This is a simple quote by CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, on Digital Rights Management in the Windows operating system. (In a way this is a follow-up to a previous story highlighted by a Zeropaid article about Microsoft applying for a DRM OS patent.) This is from an article on ZDNet that talked about a lot of different things. The following two paragraphs are pulled exactly as is from the ZDNet article:
“(ZDNet): After all the e-mail that came out in the antitrust case, there’s been a lot of interest in the security issue. Are you going to create an API (application programming interface) that other people can interoperate with?
(Ballmer): The (digital rights management) stuff will be in the operating system, so you’ll be able to create an application on Windows that allows you to author and read content that has a set of security rules associated with it. That is a feature that will be built into the platform.
The interesting thing here, is from the article point of view, it is a throwaway line. Also, how Ballmer states this sentence, as if this is already a foregone conclusion for Ballmer. This pretty much signals to me that a lot of content in the future will be built to a model of “pay to play”. ”
The questions then becomes, will the new Microsoft OS still support media (such as mp3’s) that is written without any DRM technology in the code? Otherwise, it has to be Linux for me. But even this is shaky, as there will be a LOT of corporate pressure on Linux development to have something similar in Linux. If not, some corporate interest in Linux may disappear, as corporations may decide that can’t recoup their costs without a DRM in the operating system. My hunch would be that, for Linux at least, you would always be able to play non-DRM media. What do other people think?
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