Posted by
timothy
on from the don't-miss-an-episode-of-%83hd1nzz dept.
karrde writes "CNet (and others) is reporting that: 'Microsoft has bowed to consumer pressure and pulled back from a controversial plan that would have encrypted TV shows recorded on forthcoming digital media PCs.' One could hope that this will be the first many decisions in this direction."
Re:MS bow to consumer pressure?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Informative
if you read the article, it talks about their solution to this....the burned disc's can only be played back through Windows Media Player 9 and the latest version of XP...thus keeping in the Microsoft realm....I suppose you will need to constantly upgrade your media player and OS into perpetuity to continue to use this 'feature'.
Re:But DVI will do this
by
kableh
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Except someone CLAIMED to have cracked HDCP (the encryption you are speaking of) ages ago.
My only hope, is that this trend continues, and consumers realize they shouldn't have to compromise their convenience for Hollywood's sake.
MS didn't back down all the way
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The Media Center software has been changed so that now the copyright owner, not Microsoft, gets to decide whether a particular TV program will be "encrypted to the hard drive"--meaning, "unable to be viewed on a different PC or DVD player."
THIS IS DONE by making the Media Center software cognizant of a television standard called Copy Generation Management System for Analog (CGMS-A). If a couple of bits in a program's CGMS-A settings are switched on, Media Center PCs will encrypt the program, making it unplayable on anything but the recording PC. Leave them unflipped, and the program remains copyable. Microsoft says its testing found no television programming with the encryption bits turned on.
MUstickD: From the same company...
by
rusty0101
·
· Score: 5, Informative
...which is loudly proclaming the death of TiVo, claiming setup is too hard.... Go to the bottom of the Slate page, and you will find:
For some reason I have the feeling that there is a bit of garbage floating around somewhere in one or both of these articles.
-Rusty
-- You never know...
Re:Yeah, right
by
geekee
·
· Score: 2, Informative
ok. Same old rant. Lets forget the fact the the article implies the exact opposite. According to the article, when someone actually wants to buy a DVR, the fact that the recorded material cannot be copied makes the buyer look elsewhere. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he'd prefer a dvr system where he can record favorites onto VCDs etc. MS, whose main goal is to make money, sees this problem, and switches sides, at least for now, to sell more products and expand its comsumer base (at the expense of Tivo, etc.). I think this is encouraging.
-- Vote for Pedro
Re:This can't be good.
by
Per+Wigren
·
· Score: 5, Informative
We're working on it! And it will be good! Just wait a few months until our upcoming features is in place! Development is going very fast right now!
-- My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Why would anyone but
by
Archfeld
·
· Score: 3, Informative
that POS anyways is beyond me...Youi can get a video card or a tivo that does the same thing for WAY WAY LESS, and you don't have to feed M$ to do it...
-- errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Some bit of this is right.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I work as a Software Developer at Microsoft, so I can confirm that we are interested in making the products we sell the best they can be for the consumer. However, Microsoft does cater to different groups and different markets, and not all people inside Microsoft make decisions for the reasons that people on/. seem to think.
Many of the reasons that Microsoft designs systems the way it does have more to do with the avoidance of the cost of late design changes, or with what the perceived market or users from studies shows when the projects were in the design stage. Unfortunately, Microsoft does get plagued from time to time with the "forward-looking" strategy whereby someone looks too hard at what could be the future, and designs something which shows that they weren't looking hard enough or in the right places. Remember that all software you use today took teams of people years to design, implement, and test.
There are great benefits to DRM. If I give you a video I make, but don't want you distributing, then I have the ability to make it really difficult for you to distribute it. Let me give you an example you're not used to hearing. Lets say I make a video of my children. I'm not selling you this media. I'm giving you it, but the ownership is really mine. I don't want you to accidentally or otherwise post this video on the internet where some pervert can watch the video and plan to abduct my children. DRM lets me excersize my ownership rights. If I encode the video so it only plays back on selected computers and is unencryptable otherwise, then that lets me protect my rights.
DRM can also go to far. Requiring DRM on all recording from television can prevent people from excersizing their legal rights. Requiring it on the digital recording of *Copyrighted* materials isn't going too far, provided that fair use rights are still preserved. People and companies who pour out the millions of dollars to produce something which you consume should have a right to make efforts to prevent the illegal distribution of their work.
