[Am-info] Rec'd from Steve Ballmer today......(OT)

[Fred A. Miller]

I've included the full headers....looks like it did come from Ballmer. Why me, 
I don't know, unless it's because I've used an anti-DRM sig. for quite 
awhile. :)

Fred
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From: "Steve Ballmer" <SteveBallmer@ceo.microsoft.com>
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Old-Subject: Rights Management: Enabling New Opportunities for Customers
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 01:49:23 -0700
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May 7, 2003

I'm writing to you today about a set of emerging technologies that hold great 
promise for enhancing privacy and enabling important new uses for computers 
and other digital devices. Before I share my thoughts about this in more 
detail, I want to explain why you're receiving this email.

This is one in an occasional series of emails from Microsoft executives about 
technology and public-policy issues important to computer users, our 
industry, and anyone who cares about the future of high technology. If you 
would like to receive these emails in the future, please go to 
http://register.microsoft.com/subscription/subscribeMe.asp?lcid=1033&id=155 
to subscribe. We will not send you future executive emails unless you choose 
to subscribe.

******

During the past decade, computers and the Internet have transformed the way we 
work, learn, communicate and are entertained. Yet some of technology's 
potential to do even more has not been fully realized, because of concerns 
about illegal use of digital information, about confidentiality and about 
privacy. For example, e-commerce in music and movies has been slowed, because 
artists and publishers have been concerned about protecting their copyrighted 
works from illegal use. More broadly, businesses don't exchange digital 
information with customers and partners as freely as they might, because they 
fear it could fall into the wrong hands.

These concerns reflect the increasing need of all businesses and many 
individual computer users to share a wide range of digital information, yet 
still control who can use it and how - what we at Microsoft call "rights 
management." 

We have been working on a number of emerging rights management technologies 
that will help protect many kinds of digital content and open new avenues for 
its secure and controlled use. These technologies are already helping 
encourage owners of book, music and film content to explore new e-commerce 
business models that will provide consumers with more convenient access and 
greater variety. Rights management will also help protect the privacy and 
confidentiality of consumers' personal data, such as medical and financial 
records. And in a broad range of businesses, effective rights management will 
help improve the efficiency of information flows, enhancing productivity and 
the quality of services across the entire economy.

This email offers some insights into how Microsoft is working to develop these 
technologies, and how they will bring these crucial benefits to business and 
consumers.

WHAT IS RIGHTS MANAGEMENT?

Rights management refers to technologies that protect digital content after it 
is shared or distributed. Specifically, rights management technologies enable 
a content owner to stipulate a set of rules, or policy rights, that govern 
how the content may be used, by whom, for how long, etc. The protection, 
achieved by encrypting the content, may be provided by software or embedded 
in the hardware device itself - or some combination of the two.

At Microsoft we began experimenting with such protection for our software as 
early as the mid-1980s. We learned that no rights management system, no 
matter how secure, will succeed in the marketplace unless it is both easy to 
use and flexible. Different levels and kinds of protection are required for 
an individual's medical records, an attorney's confidential client memo, a 
recording company's master audio recording, an amateur photographer's images, 
and a publisher's new bestseller. And because no system can ever be 100 
percent secure, protection needs to be easy to update, to address inevitable 
system breaches.

Microsoft has invested more than $250 million to date in rights management 
technologies, and we have substantial ongoing efforts to enable a new 
generation of rights management that will protect a broad range of personal 
and commercial digital content. We also work closely with many industry 
partners to advance the development and deployment of rights management 
systems. We actively participate in several cross-industry initiatives, 
including efforts to develop industry standards that help ensure the 
effectiveness, wide availability and interoperability of rights management 
solutions and the content they protect.

While there is still much work to do, content owners and authors today can 
choose from an array of flexible solutions tailored to meet customers' 
specific requirements, cost constraints and business models.

DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT

Microsoft's flagship technology for managing the rights to media content is 
Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM), which delivers music, video 
and other media content online in a secure format. Released in 1999 as the 
first comprehensive rights management technology for both audio and video, 
and now in its third generation, Windows Media uses one of the strongest 
encryption systems available. To raise the protection level still further, a 
content owner can change the media file encryption keys daily, or even every 
few hours.

