Microsoft Responds to Leaked Memo

AbbeyRoad writes "CNN, has a story on Microsoft's response the internal memo previous leaked: "Microsoft believes many of its efforts to market its products against Linux and open source are backfiring, according to a memo posted on the Internet. ... Microsoft declined to comment on the authenticity of the memo, and did not answer when asked if it believes its marketing against Linux and open source has been effective. ... Microsoft spokesman Jon Murchinson said: ''The document in question seems to suggest that the basis for evaluating products has been long-term customer value, and that's something we agree with. I think our marketing is geared toward that issue, toward long-term customer value.'' ""

Comments

the correct link to original memo

[djtack]

The link in the summary seems to point to the wrong memo. Here's the correct one.

Re:If only....

[ReelOddeeo]

I wonder how Palladium is supposed to stop cut-n-paste though...

Surely you jest. Given that the software controlling a box can be trusted to do the vendor's bidding, they could do anything, including stopping cut-n-paste.

If a document, say, Haloween XI, is available only in Word 2005 Palladium Edition, and the document is marked, "only allow copy/paste if License XY288273JJw8999 is in place", then you can bet they darn well will stop cut & paste. In fact, they could allow copy, and selectively enable paste. Even in non-Palladium applications. The "untrusted" app must make system service calls to obtain the contents of the clipboard, which would come back as:

TEXT/PLAIN

Sorry, you do not have the proper license to paste this content.

Heck, they could even stop screen snapshots. Certian rectangular regions of the screen could just be blacked out in the screen snapshot. Only a trusted signed app could gain access to the raw unblocked pixels. The app would not be signed as trusted unless it withstood scrutiny to ensure that it didn't leak protected content. (i.e. a hypothetical Photoshop Palladium Edition might be able to edit a raw screen snapshot, but only if it preserved the licensing conditions of those raw pixels, and didn't allow viewing, copy, paste, etc. unless the condition "only allow copy/paste if License XY288273JJw8999 is in place". If Phosothop saved protected content, then only another "trusted" application could open it. That application could edit it, but would still enforce the license restriction of the content, now in the form of pixels. A non-trusted OCR program, for instance, could not open the document. The OS simply wouldn't allow it. But a trusted OCR program, duley signed, would enforce the digital rights restrictions and transfer them to the saved OCR'ed text file. (If it didn't then the OCR program would never have gotten "trusted" status under Palladium.)

I hope this information is useful and answers your original doubts that Palladium could stop cut & paste.

Basically there is a trusted and untrusted side of the fence. Once data exists on the trusted side, only trusted applications can manipulate that data. The data itself carries tags (or scripts?) that enforce the digital rights restrictions. If Microsoft were to develop a really flexible design for expressing the digital rights restrictions, then a piece of data could be tagged such as: "do not allow people with green hair to read this content.".