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Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
David Gerard writes "Security researcher Peter Gutmann has released A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection, a detailed explanation of just what the protected-content paths in Windows Vista mean to you the consumer: increased hardware cost and even less OS robustness. 'This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry ... The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.'"
Good job describing wild guesses as 'analysis' and getting Slashdot to bite.
Vista has an install base smaller than BeOS at the present time, so your N is likely too small to be meaningful in any way.
Yay for science!
Our company did last year, cities of Vienna and Munich did, French parliament did, it should work out very nicely for you too. Our former XP users love KDE.
No need to put yourself through pains when you can improve security, save money and achieve a good deal of vendor independence all at the same time. Why support the Microsoft monopoly by paying ridiculous prices for bug ridden software with DRM restrictions, when you can run Free software on the industry standard (and thus inexpensive) hardware?
Knowing everything I know now, I only regret that we did not migrate to GNU/Linux sooner.
It really doesn't matter. Before long each new Dell and every other new computer will be shipping with Vista. It could be the worst operating system ever, and within a few years everyone will be using it. There is virtually no way for Vista to fail, given the circumstances.
This so-called analysis was written by thinking of a conclusion first, then filling in the blanks. There are no citing of references to support his claims.
This is just simply a political blurb.
Every time I see an analysis of what DRM means to the consumer, I see all this crap about how it's going to make things more expensive and lower quality. And that's true - SOME things will be more expensive and lower quality.
But these analyses never stop to consider HOW MUCH will be more expensive and lower quality, or exactly what changes we're discussing. What will be lower quality and more expensive is the DRM-protected content. And DRM sucks. People will complain. Vendors will eventually listen.
At the moment, we have a lot of content providers who refuse to provide any content without DRM because they can't imagine making a profit otherwise. DRM gets them to provide something instead of nothing. Historically, unprotected content outperforms protected content; because you spend nothing trying to stop people from stealing it, you recover more revenue than you were losing to theft anyway. If we just let providers choose, they will eventually make the right choice. We can't force them to make the right choice NOW, because they won't make it. They'll provide zero content.
That's the false dilemma. Everyone seems to think the choice is protected content or unprotected content, but it's not - it's protected content or NO content. Fighting the protected content is not going to get you what you want. You have to let the providers make their stupid DRM plans and try them, so they'll see for themselves that it's stupid.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
Content Protection is a explicit opt-in from content providers.
Its not mandated by the OS.
Migrating a different OS doen't give you access to the protected content.
Very interesting analysis. I thought Vista was supposed to make money. According to this Vista is going to bring 100,000 new jobs to the US.
davecb5620@gmail.com
The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.
If hysterical stuff like this is the best the anti-Microsoft forces can come up with (and this guy isn't the first one, just the latest in a long line of hysterical essays), it's pretty clear that Microsoft ain't that bad as a company, despite what some people want to believe. Maybe, just maybe, if you have to resort to that kind of rhetoric, maybe your position isn't that strong?
Disclaimer: I don't hate Microsoft. I am, however, frequently annoyed by their mediocrity, and unbelievably frustrated that someone doesn't have the balls to start a company dedicated to making an absolutely, positively 100%-compatible Windows clone based on a Unix-like operating system.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
But, but, but... what about the high cost of retraining everyone to use all these new weird applications that don't make as much sense as Windows applications!!!? What about the steep learning curve since Linux is just inherently harder to use!!!? What about the fact that when the user tries to hit some valid work related site that needs to access media like Powerpoint, Flash 9 and higher, Windows Media Video, and the like that they won't be able to or will have a reduced quality end-user experience compared to MS Windows??? I've seen the Xine plug-in for Firefox and it doesn't work right. Instead of embedding the content in the browser as it should it pops open a new window and only about 20% of the time does the content actually play!! What about the fact that unless you've got a few gurus on your staff, when there's a problem there's NO ONE to go to for support once the problem is out of your league? Forums? HAH! Yeah, you've got a down critical situation with your users and you're going to fart away valuable time on forums where you may or may not get an answer in a day? A week? A month? A year? Never? The only answer if to get Windows Vista because it was built for real work and not for geeks with no life. Got that?
[DISCLAIMER: The poster called 'eno2001' does not believe in what he stated above at all and is merely parodying the typical lies and misconceptions about GNU/Linux that come from the anti-Linux crowd. The poster called 'eno2001' expects many good responses to the false arguments presented above from the pro-Linux community. All anti-linux sentiments will be laughed at unless you're really good at what you do. The 'eno2001' has spoken.]
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Because pretty soon, you won't be able to watch any premium content without them.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Every touted improvement in Vista exists to make Microsoft's life and the life of their media and hardware partners better and more enriched. It is not, I repeat, not for your benefit or enjoyment. Recently MS stated this would be last 'turn of the crank' for an OS like this. I agree. This is because the only logical step next would be to lease you the OS and the hardware, only, and bar you from doing anything on your own with it. Since that's not bound to fly, yet (let's see how they react to Google) then the alternative is to lock you into their content, at least.
True, but the degradation discussed is a requirement for non-encrypted content streams. My understanding is that if you connect your new Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player via their analog outputs, or to a non-encrypted digital channel, the output is downgraded to a lower resolution (with respect to that of the encrypted digital channel).
Vista: Go where we allow you to go, be all we think you should be...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I think the point was more on the lines of, if you want to play blu-ray discs all you need to do is buy a blu-ray player.
But in reality that $2000 LCD monitor you have isn't going to help because it can't tell the video card that its a protected device, well you need to go buy a new monitor.
Wait that $500 video card can't detect trusted monitors, better go buy a new card that can.
Oh yeah, and that all digital surround sound system, well it isn't going to work at all so you need to go buy an analog one.
I think what Microsoft is doing right now is analogous to the old practice of offering a product at a higher cost initially just so you can then negotiate down to the price you really want.
... well why finish the sentence. "Most intelligent consumers" probably accounts for a very small percentage of the total consumer base.
