work on the specs in OASIS which is a much more professional outfit than the IETF and actually has a track record of succeeding with short timescale proposals."

Whether this indicates that an OASIS effort is forthcoming or not, time will tell. But the IETF attempt to standardize Sender-ID is now officially dead.

We've suffered through a long technical "learning experience" ever since moving to new servers and colocation facilities in June. But it appears that we are near returning the Editor's corner to operational status. We appreciate your patience. It's a long story, but please be assured that our apparent cyberspace near death experience wasn't intentional on our part!

Phil Becker
Editor, Digital ID World

Rights Management company Liquid Machines will announce it is acquiring Omniva, and email policy compliance company. Both of these companies were written about in the Mar/Apr 2004 Digital ID World Magazine focused on Keeping Company Secrets.

This move is yet another indication that identity based rights management is finding out that it needs to integrate and span categories smoothly.

IBM has committed $250 million to RFID over the next 18 months. It is launching a new Sensor and Actuator Solutions Group under the umbrella of its pervasive computing group. Sean Campbell, the IBM Business Consulting Services executive responsible for leading RFID initiatives in the distribution sector said, "RFID represents a very good opportunity for IBM [and] extends across all its lines of business."