News

Magex Names Campbell CEO; Batista, Muraki Join Firm
Calvin Reid -- 9/11/00
Also announces plans to launch U.S. office, and offers plan for secure e-commerce software


Magex, a U.K.-based e-commerce and digital rights management firm, has named a new CEO, announced plans to launch a U.S. office and offered its plans for secure e-commerce software aimed at the needs of book and magazine publishers.
The company named W. Patrick Campbell, formerly v-p, corporate strategy, at Ameritech, as its new CEO. Campbell will be based in New York City and is charged with expanding the firm's e-commerce and DRM technology beyond the music industry to publishing and other content fields.

In addition, David Batista, formerly with Novell as v-p, North America sales, has been named to head up the Magex publishing operations. The company also named Mina Muraki, formerly with McKinsey & Co., v-p of corporate strategy. Magex is opening U.S. offices in New York and Palo Alto.

Founded in 1998, Magex joined with DRM developer InterTrust Technologies to offer a secure platform for the digital distribution of content. The Magex Digibox technology offers content providers secure digital distribution, along with the ability to track consumer usage, payments and imbed any number of publisher requirements in the content. Consumers can even forward content to their friends while maintaining copyright security and payment protection. Consumers must download the free Magex software to be able to access content protected by Magex technology.

Batista told PW that Magex has been consulting with "major publishing houses" to add features specifically aimed at publishers to its software. The company, he said, is beta testing publishing software products that will provide wide flexibility in how content is offered to customers. Magex software allows publishers to accept micropayments and to set a wide range of access criteria. The software also collects detailed usage data from customers.

"We can help our content partners understand what their customers really want. Publishers can slice and dice their content in any way they want, and we can accept any kind of payment over the Web from a penny on up," Batista said. The software also allows digital transmission of multiple-media formats. "Publishers can package content that includes text, audio files, video. There's enormous potential both for B2B and B2C," he said.