Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Prepares Office Lock-in
An anonymous reader writes "NEWS.COM has an article describing Office 2003's DRM features for documents. This will not only coerce those running older versions of Office to upgrade, which has been a problem for MS in the last few years, but it will also shut out competing software, such as OpenOffice. Now think about this for a second. Even if the developers of a competing office suite could figure out how to get their software to open an Office 2003 document, doing so would be a DMCA violation, since they'd be bypassing an anti-circumvention device. I certainly hope the OpenOffice team will kick development into high gear. If there was a time we need a viable competitor to Office, it's now."
Just imagine the backlash that will come from inter-company communication via Excel and Word. Hell, my company has had numerous problems with reporting (scripts that mine data from various sources, such as Excel, and generate reports) and document management systems just because of differences between Excel/Word 97 and 2000 files. This may be what FOSS needs to start making massive market penetration.
Who's with me?
Anyone?
+5, Female
With this coming at the same time that linux seems to really be taking a foothold. .at least in the corporate desktop I think people fed up with MS BS may finally start to do something about it.
As long as there is enough room under the door to shove a thin-crust pizza under it, I'm game.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Next person to say something like "They made very sure that Office has these features that nobody else has" without specifying a single damn feature is getting slapped upside the head with a wet trout.
Whenever I ask people why they choose MSWord over a competing product, I always get the same answer: "It has more features." Feature like what? Ten different versions of "Clippy?" No wonder MS has the word procsessing industry in a kung-fu grip.
For those of you who like to throw DMCA around like a big, evil boogeyman, last time I checked, reverse-engineering for the purposes of interoperability is allowed by the DMCA.
Jay (=
Now all Sun needs to do is release an OS X native version, add a database that works more like Access (maybe php or jsp scripting) and MARKET THE HELL OUT OF IT.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This article emphasizes the role of DRM in commercial settings. It's perfectly reasonable for corporate customers to want to control access to their documents in the workplace, and that's what the Office 2003 DRM features are targeted towards. It's just a dumb client-server authentication scheme, people.
Put away the aluminized headgear. This is not an anti-consumer technology, or even a consumer-oriented one.
And this is high enough profile it might make some Americans rethink their next votes.
I'm stupid..
whats a PHB?... seen it a lot and have no idea what one is..
I'm no expert, but IIRC, didn't MS nailed for doing pretty much the same thing to Netscape some years ago?
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but wouldn't that be some sort of precedent here?
This post made with the Dvorak layout.
"Friends don't let friends use QWERTY"
The article points out, and I agree, that it's unlikely DRM will be applied to documents by default, since implementing it requires configuring Windows Server 2003 and ensuring both the creator and reader of the document have access/accounts on the Rights server.
It's really targeted at businesses which make heavy use of Active Directory already (or would switch to doing so), so that Finance people can restrict access to sensitive salary documents and such. Most people, even if they can apply DRM to a document, won't choose to do so. How many people change the rights for their local drives to remove access for 'Everyone'?
My impression from this document is that it is an optional feature, only active when the creator of the document specifies who can read it.
When the creator thinks it should only be readable on Windows 2003, and not on other software, that is his responsibility. And it is the responsibility of the reader to reject such documents as unusable.
This is hardly new. We use StarOffice 5.2 at work, and it cannot open password-protected documents from Office 95 or 2000. This is amongst the least problems when using that package in a mixed Office-StarOffice environment.
It may backfire by simply forcing companies not to want to upgrade or to delay upgrade decisions.
If I receive documents from suppliers and clients that I can't read, then I will ask them to send it again in another format, and they won't have a problem with that for now.
But five years from now, when everybody buying a Dell or Gateway machine has the latest version of Office bundled with their machine, I will likely be the only guy who can't read their documents, and their sympathy will have disappeared. I'll have to upgrade.
There's no particularly good way out of this using the marketplace; the marketplace will dictate it.
Microsoft is also releasing the "Clippy" worm, which is said to spread worse than MS Blaster and checks for un-authorized copies of M$ Office out there...
This is a feature some people want. It'd not on by default (how could it, be, since it requires a properly configured server to do the rights management).
It'll let businesses lock their documents down, for internal use. Nothing at all here gives any indication that all documents created will have DRM forced on. If a business or user doesn't want to use it, don't turn it on.
Pretty Hot Babe.
It's a cute name for your manager.
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
Does this not violate Microsoft's DoJ agreement? I mean, this is obviously anticompetitive behavior. I think that people will see this new "feature" and either not upgrade (unless it adds A LOT of worthwhile features) or save their files as RTFs or older doc formats. I think Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot with this. People want compatibility, that's why they stick with Windows. People will reject this.
Help I'm a rock.
Pointy-Haired Boss. it's a dilbert reference.
Even the dumbest PHB's have a no-brainer here: spend lots of money upgrading, and lose the ability to exchange documents to/from many other companies, or save the money, continue being able to use whatever they currently have, and continue being able to communicate with other companies.
Speak before you think
Another thing to think about is this: Notice MS hasn't been soo forthcoming lately about linux as a competitor. I think maybe their "near silence" means they are actually getting worried.
In adding this to office, they are really going to separate the market. I bet they figure, if they do this, whoever jumps on board will likely STAY on board due to the fact that switchig to open-source in the future after you've already got a bulk of documents done in this "new office" will be MUCH harder.
I think they just drew a line in the sand. . and they figure they are KEEPING whoever doesn't cross now
... well they say " when your bad time comes you do all wrong and make it worse"... it seems microsoft doesn't know its end is near and it making it lot more easier for others to shun away from it.. Good news for /.ers atleast..
for the first time will include tools for restricting access to documents created with the software. Office workers can specify who can read or alter a spreadsheet, block it from copying or printing, and set an expiration date.
Users get to set it. It's not automatic.
IAALS.
Point-Haired Boss. For reference, see Dilbert's comics.
Zodiac Survey
New version of [Software] has [feature1..featureN] that will make it incompatible with previous versions. Observers say that [Company] hopes this will drive sales of [Software].
Whatever.
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
coerce those running older versions of Office to upgrade, which has been a problem for MS in the last few years
Yeah, it's so damn irritating when your customers pay you for something, and then expect to continue using it.
The DRM features will be optional, if you don't want to use them then don't use them. Presumably, if you save a file without DRM it'll save it as a regular .DOC file.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Pointy-haired boss. It's a character from the Dilbert comic strip, that in certain circles has come to be the generic term for any clueless manager.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Dream on.
Call me a cynic, but I've lost count of the number of times that MS forced upgrade cycles were going to be the end of the company. It hasn't yet, and won't be in the future, even with this. Enough people and companies will pay to make it a non-issue. Watch.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Pointy Haired Boss - it's from Dilbert - look at the Boss's hair
Where does it say *all* docs will be protected?
If its just docs you choose to use DRM with, then whats the problem? You choose to do that knowing the limitations because it makes sense for your use case. If thats a problem, you don't use it.
If I, as a company, choose to require all outgoing docs to have DRM, its my need to protect my information thats locking people in, not Microsoft.
And for what its worth, I don't use a speck of Microsoft software outside of work, and wouldn't. But lets get real here.
Law firms, especially, need this feature.
Right now they have to assume that a word document is unaltered upon receipt from a client. Now, with DRM, they can guarantee it. They also need to control distribution of documents and readability.
Pretty much every major corporation will want this feature once they understand it.
So, instead of fighting DRM, jump on the bandwagon, and have --better-- rights management in Open Office.
I'm not actually convinced that you need to have compatability between Office suites. Really, most people can use their existing MS Office to edit their Office documents and their new Office to edit their new documents. That way, if the old Office license is expired by Microsoft, everyone can complain to MS about how they can no longer read their documents, whereas, Open Office would theoretically never have that problem.
So, I would educate customers that file compatibility is not particularly necessary.
This is my sig.
WILL NOT USE MS OFFICE if that is the case. I will also mandate PDF as the standard for collaboration among finance and HR people. They won't like it, but tough times....
We allready use OpenOffice for all our end user's here. Just be sure the Pc has 128 megs of ram, and put the office quicklaunch on startup, or they will complain about how long it takes to start. Otherwise, it works awesome for all standard end user word / excel tasks (99% of end users). As soon as your company gets one of those audit letters, spring the OpenSource and the management will come flocking. =)
No I didnt spell check this post...
hahah catch me now !
we don't need to shred documents, we can just drm them and swallow/delete the key !
Microsoft - Partners in Crime since 1983
We should rename the DCMA to the Digitial Copyright and Monopoly Act. It seems that all it is doing is helping monopolies get stronger. It seems that the DCMA in this case is strengthening monopolies. But wait a minute, if I produce a document, then that document is my copyrighted work. Since when does Microsoft get to claim DCMA protection on a work that is not THEIRS. IF the work was produced by M$ then I could see protection. If Microsoft was to chase down OpenOffice for DCMA issues, then I could see all sorts of court fun -- anti-competive practices, et al. Besides, who gives M$ the right to say what program can read my files.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Nobody will use this feature. Everyone will turn it off after the people they send documents to complain that they can't read them.
Please someone confirm for me, IIRC doesn't the DMCA allow reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability? If so, wouldn't OpenOffice et al be allowed to reverse engineer the DRM format and support it within OpenOffice without running afowl of the DMCA?
Shh.
Pointy Haired Boss
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Whose to say that microsoft won't cough up a subpoena once OpenOffice can read these new files, temporarily shutting down OpenOffice development while the mess that will make goes through years of litigation?
IIRC, the DMCA specifically permits circumvention of copy protection/DRM/anything else if it is done specifically for purposes of interoperability (not just to allow unauthorized access to information). That means that OpenOffice or any other competitor would be allowed to crack their encryption in order to allow their users to read .doc files. Right?
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
smile on your brother... everybody get together, try and use open standards based software right now. If enough businesses refuse to accept documents in the new format, they'll have a hard time selling it. I think they may have a hard time reaching critical-mass to make it work anyhow - not enough people have it to warrant upgrading, not enough people upgrading to warrant having it. At least we can hope?
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
It's just that OpenOffice's marketing is rubbish - it has to rely on IT-savvy word-of-mouth because they don't have the advertising budget Microsoft has.
Gaaah! It shouldn't be difficult to sell a prduct that outputs not only to standards-compliant HTML as an inbuilt function, but also exports to PDF! It's an IT Directors wet dream! The only thing stopping it is that Microsoft tech-monkeys don't know and don't want it.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Of course it's a calculated risk.. Some people will hate the DRM, but a lot of companies will really like it. Being able to say that a document can only be opened by managers in your company, for example, is worth lots of PHB points.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/PHB.html
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
The server software will record permission rules set by the document creator, such as other people authorized to view the document and expiration dates for any permissions. When another person receives that document, they briefly log in to the Windows Rights Management server--over the Internet or a corporate network--to validate the permissions.
I read this as follows:
You cannot read a document when not connected to the internet. If, by some chance, a DDOS attack is launched against a company's 'Rights Management Server' (which MUST be exposed to the 'net), or it is otherwise hacked into and shut down, then ALL of the documents with this 'feature' in them will cease to function.
Pardon me, but it is utterly stupid to rely on a single server/service to remain running just so I can read something. A DDOS attack can literally shut down a company at this point.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
At the same time, Microsoft has been fairly savvy in protecting its {monopoly|competitive advantage} without really ticking off the media. The Messenger lockdown is pretty blatant, and I haven't seen much public outrage - primarily because the people using Trillian et al are not the mainstream (yet). The big companies that are locked into their Microsoft investments make choices every 2-5 years when they upgrade their desktops. If Microsoft can create FUD - by claiming incompatibility or building it into new products - then they can hold off OpenOffice for another few years. I wonder if the EU would see this as anti-competitive (the US won't/can't do anything even if it does).
warning: epoll_wait is not implemented and will always fail
The only surprise here is that it's been such a long time coming. An imperative now exists for *all* OSS officeware developers to get their data formats (e.g. XML) as transparent and portable as possible. Only a unified front of interoperable alternatives combined with sane evangelizing will give corporate IT departments a soft landing when they realize it's time to jump off this train.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
This makes the south american government (which country was that? I can't remember) opinion even more convincing. It's bad enough that the government is using tax dollars to create documents which are not in open format; if they generate documents which CAN NOT be read in any format except for a proprietary, non-free format, I'd think they could be taken to court on it.
They could be forced to provide the documents in an open format on demand. I'm sure some slashdotters could generate so much demand for government workers to provide the documents in alternate formats that they might eventually cave and make PDF or something be the default document format for electronically published documents.
I don't mean to be an ass, but I think you are referring to a "leech" that gross little blood sucking thing that I sometimes use for fishing. :-)
His name means to empty or to drain by percolating. ie: a percolator coffee pot leaches coffee grinds.
Party?!? What kind of party is this? Where's the damn keg?
Virtus Junxit Mors Non Separabit
So, if the server or network is down, I can't access my own documents. Seems a little risky to me... What if I just want to do a little work on the road with my laptop?
My Ass hurts.
I have always wondered why one would want to exchange an Office document with a customer. Why would you send something to your customer that can be so easily changed by accident or on purpose? Most of the documents I see going to and from customers are contracts, quotes, invoices, or purchase orders. Why would those need to be anything other than read only?
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Isn't breaking encryption for compatibility reasons legal?
An open source project using the same acronym (IRM): http://sourceforge.net/projects/irm/
Isn't a lockdown of files to prohibit competition a violation of the DOJ settlement?
Think about it...
Somebody email the DOJ and let them know that M$ is at it again by shutting out all competition!
If someone sends you a locked document you should reply, "There seems to be an error in your document, and it will not open. Ask your IT guy to fix this." If they don't, don't do business with them. I think that will get the message across that this is not acceptable.
go around to everyone you know, and install alternative software such as OpenOffice on their machines. do this at work if possible. I'm working on a suite of software that I will be installing on all my family's machines: OpenOffice, Mozilla, Winamp 2.x, Trillian. If everybody does this for their friends, it will really soften the effects that all this shite commercial software has been having...
Open Office can't clone this format, because the weak "interoperability" clause of the DMCA has basically been stricken from the law by former Time-Warner lawyer Judge Kaplan (of deCSS fame).
.docs to people who can't read them? Why would I want to rely on MS's legendary security (think ass rape) when it'd be far better to encrypt the disk I store sensitive files on?
But then, WHY would they want to?
Why would I want to send
I see MS's new office as a boon to government and corporate types who break the law. Now, whistleblowers will have a hard time getting out information about wrongdoing. If they do, they can be tracked, and sued for violating the DMCA!
Corporatism != Free Market
...by unchecking the box that says save in restricted format. Since the restrictions depend on 2003 server, these restrictions will be an option that can be turned off.
For an example of this, we can always fall back on the TurboTax debunkle. Even Mom and Pop were told not to install it, and it backfired like you wouldn't believe. All over the media, million-dollar lawsuits, getting angry at tech support, etc.
:)
I guess it goes to prove: you don't fuck with a man's boot sector
Zodiac Survey
Now that they've settled the charges, they're going into full anti-competitive mode. I'm glad my state (Massachusetts) didn't accept the settlement and is still pursuing charges.
This could backfire for Microsoft if more companies switch over to OpenOffice. China looks really smart now for dumping them earlier.
In other news... demand on eBay for installation discs for Office 2000 skyrocketed...
You know, I find it stunning that anyone upgraded at all to Office XP. It's understandable for those who bought (read: were coerced into buying) it with a new desktop system, but upgrading? Why bother? Office 2000 was fairly stable (as stable as MS products get, anyway) and offered basically the same functionality. Anything beyond that is just bloatware.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
...I wonder how they'll get 1.000.000.000+ chinese ex-windows users back with this feature..
If there isn't an override on that, there's going to be problems with idiot users who can't figure out why they can't open something or someone else can't open something they sent them.
I've had enough problems with teaching people how to send email to more than one person.
Now they'll be able to block copying and printing, too? How many "my printer is broken" calls are we going to see that turn out to be "document is locked for printing"?
Not to mention "Can you get my document off of the backup? I set it to delete after 1 week by mistake and I really need it right now because the CEO is having a meeting in 5 minutes and he wants to present it to the BOD".
As article indicates, you will need to login to the remote Windows 2003 server to get access to a document.
What if the server is not available?
And the information about which server to contact is stored where - in the document itself? If this part of the doc is protected, then you will need yet another server to grant you the right to read the location of the first server. If it is not protected, you will be able to point your doc to a fake server that will grant you access anyway.
Does not sound like description of reliable well-thought-of system.
I wonder what this will do for companies such as Apple who are building in MS office document readability/writeability into their applications/operating systems? Right now I can read and write .ppt files in Keynote, and .doc files with, ahem other bits of software on my OS X boxes. So, is this simply an attempt at providing a more secure environment or is Microsoft doing an end run around other folks to make it a federal crime in the name of security to compete with them?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I've always wondered this about slashdot. How much karma do you get when you submit a story and it gets accepted? I searched and searced but couldn't find the answer.
If anyone knows please tell me. Thank you very much.
Admittedly some of it is tricky for people used to typewriters, but MSFT is just changing how their protection systems in Office work and linking them to their server software to encourage a switch. Oh, and adding a funky acronym that allows them to invoke the DCMA.
the rest of the world is free to take apart these documents however we like, of course if that information was going to cross the ocean into USA hands that would be a shame, *cough splutter*
Basically, the copyright holder of the document that is digitally encrypted is the person and/or company that is responsible for it being authored.
Since the DMCA forbids circumventing a device to protect copyright, it is irrelevant since the person doing the circumventing is:
1. Opening their own document, and as the copyright holder they can't very well be infringing upon themselves (though if this were possible no doubt the RIAA would find a way, but that is another topic).
2. Opening a document gievn to them by the copyright holder, in which they have been granted express use of the document.
Even larger than this, however, is the fact that the copyright holder DID NOT implement the DRM technology. A third party cannot unilaterally implement DRM technology on behalf of copyright holders to protected works that do not even exist yet.
I guess what I am saying is that MS (holder of the DRM device) cannot sue PersonX because they do not own the copyright to the protected work.
All this being said - did Judge Jackson have incredible foresight into the possible transgressions of a Microsoft monopoly, or are we really dealing with yet another Bush Administration pandering to large corporations? Each time I read something like this I wonder how our political representatives can be so blind to the societal harm of a software monopoly.
It requires a properly configured server to administer the rights management in order to function.
Just do what I do whenever someone sends you a document that can't be opened with the software that you use, send it back and ask them to save it in a different format.
To use IRM features, businesses will need a server running Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 operating system and Windows Rights Management Services software. The server software will record permission rules set by the document creator, such as other people authorized to view the document and expiration dates for any permissions. When another person receives that document, they briefly log in to the Windows Rights Management server--over the Internet or a corporate network--to validate the permissions.
So now you will have to open a port on the firewall and let outsiders into your network so they can authenticate against the Rights Managment Service? I can just visualize the worms now... they invade through this "service" port, crash the server, lock up all the documents, and you loose all your "protected" data. ROTFLMAO.
For f***'s sake people, cool down.
No where does it say "Every single document created by 2003 will be incompatible with OpenOffice.". Its just a feature. It will probably be off by default.
And if you're trying to read docs that have DRM on OpenOffice, you probably aren't supposed to be reading them anyhow.
Either way, if you don't like it, take a positive attitude and help improve OpenOffice or just put up the cash and shut up.
"My cat's breath smells like cat food." - The Tao of Ralph Wiggum.
Please explain how the DRM features in say, Adobe Acrobat are OK while DRM in Word documents are bad. This will not stop a third party from figuring out the format and allowing users to read DRM docs and edit non DRM docs. That is unless you are really paranoid and feel that Bill Gates is out to steel your brain because you have all the episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer memorized.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Businesses will not bite when they realize that they are painting themselves into an incompatibility corner when they use Microsoft.
"Office 2003, the upcoming update of the company's market-dominating productivity package, for the first time will include tools for restricting access to documents created with the software. Office workers can specify who can read or alter a spreadsheet, block it from copying or printing, and set an expiration date."
;)
Note the keyword *can* there. If you want to use it, use it. If you don't, don't. I thought we liked choice....
might make some Americans rethink their next votes
OK, it's almost too easy, but...
That would require that they think in the first place. A huge percentage of Americans go to the poll and just vote how their union/church/whatever told them to.
In the article, focus on the description of the "Information Rights Management" tools. They constitute "just another application", don't they? By cloning the operability of those tools, and adding them to competing Office packages, you allow restricted files to be open-able in accordance with Microsoft's rules, based on permissions. I do think that the original notions of specific methods being copyrightable while ideas are not, remains true, even with respect to the DCMA.
...or even know about this.
Us here at SlashDot tend to take a dim view of Microsoft (even though many of us like some of their products-- I myself like their mice, and MS Word is nice), but most people don't even realize there's a choice.
I apply for Unix Systems Administrator positions sometimes, and virtually ALWAYS I get asked for my resume in... MS Word format.
Giving them a PDF isn't good enough. They just ask you for the Word version again as if you'd said nothing.
I'm starting to think that MS's slogan should be "But EVERYONE uses Microsoft!", since that seems to be the way most end-users seem to think (without even realizing it). Or, of course, it could just be "Microsoft: You WILL use our software, whether you want to or not...")
This sort of thing is getting really tiresome. When will MS finally get the Grand Cosmic Smackdown for doing this sort of thing? How long can an ill-gotten monopoly last? (And why do so many SlashDotters seem to like defending MS?)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
You can use it to guarantee that the Excel or Word document you're mailing to your client does not get tampered with. A very worthy feature for law-firms and businesses that prefr to send quotes over e-mail.
BOO! TERRO
This could be a good thing. Enough people have heard of "open source alternatives" that they will start to seriously examine what that phrase means.
/bots know about the average user, it's an indisputable fact that people don't give a flying fsck about document security. Those that do already know how to protect themselves.
There is nothing in this article that talks about benefits to consumers. With what
When a M$ clone decides to say, "When we asked consumers about...", you can be certain that they didn't ask consumers anything. Consumers want document compatibility. There is nothing Office does for the average user that OpenOffice can't do.
Except take money. It's high time to start preaching this to ordinary users.
Laws are for people with no friends.
MicroSoft is in my opinion doing a wrong thing by making their documents unsharable. WordPerfect documents can be shared almost seamlessly from versions 6 thru 11. Forcing everyone to upgrade to share documents is expensive and impractical. People should start encouring exporting to PDF to make their documents sharable and hopefully Adobe won't do something as stupid as this.
If you create a standard Word document you will still be able to open it in any word compatible program.
ONLY if you use IRM will it be restricted to Office 2003 because it's the only one that supports it. This is mainly a feature that many corporations want (rights management) and it's finally here. This won't affect the average user.