You might claim it is apples and oranges. I think it's not. They design the product with more restrictive DRM knowing the consumer will not want ANY DRM. Then they 'listen' to the consumer by removing some, but not all of it. Thus arriving at a middle ground, but really closer to their originally planned position. This serves to possibly give them what they want while simultaneously making them look good in the eyes of the consumer.
Of course, most intelligent consumers decry
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Your statements are correct... but you have also failed to mention that if you dont have Vista... NONE of this is an option. The requirements are NOT set by the OS. They are set by the makers of the Blu-Ray disk. Sure if you can get a non-DRM blue ray disc, then none of this matters. However, the fact that Vista ALLOWS you to make this choice (good or bad) is a BENEFIT.
Thats incorrect. Degradation is recommended by the HD standards only if the content provider has opted-in for content protection but the hardware used doesn't provide a complete protection path to the display.
So non-opted content will display with full fidelity regardless of whether a non-secured or secured mechanism is used to display the content.
Yes, he tends to be a bit outspoken at times. He's also a veteran contributor to the security field and tends to know exactly what he's talking about. So before dismissing what he has to say, you owe it to yourself to check his reasoning.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
In the article, he a section on the potential hazard of Vista disabling video resolution in medical imaging applications. Leaving aside any issues of playing CD's in a work computer, I can see one outcome of this. The first time a blown diagnosis can be blamed on this, the malpractice lawyers will be heading after Microsoft. It's something they've got to be salivating over: The ultimate deep pockets! (cue theme from Jaws)
Simply put, MS could have made their life a LOT easier if they had put in support for a new product class - the Media Accelerator.
Imagine a card that had a couple of SATA interfaces, a video pass through input, and an audio pass through input. The card would have its own OS/firmware, and it'd be easy to control from an external software API.
Unprotected input would flow into it, but only it could generate video/audio for protected media. It'd automatically substitute its own video/audio for protected stuff.
This way, if you didn't care about "protected media", your computer and OS wouldn't be encumbered. If you did, you'd pop a couple of hundred for the Media Accelerator, and go from there.
Of course, this would have benefited the rest of the non-MS industry, too. Guess it is a bad idea.
jh
I wish I was lucky as you. Seems like everyone I know that has a computer, but isn't technically savvy in any way, has Windows. Oh wait, that's how that works......
Yep I think I think this is a true Microsoft "innivation", nothing has been as so well enginiered for user experience and consumer acceptrance since the u-buy it then pay to watch it DVD and the self-destruct DVd.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
High Cost without correspondingly high benefit = bad.
Lets take a feature that has a high cost but high benefit: networking.
Imagine a standalone Vista computer, maybe a non-networked game, a standalone information kiosk, or a standalone home workstation that doesn't have LAN or Internet access. Assume nobody ever sticks in an infected CD or other piece of media.
You can strip out:
network stack
firewall and other "essential" network-safe software
network-only applications
If all users are trusted, you can strip out the concept of users altogether and have everyone run as a default user with full administrative rights.
The resulting system would be much smaller in memory and somewhat smaller on disk. It would also be easier to manage, as the only real management would be application addition and removal, data backups, and some customization and personalization.
Does this sound like Windows 3.1 without networking installed? I think that worked nicely on an 80486 machine with 2MB RAM and tens of MB of disk space. A vista equivalent running the eye candy and a cool FPS game would probably need 1-2GHz (0.5-1.0 without the game), a good video card, 256MB RAM + however much RAM the game needed, and 0.5-1.0GB of disk space + space for the game.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes the big argument for staying with windows is having a system you can either produce documents or code for that works with "everybody else's" computer. I guess it's easier if your lab or company is very small.
If we're not ever allowed to view the high quality media in it's full glory because all outputs have to be degraded or disabled, what's the point of distributing high quality media in the first place?
I just don't get it.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Content protection in Vista will not hurt Microsoft or their sales. Two reasons for this. Consumers are not educated enough to understand digital restrictions management. They will interpret it as “just how it works” and deal with it one way or another. Claiming these impedences to copying will damage Vista is similar to claiming that content scrambling of movies will damage the DVD market. The second reason comes from established expectations. People appear used to dealing with technology not working how they want it to or think it should. Crashing computers and malware are just part of life. Pretty soon, the inability to copy files will become subject to the same perception. That is, not being able to copy media will be seen as a technical limitation or just another failing on the part of the industry. People will buy it all the same because the water is being brough to a boil slowly and we all seem to have such ridiculously short-term memories.
Why bother.
And what I think it comes down to particularly with Vista is that people are worried that is actually is going to turn out to be a really good OS. I haven't used it all that extensively but I have been doing application compatibility testing on it at work and so far it looks good. Revolutionary? No, but a worthwhile improvement. That seems to have a lot of people running scared.
No, you're not.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Thanks for the clarification. What are the odds a content provider won't opt-in for protection? In any case, I can't really make any justification for Vista (or high-def DVD) at this point -- especially if this article is accurate.
My guess is that the tighter DRM proponents squeeze, the more things will slip through their fingers -- to paraphrase someone I heard somewhere, sometime ago...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I have 8 co-workers and not one of them uses windows. It just isn't relevant. Why would you think that I'm not being serious?
I find the claim that listening to an audio CD will degrade your (non-protected) video output extremely fishy.
It sounds to me like a misreading of the spec. Likely the spec requires degrading the signal when any part of THAT signal is protected, i.e., you have to degrade the audio signal if you are listening to a CD while the computer reads some text but this doesn't affect the video.
The automatic echo cancellation seems even more fishy. In order to do auto echo cancellation one only needs access to the sound coming in from the microphone. I can't think of any time access to this information is likely to be restricted.
Many of these points are simply too extreme and need documentation.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
oh, my mom uses windows. I guess she's in the target slashdot audience.
Everyone understands they need new hardware for new technologies. The whole argument is that once you purchase that hardware, you can't use it the way you want because you don't own it. It's usability is determined by:
Having secure drivers (Try updating drivers on a machine with no internet connectivity)
Having hardware that purposefully degrades quality when played in an insecure fashion.
