Yesterday, Unwired Review posted an interesting article about Microsoft’s recent patent of a “device manners policy” (DMP), “a wireless zone enforced device protocol that allows local operators to turn certain features off (or on) based on local manners and safety policy.” Such a concept would be used by administrators to communicate expected or required compliance “manners”—like “no talking out loud” or “no photography”—to attendant mobile devices.

As Unwired suggests with DMP, audio recording could be disabled at concerts, video recording killed at theaters, and ringers turned off at funerals. Naturally, educators will see the DMP as an opportunity to retain some amount of control in classrooms filled with converged mobile devices.

The system might be implemented in several ways. Unwired proposes that bigger venues and businesses may have a separate box - DMP server - which transmits information about allowed actions to all mobile devices within it’s reach. Or nearby devices might wirelessly talk to each other and agree on the limits of acceptable behavior. Policies may be transmitted via carrier network and implemented at certain locations via GPS positioning or tower triangulation. Unwired asserts that in some cases even some non-perceptible to human signals, like invisible (to human eye) watermark or inaudible (to human ear) audio signals and RFID tags may be used to lock some functionality of the mobile device.

Of course, this all requires manufacturers to comply with the DMP protocol in their devices. And as Unwired points out, the entire endeavor might be pointless for WinMo devices if iPhones, Nokias, and Blackberries aren’t interested.