This is not the end of the world people.
A somewhat similar kind of DRM (or "document security") is already implemented in Acrobat and has been since at least version 4. I'm no MS fanboy, but I don't see the big deal with setting read/write/print rights on a document. It could actually come in handy.
If this move locks out other office suites (like OO), that sucks, but I doubt most people will find the feature important enough to exclude the possiblity of using alternative solutions.
Transistors and Beer!!
As often happens, people have reacted to a Microsoft article without understanding the real issue.
There have been many times when I have wanted to keep an email or a document out of the hands of other people. I once got in trouble for sending an email joke to people whom I knew would enjoy the humor. Alas, they forwarded the email to others who forwarded it to others... and so on... so that eventually it ended up in the hands of someone who took the value on "diversity" a bit too far and were offended.
The DRM feature in Office and Outlook enables a user to prevent emails and documents from being forwarded to and viewed by people not specified by the sender/creator. That's all this feature is. The sender/creator certainly has the option of not embedding DRM into the email or document so that there is no rights management involved.
This feature is one I have wanted for many, many years. I want to control who has access without having to expose the recipient to the mystery and overhead of encryption.
-Everyone laughs at lemmings but no one ever wants to admit to ever being one.
Limiting who can read a document, and for how long, is a useful feature (and I imagine one of reasons MS is incorporating DRM). In the case of large corporations, maintaining the confidentiality of new marketing plans or the need to grandfather obsolete draft documents is a very real requirement.
Of course, a seperate document control system could be built for such a purpose, but I've seen documents "escape" such systems in the past and find their way into the wrong hands. I'm interested to see how MS's DRM system will work.
Imagine if DRM is built into email? No more Halloween memos or monopoly building strategies escaping. No wonder they're spending millions on this.
It's even got a 1 line digital display on it; makes me want to figure out how to mod it to use that digital signal as an input for my computer. Imagine having a Typewriter in front of your computer! Okay well maybe that sort of defeats the purpose of having a typewriter in the first place...
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
and not only dos's the server but deletes all the data or even corrupts 1 in 5 documents over a time period
this sort of thing could bring a company to its knees
Computer programmer George A. Pohm was shot and killed by Montgomery Police today while being ticketed for a routine traffic violation. Details are unclear. You may remember Pohm as the author of such classes as "The Raven" and "The Oblong Box." Truly an American icon.
I can offer an opinion. Although OpenOffice 1.1 is a lot faster, it still needs to be more user freindly. I think they need a usabillity study, once its user freindly it will gain a lot more user share. I think they should work with the gnome team since they are good at this kind of thing.
For example, it took me a real long time to figure out how to change the slide background in Impres, make it easier.
More cooperation with freedesktop standards (like the ximian version) will make it more consistant and feel more native to the desktop, rather than jus looking like a "port".
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
"This kind of blatent abuse of the law is just another step towards neo-monarchism, and more loss of freedom for the common person"
.. nuff said!
A lot of us just call this the "Bush Administration"
Homeland Security on Windows 2003
It's so much more fun being able to find out the salaries of everyone in my corporation.
Wonderful HR department password protects the excel spreadsheet, but neglects to password protect the mail-merged raise letters that get sent out.
Damned if I implement it!
Maybe you didn't see it but there was a story on /. here a few weeks ago about the native port delayed. They are in dire need of help.
Help fight continental drift.
...unlike in the previous years where a lowly secretary could get her hands on an executive document detailing such things as fleecing the investors, dumping (on accident or on purpose) HIGHLY toxic chemicals into the local residential area's water supply or other scandalous corporate activities will simply cease to be.
Unless the rights to print such a document are still allowed, it would mean that corporations can get away with hundreds upon hundreds of scams, illegal activites and everything else that our nation's current corporate climate has bred.
Now, if we had a culture of doing the right thing, being honest and trusting, then there would be no issue with having such DRM capabilities being built into an office software package... Of course, that kind of feature would never be used in such a world as there wouldn't be any reaon, if people could be trusted.
I know that DRM makes sense on protecting a company's assets, but it can be the carte blanche to the CEO's of the world to forgo legal business practices...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
They probably will release a free 'office viewer' using which users will be able to view the DRM'd document.
"If there was a time we need a viable competitor to Office, it's now."
For people functioning in business environments, we don't need a competitor. We need cross platform compatibility. Windows people aren't going to use Open Office if MS Office exists in any form. If they can send .doc, .xls, .ppt, whatever, to 90% of their co-workers, then I have to conform to what they're using. They don't care about "Free as in speech." They care about "Work as in what's on their computer that they can use."
A competitor isn't needed. Putting a stop to this gross abuse of their monopoly is what is needed. Convincing MS that forcing people to upgrade and not talk to anyone not using Windows is bad is what's needed.
...EXCEPT a set of open/standard file formats, the most basic "management" tool.
Some of you might point out that you'll be able to save in or "export" to other formats, but we all know that non-computer literate office animals will always save in the default format which, of course, will be Micro$oft's DRM crap.
So, What happens if a new Office 2003 macro virus locks it's self up with this DRM?
No virus scan would be allowed to scan the document?
ok let's all wig out now without any real understanding....
This is so that you can make a document unviewable to anyone but the intended recipients...
I'm betting it will be cracked in 10 minutes after being released anyways....
THIS IS NOT for product lock-in.... this is for document security....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As E2 is so handy for; PHB: Pointy Haired Boss.
Even if the developers of a competing office suite could figure out how to get their software to open an Office 2003 document, doing so would be a DMCA violation, since they'd be bypassing an anti-circumvention device.
/. sensibilities)
Hold on a bit. Does this article say that any and every Office2003 doc can only be opened on a system connected to a Win Server2003 LAN?
No, it doesn't.
Only those docs which the auther wants locked down, for their own personal reasons.
"But rights-protected documents created in Office 2003 can be manipulated only in Office 2003."
Similarly, if a document (any doc, from any program) is encrypted, breaking that encryption would presumably be a 'violation' of the DMCA.
Let's not jump to conclusions here.
(But of course, actually reading the article is a bit beyond
If you read the article (which it seems the submitter didn't even do), you'll see that Microsoft says that applying DRM to a file will be an exception, not the default behavior. This means that the OpenOffice team will be able to figure out the Office 2003 file formats without DRM features, and open and manipulate those files just fine.
The only files that they won't be able to work with will be files that someone has chosen to apply DRM to. And from the document creator's point of view, this is a good thing. The ability to open the file in another app that was not beholden to Microsoft's DRM server would render the DRM completely useless. And DRM itself is not a bad thing. If you think so, perhaps you should execute "chmod -R 777
The first interesting thing will be to see where MS goes from here. Will Office 2004 have DRM as a default? If so, that would make interoperability a great deal more difficult. But more interesting is how the open source community will respond. DRM on documents is an important feature. If I'm putting out a document, it might be useful for me to be able to specify who can view it, who can edit it, and so on, without having to resort to filesystem ACLs. Sure, it's not absolute security on the document, but it's another layer. So it might be a good thing to consider to have some sort of open source DRM alternative for OpenOffice.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Remember, the DMCA (17 USC 1201(a), in this case) only concerns itself with works protected under the copyright act... We got into this discussion the other night in class, when someone suggested that they could simply encrypt an uncopyrightable simple compilation of facts and thus protect it under the DMCA. No; if the data itself isn't copyright(able|ed), simply adding encryption doesn't make it a DMCA violation.
The issue, obviously, becomes thornier when you distribute software (OpenOffice) that can circumvent... But again, the DMCA might not apply here either. It's at least arguable, if the ability to open DRM-protected documents is only incidental; see 17 USC 1201(a)(2).
Finally, I seriously doubt Office 2003 will save documents protected with DRM by default, given the overhead (an available Windows 2003 server to authenticate/authorize) required. Never mind interoperability and backwards compatibility; you couldn't work on such a document on your laptop on a plane, or anywhere you didn't have connectivity and VPN access... No way would the business community put up with that sort of crippling as SOP, even if they wanted to turn it 'on' for certain documents.
geek. lawyer.
I could see some good uses for this feature, but its sounds like an administrators nightmare. Not only do they have to manage the permissions they set on the file system, but now they have to deal with some jack*ss in marketing setting their own permissions on their word docs. Who is going to get called when one of these drones screws up his permissions, or quits? I'm sure MS, in their infinite wisdom, :) provides tools for dealing with situations like this, but it still adds work for the IT department.
For internal documents, what is wrong with sticking with a soundly designed file system permission set?
So tell me, how is this going to keep anyone from doing a printscreen screen capture when they can't cut+paste? Or just manually retype the doc into a non-DRM format? If they think this will prevent leaks, they've been sniffing SCO-glue.
i've never heard of such a thing, please elaborate.
sounds like trash talk...
Yes there is always the arguement that DRM will never stop an employee jotting stuff down from screen to paper and walking with that info, but there is a hell of a better chance someone is going to spot him copying 400+ pages of information, whereas with no DRM he could jsut copy the document and walk.
It says in the article that this was a feature that customers had requested, and I for one can fully beleive that. Expire documents when they become dangerously out of date? Fantastic (think of health and safety!). Dont want an accountant to walk with sensative finacial information they get emailled? Dont let them print the document or do anything other than view it.
Employers need to trust employees, certainly, but that trust also needs to be earnt. And yes you can emulate a lot of DRM with other means (no printer) but then that restricts peripheral things as well.
Even if the developers of a competing office suite could figure out how to get their software to open an Office 2003 document, doing so would be a DMCA violation, since they'd be bypassing an anti-circumvention device
This isnt MSs fault, this is the fault of a dumb law, and thats it. Want to blame someone for that? Blame the people who let it get voted in - the US populas.
It has been said before that MS Office has not had any real good features since office 97, and that this is a feature that will force people to upgrade. My view is that yes a lot of people will upgrade because of this, but not forcable. They will upgrade because tehy WANT these IRM features, as it gives them more control.
The last paragraph in the article states: ""It's not going to be adopted en masse, but I think they'll have a good rollout department by department for people dealing with more sensitive documents." and this is precisely what the office 2003 release is aimed at, the people who requested the features and who want them. If OOo had this feature before MS Office, I bet you could have enticed quite a few businesses over from the Office series jsut based on IRM.
JonKatz is listed as not having any foes, guess you're just not that important anymore.
No Comment.
(Yes, I know it's silly, but anyway.)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
() Only allow access to this document to people who I give an electronic copy to ("classic" default)
() Allow everyone to access this document (turn on IIS filesharing)
() Only allow access to people who I give a phisical copy (print)
(*) Only allow fully registered and subscription-up-to-date MS products to open this document (default)
You are mining data from Excel and Word? For reporting? Ever heard of SQL databases? Hard to take anything you write seriously.
You know, these redundant posts of the entire article that have some word of phrase replaced to make it a troll are becoming quite fun. Sort of like Where's Waldo? for the /. crowd.
Here's the offending phrase from the above article:
"It's not something that you would set up as the default, so that every document I would create is rights management protected," he said. "Rob Malda is practically a penis eating machine, and it's important that you make a choice to apply rights management to a document for very specific reasons."
I mean, it's annoying that OpenOffice.org can't read them, but DRM on word docs is reasonable in an office setting. The current protocol for confidential files is to encrypt them, and trust the employees who know the password not to download it to their USB Flash Drives and take them home. This would let them actually enforce something. It can surely be circumvented, but probably not trivially so.
It has a potential for abuse, but not that much of one. You don't generally buy content via word doc, so who cares if people can DRM them? And you can still read the non-DRMed ones in OO.org or whatever.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
must write my two cents too...
Man like all the other stories get like 60 replies, this one cuz its about MSFT automagically [thanks Dave Dunfield] gets 200 replies.
No shit MSFT license policies are intrusive. Is anyone here fucking surprised? Holy fuck what you got your fucking head stuck in a pile of shit for the last 10 years? Wake the fuck up.
[flamebait, funny and overrated all at once!]
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
use DRM to protect us from viruses. I can just see the patches for Office to try and get DRM secure
http://www.unbrandamerica.org
I think OpenOffice is ready for this. I've already deployed OpenOffice for a number of my clients who work with crazy excel documents in the financial services industry. Interestingly, one of the reasons for their interest in trying to move away from MS is so that they can understand the software market better. They have to "eat their own financial recommendations", so to speak, so in order to see if there is viability in any competitor, they have to start using them. This is why they have started testing Linux,OpenOffice, and Mozilla on the desktop. They are also having me rewrite some of their custom network applications in Java, and tweak their web apps so that they're not IE only. This wouldn't be such a big deal, except that it's in a very small firm (~30 employees) which had previously been pretty much all MS. I feel that this is one of the strongest indications of a much larger trend of Java, Linux, Mozilla, OO taking over the desktop.
for the first time will include tools for restricting access to documents created with the software. Office workers can specify who can read or alter a spreadsheet, block it from copying or printing, and set an expiration date.
this will be great when someone quietly locks 10 years worth of documents he created before getting laid off... a week later, after his Win* user ID has been deleted, his boss will loooooove the new DRM features implemented by Microsoft.
there's no place like ~
And from there, the DOM should let you get at all the content.
Design for Use, not Construction!
This is what content management systems are for- the access control, modification rights, etc etc.
:)
There are already many many systems out there that provide this functionality.
One feature that would be "good" IMO is immutability. (like how you can lock down a PDF so no changes can be made)
Of course, robust encryption would be a good thing too, nobody wants anymore European hackers being arrested at presentations they're giving
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
I'm sorry to say, but this article has nothing to do with patents.
Will Erica Wiechers be there?
I think its pretty obvious that Microsofts DRM technology will consist of flags in the file itseld - eg "can_be_copied=0" and the document will be un-encrypted. So now notepad will be a DMCA violating piece of software in the US... oh well, im sure they'll just remove notepad.exe and wordpad.exe and edit.exe for the US version of windows ;)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
A few facts and then an opinion:
1) DRM technology will be available to businesses which choose to run a DRM server on Windows 2003. It will not be enabled by default.
2) The technology will allow a management (or really the top level key holders) to limit document access rights to specific individuals or a group within the organization. A very valuable feature for many businesses.
3) Without a doubt, MS will abuse this technology to lock their customers into the new Office document format, which they will further abuse to limit document exchange from MS to third party applications.
The problem here is not 1) and 2). Those are perfectly reasonable features that most businesses want to buy. The problem is 3), the vendor lock-in issue. The Open Office project could write the same kind of DRM services into their suite, while at the same time offering document portability to those who hold top level keys to an organization's documents. IMO, this is where they should go long term, since it's obvious MS has hit upon a valuable technology - but like they're always abt to do, they're first instinct is to use the new technology to lock their customers in rather than sell their customers on their new features, quality engineering, and support. Businesses want both the DRM controls and document portability across a wide range of applications. MS always fails their customers in this regard and that's one reason why they've got such a bad reputation.
JMO.
Maynrd
Hell, it would require over half of us to vote in the first place
All's true that is mistrusted
this is a reference to the dungeons & dragons material, the player's handbook (see also: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786928867
see, the DRM is becoming such a weighty issue that it's threatening to break the books w/ which i prop up my PC.
read some dilbert.
ed
"Newest MS Office to have encryption features."
Would anybody be upset if they integrated PGP into MS Outlook? No? Well, now they're doing it with Word. This is fine.
Obviously, encryption would require changes to the file format. This is a pretty standard sort of upgrade arm-twisting. They're adding a new feature. Woo.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
You all hope this would backfire and blow up in Microsoft's face.
I think that is wishful thinking. "Why?" you say? It's quite simple, Microsoft has proven to have more business saavoy than anyone here. I'm just going to trust that Microsoft knows what they are doing when it comes to manipulating the market.
This is just yet another slashdot pipe dream of the demise of Microsoft, Think about how many other articles showing how MS will fail there have been here.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Looks to me like the 'next' 'version' of Office will vaguely lash Office DRM with Outlook to provide something like Notes 2 circa 1995.
You can block printscreen. And if it's a big enough file, typing it out can be tiresome.
This is largely to prevent *trivial* copying.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Do you want to use ActiveDRM, an advanced feature that will enhance you document reading experience ?
:
[_]Yes
[_]No
on clicking []No, a popup dialog box
Are you sure ? By not using ActiveDRM, your computer is actively broadcasting your IP adress to the internet
[_]Yes
[_]No
Get a grip, folks. EVERTHING BillyG does is about lock-in. This DRM crap is a non-starter. Pure hype designed to make it look like they are "doing something" about security. 99% of the corporate world doesn't understand DRM, much less want it integrated into apps they can barely use as is. And even if they did suddently have it with the next upgrade, they would want it disabled faster than you can say talking paper clip. I'm afraid it will take more than this to turn the tide away from the iron fist of MS Office.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
The one person who should be scared is Pud of at FC, where will he get his content?
I agree completely. They try aggressive business tactics to close out competitors but it only frustrates the end users and forces companies to look for software solutions that aren't so exclusive. It even raises the bar for the competition. Ill advised move, M$. I think that we'll see more (if possible) desktop users loathe the the barrier M$ has decided to build between itself and the consumer
...to all the mods who gave me a "-1, Paranoid" every time I said that M$ would figure out a way to use the DMCA as a way to keep other companies from opening their files. I was riiiiiight! ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
so sad to here this newz... i had not knewn about the passing of great americun arthur Edgar Allan Pom. trulie a grate man, may he rest in piece
nevermor... nevermor...
Until the first worm that takes advantage of this super security MS product that is designed to specifically change ownership and access rights to all files on systems then force the the authentication servers to go tits up.
Wouldn't that be a systems administrators worse nightmare. Seems like only a matter of time before somthing like this could happen given Microsoft's shitty history with regards to security.
Or am I missing somthing ?
Isn't Microsoft already a major target of customer disdain? I'm not trying to start anything, but fanboys aside, I don't know too many people who really like using Windows, even among the largely computer-illiterate 'normal' users. In my workplace, MS is the butt of all kinds of office humor, but no one will consider moving away A.Because everyone has been indoctrinated to think that compatibility *requires* MS software ("but everyone uses it!"), and B.It's the government. I think that since MS has already taken care of B., it's only natural that they attempt to make sure that A. comes true as well.
Really? I always get "What else is there?" or "It's what everyone uses".
You use the words "choose" and "competing product" lightly. Several people I know loved Word Perfect, but finally had to switch to Word because that was "the standard". One of the big reasons MS has done so well is because they got into the businessworld.
Ask all those people where they got MSWord, that answer is usually one of...
I borrowed a copy from a friend/family member
I borrowed a copy from work
I downloaded a copy from the internet
I don't know
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The real Sun Pin of ancient China put it something along the lines of,"Without the masses, you will fail."
/bots need to stop preaching to the choir and start preaching to the masses--that's all.
We must defend Joe User because it is in our interest to do so. We need to convince him to support us as we do the hard work of railing against crap like this. His support is represented by either money or, in the case of open source, not spending his money.
Intellectual arguments are not intellectual at all. They are stupid, arrogant and the average user will just roll his eyes from such arguments.
Laws are for people with no friends.
There are various hacks out there that crack the passwords in MS Office files from 95 up until Office XP. I use Passware, but you can find free ones if you google for them.
Microsoft's password protection is shittastic!
Well, looks like Microsoft finally figured it out. DRM file formats and protocols have been on my mind for quite awhile as potential tools that they could could use to *specifically* target Open Source. Here's why:
What Microsoft will do with the Word DRM is "license" the technology to other commercial interests that wish to maintain file compatibility. They know that THIS is the wedge they can drive into things to split off the open-source projects, because A) no self-respecting open-source project would license MICROSOFT technology, and B) even if they would, they likely couldn't afford it.
Look for this to happen with the next round of media file formats as well. On a more sensationalistic note, what if MS bribed say, NVidia to DRMize their hardware interface. Nobody could then make calls to that hardware without either having a license or violating the DMCA. Again, commercial interests can afford the license, but do you think RedHat and such would like to bankroll Open Source's hardware compatibility licenses? Perhaps at first, but eventually I think not...
Watch out.
-JT
I think that this will give Microsoft more control not more. Most people could care less about Open Source Software. Face it, their is no way to stop this power grab any more than it will be to stop SCO. Both Microsoft and SCO will win because they have the law and lawmakers on their side.
all I know about the dilbert characters is that there is a guy who goes "I HEARD A RUMOR!"...
:)
that cracked me up
OK. Let me get this straight. A private company introduces software that basically introduces built-in encryption for word documents, spreadsheets, and email. This technology is designed to allow companies to prevent emails and documents from accidentally "leaking" to the press or into the hands of corporate spies. This won't even affect the home user AT ALL because home users don't have the necessary software to make use of IRM anyway (it requires a separate Windows 2003 Server in addition to MS's Information Rights Management software).
And the availability of this product is somehow an example of "blatant abuse of the law"? I think some people here are suffering from some kind of paranoia.
its perfectly reasonable for a isolated corporate environment. but you want to make documents go out the building it will be a bitch to do. people will not stand for a sandbox or simular type of mechanism to email someone a quote in excel.
additionally if quickbooks or some other simular program cannot read/write to a file its going to be a hazard. people are fed up with having to mess with msjet, dao or whatever microsoft is pushing today for their database connectivity for dealing with their office suite and third party applications.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
It's a Catch-22 for Microsoft. Either force people to upgrade by mandating DRM (and risk losing everything), or continue supporting legacy versions (and eliminate the incentive to upgrade or use DRM).
I think the only customers who will be "locked into" an Office upgrade are those dumb enough to use the DRM features. The Darwin effect is coming soon, to an office near you.
I, for one, welcome our new Office lock-in overlords.
What does Esquire mean? Does it just mean "lawyer" ?
$8.95/mo web hosting
I think you're assuming that PHBs are rational. They are epecially irrational when the FUD sets in. I have little hope for this, since they're accustomed to buying whatever line MSFT feeds them.
Has anyone noticed that MSFT's stock sort of peaked about 9 months ago and hasn't seen much improvement in the latest run-up of tech stocks? They're looking for something, anything, to convince Mr. Moneybags to slap down even more big honkin' purchase orders to get their stock moving again. As one of the most closely followed companies in the world, their predictable earnings growth has already been discounted, so they need something new, and in a near monoploy, something new is hard to come by.
Helium balloons want to be free.
Or is this similar to the availability of encryption in WinZip - it's there, it's optional, nobody uses it?
This guy has hit the nail on the head
From the post:
"It's not something that you would set up as the default, so that every document I would create is rights management protected," he said. " Rob Malda is practically a penis eating machine, and it's important that you make a choice to apply rights management to a document for very specific reasons."
Come on. We all knew that. Truly redundant.
