Windows Rights Management

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 14:04, Scott H wrote:
> I have not verified the below myself, but it
> comes from Paul Thurrot, News Editor of "Windows
> and .NET" magazine, so expect it's at least
> fairly accurate.  I throw this out just so it's
> on everyone's radar.  I think you'll be able to
> pull the implications out of this yourselves so I
> won't bother to comment further, other than to
> say it appears that - so far - this new twist is
> easily circumvented:
> ---------------------------------------------
> "Office 2003 Beta 2 includes an interesting new
> capability called Windows Rights Management (WRM)
> that helps you protect sensitive corporate data
> and other intellectual property. Available in
> Word
> 2003, Excel 2003, and Outlook 2003, this feature
> lets you set permissions rights on documents,
> spreadsheets, and email so that, for example, you
> can prevent an email recipient from printing,
> screen capturing, copying, or forwarding
> sensitive information. In my early tests with WRM
> technology, I've discovered a simple workaround,
> but the technology does work roughly as
> advertised: If you attempt to open a protected
> email message in Outlook, Outlook connects you to
> a WRM server to validate your permissions. If you
> attempt to open that message in another email
> client, the client won't open or display the
> message."
-----
the link someone posted the other day here...

<http://aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html>

has a pretty good technical explanation of the implications of this
technology...while Microsoft might be labeling it as protecting
sensitive corporate data, the biggest benefactor of protection is going
to be Microsoft's corporate welfare since it will require a Microsoft
client (undoubtedly paid/licensed) to access the data.

Then of course, there's the issue about where the data is REALLY going
to be stored...we don't have anyone actually using Intuit e-mail invoice
handling via e-mail on this list do we?

Craig

Craig