The secureness of one of those items is not determined by security professionals, it is determined by content providers. Their decisions will be based on how much money they think they can make from you.
Windows is not relevant for you. For which I congratulate you. I have used Mac's at home since OS 8 and I now work with mostly Mac's at my job. But we certainly have lots of Windows machines. In all of my previous jobs it was pretty much all Windows. It is still the standard OS for most businesses and consumers. So, I apologize for being a bit flip in my first response. But I can assure you, people still use Windows.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Employees at his company, of the cities of Vienna and Munich, and of the French Parliament don't need to be viewing protected content at work.
A classic, absolutely classic instance of the thesis which Olson demonstrated in lots of case studies.
All special interest groups will find it in their interests to impose on society costs hundreds, thousands, millions of times greater than the benefits they receive.
In the present case, Big Content, to protect its rents, is imposing measures which will end up costing the US and the West enormously more than any benefits to Big Content.
But they don't care, of course, because even if we are all worse off, they are a little better off.
And so, you discover if you examine economic history, that revolutionary convulsions every 50 years or so benefit economic performance, by abolishing encrusted priveliges of various groups. And this is why 19c France in constant turmoil outgrew 19c stable Britain. And why the post civil war South did so well in the 20c... And why Germany grew so fast in the fifties.
And why the US is falling into paralysis today....
Think - up to this date os'es were mainly the basic framework to run programs on them. Even in that state, phletora of exploits, hacks, a million ways to hamper or exploit usage of a computer have surfaced in the last 15 years.
Now they are putting strong elements integral to os that are able to block, modify, permit or limit usage of some elements of os, software, 3rd party software, and even hardware. They are this way decreasing the workload of hackers/exploiters - now they just need to find a way to exploit the mechanism already present there.
Its no guessing that this will make using computers with vista both a pain in the ass, but also a security risk.
Read radical news here
With the launch of Vista, the optometrist market has taken a sudden lurch in profitability as users begin to experience "fuzzy" video on their 50" screens. They then schedule a visit to the eye doctor to see if they might be going blind, only to discover that is not their vision but their TV that no longer works.
When Microsoft was challenged about the problem, executives stated that "We regret that users feel they are having problems viewing the full quality of the content they have acquired, but as we feel this is only an issue for the pirated content and hacked hardware market, we do not see this as our problem. We are happy to work with honest users so that they can enjoy the full value of their Windows experience."
I sort of wish a consumer interests group would make like the Mozilla guys and place a big, preferably whole-page, ad in a major newspaper to debunk this stuff once and for all. Pointing out to consumers, in clear and simple langauge, the real limitations the coming generation of DRM technology will impose on their everyday activities, and pointing out to business leaders the immense risks incurred by basing your IT infrastructure on systems that another business can turn off on a whim, should be enough to sink Vista before it even gets off the ground.
Hell, if Apple had any sense, they'd see the huge market opportunity here: get into bed with the big name sound and video manufacturers, and then undercut Vista with an indisputable ad run about how Vista deliberately degrades your content but on MacOS it looks so much sharper, and so on. Make a selling point of not having DRM, backed by listing "fair uses" in law that Microsoft is deliberately undermining. Get a couple of soundbites from the CEOs of nVidia and AMD/ATI about how they want to support the best possible products for users, and today that means non-Microsoft. What are Microsoft going to do, revoke every nVidia and ATI driver as being unauthorised? Gimme a break.
Seriously, the content providers have to have channels, and Microsoft has to have the big hardware vendors universally behind it for this to work. If the public turns around and tells them to screw themselves on degraded quality, they aren't going to stop supplying stuff, they're just going to stop supplying degraded quality stuff no-one will pay for. It's not in anyone's interests for Microsoft to control the dominant PC-based media distribution channel alone, and if someone starts standing up and saying (quite truthfully, I suspect) that all this heavyweight copy-protection is counter-productive and they can help content suppliers to make more money by not screwing the users, well... As my father once told me, it's hard to beat an honest man in an argument.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The funny thing is that I really wanted to use windows. Their development tools are good but I cannot use them because they just don't support the languages we use which are fortran, perl and shell scripting.
A lot of this sounds like it will need new hardware and software But vista is running on old hard that does not have any of this right now.
SOOOoo...this system makes it's way out into the marketplace, and soon after, content providers are providing "high quality" deliveries via wire or disc, and for the most part, the systems slowly go through an upgrade process to conforming hardware, finally letting the "high" in quality reach the user. Balloons fall, confetti flies and whistles and claps abound - you are running a "trusted system"
In a country far far away, a series of specifications, hardware manufacturers and technology folks band together to build the impossible: To make a machine decrypt the "high quality" content and push it to a jack. Nothing more, nothing less. They use a non-MS embedded OS and cook their scheme into an IC and viola! We have an unencumbered HD-DVD/BluRay player.
The market for this is illegal - in certain countries. But no matter, since once tapped on the above device, said port burns a new HD-DVD/BluRay disc, without licensing scheme. Some Volks-haXXor posts code to read port, strip tags from the raw stream, and pump back into a disc. Cheers from the masses, "it's been hacked!". Said streams make their way onto existing distribution mechanisms (torrent,p2p,the corner cart downtown) and you've got (wait for it) THE STATUS QUO.
Currently, only the tech-enlightened really got through the ever-lowering hurdles to download copyrighted content. Scare tactics and ethics keep most people in the DVD isle of the buy-it stores. I'm sure that will stay the same.
So, we'll simply have the MS bundled-systems with their crazy bugs, people complaining and conforming media for high quality. On the flip side will be folks not so much skipping the DRM in Windows, but getting non-DRM content to begin with. Windows has simply gone the way of the yes-man for DRM enforcement, leaving you with two choices: Lower audio/video resolution or playing only proper discs. Guess what you do with your big collection of "improper" discs: Play them on Linux. It could reinforce the sentiment that "Linux is for hackers, aka criminals" but I doubt that'll fly for long.
MS, like the media players before, will have to allow for "personal" content to be played at "high quality" eventually, since consumers are also media generators. Like now with audio, if you can get source content out of the DRM shackles, making it look personal, the entire SYSTEM from disc to monitor is bypassed quietly.
