What's the fuss about? [LWN.net]

What's the fuss about?

Posted Sep 11, 2003 5:32 UTC (Thu) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874)
Parent article: An opening for OpenOffice.org

Why is everybody getting concerned about this?

I presume that if a MS-Word user creates a document and chooses not to use DRM to restrict access to it, then DRM is not required to read it.

So only those people who choose to restrict access to their documents in this way will have any problems. And given the cost and inconvenience of using Microsoft's DRM features, very few people *will* use them.

In summary, for the vast majority of people, no costs are incurred, no features are lost wrt the current office feature-set, and (once code is written to handle the new file formats) non-windows tools will be able to access these documents as well as ever.

This seems no more important than previous MS Office upgrades that changed data formats. Ok, for large corporates who mandate use of DRM for internal documents, that will lock non-windows PCs out, but those corporates typically don't allow users to choose their own desktop os anyway.

Now, if someone can tell me that DRM encryption of documents is *mandatory* in the new office version, that would be a different thing...

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What's the fuss about?

Posted Sep 11, 2003 13:57 UTC (Thu) by erat (guest, #21) [Link]

The changing of defaults Word settings has been a peeve of mine for a number of years. I used to work at a Linux company whose non-technical staff used Word for just about anything that didn't require number crunching (including email, if you can believe that). Whenever they sent any docs to technical folks, we'd always have to send them back and ask that they be re-sent in plain text, PDF, or an option that you'd think they'd be able to handle, Word 95 format. Just about any word processor on the planet can handle Word 95 formatted docs. Nope, they wouldn't do it, even though their doc files used absolutely nothing that required the most recent file formats. Their excuse: "Everyone uses the new version of Word. It's not our problem that you don't." Follow ups asking that they simply change their default save format were met with the same response. They just didn't get it.

Once, one of our developers received a question from HR that was emailed to him in a Word file attachment. He emailed his response to HR in a .dvi file attachment. It didn't do much for inter-office relations, but screw it, they'd been doing it to us for years...

What's the fuss about?

Posted Sep 11, 2003 17:16 UTC (Thu) by zonker (guest, #7867) [Link]

If you get a DRM'ed document that you can't read, you probably weren't supposed to read it in the first place.

I disagree, heartily. I get plenty of e-mail these days from people using Outlook or Lotus with the little eight to ten-line footers disclaiming the content of the message, what can be done with the message, and so on.

When one of the PHBs who demanded the footer gets the idea that they can really restrict documents with IRM, they'll be all over it. Now, if only a small percentage of these PHBs do this, we'll be okay. If it becomes ingrained corporate policy for a number of companies, it will start to become painful.

Get a grip, people. The level of apparently intentional ignorance is amazing.

I have a grip, thanks. I realize that a person can send documents without enabling IRM with Office 2003 -- just as people can send e-mail from Outlook in plain text rather than HTML. Just as people can save Word documents as text or HTML rather than the proprietary Word format. Just as people can send Excell documents in non-proprietary formats. But it doesn't happen that often. I still get press releases in Word format. I get tons of HTML e-mail.

If IRM catches on, it won't be long before I start getting press releases from companies that have been IRM-encrypted so they can't be forwarded or so that they expire or whatever. And some clients that I work with will say "oh, sure, I'll convert that for you." Others will say "sorry, corporate policy. You'll have to use Outlook so I can use IRM."

Go ahead and shrug it off if you want, but as someone who uses Linux on the desktop to do my work, I see it as a major problem.

What's the fuss about?

Posted Sep 11, 2003 21:45 UTC (Thu) by Dom2 (guest, #458) [Link]

Regarding email footers, I used to think like that. Then I saw Tim Bray's commentary, which opened an aspect of it that I didn't realise: the insurance company demanded it.

-Dom

What's the fuss about?

Posted Sep 11, 2003 22:16 UTC (Thu) by zonker (guest, #7867) [Link]

the insurance company demanded it.

Okay, so the PHB at the insurance company asked for it rather than the PHB at the company itself. Either way, I can see a PHB demanding that everything be encrypted with IRM. If it's the insurance company, it's even worse because that would probably leave no room for an employee to turn off IRM when they don't feel it's necessary.

Even worse, I can easily see a scenario where Microsoft cuts a sweetheart deal with one or two insurance companies persuading them to require IRM to cover a company...

What's the fuss about?

Posted Sep 11, 2003 18:04 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

You've never dealt with a non-techincal person from a big technology company have you?

What's the fuss about?

Posted Sep 11, 2003 17:25 UTC (Thu) by zonker (guest, #7867) [Link]

Ok, for large corporates who mandate use of DRM for internal documents, that will lock non-windows PCs out, but those corporates typically don't allow users to choose their own desktop os anyway.

Ah, yes... but those same corporations will probably require DRM for some or all external documents -- thereby forcing freelancers, suppliers and partners to adopt Office 2003 Professional as well. If they'll be doing more than just reading those documents, they'll be forced to adopt Windows 2003 Server as well so they have authoring capabilities. (I think... I'm not sure if you can edit an IRM-encrypted document, even with permission, without the RMS stuff in the back-end.) I feel really sorry for some freelancer who has to invest in Windows 2003 Server just to send a few documents back and forth.

As a writer who works with a number of publishers, I have been able to get by with StarOffice/OpenOffice thus far. I don't see any publishers requiring IRM, but I also work with companies doing bits for internal newsletters and so on -- so I can easily see a day when they want to forward documents that are IRM-restricted for me to use as background material. If you can't envision this scenario, you haven't worked with enough corporations.

I don't, quite frankly, care whether other people use Windows or Mac OS X or OS/2 or *BSD -- so long as I have the ability to do my work and funtime activities using Linux. When a technology threatens my ability to choose the platform I work on, I get concerned. IRM/RMS is a major threat to my ability to choose. That's what the fuss is about.

What's the fuss about?

Posted Sep 16, 2003 23:27 UTC (Tue) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874) [Link]

I have worked for/with many large corporations (IBM, Hutchison3G, Orange, Vodafone, Telecom New Zealand, New Zealand Post) as both employee and external consultant, so am familiar with business practices and attitudes at these sort of corporations.

I really cannot see any great incentive for managers receiving documents to require DRM. As the sender, you can send out as many copies of a document as you desire, so sending it via DRM does not guarantee that the document cannot be "leaked" by the sender, only that it cannot be leaked by the recipient.

In addition, to extend your "newsletter" example, the recipient must be able to access the data in ways incompatible with DRM (copy/paste into a larger document for example), so they clearly would not ask for DRM'd documents that remove their right to perform such operations.

I can see people wanting to send DRM documents; management seem very fond of "for your eyes only" type distribution. The "background material for newsletter" case is a good example. However in order for this to work:

(a) the sending organisation needs to have a windows DRM server open to the internet,
(b) the sending organisation needs firewalls configured so that each sender's pc can contact the DRM server,
(c) the receiving organisation needs to have their firewall configured to allow outgoing connections from the receiver's PC to the sending organisations' DRM server.

I can't see (a), (b) and (c) being widely implemented even in windows-centric companies. It certainly violates the corporate security policy at many of the places I have worked at or with.

As I said in my original posting, DRM for internal use is a different issue; it would be far easier to configure and therefore is more likely to be used.

If DRM support was required of external parties in order to perform consultancy work, I would indeed be concerned. However I am far from convinced that the DRM implementation being introduced by Microsoft is going to cause that.