A British programmer is walking on dangerous grounds having posted on his website the source code to a program that cracks the highest level of Microsoft's eBook DRM scheme. His objective, however, is benign: he would like to be able to read eBooks he has leagally purchased on his older Win CE device. Leaving aside the question of the legality of his actions, this case should make clear the other major objective of encryption technology: vendor lock-in. If you can't read your own document without the latest Microsoft product, and if it's illgal for anyone else to figure out how to read the document, then you are tied for life (or at least for as long as that document is useful) to Microsoft products. Oh, and belive it or not, I have to issue a language warning before referring people to this article. The Register is just too much sometimes.
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