Of course it's not a problem. And it's not even on by default, like you said.
But look at the Slashdot headline! "Microsoft Prepares Office Lock-In." Unbiased? Ha. Talk about spinning facts.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I'll bite. Ya see, data doesn't automagically appear in the database. Sometimes you need to take your source data and stick it in there. And sometimes that data comes in excel format.
Many jobs ago I wrote a program that did just that. It took incoming data in the form of excel sheets, picked out the important data and sent it off to the DB.
So mining these formats is somewhat important to some people. Thankfully not to me anymore...
Since SCO and their damn GPL is invalid stuff, everything I look at becomes the Chewbacca Defense. I was at a show the other night and heard "ladies and gentlemen" and my mind finished up with "of this supposed jury". Damn it! Will reading the news or hearing announcements ever be the same again?
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Okayyyy, let's look at this properly. You have data going in, data going out, and all of that over a series of devices (servers, gateways, firewalls, desktops, maybe tape streamers etc etc). All of this stuff has to be DRM enabled not to create a hole in this scheme. Am I the only one to spot a rather obvious problem here?
You are busy with sprinkling multiple single points of failure into the IT that has to support your business, and you don't have a way of disabling it for diagnostics if it dies for some reason (and it will, you're not exactly talking about mature technology here). Worse - someone else DOES have an on/off switch to your own Intellectual Property. So, the next time you have en equipment failure or the next time your accounts department forgets to pay MS protection money (just to give it a different name), imagine what's going to happen. Given that you have signed away all redress by accepting the usual shrinkwrap EULA you just *may* have a problem.
Try explaining that one to your shareholders. Oh, and try claiming that off your corporate insurance. You'll probably get a cheque: about $1 for the entertainment you've given them. You may, however, get taken to the cleaners for liabilities yourself (for example, if you happen to host data for other people). I can really see a bright new market emerging for China and Korea for non-DRM equipped kit. Once the consequences of DRM dawn on corporate America you won't be able to sell a DRM enabled piece of kit for more than scrap value, but as usual we will have to make the mistake first before we realise what mess we got ourselves into.
Insert
Just what we needed. More evidence of why Gates is so loved world-wide. I hope those who think this little exercise will backfire are right, but looking back at MS's sordid history is not encouraging. The problem might be that ordinary people don't have the devious minds of Gates and his friends.
radsoft.net
now microsoft can 'legitimately' claim not to have the contents of certain emails in their numerous law cases!
I had someone send me an .doc file, encoded with AppleSingle, and then mime encoded, when just plain text would have worked.
Get the company legal department and managers involved. Point out that company policy and/or the law requires certain things be done with documents, eg. certain finance-related documents must be kept for certain lengths of time or the company can face fines, certain documents must have file copies made, policy dictates that certain people receive copies of documents. The DRM features in the new Office software may, depending on what the sender sets, prevent the required things from being done. If the creator specifies "no copies", archive copies of financial and/or legal documents couldn't be made which must be made. Since some of the senders may not be within the company and may very well have good reason to prevent a record being made, this could put the company in the position of being legally liable while not being able to control their liability. That's the kind of stuff that makes lawyers nervous, and the lawyers have the ear of the board of directors and executives.
What's the big deal here? You can do this now by wrapping your word document in PGP. Only, this DRM is managed by a central server and supported internally by the document. Yeah, a DRM protected document couldn't be read by a machine that doesn't participate with the central server and/or can't read the new format, but that's just how it's implemented. If I emailed a PGP protected document properly signed for the person I sent it to, and they don't have PGP installed on that machine, they can't read the document, regardless of the OS. So I'd have to send them an unsigned version. The DRM end users would realize that they can't us the "Protect This Document With LAN DRM Settings" option. They'll learn quickly to avoid it if the company policy allows it.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
It's nothing new for companies to introduce products which save files in a format that older versions can not open. It is rare for a company to do that with every new version, but it happens.
To expect that a person using Microsoft MiscProduct 1.0 will be able to open a file in MS MiscProduct 10.0 format is a bit much. Now, if MS MiscProduct 10 couldn't save in something that MS MiscProduct 1.0 could read, then you might have more room to complain.
....That we'll see a DRM enabled worm/virus, that can't be cleaned?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
But can it open password-protected documents when you supply the correct password?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I've gotten 3 calls in the last 6 months from center city law firms that I support saying they need to send all their court filings in PDF format.
InternalMemos.com
You can spout about how despicable DRM as long as you want but the fact is that PHBs would love to have software that made leaks such as those that end up on InternalMemos.com less likely.
I know what the article submitter means, but I don't like the thought of encouraging anybody to kick the OpenOffice.org team anywhere over anything.
;)
;) It's incredible that this thing exists and works at all! It's an entirely free, highly innovative, enterprise-oriented office suite framework for crying out loud! :)
Developing OpenOffice.org at all is one of the heftiest, most complex, most daunting, hard-to-please development projects that one can possibly undertake. It takes a G4 two days of processing and a couple gigabytes of storage just to compile it once. The addition of tackling the moving target of a global monopoly only increases the level of user support they can hardly please everybody on. Just supporting the normal users is hard enough at this point!
I imagine an unknown point in time where OO.o's base development will stabilize. Recently, and perhaps still today, they were still dealing with legacy architecture inside OO.o from the StarOffice days. Sometimes it seems like a pre-1.0 of Mozilla when it was still entrenched with Netscape, but with an uncontrollable and inestimable potential waiting for the stars to align. It'll break fully out into its own space, it'll merge more with other productivity- and collaboration-oriented projects, and it'll become more things to more people.
And please, let's knock off the doom and gloom about the Aqua version.
My idea of a productivity suite used to be 'vi' and Mozilla. OO.o is so cool it's made me want to use an office suite! I get excited over designing dynamic documents and mail merges!
Player's Handbook, a very useful component of D&D. Take it with you to work and start up a game.
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
Will cut-and-paste violate the DMCA?
If I have a document that doesn't allow printing or forwarding, what keeps me from pasting the text somewhere else and printing or emailing it? You can do that with Acrobat's print-protected PDFs, and it has had "DRM" for some time now.
Okay, maybe they thought of that... just maybe. One could still take screenshots and run it thru OCR software.
Who would do that, you ask? Well, anyone interested in distributing the information badly might do it. And if the whole point of this DRM is to prevent that sort of mischief, it is a false sense of security.
And it wouldn't be too difficult... An auto-scrolling screenshot capture tool could pull it off quite nicely.
r4lv3k
Surely a user will have the choice of pushing the DRM button or not... if they don't push it then the playing field is still level, if they do push it then they did so for a reason.
This is just Micro$oft's way of trying to block off the open-source community off at the pass. Remember, Linux is Microsoft's biggest threat! What better way to do that then cut them off from using any of their new technology of a centeralized document rights management software! Plus Micro$oft can make extra $$ by forcing users to upgrade their Office 2000/XP, AND add another server product to their already costly enterprise software line. Don't forget new certifications for this new version of Office, and an additional certification for managing that document rights manager!
However, one must remember we only groan and moan about this cause it is Microsoft. Other software companies could easily do this, but since our cornholios are already bleeding from Mr. Gates, we make it a big dealo.
Besides, this is just one of the campaigns Micro$oft has for its "bigger" plan. They are being challenged everywhere in the war of Micro$oft vs. the world...from MSN vs 3rd party IM clients, on patents and IPs, their security, and the list goes on.
Now is the time for the open-source community to get their heads together and get cracking on a user-friendly MS Office clone that is packaged into a user-friendly XWindows system that your dog could use. We are far far from that point..
LainTheWired = isgod( int Lain, int denial, float truth)
Plink, plink.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Damn. DRM seems to be the word of the year for evil corporations.
Hasn't Office had digital rights management for quite sometime? Password protected documents anyone?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
....because people use all sorts of applications and save info all sorts of places. SQL, Excel, Access, Word, mySQL, etc - all from not only our company, but our partners. That's how us big ballers roll, grass hopper.
This is going to sound like a troll, but it's really not.
If all of the marketing weenies and pointy haired ones that use Word and PowerPoint as an email format actually had to pay for their copies of Office, they'd quickly start looking for alternatives. Those of us who'd like to stop supporting Microsoft just becausee we have to read documents created by these folks can do something very simple:
Every time you see someone using a pirated version of a Microsoft product in a system that helps maintain the lock-in, mailing you Word docs or similar, inform the Business Software Alliance. If enough of the suits get bent over and reamed by Microsoft lawyers, eventually they'll start to discover that it doesn't make business sense to pirate software. If they stop doing that, then they'll discover that the costs of using MS Office are far higher than they'd previously thought, and they'll start looking for alternatives.
It is hardly new. MS Office can password protect documents. I have also noticed of late that several application will hapilly ignore the password and try it's very best to open the document, often with wild success. p. In particular, if the document is only protected, Openoffice.org will open it without protection.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
screen captures can be prevented from within the win32 api, i have seen it done. Basically the screen capture happens as tho the window isnt there and you get whatever is behind it.
And typing documents out again? I think someone will notice you copying word for word a document over a period of time, and ask you why you arent doing what other work you have to do. Basically it will take a lot longer for you to copy the doc, and there is a much better chance of you being discovered. (and think jsut how much information is removed from the business on a impulse by a disgruntled emplyee, much more than what is removed based on a well thought out and timescaled plan)
This is just FUD. The DRM features are not on by default and require a server to use it. This is for corporations that need secure documents and can't figure out(re: end users to lazy and stupid) how to use PGP.
Plus even PGP can't stop you from using the cleartext while this method can. Betcha some one cracks the cleartext. If it can be displayed on the screen in can be saved to disk.
This is one of few useful new features of Office System.
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I agree. This is a very bawlsy move for MS. I'm sure, that they think it will make them money by restricting the "piracy". However, a small business is not going to be able to afford upgrading to this new software. also, even in larger corporations, the resources needed to make this work would be immense! more importantly, most people will not understand how to use the DRM, namely those who use the computers soley for e-mail and word processing. It think this may very well be the straw that finally breaks the proverbial cammel's back.
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Don't get me wrong, I LOVE OpenOffice.org. But I don't see how getting into "high gear" is going to do any good unless OO.o manages to completely revolutionize the office suite paradigm far beyond what MS has. OO.o is a great *alternative*, but it's not really doing much more than MS Office does and there are some features missing. To get "mind share" (profit can go to hell since that's not why most of us are here), OO.o is going to have to provide above and beyond what MS Office provides. Is that possible? I don't think it is.
Sure, some people might want to jump ship when they figure out that MS is going to hold them hostage with DRM. But that's only going to be a small fraction of office suite users. The majority will grudgingly hand the cash over to MS and upgrade. The only way to get more people to WANT to move over to OO.o or some other alternative is to provide exactly what most coders despise: features. This is what Joe Average is interested in. Yes, I am aware that OO.o has some features that distinguish it from MS Office, but it's not enough of a difference to really count.
An example of a feature that an average user would find "useful" no matter how stupid it might sound to a true geek, is say... self-contained executable documents. If a user could write something and then save it as a "self contained" document that was platform independent, I think it would be a feature that goes beyond MS Office. Think about it... the user saves the doc and then e-mails it to someone. The recipient can then just open the attachment WITHOUT needing to have OO.o installed on their machine... or MS Office... or ANY office suite. Instead the document itself comes with an exectutable that provides basic reader fearures, possibly an executable that will install a lightweight editor, or even contains an editor itself. Obviously it wouldn't have all the features that OO.o contains, but just enough to read and maybe edit.
Or... maybe the document would never get sent to the recipient. Instead the document would remain on an HTTPS accesible document store. The recipient would get an attachment that contains authentication to allow seamless access to the https document store and a path to the document. Along with this document store is the ability to "edit locally" which would give the user the option to run an editor over the HTTPS link or use a locally installed editor depending on the situation. This would go well beyond anything the MS Office suite does now and would appear to be far beyond MS's current mode of thought.
That's where things need to go if MS is to be usurped of the office suite mindshare that it currently posseses.
Un-news
You know, I was thinking about this just today. I realized that they can't just do this without providing an option to turn that kind of "encryption" off. The last I heard, they were doing the same thing with Windows Media Player.
I have and continue to produce my own (really bad) music. If I am using Windows Media Player to rip (or burn) a CD of my stuff and I want to distribute it for free (I own every imaginable right to the music), then I should be given the option to turn this off.
I think that if they don't provide an off switch, a lot of companies are going to get pissed off and find viable alternatives.
Another thing to think of: will they be doing this upgrade for Mac as well?
I concur with your points. Documents that I write must be portable. People already get pissed off enough that I use OOo (because it doesn't do all the formatting Word does) -- I don't need to be forced to buy Microsoft products to do my work effectively. This is, shortly stated, what we would call a monopoly. Point blank.
www.sitetronics.com/wordpress
This feature is off by default. Certain companies will want to lock-in their documents. This is a 100% complete non-issue.
"Sufferin' succotash."
It's about time that other folks picked up on the lock-in strategy. I was writing about this back in March.
Don't let the facts get in the way of a good anti-Microsoft rant.
One day I will learn how to proof read...*sigh*
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So, M$ wanna make sure the memos discussing how they fun SCO to FUD open source community will stay secret?!?
This has nothing to do with the consumer.
Redmond is just getting tired of having all it's Super Secret Damning Evidence Documents mysteriously leaked.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
If you are going to post with a subject of "I for one...", your comment should be "I for one welcome our locked in vendor overlords"
You're not looking at it the right way. All they have to do for vendor lock-in is to make the Office 2003 file formats for .doc, .xls, etc incompatible with previous versions and use some form of encryption. Doesn't matter how good the encryption is, it'll be illegal to decrypt it (DMCA). We use a cad program at work that silently encrypted our cad files. Simply opening and saving the file with the new version of the software upgraded the format to the encrypted version (without you knowing about it). There was an outrage against the company (not Microsoft) after all the users figured out what had happened, but it was too late. All those files can now be opened in that application only. We only found this out when we wanted to switch to a different cad system, and the files couldn't be converted. Of course, we always have the option of redoing all that work in a new cad system! My guess is that if you use Office 2003, you'll be locked in to MS Office forever, unless you're willing to re-create your documents in something else.
The spin that the media can place upon such a story will be catastrophic to the companie's image
But let's not forget who we're talking about right now - Microsoft. Irregardless of the astroturf campaigns etc. they have been up to before, we've not really seen a proper, concerted effort by them to push for something they want (by "we" I mean the general public, not the various number of small unfortunate companies they'd decided to kill in the past, e.g. Netscape).
If the media start attacking MS in earnest, will we find out how much of "the media" MS can buy with their effectively-untouched warchest of $40-50b?
It's still important if you are dealing with government data. All the time I'm finding Excel worksheets or Word documents on government sites. At least those are halfway sensible formats compared with the far more popular PDF which is essentially a glorified PostScript where the only metadata is layout information. Worse than HTML files that way, PDFs are.
I do not have a signature
Unless the rights to print such a document are still allowed, it would mean that corporations can get away with hundreds upon hundreds of scams, illegal activites and everything else that our nation's current corporate climate has bred.
This isn't going to change anything. Today a technically competent corporation can secure documents using certificates, PGP, etc. If they really want to cover their tracks they can do so. Better yet, they can do their dirty work only on paper, then shred it when the feds show up. Seemed to work just fine for enron.
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How do you type that shit so fast?
Linux?
"ah look another rant-story about M$ - lets post it on /. without reading it"
--
I know michael isnt a girl
The DMCA clearly and unambiguously allows reverse-engineering and circumvention to achieve interoperability.
d f
Don't just assume and feed absurd conspiracy theories. READ THE LAW.
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.p
Or you just get out your trusty camera and take a picture of it. If you want to get higher tech, capture the EM signal generated by the monitor. It's just like bypassing music DRM by recording from a line out. This sort of security will stop casual snoops, but somebody who wants the information will get it.
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From the article I gathered that Microsoft plans to release a new version of Office. This new version of Office will have a feature where the users can encrypt there files so only people they want to read their files can. In addition this new version of Office will have a server software addition where netadmins can control the access to shared documents from a central location.
If you want these new features you have to use the new version of Office. Why is that a big deal or problem? I'm sure there were features added in Office XP that were not in Office 2000 right? It doesn't change the fact that I can still open the document in either program (granted formatings are changed based on what functions of the newer version were used) but this isn't an "EVIL" thing.
All new apps come out with newer features that are not supported in the older versions - and honestly I like that - it's not a problem. If you want to use your New Document in an Older version it's easy 1) downsave and/or 2) don't use the encryption option.
Done.
Ave Molech Setting
Or perhaps you're supposed to upgrade to Office 2007. You have no intention of it, your office uses Office 2003 exclusively, and you don't share documents. No need for you to upgrade. The Windows 2003 DRM server contacts the Mothership for a security update, and suddenly your Office 2003 docs will only open with Office 2007. When you complain to MS, you will be told it was your turn to support the innovation you're being forced into.
Done. It can connect to PostgreSQL (I am sure to other OSS DBMS as well), which is already extremely programmable, even more than Oracle, Access and SQL server altogether: PL/SQL, PL/Python, PL/Perl, PL/PHP, PL/TCL and others (and you can add any your language interpreter using the API provided).
However, PostgreSQL still has problems with native distros for both Windows and OSX. Perhaps Apple should help with PostgreSQL in OSX - they usually love BSDL more than GPL (read: they love to rip without contributing back).
Less is more !
is DROOLING over these functions, and has been pestering M$ Premier support for mandatory DRM, document self destruct and many other heinous feature for years now. They perceive in as the panacea to the legal issues looming over liability. As much as I despise the whole concept, I can't blame M$ alone for this, when your biggest customers call for somthing you do your best to produce it....The fact that joe user get screwed is of minor importance to all the parties involved here, except Joe :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Dan Leach, Microsoft's lead product manager for Office, said rights management features were built into the new Office based on ongoing discussions with customers.
"We asked people what types of things would you like to do that you can't do now, and what they said is they'd like to spread large amounts of information around to more of their people--but they have concerns that the wider they spread information, the more likely it is to become available to the wrong people," he said.
I feel that the article actually puts Microsoft's new scheme in a positive light! This needs as much bad press as possible! When will the general population realize that Microsoft is very rarely innovative? And that virtually every business move of theirs is in the interest of stifling competition?
If Microsoft didn't have a monopoly, they couldn't pull off half of the stuff they do.
There are many ways to solve the user's problem above that do not involve vendor lock in or forced obsolescence. In fact, this could be the killer app for Linux and all of open source: integrated crypto for the Linux kernel and OpenOffice.org. Make security inherent in the total system, but use established crypto systems. DRM can be delivered with open source!
I once heard that Burger King never does location research. They just wait for McDonald's to build a restarant and then BK builds their own nearby. Well, open source might as well use the market research that Microsoft makes available---let open source deliver customer solutions that actually benefit the consumer.
I believe there is something to be said for not caring whether or not open source gains market share. Well, I don't care about market share, but I would like to be able to use my Linux desktop and not worry about compatability with everyone else. I'd like to be able to receive documents from my friends and co-workers and not have to request a non-proprietary data format. I'd like to be able to buy hardware with OEM-level Linux support. I'd like to be able to recommend Linux to my friends without caveats. Unfortunately, these things won't be possible until Linux has significant "market share". I would nearly bet my life that Microsoft's Office monopoly is what keeps open source from gaining significant market share. I think that, any more, MS Office enables the Windows monopoly! Microsoft knows this and they are milking it for all it's worth.
Microsoft is no different from any other company faced with a similar situation: they recognize a critical event in their market (the emergence and spiraling popularity of open source) and they realize they must take drastic measures to keep or increase their market share (lock everyone else out at any cost). Such a monumentous undertaking will require Microsoft to put a lot at stake. Unless open source---and educated consumers in general---respond with equal effort, Microsoft will come to own your digital world.
PHB is Pointy Haired Boss. A similar one is WALU (pronounced "wah-loo"), which is a Whiny Ass Linux User.
Actually, doesnt anyone out there believe that maybe just maybe the DMCA *should* be going against products like OpenOffice?
/. type opinion.
Before you light up the torches, let me explain a second... there is a difference between interoping with a product, and *cloning* it. How would you feel if you had vested multiple millions of dollars into research into what an ideal user interface is, or how to be enable X or Y feature... to have another team clone it exactly, and sell it as their own. Wouldnt you want your work to be somewhat protected?
I dont like the fact that Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop office software area... but as someone who makes money off creating software... I do like the fact their are protections in place to protect my livelhood. The open source system doesnt work for all software development... making money off software, isnt itself evil.
This is one of the few area's where I actually see the DMCA doing what its supposed to! Protecting the rights of ownership in a digital age... ( and yes, I hate the law as much as everyone else... especially I hate the RIAA... but for much different reasons.)
Imagine spending millions developing the forumla for a drug, then having someone knock off a cheap copy? We have laws in place to prevent ( or at least hinder ) this sort of activity. It more of these open source projects refined... instead of cloned the windows version, I might have a different standpoint. But, in most cases, they seem like ugly step children to the commerical equivelant. So, therefore there only reason for existance ( at least on a windows platform ) is because they are free... not because they are different or better.
Shrug... flame away... I just expressed a very anti
Yes! All power to the ubermencsh! Let us purge the earth of all who oppose us!
Blech. You make me sick.
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Slashdot SUX0RZ!
Just as a former coworker can no longer listen to PRI after I mentioned Painful Rectal Itch, I will never be unable to resist the urge to barf in all future meetings.....
The DRM feature in Office and Outlook enables a user to prevent emails and documents from being forwarded to and viewed by people not specified by the sender/creator.
I presume this means that every email you forward to me has to be read in outlook. Somehow I don't think Microsoft will write a plugin for lotus notes (what I'm stuck using at work) or PINE or mutt. So now I'm forced into using a Microsoft product which I'll have to pay for to read all those emails. And a couple of versions in the future I may no longer be able to copy/paste between half my emails and documents because people got used to leaving the DRM button checked. And I won't be able to make easy backups of my email because the DRM thinks I'm making illegal copies and sending them on...
If I want to keep something anonymous I just tell people in person. I'd much rather do that than deal with all the potential hassle.
Serious? Well, not much. But companies like Microsoft have to realize that DRM (like any privacy technology) is a double-edged sword. I can't wait for the lawsuit that occurs when it's found out that DRM hid accounting shenanigans from the SEC (of course, this suit will not be brought by the Feds, but by the shareholders bilked). Can you say deep pockets? Not that this suit would necessarily succeed, but it would be fun to watch.
