If you were to go by the majority of headlines last week, you might be fooled. Press reports crowed:

* "Microsoft Boosts Rights Management"

* "Microsoft Adds Rights Management Protection for the Enterprise"

* "Microsoft to Release Document Protection Software"

Windows Rights Management: It's a good thing. Isn't it?

If you are a big company or organization with lots of correspondence and documents you want to keep secret, Windows RM is, indeed, a blessing. If you are a whistleblower, a journalist, a lawyer, a cop — or anyone who has the audacity to want to use software other than Microsoft Windows or Office — you should be very afraid.

Microsoft is positioning Rights Management as technology aimed at protecting privacy and increasing security. In its white paper on Windows RM, Microsoft even attempts to hitch a ride on the Homeland Security bandwagon by declaring its RM technology a possible aid in the government's quest to combat cybercrime and more tightly secure classified documents.

To me, RM, first and foremost, is an attempt by Microsoft to further lock customers in by requiring them to use Windows clients, Windows servers, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer in order to create and consume documents. RM has another benefit, which I am not the first to note: It will eliminate the e-mail and document trails that hurt Microsoft in antitrust court.

RM won't stop with Windows and Office. Microsoft has plans to add RM to a host of other products, including its Xbox gaming system, as well Microsoft's back-end servers. Microsoft also is actively recruiting third-party software companies to back RM, too, and incorporate the necessary application-programming interfaces into their own wares.

Why aren't Microsoft watchers as alarmed about this RM scheme as they were about Windows Product Activation? There was plenty of outcry when word leaked about Microsoft's "Palladium" project (which many considered a DRM wolf in sheep's clothing), but hardly a peep about this new RM technology.

Can folks have been fooled by Microsoft's attempt to distance itself from DRM by omitting the "D"? Or are the majority of corporate customers and consumers are so fed up with illicit e-mail forwarding and document leaks that they are ready to trust Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing plan enough to give RM a try?

Got any ideas for a content-privacy alternative that would be more interoperable and equitable? Write me at mswatch@ziffdavis.com and let me know.