Microsoft Prepares Office Lock-in 1127
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."
The straw that broke the PHB's back? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
Netscape and legal precedent. (Score:2, Interesting)
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but wouldn't that be some sort of precedent here?
wait a minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The straw that broke the PHB's back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Circumvention allowed for interoperability (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mostly FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, and as such it seems entirely stupid. So the executive flying to L.A. won't be able to access the documents while on a 4-hour flight. Nor will he be able to do so from the hotel unless they open up the firewall to let him access the authentication server--something that seems inherently dangerous considering it's Microsoft we're talking about. Employees may not be able to work from home or in the evening for the same reason. If you send the document to an external consultant or a client it's going to be a major hassle to give them access--short of saving a version with no access restrictions.
If Microsoft is going to implement DRM in their Office platform, this is the way we want them to do it. It seems like a pretty stupid way to implement it that's going to cause more problems than it's going to solve. And if by implementing this DRM and showing consumers just how inconvenient it is the consumers learn that DRM is not their friend, all kind of Microsoft plans may go down the toilet.
Depends, I guess (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Re:The straw that broke the PHB's back? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?)
Time to eliminate the M$ Office cruft (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Interoperability is protected by DMCA (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interoperability is protected by DMCA (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:I for one... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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
Would it really be a DMCA violation? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:I don't see the problem here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of the ways that you can defeat this scheme:
* Print out the document and send it however you like.
* Take screenshots and send the images as JPEGs.
* Use the built-in fax modem to fax it somewhere.
* Copy the text into the clipboard and paste it into another app.
The exploits are endless. You'd have to cripple the entire operating system while the document is open.
I needn't contemplate the absurdity of Microsoft trying to get into the information-security business. Obviously, that's not their goal. Even if it were, it will frequently be at odds with their function of providing a usable operating system.
- David Stein
Ah-ha! Not so fast... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Yes, I know it's silly, but anyway.)
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
OpenOffice ready (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:not by default... (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore, what's the interplay between NTFS permissions, Share permissions, and these new DRM permissions? That's a lot of permissions to manage. Do I have to set these permissions from inside Word or can I do it in the Finder (Whoops. I mean Explorer. Man how'd that happen?)
Every place I've been, the Finance people already have restricted access to sensitive documents. It's in a folder called "Finance" that only they have access to.
This lock won't keep anyone out (Score:3, Interesting)
And from there, the DOM should let you get at all the content.
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.
I can't wait (Score:1, Interesting)
Wouldn't that be a systems administrators worse nightmare. Seems like only a matter of time before somthing like this could happen given Microsoft's shitty history with regards to security.
Or am I missing somthing ?
Re:Only when the document creator chooses to lock (Score:1, Interesting)
There are various hacks out there that crack the passwords in MS Office files from 95 up until Office XP. I use Passware, but you can find free ones if you google for them.
Microsoft's password protection is shittastic!
It will never work (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:The straw that broke the PHB's back? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [washingtonpost.com] 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.
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.
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?
Re:DMCA Violation - Not in my NSHO. (Score:3, Interesting)
Circumvention is illegal, regardless of who owns the copyright, or if there even is a copyright (ie : an encrypted public domain work).
2. Opening a document gievn to them by the copyright holder, in which they have been granted express use of the document.
We buy DVDs under a licence to view them. That would seem to imply that the copyright holder has granted us permission to view them. Yet decrypting DVDs, regardless of the motive, seems to be illegal.
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.
I concur && mod parent up (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:I don't see the problem here. (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if this "feature request" was generated by the execs at Arthur Andersen or Enron???
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.
Re:Mostly FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
The next time MS gets sued, how many of the documents subpoenaed will (via DRM expiry etc.) be unobtainable by the other party?
Microsoft would never win this suit (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Tempest in a Teapot (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:That'll be true for a while. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That'll be true for a while. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't see the problem here. (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of you people never cease to amaze me with your anti-Microsoft FUD. I'm no Microsoft fan but some of your responses here are laughable. Look it's not going to come turned on by default and if you want to use the DRM you're going to need a server. The server requirement pretty much ensures that joe-six pack (who gets office bundled with his PC) is never going to use it. Offices where users take documents home to work on aren't going to use it.
Sane IT professionals won't bother with it. I would never trust my information to a Microsoft DRM enabled format that requires an authentication server. Can you imagine what will happen when the inevitable bug / worm / virus totally screws up the server and causes all of the authentication information to be lost. Everyone in the office is locked out of their documents for a day while the authentication server is brought back up. Especially after the hassle that was Blaster and SoBig, the last thing a sane IT department would do is implement Microsoft DRM that requires an authentication server to be up and running to open documents.
This is hardly a plot by Microsoft to lock users into the Office format. If DRM didn't require a server, was enabled by default and Clippy urged you to use it, then I'd be suspicious. As it stands now it appears to be a feature that was made to appeal to certain departments within large business and it will no doubt prove to be more trouble than it's worth.
