Microsoft Faces Resistance To Embedding DRM In Windows 2003

Microsoft's plans to embed digital rights management (DRM) capabilities in its upcoming Windows 2003 Server and Office 2003 offerings sparked some controversy.

Company executives were careful to position Rights Management Services (RMS) for Windows 2003 Server and Office Information Rights Management (IRM) components for use within corporations to protect intellectual property. This technology, building on Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML), theoretically would let the author of a document grant rights to forward, print or share that document, thus controlling its distribution even after it has been sent.

"One reason we're focusing on the intra-enterprise is that the rules there are much clearer," said John Manferdelli, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Trusted Platform Technologies Group. "It's about the enterprise and employees trying to protect their own stuff. It's not about trying to protect someone else's stuff."

But concerns immediately cropped up that the technology could thwart the type of disclosures that expose corporate wrongdoing.

The DRM road is full of "land mines," one Microsoft source told CRN a few months ago. Imposing controls on what has become a free flow of mail and documents over the Web was bound to provoke a reaction, industry observers said.

But integrators said there is value in technology that would let a user "time out" documents. If, for example, an integrator and a supplier have a two-year contract, it would be helpful to grant the parties access to all relevant documents for that time frame, solution providers said.

"It should be interesting to see how Microsoft tackles the big document management companies on this,especially Documentum, whose bread and butter is on assigned rights to documents," said one solution provider, who requested anonymity.

As for deliverables, RMS,code-named Tungsten,will roll into Windows 2003 Server sometime after the operating system becomes available next month. The company is also offering software development kits to enable third-party ISVs and partners to embed DRM capabilities in their own offerings.

Adobe Systems, which has competed with Microsoft on several fronts, may even utilize some of the Microsoft DRM technology. Adobe's Photoshop and Acrobat software run on Windows, and its server offerings run on Windows 2000, said Harry Vitelli, vice president of business development at Adobe, San Jose, Calif. "While we've done rights management for some time, it's mostly for digital books. %85 Our Acrobat and PDF file formats are rights-platform-agnostic, pretty much," he said.