Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Can't DRM Docs Fast Enough
grcumb writes "As part of the DoJ Anti-trust settlement, Microsoft was ordered to provide freely available documentation for its communications protocols. InfoWorld is reporting that not only are they late in delivering the required APIs, but it's because they want to convert everything to the read-only Web Archive (MHT) format, which can only be viewed in MSIE. InfoWorld reports that, "In July, Microsoft said it would complete revisions of the documentation required by the court in the autumn, a season generally reckoned to include the months of September, October and November in North America, but may now have to extend work on a beta or test version of the new documentation into December...." So we have to wait longer for a format that makes the content harder for developers (developers! developers!) to use. Maybe they didn't read the documentation ..."
RFC 2557: MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML)
There's a Mozilla KB entry about MHTML support and open bugs for load and save (IDs 18764 and 40873; bugzilla won't accept links from Slashdot). Plus the maf extension to support MHTML.
Duh! Being Microsoft, they had to make things harder for developers to use. After all, if they made it easy, it would be a Macintosh.
I am shocked
Or are they just trying to look slick?
The opposite of progress is congress
Ermmm yeah. What part of "freely available" means available only in MSIE?
The (Developers! Developers!) reference is about the Steve Ballmer Monkey Boy Dance.
to slither itself out of something they don't want to do but are ordered to b delays and tactics like this...they are supposed to make things freely avalable thats something they dont want to do but tey have to so they make it as much of a pain in the ass as posible for everyone...too bad the system is more bueracracy and less common sense...
Well thats ok then. Now where's that format? Oh www.microsoft.com/download/mht-fileformat.mht .....
Microsoft said it would complete revisions of the documentation required by the court in the autumn, a season generally reckoned to include the months of September, October and November in North America, but may now have to extend work on a beta or test version of the new documentation into December..
Actually winter normally does not officially commence until around December 22nd. So they are quite within a reasonable timeframe to complete it in early December and still be done in autumn.
If the judge demands that the documentation for Microsoft APIs is open an available for everyone, how is delivering said documentation in a form that only IE can read, meeting the judge demands?
The current government is a
1) Republican administration
2) To which Microsoft was the third largest corporate donor.
This means that things like Department of Justice orders from *previous* administrations don't count.
May we never see th
Microsoft's policy is that all downloadable documents and specifications etc. should be signed, so you can verify that the document hasn't been tampered with. Usually they implement that by embedding a word document in an (signed) Windows executable. MHT seems to be an improvement.
...that they would get a contempt of court citation, but they deserve it.
None of this corporate nonsense will end, and it will continue to get worse and worse, until the law is readjusted to reflect that only named individual human beings have personal rights. Corporations avoid a lot of "guilt" by hiding behind the artificial person legal construct. It's beyond loony, was insane when it was aquired, now it's out of control and has lead to defacto fascism, let's call it what it is.
And I blame the law/justice/court system just as much in this mess as the corporations.
"Microsoft" should have never gone to trial, it should have been named humans, completely responsible for their decisions.
Here's a thought, a mass protest by millions of people having a nationwide "incorporation day", flood the system with incorporation papers and lawsuits, a tidal wave of paperwork shuffling, patent applications, copyright registrations, and so on and so forth. Get every human to be part of their own friends and family corporation, watch the system grind to a halt, THEN maybe we'll get some change. Take every single tax break corporations get, fill out the paperwork. Why should they get all the tax break perks, and avoid personal responsibility? Sue the pants off of every large existing corporation out there, find little picyaune laws you can use. Patent everything possible, no matter how obscure. Challenge "no warranty" EULAS in small claims court all over. Serve every PHB out there with papers detailing your employment status, make them sign off to you on every single decision. They balk, sue em. Hand your own puchase contract to every shopkeeper out there when you go to buy something, demand they sign it for the sale.
They want stupid, inane, ridiculous, society choking crap busywork and laws I say give it to 'em!