But the real bottom line is that nothing Microsoft _can_ do will prevent you 100% from being able to reverse engineer the code, capture the digital data, and remove the protection mechanism. And also, on that note, security is never finished. Once someone who can write code to exploit _any_ flaw in _any_ product on your system does, then it can basically do what you can do.
Don't get me wrong, we make lots of valiant efforts to close all things we know and can automate testing to find, but even if we close _billions_ of possible holes, it only takes _one_ hole before a new headline shows up on/. poking more fun at Microsoft's security or trustworthy computing initiative.
If you think that is bad, well, take into perspective that Microsoft Windows XP alone has something on the order of 65 Million lines of code. Since the security push started, this code has been checked by the hands of Microsoft developers and testers who know the code, Microsoft developers and testers who don't know the code, _and_ by automated tools written by Microsoft security experts to analyze this code for flaws. Every file has to get signed off on. Every line is code reviewed by 2 or more very capable people. Every change that results has the potential to destabilize or break functionality in Microsoft software and software that depends on it.
The world is a lot more complicated than seen through the perspective of a/. post. And Microsoft is not an evil company, nor are Microsoft employees out to get you. We want the same things you want, and we do the same things you do, and we even agree with some of the things you say!
I've posted several times to/., even in the early days when I was in college... and I'm an AC because I just can't take the spam.
Re:They're holding out
by
swb
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The RIAA has been rebuffing Microsoft's "secure digital media" initiatives for *years*. They know what Microsoft does to its business "partners" and it scares them, along with the wholly known stupidity of becoming reliant on one company that will supply the DRM system and then "manage it" to maximize their own business needs (more features to Windows, less to other players).
Microsoft is simply strong-arming them with this; the idea is to put Hollywood on notice that its Microsoft DRM or none at all. There is no *way* that BillG and STEVE! Ballmer would EVER allow Microsoft to become reliant on either an open standard they have to compete on and ESPECIALLY a proprietary system owned by someone else to do DRM for what many consider to be "the next killer app" for PCs.
They figure that if they make enough noise about unencrypted (copyable, sharable) video being available to consumers, Hollywood will run scared to MS begging to "partner" with MS on DRM, thus ensuring MS a place in their profit stream.
Any fantasies that this is about anything other than Microsoft locking itself into every consumer audio and video device made from now until 2030 they are fooling themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
if you read the article, it talks about their solution to this....the burned disc's can only be played back through Windows Media Player 9 and the latest version of XP...thus keeping in the Microsoft realm....I suppose you will need to constantly upgrade your media player and OS into perpetuity to continue to use this 'feature'.
Except someone CLAIMED to have cracked HDCP (the encryption you are speaking of) ages ago.
My only hope, is that this trend continues, and consumers realize they shouldn't have to compromise their convenience for Hollywood's sake.
From ZDNet: Why Microsoft caved in on copy protection:
The Media Center software has been changed so that now the copyright owner, not Microsoft, gets to decide whether a particular TV program will be "encrypted to the hard drive"--meaning, "unable to be viewed on a different PC or DVD player."
THIS IS DONE by making the Media Center software cognizant of a television standard called Copy Generation Management System for Analog (CGMS-A). If a couple of bits in a program's CGMS-A settings are switched on, Media Center PCs will encrypt the program, making it unplayable on anything but the recording PC. Leave them unflipped, and the program remains copyable. Microsoft says its testing found no television programming with the encryption bits turned on.
...which is loudly proclaming the death of TiVo, claiming setup is too hard.... Go to the bottom of the Slate page, and you will find:
©2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use Advertise TRUSTe Approved Privacy Statement GetNetWise
For some reason I have the feeling that there is a bit of garbage floating around somewhere in one or both of these articles.
-Rusty
You never know...
ok. Same old rant. Lets forget the fact the the article implies the exact opposite. According to the article, when someone actually wants to buy a DVR, the fact that the recorded material cannot be copied makes the buyer look elsewhere. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he'd prefer a dvr system where he can record favorites onto VCDs etc. MS, whose main goal is to make money, sees this problem, and switches sides, at least for now, to sell more products and expand its comsumer base (at the expense of Tivo, etc.). I think this is encouraging.