I'm prepared for a long period of relative component stagnation, while all this DRM for Vista gets sorted out. I doubt the legacy cards and peripherals will go away anytime soon.
Just in case you are not aware... Blu-Ray is a sony format. They also make consumer electronics... you know the things used to play these discs. You dont have to have Vista to play a Blu-Ray disc. You just have to have it to play the disc on a computer... Remember, this is all about NEW formats. If you want to change, you have to accept thier rules. If you dont like the rules, just stick with what you have. Vista has no affect on this. It is all about the MEDIA, not the OS.
1. There is a well-worn and completely false assumption that Microsoft is somehow -still- subject to competitive market forces. They are not. Not tomorrow, not 10 years from now. Just like the telephone company, they are not going anywhere. They will not be unseated. There's no one "coming up fast." No Apple, no Linux, no one.
2. A windows-equipped PC taxes all computer consumers. How is that possible? Windows is sold at a monopolist's high price and this reduces the volume of computer hardware sold. So we all pay more because fewer computers are being sold.
There is simply no historical or economic evidence that things will be different with Microsoft than it was for any other monopolist.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Nice reading comprehension you've got there.
Protected content is DRMed movies and music. We're not talking about encrypted financial documents.
This so-called analysis was written by thinking of a conclusion first, then filling in the blanks. There are no citing of references to support his claims.
Google has an html version of Vista Content Crippling Spec. and points to an obfuscated version I don't care to download. More can be fond here.
The author's opinion and interpretation of the document look solid to me. There really are "tilt bits" and other concepts I checked are there. It goes a long way to explaining Vista's reported bugs, bloat and lack of drivers for existing equipment. None of it changes the bottom line, M$ is the only thing that's going to fall down the "analog hole".
Debating the details is pointless because the results are already in. The specifics of the "secure path" implementations can only provide amusement. Everyone said it was going to fail and it has already in Windows Media Center and other equipment critics have panned and no one is buying. Vista has much the same in store, it's not going to work and people are not going to buy it.
People are going to avoid Vista and are going to be very pissed as M$ "updates" remove functionality from XP, which will never be allowed to view "premium" content.
The only winners will be content providers that avoid the whole mess. Movie and music publishers who provide DRM free media are going make a lot of money while the majors continue to insult and sue their shrinking fan base.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As someone who does a lot of video and audio editing, I guess my next 'PC' will have to be a Mac. There's absolutely no way I'm going near an operating system that will randomly reduce the quality of the audio and video output; how the hell am I supposed to tell whether the audio is crap because I'm feeding it crap or crap because of some retarded Microsoftism?
If this is true, then it's going to kill Windows as an operating system for content creation. Apple must be laughing.
Which is why Vista by all accounts needs 1GB RAM at least to function with any applications. Microsoft is ensuring (for the benefit of the hardware manufacturers) that everybody has to upgrade fairly soon to new hardware. This insures that everybody gets new DRM'd hardware where Vista can do its dirty work (assuming the hardware manufacturers go along.) So the CPU makers, the large PC makers, the memory makers, the content companies and Microsoft all benefit to the detriment, apparently, of the peripheral and chip makers - and the consumer of course.
Since we're talking primarily private consumers, not corporate consumers (other than the media industry per se), for the media issues involved in TFA, and since consumer purchases DO influence corporate PC purchases to some extent, this means that corporations will eventually be forced to upgrade their hardware even if they don't upgrade to run Vista per se. A number of articles recently have pointed out that consumer software and hardware is influencing corporate buying decisions.
It would be interesting to see what the "food chain" looks like here. If the peripheral and chip manufacturers rebel against raising their costs by the effects listed in TFA, will this impact the board manufacturers and PC makers enough for them to rebel against Microsoft? Or does it go the other way around - does the board and PC manufacturers being the only way that peripheral and chip makers can make a living mean they can dictate to those makers? Does the mere fact that peripheral and chip costs will go up migrate enough cost to the board and PC makers, thus cutting their profit margins, that they will be inclined to rebel against Microsoft?
TFA doesn't cover all this in detail, merely outlining the potential problems. Are these problems comparable to any previous issues the various parties have had - such as migrating to new hardware standards like AGP, PCIe, SATA, etc.? If so, can we assume the various parties will suck it up and go ahead with Vista - or not?
Is there anybody in the affected industries raising these issues besides Gutmann? It would seem to me that since Vista is shipping shortly that much of the effects should already have been considered by the industry parties. OTOH, since content using the Vista features isn't shipping yet, is it possible that the industry has NOT been affected by these issues yet and therefore has NOT considered them - making Vista a "Trojan Horse"?
Inquiring minds want to know - which means why am I posting these questions on
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I think what Microsoft is doing right now is analogous to the old practice of offering a product at a higher cost initially just so you can then negotiate down to the price you really want.
So, are you telling me that they will take all the "tilt bits" out of third party drivers if no one buys Vista for a while? Or maybe you think that they will undo the core of the operating system they just spent six years developing. Nope, not happening.
The absolute best they can do is play it off like ME by issuing another OS in one or two years, but that would be an even bigger screw to the hardware world than "Plays for Sure." M$ is throwing what little credibility they had left right into the trash.
Vista is so bad that this is going to be the year of Linux.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Protected content is DRMed movies and music. We're not talking about encrypted financial documents.
Why not?
If you've got a system with DRM capability built right in, and your company has a reason to restrict access to those, why WOULDN'T you utilize the access-restriction capability you already bought and paid for?
Oh yeah, and that all digital surround sound system, well it isn't going to work at all so you need to go buy an analog one.
They want you to invest in hdmi audio. Unfortunately, it's not a particularly good time to buy one, what with hdmi 1.3 coming out sometime in the future.
Two reasons: Because the DRM technology you've already bought and paid for is specifically designed to protect audio and video files, nothing else; and second, because the you haven't bought and paid for any access-restriction capability. The content providers use the access-restriction functions. The client side of DRM is solely responsible for making sure that you aren't restricted from accessing something you've purchased (in the way you're permitted to access it by the content provider.)