And for those of you who think I'm Microsoft bashing - I'm not. The same thing could be said about various Linux tools, as well. The real danger is when corporations get a pass for using these technologies "for sound business reasons" while individuals using it are seen as "having something to hide". I just think there's a deeper issue here that Microsoft, by providing tools to businesses, but not to individuals, is on the wrong side of.
That is all.
Messenger lockdown is pretty blatant, and I haven't seen much public outrage - primarily because the people using Trillian et al are not the mainstream
Perhaps that's because the people who use trillian, etc, don't really care. I use gaim and when MSN shuts me down I'll just stop using MSN. Who cares? Most of my friends are on AIM and Yahoo anyhow, and not like it's difficult for people to switch.
If you are using trillian, it's probably because you have accounts on multiple IM networks. So losing one of them isn't a major crisis. There might be more of an uproar if you lost 2, and definitely if all three became inaccessible.
I'll start using MSN again when they release a linux client. That is, two weeks after never.
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I just had to reinstall Win2k on my machine this weekend and I was dreading the "Re-Install routine". After Installing and all of my apps that I needed - I really couldnt justify to myself to drive to the office and pickup a Office 2k cd to install. I decided to try Open Office as my office suite and Firebird as my mail client. I must say Both applications far exceeded my expectations. Word documents opened up perfectly and the export to PDF feature was a really neat bonus. For me there is really no need for Office 2k and I was thinking this weekend about how far Open Office has come and how many companies can save by installing this application for the Users who really don't need alot of word processing power. I for one want Open Office to succede and will be looking into how I can help improve it.
Leach added that even for organizations that adopt Office 2003, rights management will still be the exception rather than the rule when creating documents.
"It's not something that you would set up as the default, so that every document I would create is rights management protected," he said. "It's important that you make a choice to apply rights management to a document for very specific reasons."
What you're saying really only applies if DRM had been mandatory. Since the article says that it won't (for the reasons you stated above) it won't be a problem, because companies wanting to use the new features will upgrade, and those who don't, won't (or will only partially upgrade, and not use the DRM feature for compatibility with older software). If you ask me, this sounds like a good thing, as long as it remains optional. The second it becomes mandatory is when it becomes a problem.
So you turn to Microsoft to secure it????
If Sun or some open source team developed an import filter that circumvented microsoft's drm, microsoft would never win a legal case against them. It's easy to use the DMCA to try to go after people who have all the appearance of pirates. It's an entirely different thing to go after a corporation that's clearly using the cirumvention to provide compatibility and competition.
Furthermore, if Microsoft won the DMCA suit, they could be immediately prosecuted for using the DRM as a lockout to maintain their monopoly. Hell, they could be sued even before that.
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The difference now is IT spending has been cut all over the place compared to the late 90s.
Back then, few questioned spending on MS-mandated upgrades. Now I think they would be much harder to swallow, and there could be some real backlash.
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Number one most important feature of this that it seems noone is getting:
2 00 30603b.html
This is just Public Key Cryptography based on open and documented standards!
How do I know? I was there when it was announced. In early June at TechEd 2003 in Dallas Texas. Some Korean VP of Verisign showed it off. His accent gave it a very scary "All your base are belong to us" kind of feel, but there it is.
Here's the press release from that day:
http://www.verisign.com/corporate/news/2003/pr_
Please read this before you spout off one more cockeyed comment on how Microsoft is evil cause you won't be able to read this on the plane or how it's proprietary and noone will ever understand it or work with it ever again.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
This nasty Microsoft "advance" is just a continuation of building document management features into what started life as a fairly decent word processor. By the way, such systems typically allow a user to check out a document (eg to a laptop) so you can read the controlled information on the plane if you want.
There are a lot of companies that want this level of control over their sensitive documentation. This isn't new. This isn't dangerous. This isn't going to lead to Microsoft taking over the world.
Cthulhu Barata Nikto
As much as I hate the idea of being sucked into XP or 2003, let alone Office getting DRM built-in,
1 - The rights-management stuff is off by default, says the article.
2 - I do infosec work regularly and I can't get people to use good passwords, and the further from geekdom they get, the faster they forget or circumvent password mechanisms. That's something easy. Key management and other DRM aspects are complex enough to get wrong any one of a dozen ways (either too tight or too loose).
3 - Imagine a pointy-hair reacting to you telling him that he just DRM'd his ass out of his own spreadsheet... forever.
I predict this 'great idea' will be rarely used since 99% of people can't be bothered to do much easier and less dangerous security tasks. Further, some companies will probably just ban it's use (since an employee can lock the boss out or stuff could accidentally get wrongly locked). It will inspire fear when people get burned. And a fair number of 'forced adopters' will go to gray market earlier versions and stop the upgrade treadmill completely, or jump to alternatives.
Oh, and imagine the fun if it does get put in: the boss makes you work overtime to get a report in by Friday night (Monday won't cut it!), so you stick in DRM to expire it at 9am Monday, so he has to call for a resend. Send inflamatory messages with a one-read, no-print, expires-forever rule so your flamage has a chance of evaporating after impact. And the geek-chic power of being able to screenshot someone that does the same thing back at you and get their ass fired.
A last comment: if you want to help the undoing of the MSOffice stranglehold, take stock of your own personal and business relationships and pressure anyone you can (not customers, not the boss or people who will hurt you for doing so) to use non-office methods. Politely ask sales drones to resend stuff in a non-Doc/Excel/Powerpoint/Viso format. When asked, spread FUD!: blame microsoft-laden viruses and them being less-trusted. But start the revolution by inconveniencing them. The monopoly is due to habits.
Ken Lay likely knew all the crap that was going on in Enron to lead it to the end it was lead to. There is no possible way for someone in his position to possibly be blind to such a thing, unless he is completely incompetent and if that's the case, how did he get his position within Enron?
Would that mean that any and all executives that are caught in the Enron sort of thing either flat-out liars or incompetent? What would you rather be? In both cases, you shouldn't be employable in the position ANYWHERE else.
As for your statement about a handful of companies doing bad things and a "snooping, rule-breaking" secretary blowing the whistle...
I just have this to say...
As a citizen of the United States you have a moral and ethical responsibility to report immoral and unethical behavior if you come upon it through the course of your normal daily work duties. Notice, I didn't say you had an obligation of going places you don't belong, just that if you come across some damning evidence on accident, that you do the right thing with that damning evidence. Ignoring that data or "Showing Loyalty" to the company by eliminating the evidence makes you just as culpable as the original perpetrators in a decent person's eyes.
It would be like if you came across your uncle or aunt murdering someone out in the woods someplace. If you fail to report or help your aunt or uncle despose of the evidence you can be convicted as an accessory to the crime, which often has a penalty quite similar to the perpetrator. Now, would you call reporting your aunt or uncle murdering someone a morally and ethically just activity?
Tell me what makes Whistleblowing less noble to you. What makes reporting a crime or extremely morally corrupt behavior less noble and worthless to you?
Name me some legit uses of this technology, besides uses that are already covered under existing technologies. I believe that you will find very few legit reasons, however there are hundreds of illicit reasons to use this kind of technology.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Try out OpenOffice 1.1
Startup time is much lower--it starts faster than MS Office on the Windows machines I've seen--and it has many new features.
It's still in the RC stage, so you may want to wait until the official release; but it's much better than 1.0 so--depending on the number of users you're managing--you may consider moving to it now and upgrading to the final release when that's out.
Not for a while anyway, Microsoft have had a hard time persuading people to buy Office 2003. Now try telling people that they will be locked into this new version, from the moment they purchase it onward.
This is the end of the line for Microsoft, they have done a complete U-Turn in terms of compatibility. Heaven knows if they had ditched legacy compatibility years ago they might actually have a better product by now.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
So I buy an Office license under XP today. I write a book (well... if I stop drinking and whoring it *might* happen so just go with it for now).
Coupla of years later, I decide when the popup message appears "You must pay your $25 to Lord Gates for another year of use of Office" that I don't want Office that bad, and remove it from my computer.
Later, I want to open my OWN FRIGGING BOOK that I wrote. Now I use Linux and some nice GPL Word reader and the DCMA police show up? Geez!
The DMCA is allegedly intended to protect the AUTHOR's rights in the intellectual property. Breaking the "access restrictions" that Cindy Smith put on her document w/o her permission (assuming she has not transferred them or given someone else fair use rights) violates HER IP rights... not Microsoft's. Microsoft should not be able to invoke the DMCA to prevent someone from producing a product for Cindy (or anyone she wants to allow) to read or access her own works.
If you give up on freedom, precisely what you describe is likely to happen because people are not going to give up word processing or editing databases, so they'll go with whatever software is available to meet their needs. There is another path: teach people the value of software freedom.
The Free Software movement proves that "the marketplace" is not the almighty immobile force you describe (or perhaps you're just interpreting too much in terms of the marketplace in order to make it appear unchanging; hence whatever happens it will be seen through that lens). When the GNU project began, many people said nobody would write software without being paid and when people are paid to write software, they are being paid to write non-free software. History clearly shows those people were wrong. In fact a number of the organizations that distribute non-free software now use the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc) as their chief compiler, and ship part of the rest of the GNU operating system too. People have been paid to write Free Software and governments are getting the idea that their people's ability to communicate freely using a computer rests on using Free Software.
I think the key is to teach more people about software freedom. Take this opportunity to show people that with Free Software you won't be beholden to any proprietor's interests. As the pool of people using Free Software grows your chances for being able to get by with Free Software grows too.
Digital Citizen
Anybody with more than cursory Acrobat experience knows you can restrict reading, editing, printing and even the Windows clipboard when you create a PDF.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
... with the fact the Office 2003 files should be in XML format and be parsable by anyone who wants to. What's the point if the file is encrypted?
...when those agencies fail. Enron was doing its thing for a number of years, before the whistle was blown on them. Oh, you don't remember that?
Well, tell you what... You go an pick up the recent book written by the two Wall Street Journal reporters that broke the Enron story and subsequently brought most of what we know about Enron's dealings into the light and read about how they found out about what happened... It started with a little whistle that lead to the downfall of one of the most corrupt corporate structures developed in the United States.
There are many hundreds if not thousands of cases where whistleblowers have opened up the rest of the populace to illegal, dangerous and highly immoral behaviors of hundreds upon hundreds of corporations. Go to your public library and ask the librarian to help you locate information regarding such court cases, they will be more then helpful in assisting you.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I use office regularly now. While I think that these features could cause people to upgrade their office suit, this is still functionality that is needed in an office suite that has been stagnating. I use Office 2K every day, yet have never been compelled to upgrade to Office XP.
:-)
However if documents can now be encrypted and privilages can be set (read only ala pdf/acrobat) then I think this would be a valuable addition, especially when doctors and lawyers are now dealing with stringent privacy laws (Hippa).
This is a good thing, and if it's turned off be default, only people requiring this functionality will use it. (hopefully
I would like to see them make a reader available for free like acrobat reader however. One shouldn't have to pay 500 badogins in order to read one of these files.
I think what we are seeing here is an attack on Adobe's text publishing empire.
This isn't a big deal. Why is it an issue if a person uses some new DRM scheme on their resume or other sensitive doc? Open Office can't open password-protected MS Office '97 or 2000 documents now anyway. Besides, this doesn't protect the binary document format, only the contents.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Uh, wouldn't corporate domination be called something like "autocracy"? I don't know of any corporations headed by a king! In fact, by definition, corporations are owned by shareholders... which in the US means that over 50% of the population are at least indirectly in charge of these evil corporations! If you don't like what a corporation is doing then convince a significant portion of the population to boycott that corporation's products! The problem is not that there's some evil conspiracy between government and corporate interests, the problem is that 99.9% of the people clearly don't give a shit! Educate them!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Does anybody know if they've encoded the documents to where you cannot convert them to PDF format? Microsoft, afterall, is trying to promote their own PDF version at the expense of Adobe by integrating it into the new verison of Office from my understanding...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Hasn't Microsoft always had this? No, wait, sorry, that's Office lock-ups, not lock-in.
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
On top of that, the data is sitting in memory unencrypted. There are utilities that will allow you to grab this. For example, you can see (in real time) the password someone is typing in instead of the replacement character (usually an asterisk).
Also, unless they're encrypting their swap file and tmp contents, they'll always leave stuff behind that running "strings" on can recover. In fact, the "much-vaunted police tool" for recovering data from crooks hard disks is just a bunch of perl scripts that do this, along with some pattern searching. The average /.er could probably do better :-)
How is it anticompetitive behavior to allow people to lock their documents? I'm sure my company will love to lock in their documents to just people in this network.
"Sufferin' succotash."
"Well, yes, MS-Office locks the world into MS products. But, really, that's what everyone wanted!"
- W. Gates, 12 Aug 2006
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
from the article:
Leach said Microsoft will provide a free plug-in for its Internet Explorer Web browser that will let it display rights-protected Office documents.
"We recognize that people are going to want to take advantage of this that don't have Office 2003," he said. "This way, they can see the document in a browser window (and) they can print, copy or forward," as decided by the document creator.
Apple better think of something quickly before Safari disappears faster than you can say Netscape.
Uhh, how about reading the article? In order to use the new features you will have to also have a windows 2003 Server running with Windows Rights Management Services software running on it. Not exactly something a home author will have lying about. Besides, no one forces you to turn on the feature, or prevent you from saving a copy in rich text or some other format. Get a grip and stop FUDing.
why not extend the support to support encrypted or signed sessions in the XML container format they use for native OO documents?
That would be wicked cool, and it shouldn't be too much of a stretch. I can imagine a special "formatting" or style that applies to a protected section such that if you attempt to cut/paste within the document, or you try to save in a different format that doesn't support encryption, it would give you a warning. You can piggyback onto how it handles style attributes in the interface.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
how long before the trendy thing for viruses to do is use Windows Rights Management to lock a user out of his or her own files?
Will Microsoft sell a recovery tool? and if so, how long before that gets cracked and distributed, and makes the whole DRM thing moot anyway?
Microsoft preps IE changes in response to patent ruling [Theregister.co.uk] They're making another IE plugin... but does said Civil case brought against them by Eolas Technologies make that some what illegal?
Open Office 1.1 rc3 does exactly this. There is a macro recorder that produces Basic scripts. This will run unchanged on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and MacOS/X.
http://www.openoffice.org
ok, so here's my 2 cents. i used to work at office max, and during my time there i realized that the real problem with MS is Office. Windows 2k and XP aren't really that bad as operating systems, to be honest. And taking over the browser market wasn't even that bad. the real problem was when a family would come in, driving a messed car, and you can tell they are fighting to get ends to meet. kid is in school and needs to have MS word to do thier work. the family then buys MS Office for $400. The situation is better because they now have a student edition, but many can't even use that. Office is where they really take advantage of people, and the software is OK, but so many other programs could be just as good.
This article brings up two thoughts... 1) What affect will IRM have on discovery during litigation? I can imagine that any document controlled by IRM will be /much/ more difficult to present in an evidentiary proceeding.
2) This TIATP* about file formats and compatability is already a known-moot point. The next generation of data store will be in a database-like structure integrated into the OS. All programmatic access to data will be through API's that /aren't/ fopen() anymore - and the DMCA + trade secret + patent, ad nauseum will ensure that only licensees of the API will be compatible.
* Tempest in a teapot
Basically they are saying that if you don't want someone to read your document they will give you the ability to lock it down. This is no reason to get in all "lets burn them down" mode.
It is in high gear and it is a viable alternative.
Where have you been?
Click here. Afterwords, you might want to give a little thank you to Dictionary.com.
Since I'm a lazy-ass, it won't be me, but seems like it's time to retaliate with a properly-documented DRM standard for document management.
Might this be a good adjunct to the Liberty project?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I like Notepad.
People discover the meaning of life between getting piss drunk and the following hangover.
I rather figure that people *won't* have a choice, because Microsoft will have special deals with computer manufacturers and with the government.
Therefore, the government will demand documents in Word proprietary format, therefore the companies will upgrade (charging to the government the bill). They, then, will demand their docs in Word proprietary format, and so on.
Microsoft has long known the value of having a capitive government, because governments have captive people, and Microsoft understands how lucrative a captive market can be.
Indeed, this has been their tactic in the past, and probably will be their tactic in the future.
That said, I've been moving our documents into Quark as much as possible. Word is lousy, and documents made in Word are not reusable.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Im not sure that it is the case that producing a rival software package capable of reading/writing these new office documents would be a violation, providing it adhered to the API for this new protection. EG,
in laymans terms , you load the aforemention encrypted file into OpenOffice, and OO applies the same security privileges to the document as it would if you opened it in MSOffice. That way , you're not actually bypassing it.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
it -supports- drm, which per usual, is optional and being demanded by their customers.
you can hate them all you want for that - but seeing as how the DRM is optional, and how office 2003 is the first version of office to support an open xml format for saving/loading documents - it's hard to not recommend the move to 2003.
if you dont like the drm, don't use it - but the xml support will make it easier than ever to slowly migrate the office workers to OpenOffice.
MS sponsored white paper at ftponline
(I am not a troll, i'm just a realist who has to live with the requirements the suits give me.)
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Damnit Bill, you know you're not welcome here.
When they finally get this up and running, find a way to circumvent the digital rights. This is office we're talking about: It hasn't worked properly since its debut. I bet, that there will be some stupid thing a regular user could do to circumvent these rights.
Also, these docs are going to have to point to a valid server to get their rights lists from. You'll be given a starting point(address) for any "activities" you would want to do to a server running windows 2003.
So for instance, I can imagine worms based on possible future windows 2003 server bugs that will scan all your "protected documents" on the system that will point to the next 2003 server to go exploit possibly giving away addresses of other people that connected to it and so on.
Entirely hypothetical, but it would be a nice @#$% %^& MS and your half-written(i think) over-priced(i think) products.
In the not too distant future... user: I just got in to work today, and I can't open any of my documents. tech: Well sir your documents are still there. tech: but I can't open them either. tech: I show them being owned but by someone named L33t3rthanU! tech2: Looks like another case of the DocLock virus. It changes the access rights on all of your word documents user: Are they gone for good? Both techs in unison: We need some drinks!!! Where the hell do you want to go today? It'll happen...
Do you think MS doesn't even use their own software?
It doesn't matter if M$ uses their own software, they don't produce even good crap. At least from my experience, it doesn't matter whose dog food they are eating, it is still processed dog food, i.e., shit.
One. In 1987 or so, I had to use the M$ debugger. Whenever you stepped into a C subroutine that it didn't have the source for, it dropped automatically into asm mode, and when you stepped back into the source code, it did not erase the registers and other parts of the asm debug display before putting the source code back on the screen, so it was a weird mixture of asm register leftovers and source code and line numbers. How could they ship crap like that, did they never use it themselves?
Two. In the early 90s, I had to use Word to maintain technical documents. Whenever we revved the software, even for minor tweaks like the copyright date, we also had to rev the documents. So we would edit, changing only the date and rev number, and it would screw up the pagination, with the last page printing as page 33 of 32. This happened maybe half the time. Sometimes a quick change and backspace would cure it, sometimes a print preview, sometimes half an hour of cursing and fussing would be required. You will never convince me they hadn't encountered this bug themselves. We all ran into it.
Three. Several years ago, I had to use the M$ development environment. In the first day alone, I found four bugs. Now maybe I just don't use it like the manual says, but they shouldn't have been present anyway. The only one I remember now is that I would click on the button to add a function or variable, it would do so, I would hit the X to close the window, and apparently that was not the proper way, because the next time it had to open that file, it would yap that the disk file had changed, horrors, should it reload?
I hardly ever use M$ software, those three periods were probably the only times in the last 15 years, which means they are 3 for 3 in producing shit. That's a pretty atrocious record.
M$ produces crap software. That is why I have never liked their products, along with frozen unconfigurable features, lack of control, updates which introduce incompatibilities just for the sake of forcing upgrades, and so on. Dislike of Bill Gates' ethics is a poor second to all these reasons.
Infuriate left and right
Working link.
I mean, really. Unless you're a sysadmin you can't possibly understand the kinds of headache that are going to be created by including DRM in Windows and Office.
A whole new kind of pain.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm a Canuk and even I know that the DMCA would not prevent a competitor from reverse engineering for interoperability
d f
Check this out if you don't believe me.
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/comments/221.p
Section 1201(f) of the DMCA specifically allows reverse-engineering for interoperability.
If you are careful and watch it closely it will do what you want it to do...
but if you don't pay attention you will find yourself taking direction from the fire.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and the more useful (i.e. powerful) a technology is the closer it must be watched lest we become the servants and the technology the master.
Technology is always a good thing if we have the wisdom to use it correctly.
Sure, that's a really good argument. We'll just ignore that it works equally well against any and all forms of security whatsoever.
The lowly secretary becoming a whistleblower sounds neat and all, but I suspect it's more common that he or she get their hands on some insider information and calls his or her stock broker.
I would suggest that, whenever people write about or comment on such technology, they define the various initialisms, such as DRM or WRM, as Digital Restriction Managment or Windows Restriction Management.
We need to shift the discussion and not conceed the moral high ground. This is not about so-called digital rights, but about using technology to restrict options previously (and properly) available to the end user.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Again, M$ is not the problem here. The legal system is for having a law like the DMCA.
It's become rather boring for me to read articles, lately. All I ever see is people whining about wanting new features, such as DRM for documents, then when a software comes out that supports it, people whine and scream twice as loud. Sorry, M$ and other software vendors are in it for the money.
If you want a product, pay for it. If you don't want it, then don't buy it. If you want competition for M$, get off your collective butts and write it. I really don't mean to sound sarcastic, but that's the only way anything is going to change. The DMCA isn't going anywhere for a while, nor are any other laws. If anything, there's going to be more additions to the DMCA and laws added.
Until then, use PGP and other tools to encrypt your documents and email.. It's not DRM, but it's your best protection for free.
drwxrwxrwx 4 jongreen staff
Seems like we can already do this easy enough in *nix
If I don't want you to read my file, I change the permissions to allow only my group....
Am I an idiot?
Oops! The rights server went down!
Oops! We forgot to pay our licensing invoice, now the rights server won't work!
Oops! We put a new hard drive in the rights server, and now we have to call Microsoft to get a new authorization!
This doesn't automatically enable DRM in all documents. What it does do is make it POSSIBLE to enable DRM in some documents, when a Windows server is used.
Now, I can certainly see where people would WANT the ability to control distribution of specific key security-sensitive documents. And in those cases, sure you'd want tight controls on who could read it (and, what they would use to read it). So this would make sense.
But this isn't just a plain old proprietary document lock-in. Probably 99% of documents will still be non-DRM'd and open, and the 1% that aren't, well the people who enabled the DRM don't WANT joe l337 haxx0r reading them.
