I am no fan of Micro$oft, as readers of this blog know. On the other hand, the article this morning on NPR was … well, bizarre.
It was about the new technology coming out from M$ that lets creators of Office documents restrict what can be done with them — no saving to disk, for example, or no printing, or limited to just certain folks. It’s a document security management system, basically, not tied to a network but self-contained.
The article was between NPR and a Seattle Post-Intelligencer journalist. Did it focus on how this increases M$’s lock on business technology, restricting third-party software access to M$-generated docs? Only in passing. How about a technical evaluation of how it works? Nope.
No, the jist of the article was that this is a Bad Thing because (wait for it) …
It restricts the information that whistle-blowers can use.
If a document cannot be easily printed and forwarded to the media or the regulators, the argument is, it means that Big Business and Big Government is finally secure from pesky whistle-blowers and oversight from anyone. Bwah-ha-ha!
What if, the journalist suggested, this technology had been around in the 70s? Would the Pentagon Papers have ever been published? What about Iran-Contra? Or Enron? My God, what about Enron?
One irony here is that it’s usually the Feds who are screaming about efforts by businesses (or private citizens) to keep information locked up and secure — the battles over encryption and the Clipper chip and ways of tapping into the Internet are all part of that debate. Whether it’s national security, the War on Drugs, or trying to beat the Mob, it’s the Feds who are usually a lot more adamant about their ability to have a back door into everything out there.
The fact is, company vaults are full of potentially damaging documents. Do away with company vaults! Heck, do away with locked file cabinets! All company documents should be kept in unmonitored bankers boxes out in the front lobby! Ditto for firewalls and networks with security on certain directories! All company documents should be scanned and posted online, with full Google-assisted indexing and all the incriminating sections highlighted. Anything less than that keeps whistleblowers from accessing everythig they need! My God!
To be honest, this does in fact impact whistle-blowers (though not in any way that a small digital camera couldn’t deal with). That’s a problem, but it’s the least of problems here, since we generally don’t evaluate security technology based on how it’s going to impact whistle-blowers. I just thought it was a very odd tack for the article to take on this stuff, vs. all sorts of ways that it impacts competition, long-term lock-in to M$, or, for that matter, long-term historical research.
Doesn’t sound like anything the “print screen” button can’t fix, anyhow. And at the rate M$ is going, a JPG of the text may actually result in SMALLER files sizes than the Word doc.
I agree, NPR’s point was silly.
The significant problems of this technology seem, to me, to be that it robs people of their constitutionally guaranteed (or, more accurately, based on prior Supreme Court decisions, later codified under this name) “fair use” exceptions to copyright, and that is far more significant. As is the inability of this technology to know that copyright has been broadly waived (such as, an after-the-fact decision to place something in the public domain) or expired (assuming any copyrights ever expire again, which congress seems to be agains) without significant manual intervention.
Can you still copy and paste, then save the copy?
I would suspect not. It’s possible that PrtScn is disabled, too, though that’s more difficult to do.
But, again, if you can display it, you can photograph it. And with cell phones carrying around cameras these days …
The answers to your questions:
* Print screen is disabled.
* Cut and paste is disabled.
* Having cameras in your office place may get you fired. (Haven’t you heard? They’re selling their corporate security policies as a .NET product!)
Other questions you may not have asked:
* Can I open a DRM-protected document with Office 2000? No. If you’re going to use DRM, any viewer has to have Office 2003. Not sure if they’ll make an independent viewer for it, but the basic story is that you can only open an Office 2003 document with another copy of Office 2003.
* Can I open a DRM-protected document while offline? The DRM (actually, I think they call it IRM) feature is based on email address and requires access to some kind of rights management server. Want to use DRM? You’ll have to plop down the money for another copy of Windows 2003 Server (or whatever) and install the IRM services… The implication here is that you’re SOL to read a document if you’re not online, but I haven’t verified that.
* Print screen is disabled.
* Cut and paste is disabled.
That only makes sense.
* Having cameras in your office place may get you fired. (Haven’t you heard? They’re selling their corporate security policies as a .NET product!)
Heh. Of course, passing on company documents to the media or regulators may get you fired, too, so that’s not a new risk.
Other stuff: yeah, this is the real meat of why to criticize document DRM — both its money-grubbing for M$ and its poor technical implementation.