REDMOND, WA (UP) - Microsoft Corporation today announced sweeping new intellectual property protections it has planned for the next version of Windows and Office. This time, however, the protections aren't for Microsoft's code - they're for your documents.
The market-dominating software company has been battling "open source" software, where the "source code" necessary to build and modify the software is freely available to all. Microsoft executives have publicly said the movement is a "killer" to intellectual property, and that it threatens the very viability of the software industry. Although Microsoft has backed away from such statements under fire from computer users, the company has also been pressing the US Government not to use open-source software, according to UP reports.
Microsoft denies such pressure, but today's announcements show that copyright is on its agenda. The company revealed plans for the next versions of Windows (code named "N-gon") and Office (code named "Superstring") that automatically assign licensing restrictions on every document you create.
"Under US law, every document you create is copyrighted the moment you create it," said Craig Mundie, Microsoft vice-president for Advanced Strategies and Policy. "Unless you explicitly renounce your rights to a document and place it in the public domain, it is copyrighted. N-gon and Superstring contain far-sighted new tools to make sure you remain in control of that intellectual property."
N-gon is to include the new Microsoft Personal License Manager (MPLM) and Microsoft Personal Identity Toolkit (MPIT), technologies built on existing Microsoft initiatives. MPIT uses Passport identity technology to embed the current user's identity into all documents created while that user is logged in, assuring rights under US and international copyright law, according to Mundie's briefing today. Identities are encrypted and hashed, and Microsoft says hackers won't be able to tell who created a document unless that person allows identification.
The MPLM software keeps a registry of all licensed documents on the system. If a colleague creates a document and sends it to you, N-gon notifies you that you don't have a license for that document. You then have the choice of securely purchasing a license through Microsoft's secure .NET service, at a price set by the document creator, instantly giving you access to that document.
Document authors can also restrict purchases to specific users and groups, preventing people outside a given company or family from reading a document even if they want to purchase it. Office "Superstring" fully implements the N-gon MPLM software, such that every document created in Superstring is fully encrypted and completely inaccessible without the appropriate license key.
"N-gon and Superstring provide the ultimate in personal computer security," Mundie said at the briefing for reporters and analysts at Microsoft headquarters. "Even if a virus or hacker obtains your documents, then by _default_, they won't be able to read them. Microsoft's 448-bit security, recently approved for worldwide exports by the US Commerce Department, can withstand attacks well beyond the means of average hackers and virus authors."
"At the same time, you can grant permission to whatever users and groups you want to license the content from you. N-gon's new technologies, which will be mandatory for all 'Built for Windows N-gon' applications, assure that even drag-and-drop or copy and paste can't remove the licensing content from your data. If someone pastes text from your document into his own, then anyone reading his document has to license both his _and_ yours."
MPLM is the extension of technologies Microsoft has touted in previous versions of Windows Media Player as "copy-protection." Until now, its main purpose has been ensuring that users had licenses for any music or movie files, thwarting entertainment piracy. The entertainment industry adopted the technology almost immediately. Microsoft hopes the business world will do the same with N-gon's new features, but that's far from certain.
Microsoft's plan is meeting stiff opposition from free speech advocates due to a small hitch - you can't license a document for free. You must either release it into the public domain or charge a non-zero price to view it, even to family members or co-workers.
"Everyone has the right to control his or her creative output, as does every company," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at the briefing. "But restricting copyright without allowing commerce threatens the entire intellectual property industry, the same one that allows Microsoft to develop amazing technology like N-gon and Superstring. The open-source movement, which gives its code away but prevents you from using it in realistic situations, shows how dangerous restrictions against commerce can be."
In Microsoft's view, explained in a briefing paper handed out to attendees but not yet available online, Congress created copyright law to preserve the right of an artist or creator to _profit_ from his work, not to restrict its dissemination or excerpting for political or ideological purposes. "Authors of political speech may profit from their work, for example," the briefing paper states, "but once their work is published, copyright was never intended to prevent people who disagree from purchasing and reading their ideas. Such restrictions are contrary to the 'marketplace of free ideas' expressly nurtured by the First Amendment to the US Constitution."
Microsoft explains that it licenses its own source code to certain companies, albeit at very high fees, because that's how commercial development continues. "Any algorithm implemented in open-source software is simultaneously available to the public but not available in commercial software, a reversal of what the copyright laws were meant to protect," says the position paper. "Similarly, any document, be it a spreadsheet or a movie, contains ideas and images that should be licensed to your choice of people.
"Copyright was never intended to permit the presentation of ideas and words solely to keep them away from those who disagree," said Mundie. "Therefore, we believe Microsoft is on the vanguard of protecting intellectual property by mandating licensing fees on all documents. You can set small fees, as small as 1, all securely transferred through Microsoft's .NET framework. But to continue to leave copyrighted works unprotected by licenses is to invite the kind of abuse and piracy that threatens the very infrastructure of the information economy."
John Gilmore of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the plan is unconstitutional, given Microsoft's court-acknowledged monopoly position in PC operating systems. "It's beyond reason to think that Microsoft alone can prohibit you from maintaining legal rights in your work unless you sell it. It's _your_ work. Only _you_ can set a price for it, from free to a million dollars. Microsoft is using its Windows and Office monopolies to protect those very monopolies, as well as to brand consumers as potential thieves. It's unconscionable."
Mundie disagrees. "Customers have made it clear to us for a few years that security is their highest priority. Whether a laptop gets stolen or a virus sends documents to random addresses, Windows users want to be sure only authorized people read their documents. That's what MPLM and MPIT do. They're secure, they preserve anonymity if the author chooses, they work seamlessly in N-gon and Superstring, and they preserve the true intent of copyright."
Groups like EFF are deciding if they should pursue remedies in court, using the existing antitrust findings to show that Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to mandate copyright licensing fees. Ballmer waved off any idea that the fees were illegal. "Hey, _we're_ not collecting the fees. They flow from other people to you, and you to other people. You can use the fees you collect to pay for other documents, or get a check cut, or whatever you want."
"Or you can refund the fees back to the people who paid for them. It's your money," Ballmer said. "And it's a free country."