Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is an consortium that develops and licenses Blu-ray technology and is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc. 

Blu-ray Disc Association

Trade Name	BDA
Company type	Incentive
Industry	Consortium
Founded	May 20 2002
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Website	blu-raydisc.info blu-raydisc.com

The "Blu-ray Disc founder group" was started on May 20 2002 by nine electronic companies: Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung Electronics and Sony. In order to enable more companies to participate, it announced in May 2004 that it would form the Blu-ray Disc Association, which was inaugurated on October 4 2004. 

The primary purpose of the BDA is to establish and maintain the format standards, license the technology to third parties, and preform audits that comply with those standards. For the AASC DRM, it is owned and licensed by a separate consortium called AACS LA.

Ownership

Blu-ray is not owned by a "single" corporation but a consortium of multiple companies that participate and contribute different components to the format; e.g. Disc architecture (Sony), protective coating tech (TDK), PGS Subtitles (Panasonic), Java Software (Oracle).

The BDA is divided into three levels of membership: the board of directors, contributors, and general members.

Board of Directors

"Companies participating in the Board of Directors are active participants of the format creation and key BDA activities. They are selected from the Contributors by election. The board sets an overall strategy and approves key issues. A board member can participate in all activities and attend all meetings. The Blu-ray Disc Founder companies will make up the initial Board of Directors.
Annual fee: $50,000" Board as of 2018:

• Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
• Xperi Corporation
• Hitachi-LG Data Storage, Inc.
• Intel Corporation
• Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
• LG Electronics Inc.
• Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
• Oracle Corporation
• Panasonic Corporation
• Pioneer Corporation
• Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
• Sharp Corporation
• Sony Corporation
• Technicolor
• Toshiba Visual Solutions Corporation
• Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
• Walt Disney Company
• Universal Studios Home Entertainment
• Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
• Microsoft Corporation

Contributor

"Contributors are active participants of the format creation and other key BDA activities. They can be elected to become a member of the Board of Directors. A contributor can attend general meetings and seminars, and can participate in Technical Expert Groups (TEGs), regional Promotion Team activities, and most of the Compliance Committee (CC) activities. Membership requires execution of Contribution Agreement and must be approved by the Board of Directors.
Annual fee: $20,000" Contributors as of 2018:

• BluFocus, Inc.
• CESI Technology Co., Ltd.
• China Hualu Group Co., Ltd.
• Corel Corporation
• CyberLink Corporation
• Deluxe Digital Studios, Inc.
• Funai Electric Co., Ltd.
• Irdeto USA, Inc.
• JVC KENWOOD Corporation
• Lionsgate Films Inc.
• LITE-ON IT Corporation
• MediaTek Inc.
• Memory-Tech Holdings Inc.
• Nvidia Corporation
• Ritek Corporation
• Scenarist, LLC
• Testronic Laboratories, Inc.
• Fraunhofer IIS
• sMedio, Inc.
• Pixelogic Media Partners LLC

General member

"General membership provides access to specific information from Committee discussions. A general member can attend general meetings and seminars. They can participate in specific Regional Promotion Team activities and specific CC activities.
Annual fee: $3,000" General Members as of 2018:

• Adobe Systems
• Almedio Inc.
• Ashampoo Technology GmbH & Co. KG
• CMC Magnetics Corporation
• D&M Holdings, Inc.
• IMAGICA Corp.
• Lauda Co., Ltd.
• Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd.
• NEC Personal Products
• NHK Enterprises
• Onkyo Corporation
• OPPO Digital, Inc.
• Paramount Pictures Corporation
• Pony Canyon Enterprise, Inc.
• Pulstec Industrial Co., Ltd.
• Q-TEC, INC.
• Renesas Electronics Corporation
• Seiko Epson Corp.
• Singulus Technologies
• smedio, Inc.
• Toei Video Co., Ltd.
• Toho Company, Ltd.
• Toyo Recording Co., Ltd.
• Vinpower Digital, Inc.
• Yamaha Corporation
• Sirius Pixels 

Patent Pool and Future

The BDA itself doesn't license patents; its members or other groups do, such as One Blue. For standard Blu-ray, all core patents (hardware/software) will expire by the 2030s or 2040s, thus making standard Blu-ray public domain. However, the Blu-ray logo and the AACS copy-protection (for players) still require a license, because (1) the Blu-ray logo is a trademark, and trademarks don't expire as long as they're actively used and renewed, (2) AACS uses 128-bit AES encryption, which is computationally infeasible to brute-force crack (even with AI), though the system as a whole has been circumvented in practice via key extraction rather than breaking the encryption itself; thus, the AACS LA retains exclusive rights to the device keys (trade secrets) for BD players. Authoring houses (who don't want DRM or the BD logo on their discs) would not have to pay royalties. For BD players, manufacturers would have no choice but to license keys from the AACS LA if they wish for their legitimate players to play copy-protected discs.

Links

• https://blu-raydisc.info/
• BDA Wikipedia Page 
• BDA Membership Levels
• BDA Members (as of 2018) 

Author(s):  Æ Firestone