[Z?]
Actually, the odds are pretty good for current HD media, because the publishers want more market penetration before they tighten the noose.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You know, this point is apparently harder to understand than you realize. After all, even some people who aren't affiliated with the publishing industry still support DRM, because they mistakenly think it'll help them "protect" their own data. They fail to understand that that doesn't require DRM, but works perfectly well with plain encryption (in which the owner knows the key).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
People making new purchases are much freer to choose from a competitor that may not have the same problems.
Your wish is granted. Wait for the first video card to be exploited to rip premium content. The hardware de-auth will take care of the rest.
The truth shall set you free!
How about... because DRM has nothing to do with file encryption? DRM is about trusted hardware and the movie and music industries wanting to ensure that their content will not play on a system which could be used to pirate it. There's only one level of protection, play or don't play.
Security and encryption of sensitive files has completely different goals and totally different technology.
You get to talk to frequently talk to lovely ladies in India and swap very long strings of digits with them. Isn't re-activation fun? And if it is a stressful day at work, just hold the phone up to your ear while you rest and tell anyone that bothers you that you are on hold with Microsoft - you should be able to get away with an hour at a time before anyone gets suspicious. What fun! Every disaster recovery plan gets to add a few hours to acoount for waiting on hold to get new activation numbers for each rebuilt system.
Yes DRM sucks, but who honestly thinks that it is unreasonable to require new hardware and new drivers for new technology.
Raising hand.. Of all the media players I have, I have no wish to replace it all. I buy compatible content and leave the other stuff on the shelf. What ever happened to the consumer is right?
I have a DVD player that can play MP3's. I have a CD player that can play MP3's. My car is the same. Winamp works just fine on the Windows PC's with MP3's. Banshee works just fine on Linux with MP3's. I just bought a flash player. I noticed there are 4 incompatible DRM formats and there is not a single portable player that will play more than one of the DRM formats. All the DRM formats are incompatible with everything except a Windows PC. (I don't have an apple.)
My decision to buy a flash player was based on not the ability to play DRM in any format, but cost, ability to play MP3's, the ability to drad and drop, the ability to expand with a card slot, and the recording abilities for both FM and Voice. I picked up a flash player for under $40 and it does not support any DRM format which is fine with me. What is not fine with me is the limited selection of legal MP3's online.
For those who need to know, the player is a Coby model MP-C751. Drag and drop from any PC. Plays MP3's and unprotected WMA files. Has FM tuner built in. Records from mic and FM as MP3's.
You may not like the specification, but you have the option to use it or not. If Vista didn't support it, you wouldn't have that option at all. So, again, where is the problem here?
If you play premium content, outputs get turned off or severly degraded. This is applied globaly, not just the premium content. Expect your VOIP or video game to go to crap if you browse a website with premium content.
The truth shall set you free!
I think the point was more on the lines of, if you want to play blu-ray discs all you need to do is buy a blu-ray player.
I'm thinking this will be wildly popular like the DAT tape recorder for the very same reasons. It simply doesn't work without lots of money and when it does work, it will be restricted to the point of being useless. I don't see many pre-recorded DAT tapes (or blanks) on the market. Yet another expensive restricted content format will be a limited market.
I still have a Laserdisk player. I bought it because it is DRM free (by the spec for NTSC video at broadcast quality). They promised the disks would be cheaper than VHS because the disks can be pressed cheaper than recording tapes. Tapes came down in price encumbered with Macrovision and content for laserdisk was very limited due to licensing issues and remained relatively expensive. Then DVD's came out. They still didn't come out as cheap as lower priced videotape but were a lot cheaper than laserdisks.
I'm not interested in another premium content player until I see the selection, restrictions, and pricing on the content. I have been sticking to the MP3 format because it works where the other stuff has serious compatibility issues. Let the industry know I'm sticking to formats that work and leaving the other stuff unsold. To sell premium content, first and formost, it has to have value. Don't forget it. Broken content has little value.
The truth shall set you free!
So you have multiple devices that play MP3's. How many of them were build before MP3's were available? Most likely none. How many TV's are there that can play 1080i... that were built before the specification? Again, most likely none (or very few). As as been said before. If you want to play MP3's on Vista.. it doesnt require anything new. However if you want to play HD video, or Blu-Ray or any of the standards that require new hardware (and software) you will either have to upgrade or do without. Nothing about Vista changes this. You can go out and by a Blu-Ray disc... but without the right hardware, you cant play it. If you want to play it on a computer, you have the right hardware and software. Vista will qualify as the right software. In no way will Vista suffer because they offer the option to acess new HD media, if you have the correct hardware (and drivers). However if Vista did NOT support this... then it WOULD suffer. People would be upset that they have the right hardware, but that Vista did not support it. Heck, this is going to be problem with Linux. You can have all of the right hardware, and it stil cant acess the media. Now THAT is a problem. As for degradation of premium content... well if I can play a HD moving degraded down to normal quality... because I dont have the hardware/drivers to play it at HD quality... why am I upset that I didnt get something for nothing?
How many of them were build before MP3's were available?
I have a Reel to Reel tape recorder and a Laserdisk player. Pre-recorded material was out for both formats. I bought a DVD player several years after they came out after I found they became common and inexpensive.
Audio DRM is in a format war with 1 primary player and 3 wanabees. HD movies is also in a format war. Dont't get me started in the number of players there are in the online content between WMA WMV SWF RA PDF DOC....
Why get a player for premium content when the prices and selection of the content isn't yet listed? I have enough dead format players.
The computer in my office is not the media center in the living room. I can play DVD's and MP3's in the living room. For now that will have to suffice.
The truth shall set you free!
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Sure, but if Vista doesn't play blu ray or HD DVD, then how will you play it on a computer? I'm not questioning Sony's ability to produce a new format and players and TV's that make it all secure and Sony happy, but so what? Sony's last few attempts to establish formats that aren't widely supported have not been much of a success... SACD, their proprietary Memory Sticks, the PSP, ATRAC3, none of these have been much of a success.