Doesn't the DMCA allow for "reverse engineering", etc. with the intent to allow interoperability? If so, this should be no more of a challenge to OpenOffice.org (and others) than figuring out another format. Not to make it sound easy or anything, but am I wrong in thinking that this would still be perfectly legal?
ascii art
Most nations do not have a DMCA. The decryption work will simply be performed outside the sphere of influence of this facism.
Microsoft could choose to emulate Adobe and trigger an FBI investigation of OOO within the borders of the US. In doing so, they would trigger a fight with Sun.
Sun is much larger than Elcomsoft, and it would be the fight of the century. It might actually be the key moment where the IT industry overthrows the DMCA (as should have happened some time ago).
When Sun wins (Microsoft legal will find a way to screw it up), the DMCA will suffer a mortal blow. Congress would be extremely unwise to attempt to strengthen it; those who endorse such an action will face the wrath of some well-organized lobbiests.
Microsoft, choose your battles carefully.
Never ever, for a moment think that MS will use DMR knowledge only for good. They always have a hidden agenda...always. Thats what business is about. I'll remain the A-Coward, as I don't want the MS police coming after me again. Last time they did, and tried give me that probe device, it blue screened. Thank God for that, the unit was SoBig! I remotely recall the procedure, and don't wish to restart it!
Is it my imagination, or have there been a lot of recent MS initiatives that could be construed an attempts to segregated open-source. First, we have the messenger block/licensing-scheme, which pretty much prevents GAIM from accessing the MSN network in the future. Now, we have office lock-in, which will prevent OpenOffice users from opening MS documents in linux.
Coincidence? I think not. Here we have a case of monopolistic anti-competetive practices at their worst.
It instantly creates PDFs too - with no license from Adoboe needed.
A DRM push by Microsoft might drive a few more OEMs into this camp.
Companies cant just have pertinent documents expire at will. This is the same thing as electronic paper shredding..
They also must provide access to the courts when subpoenaed. " sorry we cant seem to access that file" wont fly..
However this will help lock in Microsoft's control of the office suite market.
How long before they try to lock out online access? With the help of the Homeland Security Department, it might be possible ( you can only use 'approved' software.. and hardware )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
An interesting thing that many have yet to make note of is, quote:
"Information Rights Management (IRM) tools will be included in the professional versions of all Office applications, including the Word processor and Excel spreadsheet programs."
So, this seems to indicate that only Office 2003 Pro will have DRM tools. This means that Joe User with a new Gateway probably won't have DRM doc creation tools in his Office 2003 Standard; the question is, will Joe User with Standard be able to OPEN these docs?
Also, they mention a plug-in for IE that can view the DRM Docs:
"Leach said Microsoft will provide a free plug-in for its Internet Explorer Web browser that will let it display rights-protected Office documents."
So, if you want to send a document to Joe User with his Account Info, he has to open it in IE, and you have to be running a MS Web Server with DRM Authentication?
Perhaps more details on HOW this will all work are needed.
The longer I'm a member of the Human Race, the more I believe Apocalypse is a valid solution.
I am the software purchaser at our company. The buck stops at Office2000. IF M$ goes through with the DRM insanity then we are going to move to Open Office all together.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
Also, the contents are sitting in memory - just use a memory block browser to get the unencrypted data, same as you steal passwords, etc.
Or load a few copies of mozilla to force the application into swap space, and grab the swap file.
Or a digital camera to take a picture of the screen (cell phone camera, anyone?)
Or switch your video card for one that has tv-out, and hook a vcr to it (ati's video out is active by default, so, you'd never know).
If I (or someone else) want your data, I'll get it, and there's not much you can do to stop it. All this does is give a false sense of security. For example, under X, when you log out and you have a video card w. a decent amount of ram, your last screen is still perfectly preserved in video ram. There's no reason why someone can't just write a small app to do a grab of the vram contents.
DRM can be useful for things like sending a script to a studio and having it DRMed in an internet-wide service, that way you can prove that you send them the script. A bit like the post-office comment below or like having a "patent" on the document you send.
However this is quite possible already, and we don't really need MS for this. What we need is an internet wide CA that could do this and certify web-sites and validate digital sigs, etc, etc. Anyway, if what MS plans to do is to integrate this "certifying" functionality into Office, that will certainly be used. But think, controlling access to documents within a company can _already_ be done with OS level access restrictions!!! Why would anyone use yet another cumbersome way to dome something that you can already do? Beats me. (Unless they want to "ease" the usability of the OS-level restrictions...)
My feeling is that the "marketing bs" that is in that article (notice that they never quote a technical guy, only "analysts") is nothing but trying the idea on the public and seeing if the idea sticks... A bit like governments do... and MS is as big as one! ;)
There is already a viable alternative to Office 2003. It is called Office XP. Unless Microsoft can come up with something better than the competition (previous versions plus Star Office etc), then people aren't going to buy it. Something that doesn't allow people to share documents with people that use these alternative systems isn't going to get much business.
Boo... hisss.... You're such a party-pooper.
How else are we supposed to get the week going without an anti-Microsoft group tirade?
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I'm hoping that this poor move that Microsoft is about to make will only make people see more clearly the frantic attempts that M$ has been making to put themselves ahead. The application of this technology will only serve to further shelter users from being able to share their data with non-M$ companies, thus making that company much harder to work with in a network of companies if none of the other companies use this technology.
Another bad idea brought to you by Microsoft...
Slant
Between the Spaces
That's exactly why I wish Microsoft would start enforcing tough copy protection or product registration checking. When people are actually forced to pay $179 for a word processor or $287 for an office suite, maybe the alternatives will actually have a chance. I think Microsoft lets the home users skate on Office so that it maintains its stranglehold on the lucrative business market.
... at home will be to prepare some response letters to the various vendors, banks, etc. that the missus and I have a business relationship to inform them that if they send us any communications that is in a Microsoft format that we will be taking our business elsewhere. If they are unable to provide information to us in a non-proprietary format, I will make it a crusade to find someone who can. I should not have to pay a company several hundred dollars for a product that I would not otherwise choose to purchase merely so I can read someone else's business communications. To date, I have been able to accept their Microsoft-based communications because of the interoperablilty provided by OpenOffice. If Microsoft pulls this little stunt and they expect me and my family to willingly go along and purchase their software, they've got another thing coming.
I fully expect that my friends will understand this far more readily than any businesses to whom I express these feelings. They may think they have us by the short hairs... What's next? I'll have to buy a Microsoft phone so that I can receive phone calls because they use a proprietary signaling format?
After I deal with the first business that I'm forced to drop because they insist on sending me documents in a DRM-enabled Microsoft format, my local, State, and Federal policitians will receive their copies. And I suggest that everyone do something similar. Inform businesses that you are no longer able to do business with them if they require that you use a specific vendor's product for business communications. When businesses realize that they are pissing off enough of their customers, and we let them know it, perhaps this crap will end and Microsoft will find that they risk losing their business customers. And if enough every-day citizens -- you know, John and Jane Q. Voter -- begin complaining to their elected representatives that they are being adversely affected by the DMCA, then changes will occur.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Another story that seems to be running wild. I have been using the Beta of this product for months and have been sharing documents with people to no ill effect. Also Word 2003 has an optional XML save format that has every feature of the .doc version. One can convert back and forth with NO loss of functionality. I think the DRM features can be enabled if one wants but its not the default. BTW Office 2003 is quite good.
I am not a Microsoft groupie (goes back to installing Linux)
I'm still trying to figure out when BSD is going to die.
Seriously though, I'm glad I work at a company that doesn't require me to use Word to perform documentation. PDF and plain ascii files are as prevalent as DOC here.
In order to implement this rights management system, an organization has to set up a windows 2003 server for authentication, right? Well, it looks like small companies won't bother wasting money on hardware to support a software feature like this unless they're coerced. The UNIX file permission model is sufficient imho.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Sure, permission caching can be self-defeating if you set the cache to hold on to an authentication token for a year. But this is a general problem with permission cacing in general, and not unique to anything Microsoft might choose to implement.
Maximum security requires frequent re-authorization. Daily. Hourly. Every 15 minutes.
A good authentication server would be able to tell you who has a cached authorization token, so then when you decide to revoke access to a file you can tell which people have a cache token on their laptops that you need to kill ASAP.
So far as leaking secrets to competitors, the DRM "solution" simply requires you to convert across an independent medium... printout, screenshot, photograph of screen. The only thing this "DRM" provides is the ability to mass-distribute a document within a company without worrying that someone might be on a mailing list that they're not supposed to be on... since everyone has to authenticate to read the attached document, they'd have to use an authenticated account to read it.
... to shudder every time I hear "DRM." It seems as though the DRM they speak of is overly complex and unltimately no more reliable than a password protected .zip or home directory. The ill side effects are severe.
Is MS _trying_ to make everyone hate them at this point? I seriously can't believe most of the stuff they do now. It's as blatant as the rail-road robber barons.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Have a nice little TCP server that authenticates a user through a SSL connection, accepts an encrypted document, see if user has permissions, and if so, decrypt data with the creator's private key and spit it back to the client OOo program, which will display it in the document window. I don't think it would be really hard to code.
OOo people, do you copy me? (pun intended)
That was pure genius. If you thought of that yourself, you should be mighty proud. If not, thanks for sharing it.
Come on now...
When is the DOJ if not the whole flippin' planet going to realize that the ongoing abuse of the DMCA is really a way to make a monopoly legal by using DRM mechanisms that have nothing to do with anything but protecting that monopoly.
Don't think so... what about "smart chips" in printers... really who the hell do they think their kinding!
Someone really big needs to slap MS's ass back into court and get a new ruling on their so-called monoply and their continued abuses using new technology or techniques that keep them "just" under the radar of the DOJ.
I will be donating 557 copies of Openoffice 1.1 final to the libraries of Scotland as Lending CD's. One for each library. Allowing anyone to go to the library and borrow, copy and install the software. This is so that people that do not have a fast internet connection can have the software too. This is in compliance with Article 26 and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I encourage others to donate at least one cd to their local library. OpenOffice will be the most useful to them but the choice of OSS is yours
And I bet you each copy of Office will require activation, and receive a "token" from MS that is used as part of the authentication system. You can tell "who" made a document. You could even trace parts of documents (copied & pasted between documents) back to their original source & original "token".
So if MS can keep all copies of Office "legit" (ha!), they can trace back to the first person/entity to inject a macro virus into the world. Oh, your old document doesn't have authentication? Immediately strip all macros as part of the conversion. Immediately the world becomes "safe" from the macro virus (ha-ha-ha), without even having to set a security permission other than "Everyone Full Control w/o Authentication" on the document.
Alternatively, corporations could set better controls... only allow workstations to open files created within the company regardless of permission. Could this be used as a defense against trade-secret misappropriation? "How could we have read their design, Judge, since our corporate policy prevents our users from opening documents that are not created within the company?" It also is a double-whammy against the macro viruses, unless your employess write them.
The DRM feature in Office and Outlook enables a user to prevent emails and documents from being forwarded to and viewed by people not specified by the sender/creator. That's all this feature is.
100% Wrong. You clearly do not understand how proprietary DRM systems work. All 'security' whatsoever hinges upon the assumption that the client's application will play by the rules. Once you have the sent document and the decryption key(s) on your computer, all faith is in the application software. The moment that someone releases a hack for the new Office and Outlook that allows a user to access the plaintext or override the "do not copy / re-send / print" flag, all supposed DRM security will be entirely worthless. It is truly this simple: If you can read it, you can copy it. The DRM being proposed here is security through obscurity. Microsoft is betting that people won't find the proverbial "key hidden under the doormat." Even if this DRM system was eventually backed up by hardware (which doesn't look very likely at this point), people could still take a picture of the screen and use OCR to recover the text.. that is until the hardware itself is cracked.
Furthermore, I would like to point out that not all of your e-mail recipients use or want to use Outlook. Anyone who doesn't won't be able to read your emails, so enabling DRM isn't really a viable option anyhow.
I want to control who has access without having to expose the recipient to the mystery and overhead of encryption.
What you're asking for is an impossible pipe dream. For the reasons explained above, you will never be able to have true control over what someone does with information you send them. Using encryption, you can protect that information up to the point where they receive it, but you cannot reliably keep them from sending it to someone else. The best you can ever hope to do is build trust among the people you communicate with.
By the way, you cannot avoid the "overhead" of encryption. It's the foundation of any DRM system. The only difference is that the new Outlook / Office / etc. will try to make it mostly invisible to the user. You'll still need keyrings, signing, and passphrases if that encryption is to be of any value whatsoever.
So, in summary:
1.) proprietary DRM systems are not very cool
2.) proprietary DRM systems are, in fact, insidious. They do not offer true security but they DO try to force people to all use the same email, office, whatever software.
For the ones smart enough to bring a camera to work when their "print" button stops working, anyway. Sure, some CEOs might be taken in by the "DRM will protect your secret documents from everyone!" scam, but not all their underlings will buy it. And that combination works in whistleblowers' favor, as higher ups develop a false sense of security about how widely they can redistribute incriminating information.
It takes a G4 two days of processing and a couple gigabytes of storage just to compile it once.
It takes my "less advanced" x86 processor about 24 hours to compile it. So much for the megahertz myth.
What are we really talking about here?
I should read the tech papers, but here's a guess...
A user authenticates to ADS, getting back authenitcation credentials...essentially the MS kerberos ticket.
That ticket can then be used to authenticate to the Rights Management Server. Here's the unclear part...does the Rights Management Server handle the ACLs and provide a single symmetic key to unlock the document, or does the RMS (wow -- irony) act as a key server and the document is created with asymmetric encryption with ACLs encoded in the document? Or some other scheme?
This isn't rocket science. If you can get ADS and the RMS to accept your credentials, then interop would be figuring out what encryption scheme is used. As the credentials could be obtained legally, reverse engineering would not necessarily circumventing the scheme.
However, the prevention of re-saving the file seems entirely unenforceable once anything is known of the file outside the MS environment. Indeed, a secondarly program with the proper credentials could copy the data without circumventing the RMS. Unless opening a DRM protected document disallowed other processes any processor time...
This is a tough problem, and I am certain that smart guys at MS have thought this stuff through, but I am also fairly certain that it is not thought through well enough. It seems only useful for preventing casual copying to data.
You don't have the rights via IRM through the use of DRM to make a PDF or a Hardcopy of that document. Yep! That is indeed one of the features, not often brought into the light, but it is indeed one of the features...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
screen captures can be prevented from within the win32 api, i have seen it done. Basically the screen capture happens as tho the window isnt there and you get whatever is behind it.
And what are they going to do about screen caps through Terminal Server? I really doubt they're going to just dump it altogether after all the money they've put into pushing thin-client solutions.
Like I said... this is to prevent *trivial* copying. A hacker could still circumvent it (if only as root), and you obviously just go tell someone what secret stuff the file had in it. "If I can see it, I can copy it" and so on; there's nothing they can do about bringing a digital camera...
/.er could probably do better :-)
/.er is probably a technically inclined person, but certainly not a hacker. Even I have grep'ed swap (a non-geeky friend of mine, who uses MacOS X, wrote a 10-page term paper without saving once...), but I strongly doubt that the average /.er could crack this thing quickly if MS puts much effort at all into it. Of course, for all we know, their "DRM" will just be encryption with XOR-ECB and the password will be "susageP"...
However, it wouldn't be as easy as you say. At least on a UNIX system you can do much better than these easy hacks. I don't know as much about Windows (nor do I know how much effort/competence MS will put into this feature). For instance:
You really can't block out printscreen for all applications, and once a person tabs to another app, there's nothing to prevent them from grabbing the whole desktop, and not just the current workspace.
Windows already has some sort of lock on printscreens, which stops you from doing it to a movie player. It also stops movie player windows from going to video-out (sends them black), which *really* annoyed me and some friends as we tried to set up a projector for a dorm movie.
In any case, you could install an extension which traps printscreen, or you could block the window in the background (ick), or you could...
Not sure how this would work on X11, having never written anything for it.
On top of that, the data is sitting in memory unencrypted. There are utilities that will allow you to grab this. For example, you can see (in real time) the password someone is typing in instead of the replacement character (usually an asterisk).
Windows has protected memory. So does UNIX. You'd have to be root/admin to do this. Admittedly, on Windows you are generally admin anyway...
Also, unless they're encrypting their swap file and tmp contents, they'll always leave stuff behind that running "strings" on can recover.
You can pin stuff to memory both in Windows and in UNIX. It then won't be written out to swap, no matter what. GPG does this on both platforms, as do a variety of other crypto programs. And swap and stuff can only be read by root anyway.
In fact, the "much-vaunted police tool" for recovering data from crooks hard disks is just a bunch of perl scripts that do this, along with some pattern searching. The average
The average
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
This argument has been made before, by myself and others, but now I'm not so sure. My doubts are primarily due to one of the answers the DOJ lawyers gave (see the answer to Question 3) during one of those "Ask Slashdot" articles. Meet the DOJ's 'Anti-Piracy' Lawyers
The DMCA protects the authors' right to decide who gets access to a protected work and provides severe penalties to anyone who offers technology to circumvent the author's rights. But the author does not get to choose which technology is used to control access, only whether access is granted. I don't think any technology could be viewed as circumventing the authors access controls if it didn't actually do so.
An example will explain this better. Suppose I were to manufacture a DVD player which uses DeCSS (or some other non-CSS licensed technology) to play CSS-protected DVD's, but substitutes some other access control mechanism for CSS? In other words, if you put your copy of The Matrix into my player, it demands that you insert a smart card (specific to The Matrix) before the CSS-encrypted DVD will play. And I will only manufacture a smartcard for a given movie once authorized to manufacture it by the copyright holder for that particular movie.
If the Wachowski brothers (Warner Studios) want people to be able to watch The Matrix on my player, they sell me the right to manufacture the smartcards, and I cut them a royalty check for each card I sell. If New Line Home Entertainment doesn't want to participate, I won't manufacture a smartcard which corresponds to The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring and you get no farther putting that DVD into my player than you would putting it into a CD player.
Provided I built it correctly, my DVD player could not be considered a circumvention device, because it refuses to play CSS-encrypted DVD....unless access has been granted by the copyright holder. I could sell my device even if DVDCCA chose to raise the CSS licensing price to an exhorbitant price, or refused to sell new licenses at all. A publisher who wanted a new marketing route not controlled by the DVDCCA could contract with me to have smart cards sold for the works they specify, those who didn't want to participate would be under no obligation to authorize their works through my player.
Perhaps best yet, I can manufacture smartcards for works which are no longer protected by copyright without incurring liability under DMCA (circumventing non existant access control rights is okay). Additionally, I could manufacture smartcards for classes of people (law enforcement, teachers, librarians) which the courts decide are allowed to access such material (under Fair Use or other constructs) in spite of the authors' copy rights.
Apply the same reasoning to Office 2003 and Open Office. I can create a version of Open Office which can read Office 2003 documents, provided I respect the authors' (not Microsoft's) wishes in controlling access. If you are the copyright holder for your own Office 2003 documents, you can authorize yourself to read your own (but not other people's) documents. I just have to figure out how to read the proprietary format, and how to ensure that my software only grants access to documents which the author is authorizing.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
>is that there would be no software industry in the first
.. (see link)
>place, if not for the corporations that created it.
Again, this is not strictly true either, In the early days software was tied to the hardware, you paid megabucks for the whole deal, The bulk of the money that was made back then was made in much the same way as many commercial open source enterprises today, back then, software was a service industry, you couldt go down dixons and purchase software package X, you needed proffessional geeks in white lab coats to install and maintain your system. Video games were probably one of the first commercial ways that this mold was well and truly broken. Before that, Gates had his vision about every desk having a PC, and every home blah blah. Gates is a great businessman, but his company writes lousy software and because you buy it in a box off the shelf, you cant say to Billy Boy, This software doesnt work how "I" want it to, please make it do it like this; like you could back then.
Anyhow Im, straying from the point... the strictness of these Patents and DMCA bollocks is destroying choice, its not about stupid widget sets or someone's funky tear off menu. If someone somewhere doesnt get a grip on things pretty soon, things are going to get more and more Soylent Green.
You are right thought, Its Capitalism, with a capitol 'C' its the way the world goes. That's why we are here though aint it ? To change the world? Start a revolution or should I say be part of the revolution... Love Tux and what he represents?
Basically the world sucks.
Time to listen to some of my dark tunes
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
"If you're a senior executive and you're carrying around your five-year business plan, you probably want to have that information secured so only you can read it," he said.
If you're carrying around very sensitive data the only methods you should be relying on are tried and tested encryption, and physically restricting access
Businesses can lock down such documents now with third-party tools such as encryption software, but embedded rights management tools in the document creation software are much easier and more likely to be used, Gartenberg said.
"The harder you make security to use for the end user, the less people are going to use it," he said.
The safer you make people feel, the more risks they will take - someone said that about anti-lock breaking systems
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Being one of the few people in North America that actually read the DMCA ;-) I can say that it explicitly allows reverse engineering for compatibility reasons.
Oh well, what the hell...
This will coerce people into upgrading? I think not. Personally and professionally this will make me NOT upgrade to Office 2003 (or whatever they call it) since I want my documents to be readable by as many people as possible, I don't want to only be able to send work and files to people with Office 2003! And they wonder why people look at 'alternative' operating systems and software......
What are these 'type writers' you speak of? Are they like mini laptops?
My mother told me about these things recently.
Apparently it's some sort of newfangled technology that is so fast that it actually produces a hardcopy in realtime -- as you're creating it.
That's something that I don't think even the fastest computers you can buy today are able to do. One can only hope it's not just hype and/or vaporware.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
- Your sysadmin leaves the company and the new guy screws up and blows the RM server out of the water. The company is down until backups can be found and restored. Assuming there are backups!
- The company net develops a problem. Large chunks of the company are unable to access the RM server and find themselves unable to work.
There only has to be a few public disasters like this and confidence in this technology will collapse. Someone else mentioned that this would be ideal for Law Firms and the like. Well, Law Firms are notoriously crap when it comes to understanding IT, and notoriously stingy an investing money to build disaster tolerant solutions. Putting this technology in their hands is like giving them a loaded gun and asking them to spin the barrel.
" dude, pooping out the window is NOT an option!"
Yet, Windows (TM) can "poop out" several times a day.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Don't bother forwarding it to me. MS Word docs I cannot open will go into the circular file along with all the other spam.
Hmmm... Speaking of which. I think I've got Open Office here somewhere. Correction: MS Word docs will go into the circular file along with all the other spam.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
DRM isn't needed to make sure a document hasn't been altered.
Slashdot only follows the spirit of the ZDnet article.
And it is quite clear that Microsoft seized the opportunity to lock Office documents, while trying to sell its servers. This move was to be expected, though.
