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Microsoft Offers A DRM Patch
Transcendent writes "Microsoft Windows Update is offering a download for their 1.0 version of the 'Microsoft Windows Rights Management client,' if you care to download it. Seems that you need Win98 SE and up (or at least that's the minimum 'supported'). Details are here. Although it's not required or a 'critical' update, this just paves the road for all of Microsoft's software to require DRM technology on your computer. Quote from the details page: 'Installing this client allows RM-aware applications to work with Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) to provide licenses for publishing and consuming RM-protected information.' This, dubbed 'Activation', entails that 'your computer will be automatically connected via the Internet ... in order to create and save on your computer a system component that is associated with your hardware.' Hmmm... me no like ..."
thnx MS makes my job soo much easier
Steel
There are none as blind as those who will not see.. (unknown)
How long before they make a patch like this mandatory? (well, as mandatory as they can make it.... like, bundling it in with a critical security update). Hmmm.... maybe that was their plan all along while they kept releasing all of their hole ridden tripe...
Media Player 9 has had DRM options (defaulted ?) during the clickthrough installation since its release. I think more people will miss that then will install an unescessary windowsupdate patch . . .
What applications at the moment would 'benefit' from this patch being installed, being "RM-aware" ?
I think they may also be embedding this in service packs, in addition to the standalone download, so you may easily install it without even knowing. I know for a fact that I saw this DRM component listed under Windows Update on a Windows 2000 box with SP3, but after it was updated to SP4 that component suddenly wasn't listed anymore. Hmmm....
i doubt that is what M$ wantsto do when we roll over. seriously tho, what will happen when this all comes to pass? will we who don't want to run that shit have to own a special box just so we can run software and watch movies/listen to music?
and possibly legal music- who decides what on your computer is legally yours? leave this decision up to others?
I think not
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
And in a given year, Gates will donate vastly more than $168 million - some years he'll give over five billion to charity.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize Microsoft... but to say Gates isn't sincerely committed to philanthropy is insane.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
A 'rights management' patch? My friend (let's call him Joe), who is not entirely untechnical (sophomore CompEng), actually pondered the following when peering over my shoulder: "Probably should upgrade. About time they did something about those damn viruses." He was under the impression that the 'rights' referred to controls he could set. A good name, indeed.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Lets hope the sharkbite and the missing foot convinces them it's a bad idea.
DRM isn't a bad system for controlling a client-server network. Don't want your confidential e-mails, documents and data being read by someone else? No problemo.
Problem comes in when you implement it on home users machines. A home users' machine is by definition a peer; both a client and a server of services on the internet. DRM is meant to turn a machine into a far more client oriented machine rather than a peer oriented machine by giving other people control of the media they give you. Meaning, the RIAA can burn cd's and when you buy a CD you may listen, not copy, backup etc a cd. Yet I somehow think that with Ms's incompetance there'll be a way around this, but that's besides the point I'm trying to make.
So where will this lead us? First rollout's going to be on corperate amercia's networks not on home users machines; this patch is basically a demo. Home users could care less about this kind of security; most people trust their families and if they don't, then there's a major problem with that family. Sure, people want firewalls and antivirus scanners, sandboxes and spyware hunting applications as far as keeping their machine from exploding, but as far as keeping your school report form your sister well that's just dumb.
Sure, kids don't want their parents seeing their pr0n collection or vice versa, but there are other tools available both withing winnt and outside to facilitate that kind of control(and even to an extent in win98). Plus there's the added "Teacher, it says "Drm error; you have no rights to open this file", how do I print the paper I made at home?." Although the school I went to had a strict secuity policiy; you get only 1 disk, that disk stays in the computer room, you are not allowed to put any disk in any computer, which later changed quite a bit as I hit highschool but you get the idea; it adds points of failure.
So what my guess is that they are either going to package it with a future os as an enabled, mostly harmless service that makes it difficult for you, for example, to copy a CD the RIAA doesn't want you copying. Much like how most people who run win2k aren't aware they are loging in under admin, so too will they be unaware they are running a DRM system and knowing MS, they'll leave it at that. There is nothing in Win2k that I am aware of that is forced on the user. WinXP home ed is a different story, but in Win2k you get admin control. Sure, it's not total control like with linux but the computer doesn't do things you don't want it to do; if you don't want it running tcpip you shut down the protocol and it's that simple.
Ms also knows full well that there are alternatives out there that people can and will use to bypass their security bullshit. Hell, I even have friends who'll pay me to mod chip their dvd player to get rid of the regional encoding. I also know people who play a lot of music on their computers and if all of a sudden they coulnd't they'd come straight to me and ask how to get around it.