Re:I don't see the problem here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you not read that part of the plan?
http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/pa
Re:Mostly FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're mentioning that in reference to such things as legally establishing a timeline (patent prior-art, copyright, etc), an IP lawyer once told me it doesn't work. It might if you have a tamper-proof envelope, but otherwise it won't hold up.
Processed log food is shit (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Stop and get a grip everyone (Score:1, Interesting)
I am not a Microsoft groupie (goes back to installing Linux)
The Caching Issue (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Then OpenOffice.org should implement it FIRST (Score:5, Interesting)
OOo people, do you copy me? (pun intended)
Re:That'll be true for a while. (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand all the uproar, but I seriously think this isn't going to have as big an impact as people are predicting. As an editor, I have to send documents back and forth. Rights management doesn't mean squat to me; I have contracts to protect my rights. If an author sells something I own, he's out of work. If it's really serious, I sue him. I don't need to have any of that nonsense built into my word processor -- all I need to do is edit documents, and those documents will regularly trade hands between all sorts of people before I'm done.
I imagine the real audience MS is targeting with the DRM stuff is the "enterprise" customer -- somebody with sensitive documents that are supposed to stay within the enterprise, and not get leaked out to other people. This is a specialized application with a specialized audience. If you want to use Microsoft Word to write documents that other people can read, you'll still be able to do that. Hell, if you're that worried, have Word save them as RTF.
Maybe Not.... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [slashdot.org]
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.
Re:Interoperability is protected by DMCA (Score:5, Interesting)
I have just been bitten by an ebook wielding website that I subscribed to before realizing the format they used. It required rebooting into Windows, using IE and installing Acrobat 6 to even download the data from their site. Acrobat 6 blocked most attempts to print to pdf etc, but I finally got PS output by installing an HP PS printer on the FILE: port. ps2pdf under Linux refused to convert the file citing redistillation not allowed. I'm hoping good old ghostscript will work, but I will have to tinker with that later tonight. In short, it's been a MAJOR PAIN IN THE FUCKING ASS to use a portion of a book that I have paid money for outside of a single program made by a single company on a single OS on a single PC. Welcome to DRMworld.
This shit will almost certainly hurt MS in the long run. That's the _only_ beauty in it that I can see so far.
Re:The Caching Issue (Score:3, Interesting)
But that requires fixing the people in an organization, usually starting at the top of the organization. Whereas the people at the top of the organization prefer to fix the software in the organization, and are more than happy to give Microsoft their company's money.
Besides, any "encryption" that Microsoft uses will surely have some form of key escrow, either for the companies who lose all the information on their server, for companies who have a rogue admin who deletes all access information, or for the government when it has to investigate a company for "national security concerns".
Re:Mostly FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Illegal only in the US. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is all from memory; should be easy to document.
Microsoft has lost most of its major court cases.
Re:Illegal only in the US. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I don't see the problem here. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They can do this now... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe not a DCMA issue.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.....
Re:Interoperability is protected by DMCA (Score:3, Interesting)
about the Microsoft not being the copyright owner, you have an interesting point that I hadn't considered. That makes things complicated beyond my understanding of this law.
When you purchase a DVD you have the right to watch the movie and special features contained on that disc, and install and run any "enhanced DVD" software on one computer.
Additionally, you have the right to give up all your rights and transfer them to another individual.
A DVD player is able to decrypt the DVD using a complicated algorithm to determine the encryption key.
DVD players are NOT circumvention devices for a very important reason:
They have entered an agreement with the DVD copyright holder (or, in reality, its authorized agent) to be allowed to access the disk for the single purpose of playing DVDs in the manner that the copyright holder allows.
Remember that the encrypted disk / decrypting DVD player combination together make up the "access control scheme" that controls who can do what with a DVD where and when.
The DMCA does not say that it is not permissible to create a device capable of accessing a protected medium, but that nobody may create a device which circumvents an access-control scheme.
Three reasons the Office 2003 will flop (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Then OpenOffice.org should implement it FIRST (Score:2, Interesting)
Using Kerebos (or somethine similar) as the basis for the server, and PGP to implement encription. All Open source stuff needed is already available. When integrated there are all known working parts and the internal structure can stay the same.
I'll try to make this point to the Open Office community. I hope you'll find an 'encription' incubator in the near future...
Re:Then OpenOffice.org should implement it FIRST (Score:3, Interesting)
I was rolling on the floor the first time I saw this. So much for wannabee DRM strategies in Macromedia presentations.
DRM won't affect secrecy, just hassle (Score:2, Interesting)
A strategy for OpenOffice/OpenSource... (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:Then OpenOffice.org should implement it FIRST (Score:3, Interesting)
Yet another indication that DRM is a bad idea. If proper implementation of DRM requires closed-source, then one has to wonder if it also requires revoking the First Amendment, too.
Enough will be enough ... thanks! ;-( (Score:2, Interesting)
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