In fact, I had had the idea that Open source software needed to offer a generalized DRM scheme, for all kinds of files, although at first sight, it sounds against the philosophy of open source.
IMHO, a DRM scheme probably should be included in the OS, as an integral part of the security features.
This feature can be activated by selecting "Document Permissions" from either the toolbar or the File menu. Documents are NOT created with this feature enabled by default, although there might be some random little option somewhere to make it the default option.
In Word, this feature enables you to specify which people can read it, and it automagically turns off Print Screen and Printing if I remember correctly, and maybe the clipboard too. In Outlook this prevents you from forwarding or copying the text to clipboard too.
As for home users being able to use it, for the purposes of the beta Microsoft allowed users to use their .net passport as the method of authenticating users, in addition to whatever 2k3 server they might have had. I'm not sure if they're going to allow .net passports after the Office 2003 launch, but only time will tell. Office 2003 users will have to download some additional program (will probably also be on the CD too) to gain access to restricted documents.
For what it's worth, here's what the microsoft help document has to say on the issue:
Man, I remember some of the lock-ins I used to participate in...youth group, high school, clubs, etc....they were always a time for extreme mayhem performed by sleep-deprived youth high on every type of sugar imaginable. You always went with a sense that if you didn't outright get laid, you'd at least be able to cop a feel during the 3:30am game of Twister.
A Microsoft office lock-in sounds kinda ok, but I'll bet Windows engineers aren't nearly as flexible as Linux engineers.
Blog,Twitter
You know, when I come across a document that I can't open, I ask the creator to send me one that is compatible with what I am using.
For example, we use MS Office 2000 at work - if someone emails me or a user a Microsoft Works file (.wks I think) - I ask them to contact the sender and have them save it in MS Word compatible format.
Basically, as I see it, Microsoft is going to pursuade more people to NOT upgrade to the latest verion since it would be incompatible with the previous versions of Office - plus, you don't have the option to save it in a "compatible format".
At least, this is how I am reading it.
All I know is, if MS is making this an issue, then what I would recommend is to NOT upgrade, but to purchase something like 10 licenses for it, and have some people act as the go-between in the instance that there is an issue.
That, or just skip it entirely, and stick with what we have. There's always RTF/TXT format, or HTML.
I've been using OpenOffice on my home machine now for about 4 months and I love it. I am starting the push (since I'm an IT Manager) for our company to look at it as an alternative to upgrading Office. It will be difficult to convince those in management away from their precious Excel. centrifugalforce
There's no need to configure video-out-to-tv on (at least the) ati cards (that I've tested). They just copy whatever's on the screen. While they were made for windows, they work great under linux too (for those non-svcd torrents :-). But they also make a great way to see what's on your screen remotely. Mind you, a video splitter would do the same thing.
Microsoft's Leach said Windows Server 2003 simply was the best avenue for delivering rights management functions.
More like a one way street.
i don't feel like reading through 602 comments here, but i must mention that a document is only DRM-protected if the author chooses it to be. this makes sense in a corperate environment where sensitive information is sent out routinly. hourever, joe average user won't know how to DRM a document and thus shouldn't be a major problem. /me wonders of the implications for teachers and students. think of a teacher letting out notes or outlines to thier "ISM3005 2003 Fall" group.. this way no other group can look at it... interesting, and very worthwhile in my opinion
If you had a monopoly on desktop productivity and wanted to draw people to use your server software, what better way to do that than offer them a carrot! I don't know if this will prevent the copying of documents (you could open Open Office 1.1 and the the Office suite side by side and CTRL-C and CTRL-V until you got all of what you wanted) if you have sufficient authority to read them. What it does do is cause the IT departments of large companies with an interest in DRM to think twice about the Windows Server 2003. If they use the new Office and want to use the DRM they MUST use windows server 2003. You can't use Red Hat, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, SuSe, Solaris, (insert OS here...). I see this as another attempt by MS to exercise their muscle to gather up monopoly share. We need a few corporations the size of IBM, HP, GM, GE, etc... to stand up and say "No thanks. We are just fine with what we have now.". Even better would be if those companies said "No thanks. We believe we are going to switch over to a Linux desktop with OpenOffice or StarOffice, because what it will save us in licensing will cover the cost to redeploy and retrain. Also, we won't be locked in to one vendor for our products.". Too bad that won't happen.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
I think M$ could not have found a better person as a spokesman than a guy named Leech (sp).
I tend to believe that DRM is an important feature for some companies. I think it could be a new and important security feature of the Linux OS.
As well as access rights are managed at the FS level, DRM and file encryption could be included as an integral part of Linux. (Of course, that would be a departure/addition to the POSIX standard, but standards grow old too...)
This way, there would be no need to include it in every software that may produce sensitive documents, and every file could benefit from it (as is the case with some FS like Kerberos, I believe). As a bonus, this could be another way to protect important files of the file system from attacks (worms, viruses, intruders). With such an addition, Linux would be still ahead of M$ in terms of security.
Personally, I see this being used in corporate law departments and in R&D divisions, where the ability to lock people out of something even if they do have possession of it would be invaluable.
Sounds great, except the vast majority of the legal field uses WordPerfect...
Half the time when I send out a document now most of the people who recieve it report that they couldn't open it.
You guys even bother reading the article at all?
The technology is designed to enable secure document transfer between trusted parties. For instance, documents containing trade secrets or engineering specs for a company's latest greatest apps. The creator of the document can secure it so only specified people can read it, limiting potential leaks outside of the company, or the document falling into the wrong hands.
It is not enabled by default and it requires an internal infrastructure to implement (Windows Server 2003 with Windows Rights Management) so the average joe blow isn't going to even be able to use it.
As for "competing products" not being able to read these secured documents, well that's the whole point right? If you're publishing secure documents, you're securing them for a reason, and you're only going to want those who can read it to read it.
There could be an argument for Microsoft to publish an open standard for interoperation, but this is America, not a socialist state, so that argument is a little weak.
Personally, I think this is a cool feature, and one I'm personally going to be using for my day to day work.
Pet peev of mine, since I do work in gov't and many @&&#*!%& use Excel and Word as databases and then complain that it doesn't scale. Sorry to dump.
A business has the right to protect their communications and ideas. Frankly, a lot of people here sound upset about that because they think it will inable corporations to hide more information, etc. The idea of transparency in the business/information world is an interesting one, but all it takes is one group determined not to subscribe to it to sink it for everyone else. Having said that, information on corporate wrong-doings will still seep out, DRM or no DRM. I think this is really being blown-up into more of an issue than it will ever become. If someone doesn't want you to see something they wrote, you have no right to see it. Period. If the complaint is more about Open Source companies being unable to compete with MS because of this functionality, then open source needs to rise above the problem, adapt, or play second fiddle. My hunch, they rise above. Hand wringing on this issue helps no one, not MS or open source.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
Your talking about 'revolutionary' in the same post along with MSO and OOO?
I don't get it. This Office package war I mean. The one between OOO and MS Office. I see no point in people getting all excited about OOO aping MS Office. Because for all I can tell MS Office sux as long as I can remember, and I don't mean crashes or crappy coding.
For free word processing I'd say AbiWord is bareable. It's fast and has all the basics. MS Office and all the ones aping it on the other hand are bloated and have a usability that does nothing but suck naked snails through straws. They really do.
The only package I'd actually dare give the attribute 'revolutionary' is Lotus Smart Suite.
Let's face it friends: Compared to SmartSuite the other two Office packages are nothing but lame. Since AmiPro 3.1 Lotus has 0\/\/nZ0R3d the word processing game, and I can't see any other coming even near the current WordPro any time soon. SmartSuite is the only package I know that can actually cause standard office work to be fun.
If Lotus SmartSuite would be available for Linux I wouldn't hesitate for a minute and buy it. It kinda hurts seeing Lotus Smart Suite getting shelled out for 30$ (CD only version) while MS can get away with charging 300$ and more for that crap that has - believe it or not - become a standard.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
"That's all this feature is." ...intended for? Doubtful, yet even if true, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
That's the foot in the door. Once large corporations are using that, it is possible for DRM to be trickled down so that it is an invisible component of the home versions.
John_Chalisque
when it requires a server backend to function?
Use those critical thinking skills, please.
Even if the developers of a competing office suite could figure out how to get their software to open an Office 2003 document, doing so would be a DMCA violation, since they'd be bypassing an anti-circumvention device.
DMCA, that's a law in the United States. It would only be violating it there.
IBM's proprietary architecture (Microchannel), and proprietary operating system (OS/2) - where are they now? The sad thing is that they really were good for their day - it's just that they cost too much.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
No. At least not when I tried it.
This may be fixed in 6.0 or in OpenOffice, I don't know.
Their real reason for DRM in Office...
To stop the Halloween Documents from leaking year after year!
Just out of curiosity, I pulled out my ordinary digital camera and took a photograph of the screen. The screen text on the photograph was clearly readable.
Anyone who thinks that DRM on documents makes them secure from unauthorized copying is an idiot. Heck, you don't even need a digital camera, any low tech camera will do.
Think about:
The system is ultimately ineffective (screen shots anyone?, hand made copies?, pocket cell-phone cameras?), and false security is worse than none
It requires additional infrastructure (cost) and software upgrades (cost) then locks you in to the M$ implementation
Companies (financial) will have to manage (cost) the new documents to meet compliance issues (ie: you can NOT have documents that are required to be kept for compliance be protected from copying or have them expire - and how do you stop it?)
Single point of failure:What if the DRM server is down (temporary downtime company-wide for M$ Office)
What if the DRM server crashes and can't be restored (permanent loss of important data)
Will M$ provide a backdoor (for Law Enforcement, PATRIOT ACT, etc), what if it's leaked ?
THIS IS A DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT ISSUE - not a security problem, people need EDM/ECM not more gimmicks !
'Hacking' into the document to provide interoperability or to recover data may be a FEDERAL OFFENSE under DMCA
What about search/rescue for the users who screw up and lock themselves or others out of documents accidentally ???
Forced upgrades (al la Win2K) just to continue to use YOUR OWN (DRMed) corporate assets
Louts Notes has had a (less user-friendly) version of this since R2, and very few shops use it (encryption keys)
On the bright side:
There are a huge number of users/customers/vendors/partners who will not be able to use the DRM documents (requires upgrade), so it will take years to even marginally implement for external communications (which is one of the main items people want it for in the first place)
Some obvious possibilities for abuse include:
Stopping Whistleblowers (Enron, Pentagon, Worldcom/Arthur Anderson, Whitewater)
Erasing potential evidence: stockbroker send you bad advice in a doc that expires in 30 days
Erasing potential evidence: boss tells you to do something unusual that gets you into trouble
Erasing potential evidence: employees colluding to do things detrimental to a company (embezzle?)
Mafia can us it for betting slips, other low-level secure comms
Word/Excel macro viruses could be set to self-destruct to protect the guilty
Restricting fair-use rights
The Terrorists could use it !
See Also:
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/165
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
If Microsoft has a monopoly in the office software market, then this could be a monopolistic practice. If what they are doing is effectively keeping competitors from entering the market, then one of their competitors may have a case.
I think I'm missing something: Office 2003 brings DRM technology but anyone is forced to use it! If I use Word 2003 to write a memo I want someone who use OpenOffice to read it, I will not use DRM!?! DRM is usefull if I want to protect a document inside a corporation. And inside a corporation that is using Office 2003, it's hard to see any other Office.
If you follow the track record MS has on security then there will be no real problem bypassing this. Windows has proven, time and time again to be the number one most insecure OS on planet earth and in recorded history.
I would expect nothing less from them in this product and future products.
Seriously, they have a terrible record for security.
There is a possiblility that people are overestimating the ablility of large corporations to actually respond to changes in their working environment. Monopolies don't really end so much as people develop ways to work around them.
In the case of Microsoft and Office2003 DRM, what will likely happen is that all the current corporate customers will continue to buy Office updates as they always have, and individual workers will create ad-hoc alternatives. The corporation will be the last to know that Office2003 is not filling the need for which it is being purchased. (Actually that's not quite right, it will be Microsoft who will be the last to know that Office is not being used even though it is still being purchased.)
The discrepency between having Office200x be the official company tool for preparing business documents and the reality of Office200x not working will lead to many people being disciplined in the corporation and the blame being passed between various departments as long as it can be hidden from top management and the alternatives to Office can be made to work by people who won't get fired for getting the alternative software working.
Microsoft is now a permanant institution and will be kept around forever by all those who now have too much to lose if it passes. Everyone else will just have to learn to work around Microsoft's products just as 10-15 years ago they had to learn to work with Microsoft's products.
Thank you for your kind attention,
Simonetta
But we're now in a situation where the PCs and the software are "good enough".
I'm personally using Office 97 at work. Why? Because it does all that our company needs a word processor and spreadsheet to do. Some people with newer PCs have Office XP, but there's certainly no plan to upgrade. Our priorities do not include getting the latest unnecessary gimmicks.
Also, how many people are getting upgrades to PCs? We've got people at work using 3 year old PCs. They can do word processing, access our fault logging system and use the applications we have fine. Are we upgrading them? No.
No matter how deep the OS restriction on the document handling is, it still can't prevent you from putting a camera up to the screen and taking a picture of it.
forget it.
Do you have to even ask that question? Microsoft products and their support puts the food on lots of people's tables.
Quite frankly, it disgusts me every time I look in the local paper for I.T. jobs and find nothing but Microsoft..... Everyone who wants to hire anyone here in St. Louis seems to be a "Microsoft shop". (Well, there's always the occasional exception which typically turns out to be government-related, where they run minicomputers or mainframes.) How much more virus hassle, unreliability, high cost of licensing, software bloat, and buggy code will it take for some of these firms to switch to something else?
I did the MS support thing for 6 years or so, for a previous employer, before getting fed up with it. I'm trying to do Apple support now - and let me tell you, it IS a refreshing change. Only problem is, barely anyone seems to use their products in this city! There's one consulting firm that seems to pretty well have all the Apple corporate contracts locked up (and that's probably barely enough to make a good business out of it).
How soon you've forgotten about _NSAKEY.
For you non-USians, NSA stands for No Such Agency.
How exactly does this give the user any more protection than what a well policied and well equiped site doesn't already have?
DRM doesn't prevent, as the article would suggest, source code and document leaks. That is a human factor, not a software factor.
What prevents someone from copy-paste-email? Or from save-as-unprotected? Or from just printing it out and scanning it back in?
DRM doesn't protect the documents anymore than zipping the file up with a hard to guess password. Except in this case, you need permission from a central server to open your file.
What this DOES do is keep competing products from being compatible with MS's product. It does introduce the idea that: "Hmm.. I'm using OpenOffice and my customers and clients might be using MS's DRM... how oh how will we communicate, would we need to abandon OO and go with MS's software?"
It introduces fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It is FUD in product form. And it is another attempt to reinforce, or rather, shore up the walls of their monopolistic fortress.
What's that? You need a Win2003 server and a DRM server to handle those files? What if the server crashes? Does that mean that your entire business is now stuck and no work can get done?
Tell me why it is again that this feature is a benefit to the end user? Oh wait.. it isn't.
Clue to MS: Don't know where you get your customer panel from, but it needs some work.
Winged Power Photography
What/Where are the Open Standards for file formats?
... will all go away as more people get tired of doing repeated additional task to access/convert data into a more open standard transportable, usable, and shareable word-processor, spread-sheet, database, ... format. ...) provide files in readable , editable, usesable, and shareable text or HTML format .... I think, the extra money to MS-Gates and needs for common shareable open file formats will push many to use applications (that create common file formats) that maybe will not be MS-Gates' Proprietary Products and Formats. ... forget MS-Gates OS and then the applications. They are cutting their on throat (I am happy).
MS-BMP, XLS, PPT,
We should THANK MS-Gates for pushing people to choose appropriate file formats. If I always send folks text and HTML formatted documents that they can all read, edit, use, and share, then I am always requesting that they (family, friends, colleagues,
I am at the point that the stupid business decisions of Microsoft will have little or no impact on me or others.
If MS-Gates does not provide an easy to use and install viewer for my PC+OS, then I will not read what someone sends me in MS-word. I think for my family, friends, and business associates we can go back to text-email and use HTML for formatted text documents. As more software applications use open standards file formats
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucinations.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
So people will screw it up by:
MS will screw it up by:
Some people think I'm a pessimist, though. :-)
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
That's one thing that Office can't do.
Personally, I like the fact that it's all XML. As a programmer, I could write documents from a program, if I wanted to, and without having any open office software installed.
Read the article, you moron. See "Windows 2003 server required"? We are talking about elaborate communication schemes designed to force use of Microsoft products in places that seemingly are completely unrelated to the storage and reading of documents. They are trying to force this down companies throats with lies about what it does.
Technically, all the abilities of this could be had by encrypting the document. The encryption could be done in a completly open way so that the only secret needed to decode it is the password. The encryption can be one-way so that even though you can read a document, you cannot modify to a new copy that can be read with a password, unless you have permission to. Word could also refuse to print or copy the text, which will stop casual theft, without giving false sense of security to PHB's who are too stupid to realize that people can photograph the screen.
Even if Microsoft wanted to destroy interoperability with OpenOffice, that could be done with encryption just like the above, except you don't open the method. This probably makes the security slightly less, but makes it impossible to open with any program other than Word. It still has the advantages over their scheme: simplicity (and thus fewer bugs) and the fact that a central server does not have to be relied on.
This is an elaborate scheme to force purchases of their software everywhere.
Do you think MS doesn't even use their own software?
Well, actually they don't, necessarily. I know this for a fact. True, they are bound to use some of their own software, but many tasks that could very well be done on MS software is done on other (superior) software. (Case in point: guess if they use MS FrontPage or Allaire HomeSite to manage and author their internet sites. You guessed Allaire? Correct you are!)
--JanGB
(What's dogfooding? See Mozilla's jargon file)
Let's say I create an important document with this new DRM, and assign an "expiration date" (Office workers can ... set an expiration date.) then get layed off, or quit. What happens when the expiration date rolls around and the company can't get into the document? Can they come after me claiming I have caused them (financial) injury? Isn't this the same as intentionally planting a timed virus or cyber-attack?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Even if the developers of a competing office suite could figure out how to get their software to open an Office 2003 document, doing so would be a DMCA violation, since they'd be bypassing an anti-circumvention device.
No, wrong. Circumvention only happens if it is done without the authority of the copyright holder. Since an office file opener could be used to open your own documents, or documents that others want you to open, there exists a substantial non-infringing use, so the software would not be a circumvention device.
Microsoft thinks DRM is the answer to their problems? People are going to upgrade to this? Lets get real here. If a business upgrades to the next version of office with DRM but their clients do not, the clients cannot read memos and other documents sent by the business. The clients then get pissed off and go elsewhere.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
Wasn't there an EU directive some time back that stated that if a company (like MS) made a standard API which was used widely in the industry, they could not patent it? ie, it is perfectly legal for someone to design a Windows emulator that used the Win32 API, because MS effectively put it in thew public domain by making it a standard. How would a WORD document be different?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
1) Will DRM or other features in the new Office break backward compatibility with earlier Word/Excel/etc formats? In other words, will opening and editing and saving a Word 97 file in the new Word prevent older Word versions (or 3rd party applications) to open that file later?
2) Will Microsoft make any encoding APIs freely available to the public for 3rd party applications to open and use those files?
3) If the answer to 2) is no, will Microsoft license any encoding APIs to 3rd parties and will these be non-discriminatory?
4) If the answer to both 2) and 3) is no, will Microsoft agree not to invoke legal action in the event that 3rd parties reverse engineer any encoding APIs?
5) If the answers to all of 1) through 4) is no, is Microsoft not concerned about US or EU anti-trust authorities ruling that the Office file strategy is anti-competitive?
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
Intertrust wins their injunction against Microsoft. Now what would be real nice is if IBM suddenly bought Intertrust. Then we'd have a nice show, which IBM would win. Their lawyers are as top notch as they get.
Better yet, there is simply a point on the pie-chart where Counter-productive [i.e., Non-Productive] defence strategies begin clump up and change into defence tactics. After this critical point has been reached, then MS can only lose more money than it is bringing in, and can do nothing about because they no longer have any long-term strategie to implement. To put it this way, if drought brought on by climate change (or whatever) killed the dinosaurs, then there was a point where the constant search for water became more important than eating. The brutes would die either way; either from thirst [short-term tactics] or starvation [long-term statagies]. Too bad... I could feel sorry for the dinosaurs.
They're way better than that, as they combine the capabilities of a word-processor with a builtin-printer. And unlike most word-processors, they always provide a complete record of everything you've written.
Seeing that Office with DRM is just the first step, followed with Windows and .NET with DRM on by default, effectively all competitors would be legally locked out. (Since Microsoft has the patent on its DRM system, and the DMCA pretty much prevents anyone from bypassing the protection mechanisms of this system.) .NET), and way more widespread, or we're in deep doo doo.
So, what's the solution?
I think Linux better get better (i.e. at replacing the functionality of Windows and Office and
When I was looking for work last year, I also found that most companies insisted on resumes in Word format.
But one large company did not. In fact, they required resumes be submitted in plain text. And that was Microsoft.
Anti-competetive business practices are what Microsoft is know for. Perhaps OpenOffice.org could serve as the primary plaintiff in a class action suit against MS. It may work, and if the Linux community all pitches in, OO.O will have more than enough $$$ to take on MS. Heck, if they were going to do it, and simply needed the money, I'd thrown in a whole paycheck to help them.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I create a document in Office 2003 and Microsoft owns the digital rights to it? Not bloody likely. Is circumventing an anti-copying mechanism that is keeping me from getting to my own IP a violation of the DMCA? If so, not for long.
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
i say good call Microsoft, for good or bad.
see
Microsoft Hatred, the beginning
Xah
xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html
I do not think that the DMCA applies in a lot of other countries... So there will be perfectly legal decoders outside of the US -.... Am I dreaming?
Business people are well aware of the dangers of lock-in and looking for alternatives. Witness the recent adoptions of linux for the desktop (government of Munich), the moves by Asian governments (Japan, Korea, China) to create a non-proprietary OS, the moves of industry groups to adopt open standards (CELF in Japan, the embedded market in general).
The tendency here is to view Microsoft as all-powerful. However, as revealed by the recent Fortune opinion piece summarized here, Microsoft cannot come up with new products that genuinely win people over. Business people have revolted over the forced upgrade terms they put through a year ago. People are walking away from their forced lock-in at all levels. If anything, this move will just speed up the process.
Ever heard of Software602?
Whenever someone sends you a Word 2003 document you can't read, do what you do when someone sends you any other type of document you can't read. Reply that you can't read it and ask them to send you a non-protected format that you Can read, such as RTF.
