Digital Rights Protections

or how to loose all of it

[Tapolyai]

The question of .net came up a few weeks ago. This is a follow-up to it with a minor twist.

the following link points to a new pattent secured by Microsoft.

uspto.gov search [patft.uspto.gov]

In short Microsoft now owns the right to manage all copyrighted material on the Internet.

I always want the wolf watch over my sheep...

(Is there a maximum IQ requirement at the US pattent office to work?)

[Brett_Tabke]

The way I read it and have heard others discribe it, MS owns a patent on an Operating System used to manage digital rights. That's different from a program.

[SmallTime]

Xbox meets pc is my guess - only glanced at the patent, part of a whole pay to play, listen, surf schema. Copywrite and patents, in the U.S. Constitution, were established for limited time, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" - but I had better stop, lest I rant.