Microsoft Rights Management Coming to Third-Party Apps

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Software vendors seemingly have been slow to back Microsoft's RMS platform. So security vendor Liquid Machines plans to RMS-enable their apps for them.

Microsoft's Rights Management technology is coming to a host of third-party desktop and line-of-business applications — with or without the blessing of the app vendors themselves.

Microsoft introduced last year its Rights Management Services (RMS) solution, designed to control the digital distribution of documents. Since then, several services and infrastructure firms, such as EDS, Digex, Reciprocal, GigaMedia Access and SyncCast, have announced plans to back Microsoft's platform. But none of the largest independent software vendors (ISVs) has done so.

News source: Microsoft-Watch.com

Changelog:

Almost all components starting from some 0.7 beta SDK still work, though recompilation with new SDK is recommended to take advantage of new features

"Open" dialog now lists supported file types

File modification time tracking, goodbye "reload file info"

File size tracking

New menu item config, massively improved menu system

Improved matroska component (fully extendable through third-party components, improved speed, etc)

Fixed UI glitch in masstagger

Masstagger scripts can be now exported to files

New diskwriter

New albumlist

Replaygain shows total progress

Toolbar menu now completely fakes regular menu behaviors

Found a way to get rid of dreaded beep when pressing alt+key

Various minor UI tweaks, improved playlist tabs

Fixed multimedia keys displayed in shortcuts page

AIFF input fixes

FLAC input fixes

SDK side change: all uppercase/lowercase character conversion had to be moved to utf8api, some string8 methods are missing (replaced with utf8api functions)

New icons, thanks to picmixer

Improved drag&drop support, thanks to foosion

Improved commandline handling (wildcards, relative paths, etc)

Integrated commandline tagger in foo_masstag.dll, run foobar2000 /tag:help for info

#1 figgy on 26 Feb 2004 - 01:39

I didn't understand how important Right Management is,
Until I saw its use in the medical, real estate and banking industries in these
Longhorn Concept videos.
Watch it. Its cool.

(3 replies) #2 toadeater on 26 Feb 2004 - 03:49

Those were just demos, in an artificial environment. No way is this stuff going to work properly in a real-life situation. Windows is already full of bugs, can you imagine a bug in windows screwing up your DRM identity? How are you supposed to fix that, rely on M$? I don't think so! Look at M$ tech support already.

You've got to be nuts to trust your identity with anything by M$, or any other CORPORATION for that matter. What guarantees do we have from them? None.

#2.1 STV on 26 Feb 2004 - 04:13

There is no way that your position and opinion are accurate. and the '$' in M$ doesnt help you position at all (infact, it damages it). dont be so childish, and next time back up your opinions and emotional reasoning with some fact.

STV

#2.2 markjensen on 26 Feb 2004 - 04:29

toadeater, you really should avoid those nicknames, as even Linux supporters (such as myself) automatically derate or skip your post.

I think that there is a point in what you were trying to say, and that is "How is adding an additional DRM software layer going to make things better, when the security of the data should be procedural?" But, no one will really read that....

#2.3 toadeater on 26 Feb 2004 - 21:08

Sorry, but I stand by my statement. WINDOWS IS FULL OF BUGS. I don't want to trust my identity and finances to a piece of software like this.

#3 aliasNIGMA on 26 Feb 2004 - 06:37

Just like most of the major hardware companies have said, we are all looking for an industry standard that is prefferably not microsoft.

I wouldnt trust security by microsoft to be private, confidential, secure, or to be anything other then another platform aimed at market domination and profit.

I think phillips was realeasing their own security tech, i was intrested in seeing that take some ground. No doubt Bill will take quick steps to make deals with as many as he can to prevent other security platforms from stealing his planned first place.

(3 replies) #4 CheeseCow on 26 Feb 2004 - 07:50

While I clearly can see the benefits of "secure computing", and that can make public services much more efficient, I still worry. If Microsoft is the only company with such a solution, it will probably be used to "lock in" customers so that when a new (open) solution arrives later on, many companies will be unable to switch.

#4.1 STV on 26 Feb 2004 - 09:15

seriously, where do you connect the dots for the conclusion that you came to.

I would really like to know, because no company is stupid enough to do such a thing on the type of scale that microsoft usually reaches.

please explain yourself a bit more,
STV

#4.2 Faze on 26 Feb 2004 - 09:37

QUOTE

... no company is stupid ...

Well my experience tells me that Dilbert's PHB is dangerously close to the truth for middle management.

CheeseCow has a point, MS RMS is not an open standard. This means users will be encrypting huge amounts of data with MS software. Take one guess at the only software that will ever de-encrypt it. That's lock-in in my book.

I don't believe that software necessarily has to be open (as in source) but I think we would all be better off if MS would join others in creating and maintaining open standards for data storage, encryption and communication.

#4.3 jhaygood86 on 26 Feb 2004 - 18:26

I agree with Faze on this one. While I don't really want Microsoft to make open-source software, they should make their products use standards better, and adopt more standards than they already do.

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