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Last October, OpenOffice.org released the 1.1 version of its office productivity suite. This update included native PDF and Flash conversion, complex text layout language support, and increased compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats.

Roughly a month later, Microsoft released Office 2003. This product was freshly-infused with digital rights management (DRM) technologies, dubbed "information rights management" by Microsoft, designed to secure and restrict access to documents as needed. Documents employing DRM created in Office 2003 may well only be accessible via Office 2003. More recently, Microsoft filed for numerous patent applications in New Zealand and Europe, covering the interoperability of XML-based word processing documents.

What do these tactics mean for interoperability between current and pending versions of Microsoft Office and competing products such as OpenOffice.org and StarOffice? Are the goals espoused by Microsoft, namely increased document security, the driving concern behind these moves, or is this a careful strategy designed to lock out competition? How, specifically, do the project leaders of these competing products intend to address this issue?

What is DRM?

Digital rights management has often been defined vaguely. Definitions range from it simply being "a system for protecting the copyrights of digital content that is distributed online" (TechEncyclopedia), to "the description, identification, trading, protection, monitoring and tracking of all forms of rights usages over both tangible and intangible assets including management of rights holders" (planet eBook). Given these seemingly harmless sounding definitions, it is easy to wonder why DRM appears to increasingly be the buzzword of choice in both technology publications and the mainstream media.

Whether we realize it or not, DRM has rapidly become pervasive in our daily lives, at home and at work. It often appears in areas we might not necessarily expect. For example, if you are reading this article at work right now, in your office, using your company owned computer, you probably use many programs controlled by another program on a central company server to manage site licenses. Sassafras Software's KeyServer is a common example of this. Rather than buying 100 copies of Freehand for your 100 employees who might need it, KeyServer allows for more efficient licensing. Of the 100 employees who might need access to Freehand, not all 100 would need it simultaneously. Using a tool such as KeyServer, IT departments could buy licenses for, say, 30 copies, but have it installed on all 100 computers. KeyServer would then dole out access to up to 30 people. If you are No. 31, you would need to wait until someone else quits Freehand on their computer.

Site licensing tools such as KeyServer are a fairly unobtrusive form of DRM, as opposed to the much-maligned hardware dongles QuarkXpress once used, or the questionable DRM schemes used by the entertainment industry, such as disposable DVDs and convoluted CD-burning rights in many digital download services.

DRM as a form of document security has existed for some time in a variety of different forms. Adobe's Acrobat, for example, has offered a range of security options for documents converted into PDF files. This security ranges in levels, from basic password protection to prohibiting printing, prohibiting selecting text and copying/pasting, to prohibiting any changing of the document itself. Much of this type of DRM evolved from "old school" UNIX file permissions.

As DRM continues to evolve, the technology may change, but the key issue remains essentially unchanged: What is the balance between convenience and flexibility, and security and (in some cases) potential loss of revenue?

Microsoft's DRM strategy

Currently, Microsoft's DRM efforts rely on an end-to-end Microsoft environment: Windows Server 2003, Windows Rights Management, Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 or Windows XP, and Office Professional 2003. For those Windows users without access to Office Professional 2003, but with the other frontend and backend products, Microsoft offers a free Rights Management Add-on viewer for Internet Explorer. However, according to a Microsoft spokesperson, users of Office 2003 "will get the most value out of IRM capabilities," and the free viewer works "only if the recipient has permission to view the file."

In a potentially related move, Microsoft filed for a series of patents related to Microsoft Office file formats. These patents "cover word processing documents stored in the XML (Extensible Markup Language) format. The proposed patent would cover methods for an application other than the original word processor to access data in the document."

Naturally, a concern is that these patent applications could lead to interoperability barriers between Microsoft Office and competing suites. Microsoft has recently downplayed this possibility, though, claiming these moves are just standard procedures many businesses employ. Yet, if these tactics are so routine, why did Microsoft opt for these patents in New Zealand and Europe first, and not here in the U.S.? These patents, combined with the existing DRM features of Office 2003, are controversial at best, anticompetitive at worst.

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