Vote for Pedro
We're working on it! And it will be good! Just wait a few months until our upcoming features is in place! Development is going very fast right now!
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
that POS anyways is beyond me...Youi can get a video card or a tivo that does the same thing for WAY WAY LESS, and you don't have to feed M$ to do it...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I work as a Software Developer at Microsoft, so I can confirm that we are interested in making the products we sell the best they can be for the consumer. However, Microsoft does cater to different groups and different markets, and not all people inside Microsoft make decisions for the reasons that people on /. seem to think.
/. poking more fun at Microsoft's security or trustworthy computing initiative.
/. post. And Microsoft is not an evil company, nor are Microsoft employees out to get you. We want the same things you want, and we do the same things you do, and we even agree with some of the things you say!
/., even in the early days when I was in college... and I'm an AC because I just can't take the spam.
Many of the reasons that Microsoft designs systems the way it does have more to do with the avoidance of the cost of late design changes, or with what the perceived market or users from studies shows when the projects were in the design stage. Unfortunately, Microsoft does get plagued from time to time with the "forward-looking" strategy whereby someone looks too hard at what could be the future, and designs something which shows that they weren't looking hard enough or in the right places. Remember that all software you use today took teams of people years to design, implement, and test.
There are great benefits to DRM. If I give you a video I make, but don't want you distributing, then I have the ability to make it really difficult for you to distribute it. Let me give you an example you're not used to hearing. Lets say I make a video of my children. I'm not selling you this media. I'm giving you it, but the ownership is really mine. I don't want you to accidentally or otherwise post this video on the internet where some pervert can watch the video and plan to abduct my children. DRM lets me excersize my ownership rights. If I encode the video so it only plays back on selected computers and is unencryptable otherwise, then that lets me protect my rights.
DRM can also go to far. Requiring DRM on all recording from television can prevent people from excersizing their legal rights. Requiring it on the digital recording of *Copyrighted* materials isn't going too far, provided that fair use rights are still preserved. People and companies who pour out the millions of dollars to produce something which you consume should have a right to make efforts to prevent the illegal distribution of their work.
But the real bottom line is that nothing Microsoft _can_ do will prevent you 100% from being able to reverse engineer the code, capture the digital data, and remove the protection mechanism. And also, on that note, security is never finished. Once someone who can write code to exploit _any_ flaw in _any_ product on your system does, then it can basically do what you can do.
Don't get me wrong, we make lots of valiant efforts to close all things we know and can automate testing to find, but even if we close _billions_ of possible holes, it only takes _one_ hole before a new headline shows up on
If you think that is bad, well, take into perspective that Microsoft Windows XP alone has something on the order of 65 Million lines of code. Since the security push started, this code has been checked by the hands of Microsoft developers and testers who know the code, Microsoft developers and testers who don't know the code, _and_ by automated tools written by Microsoft security experts to analyze this code for flaws. Every file has to get signed off on. Every line is code reviewed by 2 or more very capable people. Every change that results has the potential to destabilize or break functionality in Microsoft software and software that depends on it.
The world is a lot more complicated than seen through the perspective of a
I've posted several times to
The RIAA has been rebuffing Microsoft's "secure digital media" initiatives for *years*. They know what Microsoft does to its business "partners" and it scares them, along with the wholly known stupidity of becoming reliant on one company that will supply the DRM system and then "manage it" to maximize their own business needs (more features to Windows, less to other players).
Microsoft is simply strong-arming them with this; the idea is to put Hollywood on notice that its Microsoft DRM or none at all. There is no *way* that BillG and STEVE! Ballmer would EVER allow Microsoft to become reliant on either an open standard they have to compete on and ESPECIALLY a proprietary system owned by someone else to do DRM for what many consider to be "the next killer app" for PCs.
They figure that if they make enough noise about unencrypted (copyable, sharable) video being available to consumers, Hollywood will run scared to MS begging to "partner" with MS on DRM, thus ensuring MS a place in their profit stream.
Any fantasies that this is about anything other than Microsoft locking itself into every consumer audio and video device made from now until 2030 they are fooling themselves.