The bigger, underlying problem as I see it is this:
People who care about concepts such as "Software Freedom" do not tend to rise to positions of decision making authority in business.
If they did, then the questions of open source in the enterprise, interoperability, and patent encumbrances, would be answered by boards of directors, and not just discussed on slashdot and other places where there is no effect on the marketplace.
The people who seem to know so much about what's right for technology, sure don't seem to be rising to positions of authority where they could just lay down the law.
Instead, we just make excuses while others who ARE successful at achieving positions of authority make decisions.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Sorry to have to say it, and mod me down for redundancy, but I'm Really Pissed Off with the way that the sodding American government basically passes laws that in the current American legal system effectively mean if you have lots of money, you can do what you like.
/me screams at his monitor, looks very pissed off with the whole patent-pending, DMCA'd-to-oblivion utter shocking (and embarassing) mess that is the law on the other side of the pond from him and hopes the middle east collectively nuke congress to hell and back as a result. Kinda.
It doesn't matter if you have all the legal protection in the world, if you can't afford to fight the case in the first place, you're totally screwed. And when it's Microsoft, who can afford to fight it?
</rant>
Is that "(...)you can tell which people have a cache token on their laptops that you need to kill ASAP." or "(...)you can tell which people have a cache token on their laptops that you need to kill ASAP."?
I'm leaning toward the former.
'The First' like in the first evil in Buffy. Has anybody seen Bill touch anything lately?
I just hope companies won't give in and become MS's biatch again. Since Linux and Open Source are getting big, I think they should jump ship and use them.
.smell my feet.
Just whatever you do- don't forget to save! you never know when your typewriter with crash.
Save Save Save!
For the sake of argument, assume that it is true that the DCMA legally prevents me from breaking an encryption that a movie production company has placed on it's DVD to prevent me from copying it, ignoring for the moment the side discussion that copyright laws says I can make copies for my own use. A legal argument can be put forth in court because there are two parties involved in this contract and encryption scheme... MGM and me. It doesn't make any difference what the encryption method is, MGM has used it specifically so anyone who has access to the media can't copy it, because they own the rights to the content and they say so. (OK
Why would that law prevent me from breaking the encryption on a document that I have created? I do it all the time in order to read it, so what is the problem if I want to do it in order to use it from another program?
Where is it said that I cannot provide a product that enables a user to decrypt documents that they already own,that they have created, or given someone else the right to read? It's not breaking an encryption if it's your own document, is it?? If I can reverse engineer the method M$ is using to extract the key and decrypt it, and use all the authentication M$ is using, why would that not be legal??
It appears to me that it would only be illegal to provide a method to break the encryption of a document that someone does not have a right to.
Just wondering.....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The problem is that PHBs will not be thinking like this when making purchasing decisions. So, a lot of businesses won't find out right away just how locked-in they're going to be. MS is counting on that. Once a business gets used to using DRM to protect documents and it becomes a "must have" as decreed by the Chief PHB there won't be any easy, or cheap, path back to freedom. MS is banking on the fact that it will be easier for businesses to pay inflated license fees than to switch to a competing product.
Sure, there'll be some wailing and gnashing of teeth, but small businesses will be pushed down the road to perdition, also. No small firm that does business with a GM or Ford that uses MS Office and insists on the use of DRM to protect inter-business communications will be in a position to say no. Again, the small business will find it easier and cheaper, in the short run, which is all American business worries about these days, to knuckle under and "upgrade" to MS Office 2003. I'm not as sanguine as you that people and businesses will see the threat that this technology poses to their futures.
I think the only way to stop this particular bad dream from happening is to stop it before it starts. Make sure the your boss understands the threat posed by MS DRM technology. Write memos to anyone who'll listen to you about what the future holds for any business that swallows this particular poison pill. Put your arguments in dollars and cents as best you are able. Talk to your employer's legal people and make sure that thay understand what is entailed if the business follows MS's dictates. It's a lot easier to stop this sort of thing before it starts than to try to make it go away once it gains a foothold.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P
Most companies have rules regarding anything that you produce while working there. Therefore, more than likely that document would become the property of the company at the moment that you wrote it. If you were to assign an expiration date to it, and you were not supposed to, then you would get probably get canned and have the crap beat out of you. If you were instructed to set such an expiration, then who cares.
I really fail to see your argument. Does having an expiration date prevent any preservation of the document outside of that date? Could it not be printed/copied/photocopied/take a screenshot and save that, etc.?
This is a pointless what if question.
What?
I was about to post the exact same thing...
To bring a sense of perspective to this, let's contrast the US and Europe.
US: total population approx 280m.
EU: total population approx 380m.
IOWs, Europe alone is roughly a third larger than the US. Now consider markets in the rest of the world as well, and the law in the US isn't really as important to the economics of a company like Microsoft as a lot of people assume it is.
Realistically, any attempt to force upgrades by DRM-izing documents would more likely result in a mass rejection of upgrades to that DRM-enabled Office version. Even if people in the US upgraded, everyone else would carry on regardless, and the US would wind up sufficiently damaged by the lack of ability to exchange documents in a de facto standard format with outside bodies that something would have to give.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Googling for pdf_sec.ps along with "Adobe" or whatnot should give you more info.
For your friends w. problems doing the video-out with movie players, tell them to get a video-out card (tv-out) that just does a clone of the current screen. by this, I don't mean nVidia's clone-screen mode (nVidea cards need to be configured), but ATI's default mode, which is done in hardware without any need to load/configure software.
:-). But they also make a great way to see what's on your screen remotely.
There's no need to configure video-out-to-tv on (at least the) ati cards (that I've tested). They just copy whatever's on the screen. While they were made for windows, they work great under linux too (for those non-svcd torrents
Mind you, a video splitter would do the same thing.
Replacing the video card would be overkill, and the issue was really not wanting to keep 2 dozen people with popcorn waiting. We could have borrowed a Linux laptop or dragged out someone's tower (or my eMac) had we gotten desperate.
There were two incidents, both on laptops (so no video splitter). I don't remember the specifics exactly of the dorm-movie one. We wanted to do a dorm movie on a projector. I think it blocked playing the movie to video-to-tv, but the monitor port worked, or something like that. However, we had to borrow a monitor cable from someone because the projector we borrowed didn't have one in the box. This was just plain annoying Windows DRM.
In the other case, a few of us were in a friend's dorm and decided to see a movie on his computer. He had an old Windows laptop with a broken screen, and had removed it and connected a CRT through the monitor-out port. (In other words, it was a free desktop with decent processing power.) We had brought the movie on DVD, but the system was using hardware playback and only played to the nonexistent built-in screen. No video splitter in this case, and I don't even know whether it was software DRM, hardware DRM, or just hardware not designed for the task. Anyway, someone went back to her dorm and brought a Linux laptop, and played it on that.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Judging by your first sentence, you have obviously never used MS software. If anyone actually used it before release, could all those obvious bugs be there?
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
Until Microsoft figures out a way to prevent your recipient from saying, "hey Bob, have a look at this!" and showing your file to somebody else on his own monitor, you better make sure anything that can be traced back to you isn't going to get you in hot water.
Don't worry; in a few more election cycles, Microsoft will have bankrolled enough politicians that they won't need their own personal thought-police to do this job. They'll be using your own tax money for it.
General Electric has announced that they will begin producing bread. This bread will have special ingrediants so that it only works in GE toasters.
If you use non-GE bread, your toast will come out over-cooked, so it is highly recommended that you buy the new bread from GE, which costs $30 a loaf.
If you attempt to mix a slice of their bread with a slice of Wonder bread (such as you only have 1 slice of GE bread left), you will be in violation of the Gormet Millenium Copyright Act of 2010, and could be fined up to $30,000.
General Electic will also be shipping all new toasters with titanium alloys. This innovative feature ensures safety by preventing people from trying to open their toaster when it stops working. To improve user friendliness, the toasters will lock onto the power cords and secure them, so users will be unable to accidently unplug their toasters and become confused about why it isn't toasting.
Hypocrisy is the 8th deadly sin.
"I think some people here are suffering from some kind of paranoia."
You are new here, aren't you?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It sure is going to be risky business to kill backwards compatibility to all current Office versions. It could end up being good for the free alternatives, if your current office version is no longer supported and MS tells you to stop using it, then why not switch into a free alternative that works with the old documents too instead of a new, expensive MS office suite? Especially since MS Office hasn't really got anything that revolutionary new for years that would be worth the massive license costs and losing all compatibility.
There is another path: teach people the value of software freedom.
Are you sure you don't mean preach?
Heh, yep. She's definitely a geek. Hot too. Uses Linux, TeXs all her papers. She got a perfect score on the USA math olympiad. Her dad was a major contributor to emacs and a minor one to perl. If you can't google her after all that...
And before you start cracking girlfriend jokes, I do have a girlfriend, and it's not her. And even if I didn't have a girlfriend, I wouldn't make a pass at her after watching my other friends fighting over her.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
My experience in large firms is that the law departments use what the rest of the company uses, with the other application as an occasional backup if it's present at all. Five major firms, three of them Fortune 500 companies, have adhered to this in the last six or seven years that I've been noticing.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
There is nothing in Office 2003 which FORCES DRM signing on documents.
There is nothing in Office 2003 & Windows Server 2003 that is particularly malicious (unless you think signing all your documents with DES or your PGP key or so is malicious)
There is nothing to stop OpenOffice from reading ANY unencrypted documents, apart from just not interpreting features right (which means it will open Word docs just as well or badly as it did always..)
This is another one of those whines a lot of Geeks have that they think that somehow their rights are being infringed just because someone has the ability to stop them reading a document - or at least encourage them not to.
The same way they whine that "cctv cameras infringe on my civil liberties!" when what they really mean is "cctv cameras mean I can't get away with mugging old ladies!" and the classic "public non-smoking laws discriminate against smokers!" when really they mean "It's my God-given American right to cause lung cancer in my fellow human beings!"
Give it up. Most businesses would literally give the right wing of their office block to be able to stop people from reading other peoples' performance reviews, or to stop their secret info leaking into the hands of competitors, or negotiation meeting minutes being published on Slashdot.
.. since it's bound to be integrated into the Active Directory, too, (why else would you need 2K3 server?) which means when people quit your company and you delete their account, they lose all access to those documents too. Sounds like a great idea.
"wah wah Microsoft are stopping me from building my retirement fund by selling company secrets to someone else!!!"
There are nefarious purposes you could use it for though.. like, making sure your equivalent to the "Halloween Document" is unreadable, or auto-destruct capability for those spreadsheets that show much it'll cost to drive a rival browser company into the ground. But that stuff happens even without DRM, and they manage to prove it happens and win in court by other means than bringing up petty emails and Word documents.
If OpenOffice had gotten this first, nobody would be complaining.
And of course.. what's the betting that OpenOffice can actually use a standard Windows DRM/IRM API at some point to unencrypt documents based on their Windows 2003 Server authentication and signature key?
Developing a License Provider Service for Windows Media Encoder
Getting Started with Windows Media Rights Manager SDK
Looks relatively public to me. No less public than the new PKZIP encryption extensions :)
Hell, why doesn't someone talk to Microsoft and ask if they can use the API for interoperability purposes? It's not breaking the DMCA if they let you :)
Microsoft has done it again! A fabulous new feature! A word processor that creates documents that other people can't read. It's ingenious!!! I wish I thought of it first =( I guess it's back to my little corner...
Hypocrisy is the 8th deadly sin.
I've been applying to PHB type jobs on an occasional basis. For the first few applications, I sent Microsoft .DOC documents produced with OfficeX. After several got stripped out by the corporate email firewall, I started sending my resume in Adobe PDF. The resumes are no longer stripped and I have yet to receive a complaint.
One of OS X's more underrated features is the standard "Save as PDF" button in every print dialog. Any OS X application that can print can make a nice virus and Microsoft free PDF.
Waste works the same way doesnt it?
We have a small waste p2p set up and we all exchange our IP's and Public Keys, then this allows us to view each others files. If someone else were to get an IP but not the key they couldnt connect to the shared files.
I can see where this will work on its own, say on a laptop in a plane for 4 hours.
What I dont see is anyone complaining about how this in anti competitive behavior.
I dont like to use any MS products either, but where I work we have to. I mostly use ConTEXT as an editor for some code. Now, if someone makes a plain text document in notepad, then I am not going to be able to open this document?
I know notepad isnt a part of Office, but I can do the same with *.doc files.
Since they have the majority of the business in the workplace, isnt this behavior going to ensure that no other competitor will be able to co-exist with their software products?
There is no Messenger Lockdown. They are upgrading their protocols. Trillian 2.0 supports the new protocol. Signs point to the release of a new Public Trillian client that will support the new protocol as well.
Most nations do not have a DMCA
We allready use OpenOffice for all our end user's here
How did you make the switch? I did some tests with OpenOffice and some of my clients who don't want to spend money on licences... It's hell! Not because OpenOffice is bad (I don't use MS Office anymore) but because most people are completely computer illiterate. As soon as the smallest thing changes they're lost! Half of them think that File/Print/Select PDF printer is too complicated so they keep sending SXW files to people who use MS Word. The worst part is since they try to find a excuse for their incompetence they're constantly bitching OpenOffice (and me, of course). If OOo had a perfect MS Word filter I guess change in a large (i.e. more than 2 people) organization could be possible but until then it's a lot of trouble and in a short term period paying for an MS upgrade cost a lot less than switching to OOo (particularly because people would use the "I'm learning the new program" excuse to not do their work).
They say they can have a copy protection. I don't think that copy protection can be possible.. or 100% effective.
;)
1. In a split view window mode, you can retype an entire document
2. You can take a screen capture with "Print Screen" button
3. You can take a screen capture with a digital camera!
4. Copy / paste?
On some of the users, I just replaced the OOo icons with their old MS Word and MW Excel icons, and told them they got a new 'updated' version. Most didnt even notice, and if you go into Options and under load/save, choose 'always save as MS Word 97/2000', they will never even know the difference. Never say free tho, or they will think they are getting gyped. :)
No I didnt spell check this post...
The system is ultimately ineffective (screen shots anyone?, hand made copies?, pocket cell-phone cameras?), and false security is worse than none
You need special tools to take a screenshot (print screen doesn't cut the mustard). I also would propose that it would be difficult/impossible to copy by hand or photograph a 400 page word document while not drawing attention to yourself.
The point of this technology is to help prevent accidental disclosure of information to untrusted 3rd parties. It is not meant to control access to a document by an untrusted 3rd party.
Similar analogy: why do you bother hiding the password as you type it in when a user can record/watch you type the password on your keyboard?
It requires additional infrastructure (cost) and software upgrades (cost) then locks you in to the M$ implementation
Great, point me to a non MS implementation that doesn't suck (having to mess with CLI apps in windows == suck).
Single point of failure:What if the DRM server is down (temporary downtime company-wide for M$ Office)
Keys are cached on the client, and are set to expire after a predetermined amount of time. Additionally, you don't have to be running just one server -- you can have multiple servers, or whatever kind of load-balancing/redundant setup you want.
Same arguement could be made against using file servers, so I'd say it's pretty much a moot point.
What if the DRM server crashes and can't be restored (permanent loss of important data)
This is a backup issue. Same problem can be present with file servers, so it's a moot point.
Will M$ provide a backdoor (for Law Enforcement, PATRIOT ACT, etc), what if it's leaked ?
Doubtful that they'd put in a back door. See Admin note below.
THIS IS A DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT ISSUE - not a security problem, people need EDM/ECM not more gimmicks !
And hey, what better place to edit your document management settings than your DOCUMENT EDITOR.
'Hacking' into the document to provide interoperability or to recover data may be a FEDERAL OFFENSE under DMCA
If the purpose of 'hacking' is to provide unrestricted access to the document, then yes. If it is just for interoperability purposes (ie: provides and respects the access control mechanisms) then no.
What about search/rescue for the users who screw up and lock themselves or others out of documents accidentally ???
There is supposed to be a feature that allows the admin to deal with this problem, though I haven't used it.
Forced upgrades (al la Win2K) just to continue to use YOUR OWN (DRMed) corporate assets
Err, if you want the feature you've got to upgrade. If you don't want the feature, don't upgrade. Once you have the feature, you don't have to upgrade to keep it working.
Louts Notes has had a (less user-friendly) version of this since R2, and very few shops use it (encryption keys)
So we'll find out if the reason why it wasn't used is because it wasn' tuser friendly, or because nobody wanted the feature.
There are a huge number of users/customers/vendors/partners who will not be able to use the DRM documents (requires upgrade), so it will take years to even marginally implement for external communications (which is one of the main items people want it for in the first place)
Doubtful this will be used for document distributed outside of a company, due to the nature of the key management system. Additionally, the scenarios where you want to restrict access to a document generally occur within the walls of a company, not outside of them.
Stopping Whistleblowers (Enron, Pentagon, Worldcom/Arthur Anderson, Whitewater)
Erasing potential evidence: stockbroker send you bad advice in a doc that expires in 30 days
Erasing potential evidence: boss tells you to do something unusual that gets you into trouble
To counter this "upgrade" to M$Office is to provide a very SIMPLE means of doing GPG encryption of their documents. Provide the same benefits without the cost: no windoze servers required, no lockin to a single vendor, etc. You encrypt your doc, only certain individuals can access it as you wish, etc. This could be done quickly, providing this capability with the next revision vs all the pain that M$ and users of M$ will have to go through...and it is fully backwards compatible/cross-compatible. Any GPG-based app/frontend could be used to decrypt the document if you have an older version of OO or some other wordprocessor but need to access the document.
Yeah, you can do this now with gpg at the commandline or via frontends but it is "harder" than simply making it a simple selection in the save file dialog. This simplicity is what corps and users need/want/could go with.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Great. You pointed out a huge reason why things will actually improve. DRM incompatibilities will make it such a hassle to email MS Office docs all over the place, that people will just end up printing to PDF, without DRM enabled, and just email those files instead. No more Word or Excel docs means no more macro virii and no more "hidden confidential data" unknowingly appended and sent out. But in return, we'll get MS-bloated PDF files instead.
Of course, that's probably not what MS intended (defeating DRM), but it would certainly be an improvement.
Then it is up to us to make businesses where this does not happen. Nobody said the fight was easy or that one could afford to wait to be elevated to a decision-making rank. Like any other social movement, the Free Software movement has to build their own way and defend it. I think most people in the Free Software movement understand this (after all, most free software copyright holders choose the GNU GPL and apparently a lot of people in Europe talk to their elected officials about software patents in Europe).
For those who are in free software organizations, more people are seeing that if they want their business to survive, they had better care more about software freedom. It is not profitable to watch their niche being taken over by some larger corporation leveraging a larger patent portfolio or the DMCA. Cross-licensing patents means losing the exclusivity patenting was invented to ensure. Businesses who are victims of software patent cross-licensing gain a competitor in exchange for keeping their patent-dependent project viable. This helps open people's eyes to the dangers many in the Free Software movement and Open Source movement have been speaking about for some time now.
Then it is our job to make that happen by talking about software freedom more and making it an issue with elected officials and business leaders. It's a tough row to hoe, but history shows it is not impossible. Perhaps some people have unreasonable expectations on how long social movements take to make progress and how much work is involved in making sure the progress is not eroded.
Digital Citizen
As the thread a few days ago about Microsoft adding "Security" Thread 1 Thread 2to the new MS Messenger versions which will require older versions to be upgraded but lock out third party IRC products. It seems that they are setting up a DMCA "protection circumvention" legal grounds for shutting down other services using their MSM service or to allow them to go after them with law suits or even denial of service attacks legally. Looks like things aren't going to be friendly for very much longer.
I read what this poster wrote. He got it right! Besides, it was on-topic to it's parent, which was off the topic the original poster put in place...
What kind of silly censorship is this?
...it is like the ecnryption used on Windows XP machines, unless the user him/herself changes their password any encrypted document they have is "Permanently" gone...
If such a user loses their password and the admin didn't make a "Password Recovery Disk" (Who does BTW?) and the admin has to reset the password... BAM, all the documents are simply useless space taken up on the hard drive... (Only if the user encrypted them with Windows XP's built-in encryption...)
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Retype it. Sucks, but it'll work
Take a picture with your digicam. Again, sucky, but no worse than screenshots if it's a good digicam.
Probably redundant... but here goes...
According to the article, it is not the default behavior for O2K3 to use Information Rights Management. In fact, in order for Office to lock a document, there has to be a Win2K3 Server running the rights manager suite somewhere on the LAN...
Nothing to see here... move along...
Does that mean suddenly I can't read any of my documents? Well, what with the net being so stable and microsoft viruses being so rare, that sounds dandy to me.
Politely ask sales drones to resend stuff in a non-Doc/Excel/Powerpoint/Viso format.
Pure fantasy.
If it's employees, you probably wouldn't mind giving them VPN access
Just my two cents (Ka-Ching!). . .
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Change "runs on OS/2" to "runs OS/2." My bad.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
From the user's perspective, this won't be much different from having to fetch the document directly off the server, except that the bandwidth usage is lower.
IRM documents are completely "tethered to a server" with all the problems that entails: Server down? Behind a firewall? Notebook offline? No Office 2003? IRM documents will be unusable in many, many cases, and people will eventually come to view them as basically "fat URLs" that require a special (and very expensive) setup on the client.
They will probably call ROT13 an encryption algorithm and sue anyone who discovers it. :-)
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
The exploits are endless. You'd have to cripple the entire operating system while the document is open.
Not just the OS, but the hardware as well. By a stunning coincidence, the list of features you've just enumerated, plus the hardware platform features necessary to implement them, are pretty much point exactly what "Trusted Computing" is designed to destroy.
Enjoy your future!
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
This doesn't seem to be any different from the existing copy protection and security features in PDF, and no-one compalins about that.
Someone sends me a pdf with silly security restrictions on it I send it back.
there's enough office 97 installations out there to stop the use of these features becoming widespread.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
There's a difference between software freedom and free software. People seem to get this mixed up A LOT.
Software being free is a great idea, more developers to help solve the most trivial issues.
Free software though is bad. You are effectively eliminating a huge revenue stream for a lot of companies. Campaigning for everything to be free is not going to win a lot of supporters.
No freedom is given up by using Microsoft software. If you don't give a shit about those rights in the 1st place then you haven't "given" them up.
