The Butt Ugly Weblog

Ballmer on DRM

From The Register:

"...our forthcoming Office 2003 productivity software suite will enable users to designate who can open a document or email message, and specify the terms of use - for example, whether they can print, copy or forward the data. A rights management add-on for Internet Explorer will extend these protections to Web content."

Hum. Isn't the point of putting protection in Office such that if someone, say OpenOffice, produces software that can read Microsoft Office format files, they can be sued for DMCA violation?

For Microsoft, Office is the one that brings them the money, because people want to keep compatibility with their documents. Since new programs are getting pretty good at deciphering .DOCs and other formats, it's in their best interests to make sure that this stops as soon as possible. They can even move to an XML-based, otherwise open format, and still yell "DMCA" whenever someone even breathes at it.

Yes, DMCA was done to protect starving artists. Ri-ight.