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Microsoft Prepares Office Lock-in
Posted by
michael
on Tue Sep 02, 2003 12:27 PM
from the stupid-business-lining-up-to-lock-themselves-in dept.
from the stupid-business-lining-up-to-lock-themselves-in dept.
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."
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Hmph! (Score:5, Funny)
Who's with me?
Anyone?
Re:Hmph! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Office lock-in? (Score:5, Funny)
Interoperability is protected by DMCA (Score:5, Informative)
Jay (=
Re:Interoperability is protected by DMCA (Score:5, Informative)
If it was possible for a user who shouldn't have access to a file to use another application to read it, then that app would be in violation of the DMCA because it is a circumvention device.
If it respected all the DRM nonsense, then it would probably fall under the interoperability portion of the law. At least that's the way I read it.
Parent
Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
not by default... (Score:5, Informative)
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'?
Only when the document creator chooses to lock it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
wait a minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Disgruntled employees (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
"Problem?" (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it's so damn irritating when your customers pay you for something, and then expect to continue using it.
It's actually important to do this. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's actually important to do this. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about your area, but I think that a number of the bigger law firms around here (such as Torys [torys.ca]) has all their documents stored in PDF format. If they need to prevent changes, it's a simple matter to sign the document before sending it anywhere.
Parent
Re:It's actually important to do this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be silly. This can easily be done already. PGP sign and/or encrypt your documents, and your clients can verify they get there intact, and only authorized recipients can read them.
Or did you want your clients not changing them? Wait, same deal applies. You've got the original signature, anyone who gets the document can verify it's in its original state.
Hint: when you give the data to someone, you can't restrict what they do with it. I don't mean it in terms of a rights, just simple physics. Grandiose complex schemes like this one are easy targets; if you rely on them, when they break, you're in trouble. Litigation won't make secrets secret again, or undo damages.
Parent
Circumvention allowed for interoperability (Score:5, Interesting)
Very stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Very stupid (Score:5, Funny)
It would have been satire but I couldn't keep up the facade.
-bort
Parent
Most (99%?) people, regrettably, won't care... (Score:5, Interesting)
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?)
Office 2003 DRM: It's Very Cool and Not Insidious (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
DRM will be the exception, not the default (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:DRM will be the exception, not the default (Score:5, Funny)
C:\>chmod -R 777
'chmod' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
C:\>
be a bit more helpful next time.
Parent
Business Orientated Positive Feature (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Ah-ha! Not so fast... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Yes, I know it's silly, but anyway.)
DRM for business documents is a valuable tool (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Change the headline. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
You wish. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Embrace, Extend, Register with the DMCA. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
How to short-circuit this (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Whaa??? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Mostly FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Put away the aluminized headgear. This is not an anti-consumer technology, or even a consumer-oriented one.
Parent
Re:Mostly FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to ensure that older versions of Office or Word cannot read a DRM restricted document, they have to make it "incompatible" in some way. If they do that by having a few fields that will choke older programs, it still won't do anything to prevent developers of other office productivity software from making it readable in theirs. So Microsoft will almost certainly have to encrypt the document, and serve up the key from the DRM server (using a proprietary protocol, of course). That encryption is involved makes it the kind of rights-restricting scheme the DMCA makes illegal to re-engineer. And don't think Microsoft doesn't know this; they are not dumb. They will try to do at least as much as they can get away with (and perhaps more, which we can then pounce on). Be sure you use the word "interoperability" more, now.
My big fear is that this new protocol and server will be full of the kinds of bugs that Microsoft traditionally puts in new software expecting the public to help them debug it. Imagine the impact when people assume this DRM will protect their confidential documents (such as health records, bank records, and such), and stop using other methods. In a few years we'll see lots of these documents not only cracked, but cracked via the internet en masse. Oh the horror.
Parent
Re:Mostly FUD (Score:5, Informative)
I was there at TechEd 2003 when a VP of Verisign took the stage during the keynote address and announced these features.
It is not dumb client-server authentication. It is a public key encryption package. You need access to a centralized server for typical key management operations, including looking up the public keys of parties with whom you have not communicated in the past.
However you will certainly be able to access the documents in a disconnected fashion, as long as your local keystore contains the right information.
Oh and at the time they also announced that the USPS would be supporting a stamping feature for this. Just like today, you can take a document and send it through the mail (to yourself) just to get it stamped with the current date. The USPS will digitally stamp the document with their current date/time. They didn't go into details on how this would work, but I imagine it's a typical hash/signature style function...
Parent
Re:Mostly FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think MS doesn't even use their own software? Their executives spend a lot of time jetting around the world for various reasons, be they business, lobbying, or vacation. I doubt they would be so short-sighted as to not put some method of permission caching in place. Personally, I see this being used in corporate law departments and in R&D divisions, where the ability to lock people out of something even if they do have possession of it would be invaluable.
Besides, if it's hard to use or if there's not a real need for it, people simply won't use it. A lot of features get his treatment -- how many places do you know of that have even tried to implement the shared editing features?
Parent
Re:Mostly FUD (Score:5, Interesting)
Most corporate-secret theft or destruction cases are an inside job. Competent IT staff (such as the kind that companies large enough to have valuable secrets can afford... not that they do, but they *can*) can, reasonably well, lock down a network from intrusion.
The much harder, and more common, problem is with ex-employees or unfaithful employees sending documents and secrets to competitors. Any scheme intended to squelch this is entirely defeated if permissions are cached.
- David Stein
Parent
That'll be true for a while. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
I don't see the problem here. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
An end to Whistleblowers... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Parent
Re:An end to Whistleblowers... (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, Kenneth Lay didn't have a clue what was going on in Enron (or so his PR firm says) - what makes you think he'd be smart enough to use this feature?
Parent
They can do this now... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:I don't see the problem here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The straw that broke the PHB's back? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:The straw that broke the PHB's back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:The straw that broke the PHB's back? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The straw that broke the PHB's back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:The straw that broke the PHB's back? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:I swear... (Score:5, Funny)
Grammar the other hand is no proper checking way.
Parent
Re:out of the water (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, what the hell does Linux have to do w/Anti-DRM and people switching? Linus has specifically stated that he has no opinion either way. If you want it, woo, if not, woo. People aren't sick and tired of DRM and it's not BS (no matter what "we" think)
Linux is taking a foothold because other software companies have expensive software.
You think that an alternative to Office is going to help? There have been alternatives (Corel, etc) did it matter? Do you think because they are creating a new version of Office it will render the other files incompatible? That would be really really dumb for MS to do (no ability to bring in your old stuff? retype? what?)
The only reason for a switch is PRICE. Honestly, no matter what bullshit people spread on here about how good OO, SO, etc, are, they aren't what MSO offers. Not even close.
Until the OO, SO, etc, get some strong following and somehow create something better than Office, no one is going to care unless it is money related and even then, I doubt a few hundred dollars is going to matter...
Just my worthless
Parent
Surely you jest? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent