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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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...
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.
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
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
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.
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.
...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
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.
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.
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.
...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?
Either that or forbid upgrading. This could have the opposite effect that MS is hoping for. Some companies may instate a rule requiring the use of Office NO NEWER than Office XP or something.
Our company did something similar for a while. We were developing with Visual Studio 4.2 because 5.0 sucked rocks, and we couldn't buy 4.2 anymore, so we bought copies of 5.0 for new people and installed 4.2, leaving the 5.0's unopened on the shelf.
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.
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.
(Yes, I know it's silly, but anyway.)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
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!
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
"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.
...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
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.
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
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.
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 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.
The dictionary is your friend, and it doesn't make you wait 20 seconds to see your result.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
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
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.
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.
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)
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."
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.
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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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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.
And how do you know they're using pirated copies? Does the word document's headers contain anything special that says as much? No, it doesn't.
Like it or not, piracy is good for software vendors. The more people you have using it, the more mainstream it becomes.
After everyone's hooked, you move to a registration scheme similar to XP's (take Adobe for example -- the next version of PhotoShop).
Unless and until GPL applications with the same features (and ease-of-use) come along, people are going to stick to what they know. No GPL application will have an easy fight getting users of pirated software to convert. By the time the GPL program is out, the users are used to the other application's menu structure and use. Unless said application mirrors the pirated program exactly, people will resist changing.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
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.
Many times I have been sat at my desk and read something that is internally confidential to my company posted on an external web site... this is hugely damaging for the company and it's reputation. As a senior exec I would buy off on anything that allows me to keep my confidential information confidential.
Somehow, someway stuff will get leaked. Its inevitible. Whether it be by accident, carelessness or malice - it'll get leaked.
Sure, this'll slow it down. But how much do you want to bet that MS will offer MSDN users tools to break the docs? How long before some CEO or CIO forgets his/her password and needs to get into a protected doc?
It'll happen. And when it does, the info will make it out. This is simply a band-aid.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
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.
Your sig:
LinuxSecurity - All the Linux vulnerabilities Slashbots don't want you to see
You are such a troll! Most of those vulnerabilities are for applications! Many of them are just freaking bug reports! If Microsoft was held responsible for all the non-Microsoft applications then you'd be comparing apples with apples.
GNU/Linux distros include all those applications. But you don't have to install them!
Take a minimal Windows install and a minimal Debian GNU/Linux install. Or take a Windows box and load up a selection of applications from various vendors and a selection of stuff from downloads.com, and compare it with a reasonably complete Debian install. Then I will be able to take your criticisms seriously. As it is, you are overly critical.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
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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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?!
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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 ----
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
... 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
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.
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)
Esquire generally just means "Gentleman." That is, I am a gentleman. Versus being a crass slob or something. Attorneys use it because they have such a bad reputation in this world, adding Esq to their name tries to cover that up. Just like when a news channel says "Fair & Balanced." you know that they are trying to cover something up.
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.
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.
"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 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
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.
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.
Their real reason for DRM in Office...
To stop the Halloween Documents from leaking year after year!
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Googling for pdf_sec.ps along with "Adobe" or whatnot should give you more info.
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.
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 :)
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).
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...
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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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