Microsoft DRM OS

[gstudios]

Hello, I was reading through SlashDot this early morning, and came across a very intriguing article. It lets you know about a Patent, that Microsoft was granted on "Digital Rights Management Operating System" You can see the original SlashDot Discussion here or you can go directly to the Patent's Site here
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That scares me. It scares me because, MS is behind it. And alot of average users, like MS. Therefore if they bought it, it would become widespread. What do you people think? Could it be the Beginning of the End for MS?

[ThePreacher]

This is quoted from the site:

Digital rights management operating system

Abstract

A digital rights management operating system protects rights-managed data, such as downloaded content, from access by untrusted programs while the data is loaded into memory or on a page file as a result of the execution of a trusted application that accesses the memory. To protect the rights-managed data resident in memory, the digital rights management operating system refuses to load an untrusted program into memory while the trusted application is executing or removes the data from memory before loading the untrusted program. If the untrusted program executes at the operating system level, such as a debugger, the digital rights management operating system renounces a trusted identity created for it by the computer processor when the computer was booted. To protect the rights-managed data on the page file, the digital rights management operating system prohibits raw access to the page file, or erases the data from the page file before allowing such access. Alternatively, the digital rights management operating system can encrypt the rights-managed data prior to writing it to the page file. The digital rights management operating system also limits the functions the user can perform on the rights-managed data and the trusted application, and can provide a trusted clock used in place of the standard computer clock.

What does this mean to the average user? Im not quite sure. I think its saying that if you dont run a trusted application on this system, you can not access data from a trusted one. So if you right your own programs you are screwed. Or if microsoft doesnt want its competitors products on their system, they can make it an untrusted app. Maybe I'm reading this wrong.

[proactive]

Yeah, I dont't understand this either. Maybe someone has a link with an easier description of the OS?

To me it sounds like untrusted applications are not allowed to run, which will make virus scanners obsolte. But that's probably not it.

[oddvector]

Obfusciation is a normal M$ tactic. And be sure that monopolistic ventures are cleverly inserted into their os's.