Office 2003 gets rights management

[ua549]

Here is a link to a recent article at MS about digital rights management for your e-mail and documents. This will give the author the ability to copying and forwarding of e-mail sent to outsiders.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...etins/wrm.mspx

[Isezumi]

man UA in a sense that is almost scary.

I am all for business' of any size to have the ability to manage such rights on their intranet, and anything that is spawned from inside their intranet.

But its like taking the first (or another, depeding on how you look at it) step down that path that could lead to the usurping of certain Constitutionally Protected Rights, of individuals.

[ua549]

Not really. The one who generates/owns the content can control the terms and conditions of the use of that content. I for one would love to be able to send "eyes only" email with some assurance that it cannot be forwarded or copies to someone else. Right now it is almost impossible to do that without using some very sophisticated encryption where the key has a limited or single use life.

I can visualize widespread use of limited term software use licenses that expire after a period of time. I already have several pieces of MS software that have a 1 year license term. At the end of the year one must renew the license or . . . poof.

The cost for 5 to 10 full use licenses depending on the software is ~$200 per year for all the following:

· Microsoft Windows XP Professional

· Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server

· Microsoft Small Business Server 2000

· Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition

· Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Enterprise

· Microsoft Project 2000

· Microsoft Mobile Information Server 2002

· Microsoft Visio 2002 Professional

· Microsoft Office XP Professional with FrontPage 2002

· Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server

· Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001

· Betas and a few other miscellaneous items

[Isezumi]

im thinking more along the lines of it being used in very inappropriate means to cover no no's.

Or worse yet, impede the free flow of information.

I mean whats to stop an exec from slapping a one hop no forward, no print expireable order on something that is supposed to be distributed too everyone in the company. And then just playing the "im sorry you missed out and I dont have it any more" song.

I mean this could present a rather large hickup for the judicial system, on the assumption that MS provides no root lvl access (ie a lvl of access that can look at anything and everything regardless of rights granted by its original author).

[ua549]

The government can crack anything they deem important enough. This includes reading original data from a disk that has been reformatted and written over with other data several times.

[Isezumi]

WOW!

I thought once a sector was written on once or twice, that original info was pretty much FUBAR.

[ua549]

Tracks don't overlay each other perfectly so there is a residual trace on the track edges. It probably takes 5 or 6 rewrites to destroy all the data. Back in the 80's a government disk wipe wrote all 0's and all 1's repeatedly for a minimum or 9 full passes of the disk. If the disk contained classified data of a certain level the disk is physically destroyed after being wiped. I have no idea what today's standards are. Perhaps Blood Red knows.

[MedicBob]

HDD of the military are destroyed via BFG after the "Box." The Box is a lead box with a large magnet in it.

[SkyDog]

I've also known a few military sites where it was common practice to disassemble hard drives and belt sand all the magnetic media off the platters before they were allowed to be discarded.

Here's a web page that shows the U.S. Dept. of Defense regulations for "cleaning and sanitizing" data storage devices:
http://www.killdisk.com/dod.htm