In any case, if home users don't like it they will no doubt goto their geeky friends and ask "I can't copy this cd, what do I do?" and those geeky frineds will hand them a linux cd if that's the only alternative.
There's, thankfully, been a lot of developement as far as dumbing down linux so the average user can understand and utilise it. Sure, a lot of hardcore linux elitist assholes are going to complain, but when it comes right down to it most people are dumb and lazy. The next step is taking linux from, for example, a gaming engine to an actual game. We've got the engine complete, it's got documentation out the asshole, it's got different mods now we've got to make a coherent distrobution that's standards based that people can understand.
What do we have to watch out for? Firstly, if Ms gets control over what you can and cannot run, then they are most certainly not going to let you run competing products
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Actually, more than 50% of the daily visitors here are using Internet Explorer. Really. Just check out that IRC log that's in the interviews section.. it's somewhere there..
:)
It's just that there are a large number of Linux advocates who are very noisy here.
Oh, by the way: I like Windows.
(I really do.)
~ Aero
Linus has said about the DRM issue.
Zealots on both sides of the DRM debate can bite
my fleshy ass.
Really if I wish to manage my rights on files I use public key encryption. That way I can confidently know what really I am allowing access to. I dont need nor would I want any rights management Microsoft give me.
As for Joe user never noticing. I think Joe user will. If my memory serves people really did not like the activation process that came with Windows XP. This seems to be taking it just another step further.
Nope. Things like region coding have been acceptable because Joe Sixpack doesn't deal with discs from a different region very often. However, the first time Joe puts a CD that he bought for his car into his computer and finds that it won't play, he's going to be irritated. And when he takes it back to where he bought it, complains that it doesn't work, exchanges it for another copy and finds that it still doesn't work, he's going to be really pissed. Rights Management (indeed, virtually all security systems) impose a certain loss of convenience upon the user. American consumers are notoriously intolerant of anything that gets in the way of their doing what they want to do, when they want to do it. It's why every attempt to impose "rights management" to date has been met with skepticism if not outright hostility. Very little computer software is copy-protected anymore ... why is that? Because consumers didn't accept it! The RIAA forced SCM (serial-copy-management) upon Digital Audio Tape and killed off that promising media. Consumers don't like being told they can't do something, because their (correct) perception is that if they bought it, they own it and should be able to use the product in any way they please.
Now, admittedly computer software is a competitive industry, and if one vendor tries to protect his offering, a competitor can gain an immediate marketing advantage by not protecting his. The RIAA and MPAA have sought to eliminate that avenue by simply eliminating competition. They're getting away with it for the time being because the only disadvantages the consumer perceives are high prices and poor quality. When the media companies start trying to dictate to individual consumers, in any meaningful way, how and where their products can be used, expect the backlash to be immediate.
The other problem the music companies will encounter with DRM is that consumers have had a taste of what it means to have control over their music. Whatever you want to say about Napster, peer-to-peer, indeed file-sharing in general the truth is that a lot of people have been exposed to it, and liked it. It will damned hard to get those sixty or seventy million worms back in the can and accepting DRM.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
True. With all the loopholes that even the common user keeps finding (see: the older Apex DVD players, and region-free DVD-ROM hacks and region-free DVD players from overseas), those baby steps aren't such a major concern. I dunno how hard it is to bypass the restrictions in iTunes, though.
It'll be a heck of a lot more interesting if all the loopholes are closed, and there are no backdoored DVD players or hacks for DVD-ROMs. We'll only really know the extent- or lack - of consumer wrath - if Fair Use is completely nipped in the bud.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
>I think the point is that any newer (media) software written for Windows will eventually tie-in with the RM APIs, so you won't have a choice in the future.
It actually is.
I don't use Win XP because I don't like its activation scheme. I chose not to use it.
I don't use Word/Excel/whatever on my Windows 98 computer because I don't want to use it. I chose not to use it.
If a piece of software does require RM API then I will decide if I want to use it or not.
>It won't be as simple as "don't use it."
Why isn't it? How many non-MS OS users have already done exactly this?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
On one hand, we could potentially see more digital content via DRM. On the other, it's kind of like being able to see movies ONLY if we go to the theaters.
*Sigh*
I do have one optimistic hope, though. Wasn't it Princess Leia who said "The more you tighten your grip, the more will slip through your fingers"? Well, I think that applies here. If it's such a pain in the butt to have movies on your PC, then Indie movie makers will have an extra boost. "For $5, you can buy our movie DRM free. We'd rather not treat all our customers like they're thieves."
In that light, I kind of look forward to it. I think the content industry is selfish enough that it'll blow up in their faces.
"Derp de derp."
