Digital Restrictions Management in Office 11

conaone writes "According to a Microsoft Watch, there is a feature in the leaked Office 2003 called "Information Rights Management." A lot more control over documents with this... the story says: "Microsoft is threading DRM throughout the Office 2003 suite, allowing restrictions to be set on Outlook mail messages, as well as on Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Using "permission templates," document authors can determine restriction policies to be applied to entire categories of documents, according to Microsoft's site." Here's a link to the whole story."

Comments

Re:What the heck is going to happen?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

First, I wouldn't say that making it easier for governments and corporations to engage in illicit behavior is a good thing. Maybe that's just me...

Nevertheless, I actually think this technology might make such scandals MORE likely. If someone thinks that they can actually control information sent out of their physical control, perhaps they'll be more willing to detail their sins in Word.

All a whistleblower has to do is bring in a digital camera and snap a picture of his screen or install Naturally Speaking on a laptop and read the "restricted" document aloud.