Supporting a broad array of content distribution business models - such as 
previews, rentals, subscription, purchase and try-before-you-buy - Windows 
Media DRM is widely used for securely distributing digital media online. Many 
major music labels are using Windows Media to deliver digital music, and 
Microsoft has partnered with several companies that use the technology to 
offer top-quality online audio and video subscription services. Pressplay and 
MusicNow, for example, provide online access to hundreds of thousands of 
music tracks. CinemaNow and MovieLink provide high-quality Internet 
distribution of movies from major studios such as Warner Bros. and Twentieth 
Century Fox.

Consumers gain the most from the efforts of these pioneering entertainment 
companies. Online distribution offers a convenient way for people to access 
their favorite content wherever they are, at any time. But digital piracy is 
against consumers' long-term interests; it undermines the economic incentives 
for artists and producers to continue creating and distributing the work we 
all enjoy. With rights-managed licensing, consumers can help sustain the flow 
of fresh creative work, confident that they have legitimately acquired rights 
to content that is authentic, of highest quality, and virus-free. 

RIGHTS MANAGEMENT SERVICES

Anyone who uses a personal computer for word processing, email, data analysis 
or other common purposes is creating digital content - content that if 
unprotected might be misused by others. One of the touchstones of our 
Trustworthy Computing initiative is responding to customers' demands for 
technology that protects the confidentiality and privacy of their 
information.

This year we will release Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services, a 
security service for Windows Server 2003 that works with applications to help 
customers protect sensitive Web content, documents and email. The rights 
protection persists in the data regardless of where the information goes, 
whether online or offline. 

Building on this technology, 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. Independent software vendors 
and application developers also will be able to build on Windows Rights 
Management, using software development kits that we will make available.

As these technologies become widespread, their protection will help encourage 
wider sharing of information within and between organizations, improving 
communication and productivity by assuring information workers of the 
confidentiality of their documents and data. For example:

- INTRANET CONTENT. A manager with a toy manufacturing company uses its 
enterprise information portal to see year-over-year sales data on screen. The 
company has confidence in posting this sensitive information because specific 
usage restrictions have been applied to it. The manager gets the information 
she needs, conveniently, but because she cannot print, copy or paste it, 
sensitive sales data are protected from inadvertent (or deliberate) sharing 
with a competitor.

- DOCUMENTS. Using a simple on-screen dialog prompt built into her word 
processing application, an advertising copywriter specifies that her 
document, a draft marketing plan, may be viewed and edited by a selection of 
the client company's managers for one week. She posts the document to a Web 
portal to share with them. Based on their feedback, she finalizes the plan 
and posts it. Managers who downloaded the obsolete draft can no longer open 
it, which prevents confusion as to which document is current.

- EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS. A senior partner in an accounting firm needs to send 
email to his partners with a confidential contract proposal attached. Besides 
specifying who may read the proposal and that they may not copy, paste or 
edit the information, he specifies that the email itself cannot be forwarded. 
The recipients' email and word processing applications transparently enforce 
these policies. All partners worry less about information leaks that might 
damage ongoing negotiations.

Similarly for consumers, rights management will help protect the privacy and 
confidentiality of computer files and email. Rights options will be easy to 
use, appearing as an extension of familiar menus and commands. Besides 
protecting personal documents of all sorts, individuals will, just for 
example, be able to ensure that only family and friends can view or download 
vacation snapshots or correspondence posted to a personal Web site.

CREATING NEW OPPORTUNITIES WITH RIGHTS MANAGEMENT

Rights management technologies alone cannot solve all digital piracy and 
confidentiality problems, but they are a crucial part of the many efforts 
Microsoft is making toward Trustworthy Computing. For the technology 
industry, rights management offers exciting new business prospects. Software 
and hardware developers can enhance their products and generate new revenues 
by offering rights management capabilities with their applications, devices 
and peripherals.

We're excited about partnering with a wide range of content owners, authors 
and industry vendors on these crucial technologies, particularly as broadband 
continues to expand the opportunities for delivering digital media content 
worldwide, and as rights management is recognized by businesses large and 
small as an opportunity to protect copyrights, confidentiality and personal 
privacy while promoting innovation, creating opportunity and empowering 
customers.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you would like more information 
about these and related initiatives, you can find it at 
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2003/05-07rightsmanagement.asp.
 
Steve Ballmer


For information about Microsoft's privacy policies, please go to 
http://www.microsoft.com/info/privacy.htm

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