>> Or... maybe the document would never get sent to the recipient. Instead the document would remain on an HTTPS accesible document store. The recipient would get an attachment that contains authentication to allow seamless access to the https document store and a path to the document. Along with this document store is the ability to "edit locally" which would give the user the option to run an editor over the HTTPS link or use a locally installed editor depending on the situation. This would go well beyond anything the MS Office suite does now and would appear to be far beyond MS's current mode of thought.
http://twiki.org
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
worker 1: "I've been wondering... Since all our docs are DRM protected, what would happen if something happened to our server?" .pif files, I thought I was going to be fired after infecting the whole network."
worker 2: "Let's DOS our server, so we don't have to do any work!"
worker 1: "No, let's just go to Usenet and get all the latest network-aware viruses."
worker 2: "Are you kidding?! When I kept running all those
worker 1: "Hey, what's that network message?"
Network Server notice appears on all screens:
worker 2: "Great! I'm taking my family to the beach. See you in two weeks."
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
All openoffice has to do is move to china or some other country where DMCA does not apply. Note it could even be a openoffice plugin from china. Note even in australia there is a good chance that in court openoffice would win. So it is not a problem.
... version for every OS every writen so that a hacker never had any grounds to force access. Now a hacker could write his own OS given him grounds to access. It will cost more than that DRM is worth to protect it.
Go and read on the playstation mod chip stuff up you buy a game from overseas since you own it you are allowed to mod chip a Playstation to play it same goes for the Xbox. Now some one sends you a DRM it is now yours you have the right to access it or the person sould not have sent it. Basicly one court case and it is by by protection.
Now microsoft is playing a bad game and may end up having to sue to win. Now in the USA is it not a breach of free speach if DRM will lock out people from here what you have to say. Basicly DRM must be a internal system only or it could turn really nasty. It is not like microsoft owns the contents of the document the writer does now this is where the hacker wins in australia.
Basicly legally it is stuffed. Because microsoft would have to put out a linux Reactos
Beside Microsoft track record on system protection basicly suxs they have too many programmers there because they can not leave not because they want to be there. Ie the lock in contract Microsoft uses. And until this changes Microsoft will keep on having problems.
Is anyone looking forward to the day when a sleeping worm wipes out all of a company's ID servers, and some glitch renders backups of same useless? A classic Microsoft scenario.
"Do you have those documents for me?" "Um, weeellll... that all depends on what you mean by 'have'..."
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
only 2 kinds of people use ms office - those who are forced and those who are retards.
i don't need it and i won't buy it, so as far as i'm concerned, bill gates can take his bloated gestapo software and nazi mentality and shove it up his a**
If what you say is so, DRM operates to thwart laws about obtaining evidence. That may make it inherently illegal in some circumstances.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
And more.
This is where OSS really shines. Your software is tested by people you don't know, using methods you'd never dream of trying yourself - if they're planned at all.
Microsoft (and others) try to rigorously plan their testing, but because it's being done by one person or small group it bears the stamp of their (perhaps collective) personality. They set about testing things in certain ways, a limited and predictable number of ways, and that can leave some glaring holes in the QC results.
To work with the debugger example, it's not unreasonable to surmise that their test suite happened to include only code sets that were all symbolised or all raw, or only walked through the transition one way - so the transition in question was simply never tested.
Within two days of an OSS release, you'll get reports back from users in the field who have walked through the transition. This despite the fact that many others did so but couldn't be bothered reporting it.
Your fatal mistake lay in using the word "obviously" which roughly translated means "I didn't think about this very carefully before I posted it."
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...by turning "oh, bugger, that involves much work" into a simple "sorry, it can't be done" by making the task involved much too hard to be reasonable when compared with (say) re-typing a document - kind of like UNIX password recovery if you required cracklib to bless the password in the first place.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It's changing though. We now have customers calling us and saying that they're throwing out Microsoft altogether and they want a Linux solution (we sell software targeted at big business) within weeks or a small number of months. It started as a trickle, but it's building rapidly. Very rapidly. It's kind of like spam was in the mid 90s. It's not a lot yet, but there's a definite pattern forming that's pointing to torrents a couple of years down the track.
Rather than coming using a proprietary DRM solution thought up by Microsoft, we would all be better off using PGP to encrypt your documents. That way, you can protect your information, without locking out other *authorized* users who happen to be using OpenOffice instead of MS Office.
Life's a lot like money-- you spend it, then it's gone. Spend wisely.
and i thought it was "pin headed bastards" the whole time... maybe they are interchangable?
/me installs the latest version of OpenOffice.
In a world without walls and gardens, who needs gates and windows?
You have it quite wrong. DRM is not encryption. It is amazing to me that people so often confuse the two.
Encryption is the art of securing a communication that both parties want secret. An example of encryption is the Pentagon-Kremlin hotline.
DRM is the art of securing a communication that only the sender wants secret. The whole point of DRM is that you are trying to keep the communication from leaking even in the face of an adversarial recipient.
The distinction is a really big deal! It's the whole reason why DRM is so difficult (and, to some, so objectionable).
Disclosure: I work for Microsoft, in the cryptography/anti-piracy/DRM group.
1000th post!
(heh... who knew?)
davejenkins.com |
Money could always play a factor though. Say you've been working on a project for the last serveral years. Something designed to be the 'new hotness' of whatever industry you're working in. Now, let's say that your employer decides to downsize 20% of it's staff across the board, including you. The project is still there, but you are being given a paltry severance package that really doesn't amount to much compared to what your retirement would have allowed for.
You suspect upcoming doom, so you back up whatever bits of the project you can, and take them home. You sell them to a competitor in such a way as to not make the transaction obvious. That would allow for espionage to occur, but even if they suspect you, as long as you maintain absolutely no copies for yourself post-sale, and don't put your payment into your bank account, they might not have much success in figuring out what happened.
It doesn't take much to destroy the desire of an employee to remain honest with a company.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You must have missed the part about there being no backward compatibility. The only people who are going to be able to read your shiny new M$ DOC are people with shiny new M$ OS AND a network connection that can see your shiny new M$ $erver. It's going to be harder than ever to share Microsoft crap. Your impression, that you have any choices, is the false one Microsoft would like you to have.
So is your impression about data secruity. This nice little article shows how Microsoft is going to be watching your every keystroke. Witness the "research pane" that pops up next to your documents with relavent stuff. Microsoft is morphing into the biggest spyware application ever. What else would you expect from people who have always considered your desktop their billboard to be bought and sold?
This is hardly new. We use StarOffice 5.2 at work, and it cannot open password-protected documents from Office 95 or 2000. This is amongst the least problems when using that package in a mixed Office-StarOffice environment.
Eliminate the painful end of things and you will have far fewer problems, large and small.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is an example of why it is dangerous to use proprietary DRM software. If your documents really are so important to you that you need to use DRM software to secure them, it makes even less sense to put so much trust in a single software corporation.
It takes the megacorporation I work for 3 years to roll out a new version of office or windows.
So for 3 years all our suppliers, vendors etc etc will have all DRM docments returned to them, or ignored.
By the time we are ready to use it everyone else will have abandoned it.
Sometimes, humor can fall flat, as my first post did, I suppose. But, becuase of the flame in this response (the obviously comment) I will respond with examples.
In the office 98 version of excell for the mac, if you made a graph, and wanted to change the options, the menu did not show up. If you guessed where it was, and clicked in that area, you could bring up additional dialogue boxes. Since making graphs is a not-trivial and common use of excell, this was obvious.
In MS, to this day, the defult for graphics is to float overtext. This causes an image to "bury" text making it unreadable. On top of this issue, this tends to cause the image not to be anchored to a place in the document, allowing it to wildly alter its position. Perhaps there are a few cases where this is useful, but they escape me. At the very least, this should not be the defult setting. Placing a small graphic in a word processing document is common and obviously not an obscure function.
Lastly, one for the PC. As released, powerpoint in microsoft office xp would spontaneously quit when selecting a link to a different slide in the slide sorter view. Again, this is a function that is one of the major features and uses in powerpoint, and would have been obviously caught by even the most casual user.
I could go on, but more examples would obviously get old. And for the record, I obviously have thought about this for many years, even before I posted it.
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
Call me a cynic, but I've lost count of the number of times that MS forced upgrade cycles were going to be the end of the company.
I've lost count of the number of people that claimed that the internet bubble would break. What ever happened to that?
The tone of the "obviously" comment was merely an echo of your own tone. The guy hadn't "obviously" anything. Instead of "obviously you haven't" can I recommend the less cavalier "is it safe to assume that you haven't?"
Keep up the examples, all very heartening stuff. They're timeless, so it's not obvious that they'd get old. (-:
None of them obviate my point, either; no doubt the MS testing routine for Excel-for-Mac didn't include fiddling with graph options, and the poor overworked tester concerned may simply not have noticed the lack. Click-click... got graphs? Tick... next. Mongolian-horde testing methods aren't necessarily rigorous but they will find stuff that "rational" testing misses.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Do you think that most people will bother with this kind of crap? I don't.
Most offices (small and medium business makes up a great deal of the office space in the USA) don't have the infrastructure to support such a thing as server based DRM. God, most people don't even have a domain or central server, nevermind the fact that a lot of people still run Windows 95.
I've been to three businesses in the last two weeks with NT 3.51 servers, one of them runs Winframe to serve up dos applications. A scary amount of people run Netware 3.12 - only a few have the y2k patch up to 3.2.
The point is, I think it's marketing crap. Most people won't use the DRM stuff. Most people don't even use the password features on documents now, nevermind going to a client server model DRM.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Hmph. Sun has a great reputation and that works wonders. They are in the same league with IBM on that one. Say "Sun" and people think quality and ependability. Say "Microsoft" and people think unethical and poor quality. This is the essence of good marketing. Application sales will come.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Oh no! They're going to put in a feature that allows the user to make documents private to a certain group of people. This will lead to the end of the world!!!
Are you guys kidding me? Do you really think they're going to change the format so all the millions of people have to upgrade? They're not stupid for god sakes. And they've been watching their asses after msblaster and sobig so their not in any position to piss people off this obviously.
With the market as sour as it is now, don't you think they're trying to come up with a real feature that will sell the next version of office and not hold it back. Office XP had almost no real advantages over 2000 and they know that. They know corporations need a damn good reason to upgrade and they believe this might be it.
The idea that this will convince corporations to switch to some open source clone of office is as ridiculous as the panic about this feature. If it takes more than a couple days for the average person in the company to learn the software, then it's costing them more money because of lost productivity. And no, this is not FUD!!!! I hate when I see that remark thrown in whenever someone says how the idea to shift at this current moment may not be the best idea. Well it's not! Give it time. If everyone added a line of meaningful code to an open source project instead of typing the acronym FUD then things would be a lot better.
And the idea of DRM isn't necessarily bad. The only annoying thing about it is that what would take a programmer a half hour to do to get around it would take some idiot judge ten minutes to rule against him because of the laws set up. Don't blame the companies, blame the lawmakers who were paid off to pass the laws.
Amazon got another yet another patent.f d_top
http://news.com.com/2100-1019_3-5070569.html?tag=
All your webforms are belong to Amazon.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I can just see Balmer sprinting up and down the hallways, screaming for everybody to "say nice shit about the fucking company!"...
1. I highly doubt that the average creator of a a word document cares about DRM on their document.
2. Some people may upgrade to Word 2003, but inorder to communicate with those that don't have Word 2003, they will not use DRM. Plus, DRM is not on by default. So there will be no incentive to upgrade.
3. If I use Open Office, Word 2003 users can still read documents that I create. If T need to read a doc that is DRMed, and it is important, the author can send me a copy that is not DRMed.
In the next few years, companies will be looking to cut costs. I don't think very many companies are going to be looking forward to paying more Liscening fees to Microsoft. Especially if users aren't asking for upgrades, as their software already does more than they need it to.
Also, about them creating a plugin for to view DRM in EI. If that isn't a Monopolistic practice, I don't know what is. "As long as you run our Operating System and use our browser, you can view DRMed documents. If you do have the rights to view the document, but don't use our software, screw you".
I really don't see any problem with Open Office providing the same DRM functionallity as Word, as long as they are only letting those viewers whom are supposed to see the document see it. Keep in mind that they haven't DRMed the DRM algorithm.
None of this seems to me to be anything bad, it is just a way of controlling who has ready access to documents. While reading the comments, I thought about how it could be implemented as an open source system. If I get free time I may look into prototyping it. Here's what I've come up with so far:
You will need three components generally:
A server-side daemon
This tracks what documents are registered against it, who should be allowed to use it and when and so on. It stores the private keys of the documents, and also public keys of all the potential users. When a user requests a document, it issues a challenge, which they encrypt with their public key, and send back. This is how it knows the user is valid (unless their key has been stolen). It then sends the key that allows the document to be decrypted, assuming all the rights are OK.
A client-side daemon
This is less important, and could probably be removed entierly, but will do caching and allow things like offline access. It acts as an intermediate between the local application and the main server. It will cache the keys and so on, for the time period that they are allowed. It may also store user credentials for a while, so that passwords don't have to be reentered. Ideally, the user password will decrypt the key used for authentication against the main server.
A client-side application
This is the application, OpenOffice, or whatever. When it wants to open a locked document, it goes through the process of asking the client-side daemon for a key. The daemon either replies with the key, or queries the user for a password and then returns the key. This may involve asking the server for the key if it has never been queried before.
This is just off the top of my head, and there are a lot of details missing. What it won't protect against is someone who legitimatly has access to the document running off with it, but it would make it very difficult for anyone to see it who wasn't supposed to have access to it. If desired, you could also have flags for 'no printing', etc, but they would have to be respected by the application so couldn't be relied upon.
One other thing that may be of interest from this is that there sometimes may be no need to distribute an entire document, just a token, and if the person tries to access the token, the latest version of the document is fetched from the server. This could be another way of dealing with dynamic documents.
I might look into this further some time. If you are interested, email me, and I'll find a place to document stuff.
You obviously don't have a lot of experience using a version of office that is more than one behind. If you had, you would realize that this is a very common strategy for M$. OpenOffice is a lot more compatible opening office XP documents than Office 2000 is. I have no statistics to prove this, but I speak from experience as some one who frequently has to try and open Instructors documents that were made in Office XP. -> Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
If a nation publishes a law in a format which I cannot legally read except by purchasing a specific product, and I refuse to make that purchase, how can I be expected to obey the law?
The example in the story of a senior director wanting to keep the 5 year business plan so only he can read it can surely more flexibly and easly be done by giving him an encrypted partition for his home directory.
would anyone notice?
My boss was the principle in an engineering firm (bridges, HVAC, etc) and worked on Insurance cases also. If he had to send files out to clients, lawyers, engineers he did it in one way: Burn it as a PDF to CD. It made it impossible to alter. Then he knew exectly what had been sent out.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
To all the students and dropouts commenting smugly from their parents' basement about how this is a step too far, please join the real world. Having just gone through a security audit from a potential technology partner, I can tell you here and now that corporate security teams the world over are wetting their pants at the prospect of this. By the end of this year, "Is all your internal documentation protected by Windows Rights Management?" will be a standard question. By the end of 2004, it will be a prerequisite to doing business in the corporate world. Given the embarrassment of riches of, uh, embarrassment of leaked government documents, it will also catch on in USKA government as well.
Academia and some (read: German) governments will drag their heels over this, but the clock is ticking in the corporate world. If Sun decides to reverse engineer this and try and do it in Star Office, they'll have to fight it under the interporerability clause of the DMCA. Under those circumstances, do you think they'll just gift the source to OpenOffice?
Tick. Tock.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I, for one, do not welcome our new Microsoft overlords!
Martin,
....
...) encrypted data as the private citizen. They get paid the big-bucks and are the responsible parties in organizations.
I agree "Because placing the master key for something outside of the control of the entity for which it's intended to be used weakens the system tremendously."
I strongly agree, the entity (business, government, private citizen) should retain the "Master-Key", but they (CEO, CIO, or CTO) should be legally (they must decrypt) and criminally (they may attempt to obstruct justice) held responsible when documents needed for an investigation are made unavailable on a valid ruse.
The ruse being: (1) that person no longer works here, (2) we updated all our encryption products and lost access to the data purported to exist. (3) There is no discoverable/readable/searchable proof that such a document ever existed, (4)
I like my personal PGP PKI keys, but if I (private citizen with private key) tried to prevent access to information required for a criminal investigation, then I would go to jail (obstruction of justice and contempt of court) until I provided (unencrypted) access to the data.
I am not sure, but it looks to me like information that may be needed by the public and/or justice system may vanish when it is critically needed.
So, I do not want to weaken the encryption tools/methods. No business, agency, institution should trust another with internal security. However, business, government, and institutions corporate officers/bosses need to be held as accountable/responsible for their (employees, sub-offices,
OldHawk777
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
can any of us wait until the next import into the software market comes from China? if the Asians can make better cars, and import them and sell them, it is only a matter of time before MS becomes like the Big 3 auto companies and has to battle for it's life. then, GM and whoever is left will say, ...send me your quote on your least costly software package and we will evaluate which one to use as our standard worldwide.
seems like a lower revenue stream to me ...
DRM won't affect secrecy, though it is likely to amount in lost productivity among legitimate users trying to open documents. This is for two reasons. First, Microsoft can do what they want with your data and they have the keys. Second, they have such a bad track record for security that it will pretty much be only legitimate users who will be affected.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
This could actually be a big opportunity for open source to seize the initiative.
.Net with a remote database?)
I have seen various programs that act as add-ons to MS-Office, e.g. footnoting software that gives Word the ability to have a decent referencing system for use in proper academic and legal documents (called EndNote or something). Is there any reason why we couldn't write an open source DRM standard and then implement an Office plugin to provide functionality for MS users? I can think of a few benefits:
- there is an incentive for people to use a system that is transparent and therefore free from MS shenanigans
- there is a very big incentive for business to use a standard that all of their partners/suppliers/employers/customers can also use irrespective of their OS and software configuration
- people love the word 'free'
- an open source standard could easily be implemented to run on practically any system, whereas MS's system will no doubt require very specific MS networking/security protocols to be installed and configured (ever tried to use
- and most of all, open source cannot win battles it is not in. We must comprehend that we are not talking about the 'DRM v no DRM' battle any more, we are talking about the 'MS Secret DRM v Open DRM' battle. We can't win that if we don't have a contender, and by contender I mean a contender that people running Windows with Office can use. People who think we can just say, this whole thing sucks, we don't want DRM at all, are dreaming if they think that will stop it from happening. What we need is to seize the initiative and create a version of DRM that is the best option for business and individuals. Furthermore, we can't stick with Linux and hope that enough people switch to let us win - there must be a focus on fighting MS with open source on its own turf, the Windows family of OSs.
Now we just need someone to actually do it...
Read Pynchon.
I have noticed is that there are ALOT of people that flat out just do not know that there are "alternatives" to M$ orfice such as OpenOffice, staroffice, koffice, etc..etc...
maybe educating people that the M$ way isn't the only way would be a *decent* start to helping these other products get more *mainstream* acceptance.
iF yOu WAnT to C YOUr iP agaIn gAThEr tWO MilLIon dOLLArS IN Non - cONsEcuTivE TweNtY's AnD AWaiT FuRThER iNstrUctIoN
I'm giving up on Slashdot. Even raising the rating to 5 doesn't rid the discussion of a bunch of Anti-Microsoft garbage. Talk about FUD...this whole discussion is nothing but FUD against Microsoft. I've been reading Slashdot probably as long as anyone, and I've finally given up trying to find the few sane intelligent posts amongst all the garbage. Anymore the standard News article is--A link to an Anti-Microsoft article, followed by 400 replies from idiots that never read the article and never used the Microsoft product they are talking about.
Where (website) has the sane intelligent discussions gone? Please enlighten me, and I'm there.
Yea, verily, Microsoft's new software is the Second Coming. Bow down! You have nothing to lose but your freedom. And money. And patience.
Just imagine the backlash that will come from inter-company communication via Excel and Word.
:)
Since Microsoft want a good revenue generator maybe in the future you will need a special licence to exchange office format docs
If you recieve an e-mail with a DRM-controlled attachment, reply saying that DRM is not widely supported outside of that specific version of Office and that people (regardless of wealth) should not be expected to shell out $500 for someone else's benefit.
This is why the arrogance behind IE-only websites or Word-only HR depeartments is painfully frustrating. The people who demand Microsoft Word attachments are saying that the barrier to entry for employment, for example, is that the candidate must first demonstrate an ability to spend money needlessly, travel needlessly to a public unsecured terminal, or needlessly and illegally use their present employer's software.
The convenience of the "World Wide" Web was not intended for this abuse. There should not be this brand of elitism in an environment whose sole purpose was to eliminate those barriers!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I read a book about a runaway jury who refused to convict or some such thing based on the jury's feeling/belief that a law (DMCA in this case) did not apply or was unjust... Naah never happen in this country.
;-(
;-)
In the US property rights (DMCA=IP Rights) are sacrosanct and where normal individuals don't own even the right to read/view purchased or licensed 'content' in the living room, bathroom, bedroom, workplace with the device of their choice.
At some point I would hope folks (including corporations) will get fed up with being told what is good for them, how much it will cost and just paying the bill.... again and again...
But again I suppose that idea is more than a little utopian. We've been following MS (and by tactics RIAA, MPAA, and others) around like sheeple for 20+ years now. MS Office with DRM sounds more than a little like the judas goat bell ringing. Dinner bell for the rich kid in Redmond I suppose. All to feed the mavens of tech stocks with no long term intrinsic value. MS has yet to deliver ANYTHING innovative or of lasting value. Sheeple will continue to buy this trash though.
I'm voting with my feet... straight to the likes of staroffice, openoffice, thinkfree, etc. If my company goes, they will get my communique's in simple text, or RTF.
mdw
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, you made several very good observations !
I'm still of the mind that this is just a big marketing/buzzword thing. It's only a (very) lightweight solution to the document management/security issue, and yet requires a fair amount of capital costs, is an administrative nightmare (God forbid the untrained masses actually start using the thing), locks your content into M$ forever (see Subscription Model), and will probably generate more problems in the real world than it solves.
I can imagine a couple very specific uses (HR forms) but no broad appeal. In fact, I would be very surprised if you don't see them adverstising to Enterprise customers that there is a way to prevent it's use (which I'm certain our finacial services co. would require).
Thanks again, Dave
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Presumably all this only makes sense if we can't print or copy and paste unless the DRM says so. Cripes.
At the moment when I print from any application on my Mac I can save as PDF. Will this be disabled in Office? Will the equivalent (Adobe Acrobat Distiller / PDFWriter) be disabled as well?
It seems to me that DRM should be handled at OS level and work on documents and directories rather than file formats (obviously this might not suit Microsoft's plans to lock us in to Office). Yes, this means that I can drag a document out of a directory if I have access to it, but fundamentally, if I can open the document I can do stuff to it that you may not want me to -- just as I can play a Windows Media audio file into an analog tape recorder no matter what DRM is on it.