Microsoft Delves Into Digital Rights Arena

According to information on its Web site, Microsoft is developing a digital rights management (DRM) platform and a service called ePub.Net, which will enable corporations, consumers and service providers to distribute and exchange various types of content,including Office documents, video and software,in e-business transactions over the Web.

And this week, Microsoft is slated to team with Hewlett-Packard, VeriSign and Reuters to back Xerox spin-off ContentGuard, which plans to formally submit eXtensible Rights Markup Language (XrML) as a standard to Oasis, an XML consortium, industry sources said.

Microsoft's DRM platform will consist of a set of formats, protocols, hardware, software and distribution procedures that define a digital rights language and mechanism called digital works. For example, it will allow owners of an Office document to grant permission and issue licenses expressed in a digital rights language such as XrML to a set of authenticated users and operating environments, according to the company's Web site.

Microsoft's current DRM solution, Digital Asset Server (DAS) for eBooks, supports XrML. The vendor's next-generation DRM platform is slated to be called Unified DRM, said Martha Nalebuff, a member of Microsoft's Unified Digital Rights Management Core Technology team, at a conference last April.

"The Digital Distribution-.Net team is building the secure digital distribution server and service of the future, allowing content providers, enterprises and consumers to exchange copy-protected, copyrighted, private and tamper-proof information, such as documents, music, video, eBooks and software," according to Microsoft's Web site.

"The DAS and the service [ePub.Net are positioned to provide Microsoft with a multibillion-dollar revenue opportunity and a significant strategic advantage in the enterprise and the digital content marketplace by offering capabilities that Sun Microsystems or America Online do not offer," Microsoft's Web site said.

A Microsoft spokesperson discounted the digital rights distribution information on the company's Web site, saying that the DAS is for eBooks only and won't go beyond that.

Yet channel sources said the DRM platform will incorporate XrML and be integrated with Microsoft's future Office.Net, Sharepoint Portal Server and .Net MyServices, formerly code-named HailStorm. Server and .Net services will follow, but the final DRM product road map is still being worked out, the sources said.

Two years ago, Microsoft made an investment in ContentGuard that called for the companies to collaborate on DRM and establish XrML for managing books, documents, music, software and other content distributed over the Web.