"Digital Rights Management" offers the end user, or consumer no real advantage. They will NOT see more functionality by installing D/RM; in fact they will see less functionality. There is nothing 'broken' with their computer.
/. begging for a legal and legit music distribution one second and then cursing D/RM the next... you cant have it both ways. this isnt a bad thing.
I dont understand attitudes like these. I know its microsoft, and we hate microsoft. But we love Apple's iTunes $.99 a song deal, and most of us intellies are probably yearning for such a service for windows/linux. well guess what - that requires DRM. Would such a service somehow lower functionality?? I see people in
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
But information isn't a consumable no matter how much corporations might want it to be, nor should it ever be treated as such. To do so is, ultimately, to turn us into mental slaves.
I swear, if a quick and easy method existed for making someone forget something, its use would be mandated by governments faster than you could say "intellectual property". Pray that day never comes (but, of course, it will, since it's merely a matter of technology).
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I disagree. Services that offer you high quality music downloads DO NOT require DRM -- that's just what we're being lead to believe by the commercial music industry lobby. They are making it law that these things require DRM; this is why I'm really resenting this new shift.
They will keep lobbying government and spreading heir advertising, and eventually people will believe that yes they need DRM in order to "properly" view videos, listen to music, and read documents.
However all of us know that right now we do not require any sort of digital 'rights' management in order to enjoy any of these forms of media. I still firmly believe that there is nothing illegal about making casual copies of media.
It's just one more reason I'm becoming completely unmotivated to work in corporate I.T.
I've been an "I.T. guy" ever since my first job, and frankly, I banked on "PCs and DOS/Windows solutions" as the stuff one needed to keep up with to retain a decent job.
Somewhere along the way (I think roughly around the time Microsoft started pushing Active Directory integrated with Exchange 2000, but that's far from the ONLY factor), I started becoming disillusioned with the whole thing. I had always tinkered with Linux as a curiousity and fun "alternative OS" to use at home - but couldn't spark any interest in it where I worked.
I decided to "rock the boat" a little bit, building Linux-based thin clients PCs out of old, depreciated systems being taken out of service, and asking employees to try using them on a "trial" basis. I had few complaints, and got most of the ones I did have ironed out in short order. (Mostly, people whining about needing support for their scroll wheel mice, stuff like that.)
I think it threatened my co-workers though, who were die-hard "MS only!" people. My boss was "on the fence" about the whole project, basically not wanting to stop me from experimenting - yet uneasy about it disrupting his little "happy family" of I.T. employees.
Next thing I knew, I was let go. By this time, the job market was quickly drying up, and I spent a long time collecting unemployment checks, and trying to find another, similar job to no avail.
I finally found work with Apple Mac systems. Wow, what a difference! Problem is, it's a small mom and pop place that's hanging on by a shoestring. My hours got cut back to part-time recently, because he couldn't make ends meet otherwise. It's really disappointing more folks haven't yet discovered the things Apple has done/is doing with OS X.
But anyway, here in the present, I see the I.T. job market SLOWLY starting to open back up, but when I read the job descriptions, my stomach churns. I don't even want to apply for most of them! It just seems like signing up to administer hundreds (or thosands?) of users on Exchange email while helping develop roll-outs of the latest MS technologies is like signing one's death warrant.
This DRM garbage is just another nail in the coffin, the way I see it. I can just imagine the fun it'll be explaining to the higher-ups why everyone's locked out of hundreds of important documents because Joe Schmoe encrypted them and then got laid off/fired/took a vacation/whatever. It's already insane enough trying to keep up with all these security fixes (and fixes for broken fixes!), stop the floods of email from woms/virii, and all the other MS headaches.
Obviously, there are still plenty of I.T. folks out there happy and willing to take on these jobs, risks and all. But maybe all my experience has made me too jaded? I'm about to throw in the towel. I don't have nearly enough "real world experience" using the OS's I see as superior solutions (Solaris, Linux, BSD, etc.) to get a decent paying job supporting/administering them. I spent too much time in the MS camp for that. I think I can handle the Mac OS X support quite well, but nobody's hiring for that. MS's current offerings give me the creeps....
I've got issues with companies that try and 'slip it under the radar' like MS. Perhaps MS should realize that people like me who admin Windows machines, and switch to Mac are going to tell everyone who requests 'Computer Help' to grab a Mac. No viruses. Easy. Powerful. And sexy-hot. :)
With the advent of the G5 kicking ass and taking names, there is less and less reason to go with insecure, unpredictable, untrustworthy Windows.
Frankly, I think it's good that a major corporation is finally taking such a keen interest in the personal lives of their customers. DRM allows them to keep and eye on us, be our "Big Brother" if you will, just to make sure everything's okay. I don't know about you, but I feel safe and secure in the hands of such a responsible company.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
(Source: UNICEF and WHO, April 25, 2003.)