Anyone who thinks a new multimedia format can succeed without full Windows support is being pretty myopic. And that's really my point. Sony doesn't have the ability to withhold support for Windows because it's not secure enough. If they do that, Blu-Ray will fail. I think the original article had it right... Microsoft is supporting these special secure paths not to parley favor with the media companies, they're doing it so they can get the same lock-in for movies that Apple has for music.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
1) The consumer does not matter. No, he doesn't. It doesn't matter if the new 'features' of an operating system are actually against the consumer, because the consumer is never going to be aware of this fact and the consumer is going to buy this operating system automatically. It just comes with the computer.
2) As informed as you can be, your opinion doesn't matter. You are part of a market minority and eventually "everybody else" will upgrade, you can actually claim things like "everybody stay with XP!" or "Everybody move to Linux" both of those are truly fantasies that will never be true.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
> I am, however, frequently annoyed by their mediocrity, and unbelievably frustrated that someone doesn't have the balls to start a company dedicated to making an absolutely, positively 100%-compatible Windows clone based on a Unix-like operating system.
:( Those in Europe or anywhere else being screwed over by these legal exports have my sincere apologies for this mess.
:-)
I wish! Do you have ANY idea what that requires? Okay, so Novell is sorta working in that direction (although they're going to have trouble from both sides), and there's Wine, but we both know that neither of them are going to be able to get past all of the following roadblocks:
A) Non-standard standards. Microsoft doesn't implement any standard correctly. They ARE the de facto "standard" and many bits of hardware / drivers do ugly, nasty just-so things to work with Windows. Even Microsoft can't manage 100% backwards compatibility. Thus, even where things should be standard, they aren't. Worse, half the time the code is the standard, as with Word. My theory of the excessive bloat of Office is that each new version effectively includes most of the code of prior versions for compatibility purposes. And it still doesn't work right. Yes, the OpenOffice folks have done great work. The Samba people have done great work. The Wine people have done great work. But I don't think we can call them 100% (even if their work is probably a better copy than the originals in many respects).
B) Software patents. As others have pointed out, the way these things are described, they patent every way to get from point A to point B. It's not like a machine, where you can rework a few gears or something, when they patent stupid crap like double-clicking you CAN'T do what Microsoft does any more, whether it was obvious or not. Perhaps its only the US that's screwed in this regard for now, but lobbyists are at work even now trying to bring these laws to "parity" (i.e. screw over all the other countries, too). It is my sincere hope that they learn from our mistakes rather than repeating them
C) Dirty tricks. If you've read any of the anti-trust trials against Microsoft and read any of the Microsoft emails they were forced to produce in discovery, you might have some idea about how they treat competition. Currently, they're working to divide the Free Software community, working to cause legal problems and hurdles for the software (see point B) including "innocuous" terms like forbidding sub-licensing (prevents a user from transferring the software to others, allows Microsoft to kill such software by cutting off the source at any later time), patent "protection" (again, creates non-transferable legal rights... making it so that the software can be later discontinued), and probably other tricks I don't know of yet.
In other words, Microsoft's manipulation of the market remains as the primary reason no one can yet manage this, although people still are working on ways to supplant them. Of course it's unreasonable to expect them to go quietly and to just give up the monopoly position they fought so hard to get, but it does pretty well prevent anyone from being able to realize that dream of yours.
After all, if we could do that *perfectly*, well... I suspect we'd have managed quite a few more migrations by now than we have already. Even if we had to claim that it was a "new version of Windows" to get our users to use it
I have stated that you have to buy new hardware to play new media types. People have complained that this was unreasonable. So I asked how much of thier hardware was FORWARD compatable... i.e. able to play new standards that came out after the hardware was built... Some people seem to think that they should be able to use thier old hardware for new media... and blame Vista that it doesnt work. The point I was making is that Vista has nothing to do with this problem.
As far as I am aware, Vista is the ONLY OS available (soon) that will play Blu-Ray or HD DVD's. However the reality is that the computer is NOT the main delivery system for this type of media. In fact, it is a minority compared to DVD players, and will most likely be but a small % of the market for HD or Blu-Ray players. The reality is that more people watch video on Televisions, and dedicated devices, than do on computers (despite a bias on slashdot). Microsoft has gone the extra step to allow people to acess Blu-Ray and HD video content on a computer using Vista... but they didnt set the requirements. Just because it is simpler to meet the standards with a VCR like device, than with a computer, does not mean that Vista is going to fail, because people dont want to buy the new hardware for thier machine. There is NO additional cost for this feature... only the option to use it if you have the requirements. The fact that you can actually view the media, but at a degraded quality, back to 'normal' shows that in fact, this is just a benefit... not an expense.
Do you know multiple people some of whom learned Windows first and some of whom learned Linux first so that you can objectively state which is inherently easier to learn? I do. And the evidence I have seen is in Linux's favor when no predisposition to Windows is involved.
But neither I nor you can discern the truth about the matter until a sufficient body of people have learned each way and we can compare the ease of their progress. Just because it may be hard for you to adapt your biased skills to Linux doesn't mean it's inherently more difficult to learn Linux outright.
My father-in-law and now some of his older friends are set up with Ubuntu and they have a way easier time than their friends who use Windows. And all of these people are new to computers. I set up my FIL with Ubuntu initially and gave him some lessons over VNC. He has now installed Ubuntu on several people's computers at a retirement home in Portland all on his own. And even being a nontechincal guy he was able to get them on a better foot than they were using Windows. So there. Ubuntu is easier for your grandma when you're not there to clean out her spyware. And old people love the Beryl Cube effect.
While Windows development starts over with a complete rewrite every couple of years, open source will just keep steadily building on itself and get better and better and better with each passing year. It's quite fun to watch (and even more fun to participate in).
