[DMCA-Activists] Ballmer: DRM is the Future

[Seth Johnson]

Okay, this is the pro-Palladium spin being unleashed.  Ballmer does mention
"data protection" and "antipiracy locks" as two separate concepts, but he's
way out there, siding with the entertainment industry instead of the basic
rights of free citizens.  This is not what exclusive rights are about.

Let's go, folks.  Gotta stop this.

Note that Ballmer is playing directly to the WIPO Performances and
Phonograms Treaty, as I said was the game:

"The idea is to protect corporate and personal data from finding its way
outside the circle of people who are intended to see or use it, the company
says. Just as songs could be pre-loaded with rules that prevent them from
being copied or distributed online, e-mails or Word documents could be
wrapped with protections that prevent them from being sent to unauthorized
individuals or outside a corporate firewall."

Seth


> http://news.com.com/2100-1025-1000411.html?tag=sas_email


Ballmer touts DRM to customers 

By John Borland 
May 7, 2003, 6:30 PM PT

Corporate data protection and antipiracy locks are at the core of
Microsoft's future and are the future of business, Microsoft Chief Executive
Officer Steve Ballmer wrote in an e-mail to customers Wednesday evening. 

In the latest of a periodic series of policy statements for the company's
customer base, Ballmer outlined Microsoft's ambitious plans for digital
rights management services, which straddle the line between the
entertainment industry and ordinary corporate business. 

Microsoft uses the series of e-mails, which are sent roughly once a month,
to highlight what issues its top executives see as most important in driving
development and use of their products. 

"Some of technology's potential…has not been fully realized, because of
concerns about illegal use of digital information, about confidentiality and
about privacy," Ballmer wrote. "E-commerce in music and movies has been
slowed, because artists and publishers have been concerned about protecting
their copyrighted works from illegal use. 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." 

The e-mail contained few if any new tidbits of information about details of
Microsoft's technology or strategy. But as a policy statement, it
highlighted for customers one of the key features that the software company
sees as an impetus for growth across its product line in the next few years. 

Most digital rights management news in the past few years has focused on
media businesses such as music and movies. A generation of companies rose
hoping to sell antipiracy technology to record labels and movie studios, and
fell again after gaining little traction with the entertainment giants. 

Microsoft, which is now seeing its technology protect songs distributed
through subscription music services and even packaged on CDs themselves, has
been one of the few companies starting to see significant support. 

As outlined by Ballmer in Wednesday's e-mail and elsewhere, the company
takes a much broader view of rights management technology, however. 

The company has built a different set of tools it dubs Windows Rights
Management Services, which will form a key component of the upcoming Windows
Sever 2003 product and will ultimately work with other products such as
Office and Outlook. 

The idea is to protect corporate and personal data from finding its way
outside the circle of people who are intended to see or use it, the company
says. Just as songs could be pre-loaded with rules that prevent them from
being copied or distributed online, e-mails or Word documents could be
wrapped with protections that prevent them from being sent to unauthorized
individuals or outside a corporate firewall. 

"As these technologies become widespread, their protection will help
encourage wider sharing of information within and between organizations,
improving communication and productivity by assuring information workers of
the confidentiality of their documents and data," Ballmer wrote. 

The strategy is still in its early stages and--in its broadest terms--has
drawn criticism from proponents of non-Microsoft operating systems and
tools. Open-source advocates in particular are worried that Microsoft's
broader "Trustworthy Computing" campaign, which would involve authenticating
software programs as well as documents and media files, is in part aimed at
pushing software such as the Linux operating system out of the market. 

Microsoft has not set pricing for its corporate Rights Management Services
product, or indicated whether it would involve a recurring subscription fee
or a more typical license.

-- 

DRM is Theft!  We are the Stakeholders!

New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org

[CC] Counter-copyright: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html

I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
this incidentally recorded communication.  Original authorship should be
attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
exclusive rights.