Completely drown them in their own corporate/governmental/so called "legal system" paperwork BS.....
If MS has to provide freely available documentation, and the documentation they provide is only accessable using IE....doesn't this mean that MS should provide me with a free Windows license if I choose to develop my Windows software on a Linux workstation? :)
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Don't we just need one machine on the net somewhere to which we can...
Not if it gets Slashdotted.
" I'm not sure what the article is talking about" - then READ it. You would find the following:
.mht file and the signed publishing license into a file called a compound file. This file, which has an .rmh file extension, is used by the Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer to permit viewing of RMS-protected content in Internet Explorer. For more information, see Compound Files. You can use your own format if you are not using the add-on."
from Microsoft: "The Web application puts both the encrypted
The antitrust suit from burst.com or whoever they are and the article recently mentioned pretty-much says it all with regards to Microsoft tactics.
They are like children always trying to slither and wriggle their way out of things. It's disgusting and dishonorable. What's worse is that the court system seems to tollerate it all too often. I'm not a lawyer which is probably why I have a pretty clear picture of "right and wrong" in this.
Basically, the court ordered them to do something and they failed to comply. The court should take action and not accept excuses. Freely available is freely available -- locking it down through format is not freely available and NOT what the court intended.
It's signed with an IE only rights management plugin. So where's the freely availiable source code to their garbage browser and rights plugin that will make this document freely availiable as per the terms of the court order?
What's wrong with text/plain or text/html anyway?
"The plaintiffs have three main areas of concern about the documentation.
First among these is that Microsoft, asked to open up and document the interfaces to its communication protocols for licensees, has chosen to issue the documentation in a rights-protected file format called MHT, readable only with its own Web browser, Internet Explorer. This means licensees can neither annotate nor effectively search the information, according to the plaintiffs. "
I saw that metadata and I must admit that seeing the last 10 authors, the fact that MS folks had crashed no less than 2 times in the document itself, and seeing the revealed tracked changes that showed up again as a result of the corrupting document was a real hoot. Apparently the folks at Microsoft were somewhat horrified...
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult. -Whitton
Rights-Managed HTML, yet another MS proprietary method to "embrace and extend" a known open standard.
RMH is a subformat of Microsoft's Rights Management System (tm). Yes, that's right, it's called RMS . How's that for doublespeak?
I believe this is probably the first shot over the bow... so to speak. I see this, and other M$oft tactics, as a sign that they are getting ready to use the DMCA (and hopefully the IDUCE act if it *GASP* get's passed) to bully the wayward explorers that have moved away from them to the Open Source Initiative. They will end up wrapping EVERY file that is created through their programs in some for of DRM/File Encryption so that they can sue the pants of anyone who writes an import program, like Open Office and all the other Office "Compatible" suites. I think this is a step in the wrong direction that needs to be stopped before Microsoft has the right to deny the CIA or the President the right to view a document simply because it was created by Microsoft Word and they want to view it in open office.
The really scarry part... All the above coupled with "Trusted Computing" and you no longer own anything you create, you no longer own a "lifetime" license to the software you purchased, hell you don't even really OWN your hardware at that point............
And people wonder why geeks view M$oft as such a bad company. It's a perfect example of the damage that can be done by an entity that has a monopoly on the system.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Just because you don't pay money, doesn't mean it's free.
...oh, wait.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever read...
Reminds me: My dad was a missionary to various countries in South America -- he spoke fluent Spanish. One day a fellow preacher came by, from the US (Estados Unidos), to give a grand Protestant sermon to the mostly Catholic-born natives. The title of his sermon (in English): "The Difference Between Righteousness by Faith and Justification by Faith". (Yes, humans often quibble over the finest of details.)
He had to take a seat, aghast and flabbergasted, after just ten minutes into his 90-minute sermon, when his translator (mi papa) explained to him that, in Spanish, there is only one word (Justicia) for his two words, Justification and Righteousness.
Freedom, sir... I'll take Freedom over Free, any day.