SlashNOT

Matthew writes: Microsoft executives have announced that they are about three months away from realizing that they can market Digital Rights Management technology as a security tool for consumers. Currently, DRM has not gained acceptance because consumers have no reason to accept the ability to keep them from copying data. Publishers have failed to provide any reason why consumers should pay extra for DRM technology and hardware when it doesn’t benefit the consumer.

“In three months or so, some of our technology people are going to be brainstorming over subway at lunch about DRM—you know, the old “how we can convince people that DRM is good for them” problem, when one of our guys is going to have a major Epiphany.

We expect it to go something like this:—’wait a second! We can use DRM to protect secret documents from being opened by unintended recipients and copied off of servers! Imagine permissions that travel with the document, as an e-mail attachment, or on CD-ROM or tape backup! We can rebuild the permissions architecture of Longhorn [The next version of Windows] around DRM! This is how we can get people to accept Palladium! Man, we’ll be able to integrate DRM document protection into office, and that will get corporations buying Palladium in a big way. Wait a second, the open source guys can’t do DRM, so this is a way to add value that that damned Linux can’t match! Nice!’

Microsoft plans to kick off a huge “DRM as private security” initiative within days of the realization, as soon as idea gains traction and goes viral within the company.