By Matt Rosoff [bio]
Posted: Sep. 12, 2005

The digital era presents a problem for organizations whose business depends on controlling access to content: once in digital form, content can be copied an infinite number of times with no loss of fidelity and redistributed at lightning speed over computer networks. Rights management, sometimes called digital rights management (DRM), addresses this problem by allowing the owner of digital data to define what users may and may not do with that data—that is, their "rights" to that data—and enforcing those restrictions as the data travels among computers and other devices.

Today, Microsoft offers two distinct sets of rights management technologies: one for protecting digital media, such as movies or music, and one for protecting corporate data, such as documents or e-mails. Although functionally similar, these two technologies are intended for different audiences, are being developed by separate product teams at Microsoft, and are not currently slated to merge or evolve to use a common foundation.

This report will help content owners understand the benefits and limitations of Microsoft's rights management technologies for digital media and explains how partners might be able to take advantage of this emerging business area. It will also help enterprises and partners understand Microsoft's rights management solution for protecting corporate data. Finally, it will identify future directions for both technologies.