Barnesandnoble.com (Nasdaq: BNBN) has become one of the world's largest web sites and the fourth largest e-commerce retailer.

"Enhanced rights management is absolutely critical in growing the digital commerce business and the digital media business at B&N.com," said Steve Riggio, co-chairman of Barnes and Noble and chief executive officer of B&N.com. "The XrML open-license movement and the move towards rights management standardization is one that will be good for the industry."

The Book Industry Study Group is a not-for-profit corporation organized to assist in the exchange of ideas between members of the publishing industry and to facilitate research into related subjects.

"Open standards like XrML are crucial for the rapid growth of the eBook market," said Sandy Paul, president of SKP Associates, managing agent of the Book Industry Study Group. "We applaud ContentGuard, Inc.'s XrML initiative to establish an open, industry specification available to the public for rights and permissions. We look forward to a broad industry adoption of this specification."

Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), brings together the finest source materials and digital publishing technology to provide high-quality and high-value educational materials in many disciplines.

"There are many proprietary tools for creating and associating rights and rules for our content, but frankly, until now, there have been few viable solutions and no real standards," said Jonathan Stowe, director of technology, Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies. "The digital parallels to our books are distributed on diverse devices and systems. By adopting XrML, we will be able to publish to a hub format that is open, platform-independent and will allow us to define ownership, payment, promotion, access, and privacy of our content. The impact of this is that our relationships are extended and reinforced in the digital realm without being proprietary."

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (NYSE: JWa, NYSE: JWb) publishes books, journals and electronic products for the educational, professional, scientific, technical and consumer markets.

"At John Wiley & Sons, Inc. we believe that standards are important if DRM is going to work," said Gregory St. John, director of New Media Development for John Wiley & Sons, Inc. "We applaud the XrML initiative as a step in the right direction and expect initiatives like this to have a positive impact on the DRM industry and the evolution of eContent." Lightning Printing Inc., a unit of Ingram Industries, is a print-on-demand, multi-facility printing company doing business in the Twin Cities and across the United States. www.lightningprinting.com, www.ingram.com. "Lightning Printing Inc., the Digital Fulfillment Services company, is pleased that Xerox and Microsoft have joined forces in the important DRM area," said Ed Marino, president and chief executive officer of Lightning Printing Inc. "Publishers, authors and other content owners will benefit from a common standard for specifying rights. Lightning will support XrML and will be deploying a content distribution system that will support the strong copy protection offered by this solution."

RoweCom Inc. (NASDAQ: ROWE) develops and operates Web-based services that enable businesses to manage the acquisition of knowledge resources such as magazines, newspapers, journals and books.

"RoweCom is dedicated to building online services that facilitate the exchange of knowledge resources," said Walt Crosby, vice president and chief technology officer of RoweCom Inc. "As an online content provider, the XrML initiative is an important, open standard that will allow us to quickly develop secure content delivery methods across applications."

St. Martin's Press, a member of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, is one of the top ten trade publishers in the United States.

"XrML is something the DRM industry genuinely needs," said Steve Cohen, senior vice president of St. Martin's Press, a member of Holtzbrinck Publishing