Well, I'll be laughing my ass off when the first worm or trojan comes along that plays a small sample of protected content in a continuous loop, just to piss people off. Maybe even one you can't see or hear. But the effect will be there nevertheless - devices being switched off, quality degradation, the full package.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Parent replied:
That's incorrect if you're using digital connections (e.g. DVI, HDMI) and commercial BluRay/HD DVD discs (almost all of which use AACS). If you try to play almost any commercial disc using a digital connection and you don't have HDCP protecting every step of the playback process, then it probably won't play at all. However, it probably will play back in full resolution over analog connections (e.g. VGA, component) because most commercial discs have not implemented ICT yet. When ICT is implemented, then the image (over analog connection) will be degredated to a lower resolution. Did that make sense?
To clarify, the rules are different for digital and analog connections. The rules are also different for AACS and ICT.
AACS (Advanced Access Content System) is the encryption system that's currently used by almost all commercial BluRay/HD DVD discs and requires HDCP everywhere (video ouput/input, driver, playback software) to playback (at any resolution) over digital outputs (e.g. DVI, HDMI). The disc probably won't playback at all over a digital connection that isn't fully protected by HDCP. Here's a link with a good explanation: The Authoritative BD FAQ: VIII. Device Connections
ICT (Image Constraint Token) is the DRM system that currently is not used by commercial discs but, when it is implemented, will degrade the resolution if analog connections are used.
You're much more likely to run into DRM problems on a computer/LCD than on a set top box/digital television. All BluRay/HD DVD set top boxes (except XBox 360) have all the DRM requirements built-in and all digital televisions have (at minimum) high-def analog inputs. On the other hand, most high-end computer/LCD setups today are connected with a DVI connection that doesn't have HDCP in either the video card or LCD. These computers (with incomplete HDCP implementations) won't play the movie at all using a digital connection (it will just display an error message). These same computers can playback HD content over a VGA connection (if ICT hasn't been implemented), but that would require changing the LCD connection from good digital to inferior analog. Who would want to do that just for watching HD movies?
More AACS/ICT/HDCP explanations:
HD Video Playback: H.264 Blu-ray on the PC
Review: Sony BWU-100A Blu-ray Recordable Drive
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
"What are the odds a content provider won't opt-in for protection?"
e n
If the content provider does opt-in for "protection", then they will miss out on all the customers who have older HD displays that don't take HDCP signals. (This is because the packaging has to clearly state the "protection" is activated.) Therefore, the "protection" will not be activated on HD-DVD and BluRay releases until 2012. (See URL.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_Constraint_Tok
My dad claims that they will simply *never* use the functionality. I disagree and have been trying to convince him of the need to buy compatible hardware or miss out on the HD bandwagon.
Well, Vista might sell due to the windows tax, but there is no way "premium content" is ever going to popular.
People will quickly learn that "premium content" means that their machine will be screwed up and that there are tons of things that Just Don't Work(tm) with premium content, so they will quickly stop buying it and start pirating the content in stead.
Am I the only one who has noticed that MS is taking a lot of clues from 1984?
War is peace, slavery is freedom, broken is premium; notice how it just fits in?
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Well, ok it's an acronym, but anyway, AACS is built on real crypto tech, not some dinky homebrew like CSS was.
AACS will probably never be 100% broken like CSS, but we might get very close by attacking players and extracting the player keys.
With a player key you can decrypt all HD-DVDs released up until the time when the Motion Picture Ass of America gets learn of your cracked player key.
The funny part is that if you distribute decrypted title keys in stead of the player key itself it's going to close to impossible for the content dictators to figure out what player key you have.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
However, the fact that Vista ALLOWS you to make this choice (good or bad) is a BENEFIT.
It most certainly is not a benefit to computer users. It is a benefit solely for the media cartels.
Had Microsoft acted as if they were an ordinary business competing in a free market, then they would not have blown billions of dollars developing technologies whose sole purpose is to prevent their customers from using their computers as they see fit.
They would have told the media cartels to fuck off and that would have been the end of the story with DRM.
That would have been a benefit to their customers.
Name me one other company that spends billions to protect a cartel of which they aren't even a member?
Yeah, thought not.
How about every gas station out there... Or every jewelry store that sells diamonds... or every electrician that wires a house the the grid... I am sure I can think of more, but why bother, the point is clear. Business make money. MS could have told media cartels to F@$# Off!, but that would have COST them money, not made them any. The reality is that no one (reasonable) is going to refuse to buy Vista because it CAN do something, and go out and find an alternative that will not support HD media, because they can just choose to NOT purchase the media. However the opposite is NOT true. People would go out and find another way to play HD media, if Vista didnt support it. As for who benefits... well only the user. Media cartels make thier money when they sell the media. Users only benefit when they can play it (and yes, many people end up buying media that they cant play, only to find out afterwards). More options are better for the consumer, not less. If you dont like DRM, then dont buy it. However dont be fooled into thinking that people will protest the ability to play DRM. Just look at IPods. No one (reasonable) ever said, 'I wont buy an IPOD, because it can play AAC, and isnt just limited to MP3s'. Why should they do this with Vista?
Seems to me Microsoft regards content providers as its actual customers, not the buyers of PCs or MS software. I get this impression since Windows seems to be more and more geared toward the interests of the content providers.
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
MS could have told media cartels to F@$# Off!, but that would have COST them money, not made them any.
What a bunch of crap.
They would have been ahead the massive expense of implementing this technology which is completely useless to their customers and then they would have *more* people who actually wanted to buy Vista.
How could it possibly have cost them money to *not* blow a bunch of money on worthless technology. That expense plus the massive alienation of their potential customers cost them a lot.
The reality is that no one (reasonable) is going to refuse to buy Vista because it CAN do something, and go out and find an alternative that will not support HD media, because they can just choose to NOT purchase the media.
However had Microsoft actually stood up for *their* customers, instead of against them, then their customers would have *more* options since all DRM can possibly do is limit options. All it does is remove rights that they already have.
No one (reasonable) ever said, 'I wont buy an IPOD, because it can play AAC, and isnt just limited to MP3s'. Why should they do this with Vista?
You, of course, are redefining "reasonable" to mean exactly that, since it's the only way that statement could be true.
You are ignoring the fact that I am explicitly allowed to do everything that DRM is designed to prevent me from doing.
