Microsoft fights for your digital rights

REDMOND, WASH. - Microsoft last week aired plans to help users secure corporate documents with digital rights management technology. It's a move observers say should bring awareness to the technology, but hardly would signal the start of widespread adoption.

Corporate acceptance of DRM still must endure growing pains and overcome issues such as deployment and ease-of-use barriers; establishing trust networks; cost and infrastructure requirements; and the fact that only certain users could benefit from the technology.

Those factors have kept things quiet despite the introduction of products from vendors such as Authentica, Adobe, Liquid Machines and IBM, which is recasting its Electronic Media Management System for the WebSphere platform. Microsoft says it hopes to make noise in this market with its forthcoming Windows Server 2003 and Office 2003, which will work together to support DRM through the company's new Windows Right Management Services technology.

The market might be ripe because companies are committing more intellectual assets to digital media, as well as dealing with federal regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) governing document confidentiality.

The ability to restrict who can see, forward, copy or print data based on a set of managed rights embedded in a file has become an intriguing idea. But the technology has to be easy to use or it will fall into the same quagmire that once stifled secure e-mail, experts say.

"A lot of people tell us they have been thinking of protecting content, but it has not translated into sales," says Ray Wagner, research director for information strategies at Gartner. The market is so small that Gartner does not measure it.