[plug] M$ again - Digital rights in Office

[Denis Brown]

Interesting discussion on password-protection, encryption of documents, etc...

Come to think of it, Word users have been able to assign password 
protection to their documents for yonks.   Excel sheets too, I 
assume.   OpenOffice has all that and more; OpenOffice -> help -> Index  -> 
"passwords" shows a rich set of possibilities.   Is this supposed to be a 
"new" feature in O2003?   As much as MS would like to sell server side 
licenses (and client as well) I can't see that any scheme would be tied to 
a server.

What if you're the CEO of a company, flying 30,000 feet above the ocean, 
wanting to work on a document your secretary has edited - and protected - 
back in the office?   And then he/she changed the password on the server, 
being a security conscious person!  If you haven't got access to that 
server and hence the updated password you might well be s****ed.   I think 
it has to be a local document thing.  Unless I'm missing the Bleeding 
Obvious (tm) which certainly has been known to happen :-)

Cheers,
Denis