It adds nothing and removes a lot.
Your delusional belief appears to be that I have no rights whatsoever and I should consider myself lucky to only get fucked over as far as it goes.
That's complete crap. I'm a citizen and you are a subject. There is a deep fundamental difference.
MS is making money in different ways from this. First they are getting increased sales from Vista because it allows acess to HD media. (There are plenty of people that purchase things BECAUSE it has features, not because it does not). Second they are making money on licensing. I am reasonable certain that they will end up making money with licencing, and through partnership deals (this is MS after all). As for rights... well you have them until you give them up. However, you seem to believe that you give them up by having a system that can play DRM media, rather than by purchasing DRM media. I can purchase an IPOD for its ease of use, and for its features (one of which is the ability to play AAC files). I can then use it with MP3's or AAC files as I see fit. If I object to the issue of DRM on the AAC, I can protest by not buying the file. However not buying the IPOD wouldnt have any effect, or even be relevent. The same applies to Vista. If I dont like the DRM on the HD media... I dont buy the media. However I can buy Vista, for many reasons... one of which is the OPTION to play HD media, if I so choose. You seem to think that citizens that exercise thier right to choose are somehow second class. However the reality is that you dont have a choice... as you exclude those options that might give them to you. So in reality you are living in a prison of your own making... and are powerless to affect or influence the real world.
First they are getting increased sales from Vista because it allows acess to HD media.
The point is that had Ms actually done what their customers wanted rather than what the media cartel wanted then their customers would have access to HD media *without* DRM which is how they want it since it allows them to use their property in the manner that they see fit.
Instead of doing this, MS colluded with the media cartels *against* their customers.
You seem to have the delusional belief that without DRM the media cartels would just close up shop which is blatantly false.
Had they not found a stooge to help them fuck the citizenry out of their rights, which is all that DRM is intended to do, then the media cartels would have been unable to force all this shit onto the public.
It's a monopoly colluding with a cartel to provide negative benefits with no upside.
You seem to think that citizens that exercise thier right to choose are somehow second class.
Not at all. I'm saying that Microsoft's collusion with the media cartels have removed the choice that people want which is DRM free media. That is the choice that has been removed from the table.
The media will be there regardless of whether or not DRM exists. That's the absolute fact you continue to fail to get.
If the tech companies work for their customers rather than against them then DRM would never have happened.
MS doesnt make media (unless you count some webcasts as media). The consumers have never ASKED MS to go into the media business (I must have missed the crowds clamoring for MS produced TV and Movies). What thier customers have asked for is the abilty to PLAY the media. It is the media producers that determine what the requirements are for that. I am not aware of any HD media formats that do not require DRM, and that are not being supported. MS hasnt colluded, they have done business. If people dont want DRM media, then they dont have to buy it... and the producers will have to either lose money, or drop the DRM. This has nothing to do with Vista. It has to do with the media itself.
The media cartels have produced DRM free media in the past, and will do so again in the future (if they cant sell DRM media). However lack of a player for HD media wont get them to create DRM free HD media (as it still cant be played DRM or not).
Since you seem to have difficulties... let me be clear. I can have DRM free media, and they can still make players that play DRM media. I do it today, and will do it in the future. Your inability to purchase DRM free media, becase of the existance of a player for DRM media is no ones problem but your own. Get over it.
Luckily the make software that plays both media. Yes most of it starts out with DRM, but unless it includes the options I want (DRM free) then I dont buy it. I do however buy players that do both... because it gives me what I want (DRM free). I guess you cant have that, as you would rather have nothing, because they also include the option for DRM content.
Read the RTFA, it's quite entertaining reading. Many example problems are there.
Basically the RTFA spins around the Vista way of closing "analogue hole": if protected content present in system memory, all channels which do not support content protection will be downgraded. IOW, if you would try to play DRM'ed WMA music during your work - and you work with imaging applications - Vista would downgrade quality of output of (amongst other things) your imaging application. It can be anything - anything protected - and whole system will go into "content protection" mode. The author already sees the problem for sensitive application fields which depend on unfiltered channels. E.g. degradation of image quality produced by medical appliances might threaten lives.
As he states, he is more interested in costs parts of the equation, so he goes into depth to show problem in full. IOW, as user of sensitive imaging software, in order to get some sort of guarantee that Vista will not at any time stop working, one would need to: upgrade display, upgrade video card, upgrade sound card, upgrade motherboard and of course your imaging software. Whoever you are - producer or user - M$ wants you with Vista to rework every part of computing system. (And that all would still not prevent fallouts: compromised driver, some bus fluctuations might still trigger Vista's alarm and it would downgrade performance of system.) Now try to think of all involved costs - for both consumers and producers. That's not any kind of small number.
One of the examples author provides, is security system. Intruder might send piece of malware which will do nothing disruptive but launch piece of protected content, thus potentially downgrading unprotected video and audio quality. After all, security cameras are not intended for protected materials, yet they could be used e.g. for dvd ripping. The effect of the malware will be simple: guards will see distorted picture and will hear lossy audio. Thus helping criminals. All thanks to Vista security - on guard of protected content.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Please check the facts. The 'downgrading' of the HD media, is to that of 'normal' media. So in effect, you get what you have today... without Vista. As for multiple media types, yes, there is a crossover. If you are playing multiple types simultaneously... but not if you play them independantly. This only applies to situations where (for example) the video has DRM but the sound does not. As for those distorted pictures and lossy audio... well that is what they get right now. The 'degraded' version is what they are getting without Vista...
because he who owns factories owns the business, ultimately.
Maybe not. If the service industry can supply jobs and steady salaries to people, maybe it's a enough replacement.
I don't know of course
Cheers
Ben
- Broadcast emails with embedded "premium content", as an image or whatever
- Every Recipient's Vista turns off its hi-res graphics, sound etc.
- Recipients have to pay for instructions to undo the self-inflicted damage
- Profit!
IANAL but I can spell "class action suit". I suspect this plan might even be legal if the sender owns the "premium content".Reduce, reuse, cycle