Microsoft intros Anti-Trustworthy Computing - DRM aims to kill piracy and competition (& more!)

THERE MUST BE some confusion about what digital rights management (DRM) means. Steve Ballmer has decided that people need to know more about the topic, even though it has been with us for a good few years now, he has sent out an email missive to the masses. The Vole itself kicked off its own efforts four years ago in the realm of media DRM.

The trick in trying to persuade people of something that is completely made up is to start off with facts, move onto plausible spin and finally introduce stuff that's completely made up. Ballmer's email is a classic. As with so much that comes out of the Vole, most of the effort needs to be put into sorting out the spin from the facts, the made up stuff stands out a mile. Ballmer starts well, "e-commerce in music and movies has been slowed, because artists and publishers have been concerned about protecting their copyrighted works from illegal use." Which is fair enough, there's our fact. "More broadly, businesses don't exchange digital information with customers and partners as freely as they might, because they fear it could fall into the wrong hands," he continues. There's our spin.

Standing out a mile from all the rest is the idea that companies need DRM for documents. The idea is that, all of a sudden, documents can be protected from prying eyes. It means, for instance, being able to send confidential product information to a supplier that can't be printed, copied and pasted or even forwarded. The catch is that everyone must be running Microsoft software.

A good while ago it was pointed out that file formats were Microsoft's Achilles heel. What has happened in the intervening time is that the Vole has well and truly woken up to this while the rest of the industry sat around picking its collective nose. So now Microsoft is pushing hard to persuade firms that switching to using encrypted files is a good idea. It means the competition won't be able to open those files. Scratch OpenOffice.org and Star Office from the picture.

But why stop at Office productivity suites? With emails that can be encrypted to stop them from being forwarded or printed, there's only one company's email clients that will be able to open them. Unless you're running Outlook or Outlook Express, forget receiving information from some people. You can be certain that some companies will fall in love with the idea and will make it policy to send emails that way. Meaning if you want to work with them, you'll have to be running one of the Microsoft email clients. And not an old one either. You'll have to buy the latest one with all of the DRM stuff built in.

And why stop at email, why not go the whole hog and do web pages too? That's right, Ballmer says the firm will release, "a rights management add-on for Internet Explorer will extend these protections to Web content." So you can forget any more episodes of the browser wars, Microsoft wants to make sure that everyone is running Internet Explorer.

Once again we're seeing the results of the ridiculously lenient anti-trust settlement. Microsoft top brass knows that it will be years before anyone could get a replay into court and by then it will be far too late. Many companies will blindly adopt the new measures and that will cause a domino effect.

Make no mistake, this initiative is aimed squarely at open source. Microsoft knows that it is the biggest threat that it faces. It has now found its first major way to cut off the air supply.

Microsoft has called this whole initiative "Trustworthy Computing." A far more fitting title would be "Anti-Trustworthy Computing."

DRM is the hangman's noose for the tech industry.

A few fools may buy into it, but the rest won't because it will not allow the flexibly (and I am not talking about piracy) that most fell in love with in previous personal computers.

At best, Microsoft will experience a boycott, at worst they are slitting economic their own throats. MS is not the first corperate giant to fall because of their own stupity and arrogance.

A good while ago it was pointed out that file formats were Microsoft's Achilles heel.

Indeed.

And the way to prevent this from being a problem is for the government to establish a rule for procurement contracts that data file formats must be based on open standards, not undocumented proprietary formats.

Make no mistake, this initiative is aimed squarely at open source.

There have always been undocumented interfaces in MS stuff, that MS software takes advantage of, new non-backward-compatible "features" in the apps which compel upgrades, and that pattern continues.

The push for encryption is a response to the customers wanting better "security" in products. As it always does, MS will not use proven encryption standards, but will try to re-invent it in a MS flavor that's incompatible with the world and fails miserably at its task. And yet, it will be spun as "you've got to have this" to encourage further lock-in.

Security researchers know what system admins know, and that is that MS doesn't know the first thing about "security". The Passport thing shows it. But MS continues to spin and make promises that it can't keep, and now the FTC may become involved. More power to 'em. A $2.2T fine just may get MS' attention.

Or maybe not. MS is determined to re-invent the PC in and for its own image, and all of the spin coming out of WinHEC about Athens and NGSCB sounds wonderful now, but when you dig into what it all means you might not really want to go there. But, as PT Barnham said, there's a fool born every minute, so there is a market out there.

No doubt that this will make it harder for the Open Source folks to co-exist and interoperate (and that's all we want to do, really, we don't want to take over the world because we don't want to have to support the "stupid" users), but we won't be blown off this easily. MS can continue to fragment its market and squeeze every last dime from its remaining user base if it wants to. DRM will be its driving force and its legacy, and everyone will eventually come to realize what that means for the consumer.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.