I have not downloaded that new patch yet, but for a while now, I have watched many apps checking with M$ to see if they have permission to run. At least I THINK that is what is going on. They always check with crl.microsoft.com instantly after startup. These are just random apps and it looks like the OS is doing the checking, not the apps.
It started doing this after I downloaded some of those patches for those damn RPC worms. Me thinks they snuck the DRM thing beta in those patches and this is to fix a few items.
that's right -- quit fooling yourselves and forget the legit-download-for-cheap joke. napster/gnutella has made the record distrobution system obsolete, and the riaa fear for its life. instead of asking for more itunes, how about asking for less legal interferrence from the riaa. hell how about asking for the _end_ of the riaa. destroy it. we don't need drm, and we don't need itunes: we need less legal pressure groups defending patents/copyrights/etc. free your software, free your knowledge, free your music...then free your mind.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
So...it doesn't matter what his money does, it only matters what percentage of his net worth it represents?
Assuming the 168 mil will make a difference---and I assume that it would---the people who don't die from malaria as a direct result of his charity would no doubt love to argue this point with you.
If he spent a far greater amount of his net worth on something idiotic like historic golf course preservation, I'd have to assume you'd feel he was more "generous."
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
...but when MS controls 85% of the country's desktops
Big deal. Adobe and MS give away e-book readers. AOL gives away access software. Getting people to buy the paid content will be the trick. AOL is losing share. They gained ground as they were pretty much the first national dialup ISP. Now that they have copmetition, free software isn't keeping them from shrinking. Unfortunately paid access stuff has to compete with already in place free stuff. They do not have the only content without free competition. Many early markets were served by AOL only. DRM does not have this headstart in a world of free content. The pay stuff has to advertise heavly to get people to spend the money.
If your company requires DRM or you want to play DRM media (not unlike a DVD, DAT, Sony Mini-Disk) you will need a DRM machine. Due to it's limited capibilities, it should be limited to a single use type function much as a DVD player, or cable TV box is now. For the rest of your computing, use a primary general purpose computer which does not have the serial copy restrictions of DVD, DAT, Sony Mini-Disk, etc. I'll have to use a general use computer to do my editing and creating. This is doubly true if it needs released in an open format.
There will be programming that can only be viewed on the TV in the living room. There will be other programming that can be played on your RIO, in your DVD player, in your car.... As long as there is indi content, the DRM stuff will have harder time entering the market. Don't forget the Circuit City DVD experiment, full priced E-Books at Barns and Noble and of course the tiny press play optical. People don't pay full price for perishable media. They know it will go bad and won't invest in it for the personal library. The last DVD I bought, (Jackie Chan flick at Wal-Mart) I spent less than $6 for it. Selling a DRM protected newspaper article for $2 with an experation and with backup problems will be a very hard sell. Some corporate stuff that is sensitive may have a place, but for general consumption entertainment, it won't fly at high prices.
Hey RIAA, Why can I find Jackie Chan videos for under $6, but no good music for less? Don't call loss of sales due to competetion for the entertainment buck a loss to piracy.
The truth shall set you free!
This is a very good point. Apple embedded DRM in their optional free iTunes and Quicktime software. And nobody sees it's bad, because it allows you to burn CD's (for now). /., people always object saying that's not DRM. That may have changed after the eBay-sale of a song, but people were not opposed to Apple's DRM because it was disguised pretty good.
It's even worse, when bringing this up on
Apple Music Store is nice because it makes the music industry look silly. But it is bad bacause you can't play the songs on *nix/windows systems.
Hear hear. But having said all that, the masses are already calling us dirty hippies for playing with Linux and Apple and not playing along.
This is the golden opportunity for Apple and for Linux to get some more market share, should the price of DRM Windows shoot through the roof. Perhaps we should be encouraging this trend?
Personally, if it were economically viable and if I had the time to spend on re-educating myself I would be off the Windows bandwagon ASAP, as I have wasted too much of my life reinstalling Windows.
More recently, I have spent the better part of the weekend trying to get 2 computers on WinXP that are 3 feet away from each other to see each other on the network, despite the fact that one of them can access the other's FTP server. Having accomplished this one of the computers decided to ditch 1/2 the RAM and ignore the network card...
In contrast, my friend doesn't even know what the inside of his Mac looks like...
The words "Macintosh" and "open source" couldn't possibly be in one scentence..
au contraire mon frere. There are many components to Apple's technologies that are indeed, open source. Darwin (the core OS of OS X), Quicktime streaming server, Rendezvous, and others.
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