When Microsoft announced in February its plans to add digital-rights-management technology to Windows and Office, it offered scant details.

But during a recent Microsoft-sponsored online chat on the topic of Rights Management and Office, the Redmond software giant provided a few more specifics.

See "Microsoft Readies Cross-Product DRM Platform"

"Information Rights Management to Debut in Office 2003"

Microsoft's Rights Management White Paper

Microsoft has made available to Office 2003 beta testers in February versions of information-rights-management-enabled versions of its core Office 2003 applications and a beta version of its Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) server.

Microsoft committed during the online chat to making a beta version of its Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer available in early May. Company executives said Redmond plans to make the final versions of RMS and RM add-on code available via Windows Update this summer.

Microsoft also is working on an RM software development kit (SDK), which will include the RM application programming interfaces. Microsoft plans to provide this to third-party software vendors for free so that they can embed Microsoft RM into their client and server applications. The likely delivery timeframe: June.

"We absolutely want a rich ecosystem for RM with as many ISVs participating as possible," Marco DeMello, Rights Management Server group program manager, told chat participants.

DeMello reiterated that Microsoft wants its RM system not only to work across Microsoft servers but servers not running Windows. He pointed to Microsoft's Passport Internet authentication technology as the way to bridge this gap. Users not running RMS will need to authenticate to a Passport server, he explained.

In addition, DeMello added, Microsoft plans to provide "via our Protocols Licensing Program, a license to non-Windows vendors who want to implement RMS-like functionality in non-Windows platforms, which will help establish an interoperable RM ecosystem over time."

DeMello said that Microsoft plans to make RMS "part" of Windows Server 2003 (Enterprise and Datacenter versions only). But, like other "layered" technologies, such as Microsoft's "Greenwich" Real Time Communications server, RMS will be a "premium service," DeMello explained, like Terminal Services. As such, "it'll have a Client Access License fee associated with it," he said.

For now, Microsoft's plan is to continue to offer free access to its RMS server for at least a year, DeMello said.

Chat questioners asked how and if RM is related to Microsoft's Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (a k a, "Palladium"). DeMello's response: It isn't, other than the fact that future versions of RMS will run on the "trusted" kernel that Microsoft will build into Windows in the future.

Information Rights Management (IRM) — the elements of RMS that will be embedded in Microsoft Office 2003 — will be available for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook once Office 2003 ships commercially this summer. IRM will be included as part of all the SKUs of Office 2003. But Microsoft has no plans to add IRM to its Mac Office product, officials said.

IRM will make use of 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) technology, company officials told chat participants during Thursday's hour-long online question-and-answer session.

Watch for Microsoft to add IRM support to other Office applications, such as InfoPath, its e-forms application, over time, officials said. Also expect RM technology to show up in future versions of SharePoint Portal Server, Exchange and other Microsoft servers, they said.

IRM can be turned off, Microsoft executives admitted in response to a chat participant's question.

"In fact, an admin can decide to prevent the use of IRM in all Office applications," Chris Graham, Outlook program manager, told chat participants. In that case, "the Office applications will behave just like Office XP would behave when IRM content is encountered."