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Microsoft Answers Vista DRM Critics' Claims
skepsis writes "Recently there have been some stories on Slashdot claiming that Vista would downgrade the quality of audio and video for every application in a machine where protected content was running. One of the stories painted a scary scenario where a 'medical IT worker who's using a medical imaging PC while listening to audio/video played back by the computer' would have his medical images 'deliberately degraded.' A post has been put up on the Vista team blog explaining exactly how the content protection works, and it turns out the medical IT staff and audio pros can relax. From the post: 'It's important to emphasize that while Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios, this infrastructure is designed to minimize impact on other types of content and other activities on the same PC. For example, if a user were viewing medical imagery concurrently with playback of video which required image constraint, only the commercial video would be constrained -- not the medical image or other things on the user's desktop.'"
"the content protection mechanisms ...... will lead to better driver quality control."
Less freedom = better quality?
Might as well say it.
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.....
At best, this will prevent point and click piracy. With HD-DVD already compromised and Blu Ray on its way, I hate the idea of losing CPU cycles for a copy protection scheme that doesn't even work. If it comes to a point that everyone and their grandmother can pirate high defintion content with the click of an icon, can Microsoft make a Windows Update that removes this "feature".
Who decides if it requires image constraint?
Who else except me has such a call to make on my private property?
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
'medical IT worker who's using a medical imaging PC while listening to audio/video played back by the computer' would have his medical images 'deliberately degraded'
For the $400 per hour I get charged, that PhD can focus his whole attention on my MRI. If you job is important enough to complain about possibly degraded video, it's also important enough to not multitask. Listen to MP3's on your own dime.
We are all just people.
Just Wow. That's the biggest piece of bullshit response I think I've ever seen. Look closely and compare that and the original article. For example, the original article says that the component and S/PDIF can be disabled by the disc you put in the drive, and this article says that "Similar to S/PDIF, Windows Vista does not require component video outputs to be disabled, but rather enables the enforcement of the usage policy set by content owners or service providers, including with respect to output restrictions and image constraint" which sidesteps the point that a disc can disable the current standard connection from a normal computer to a normal TV you fucks!!! Of course they also go on about how the degraded image is still DVD quality, which is a great help to the people who spent an extra few grand to set up HD DVDs when they could have just gone to the shop and bought a DVD. They then also point out that you don't actually need a dedicated decoder, even though the original article pointed out that CPUs simply aren't strong enough for the task.
So all this Microsoft article has done is only confirmed my conclusion that they're trying to give the movie studios every opportunity to rape the people who try to watch their stuff. This is just bullshit marketing spin.
I can't help but think that you guys are missing the point.
Anyone building hardware and/or software to play back modern media currently has two choices:
1) Implement the restrictions and allow the content to be viewable.
2) Don't allow the content to be viewable at all. (i.e. No HD-DVD or Blu-Ray playback, period.)
Microsoft doesn't create movies or music. Their only interest in implementing these things is so that users have a way of playing content on their operating system. Apple and Linux vendors will also have to bend over for the RIAA and MPAA if they want to be able to support viewing the content. There's a chance that Steve Jobs will bend the universe to his will on this and avoid it, but it's doubtful. Linux users will probably just find ways hack around it, and ignore the fact they're breaking the law (no matter how ill-conceived that law may be; the point is that if Microsoft breaks the same law they would be sued into oblivion. It's simply not an option.).
Blaming Microsoft for this DRM fiasco is lame. If you don't like DRM, focus your blame on those that deserve it and buy your media from sources that don't promote it.
That said, one thing that could be argued is that Microsoft wields enough money/power that they could fight back against the RIAA, MPAA, etc. and block the media industry's attempts to create such lame DRM policies. Personally I don't believe they have this amount of clout, especially with the antitrust thing still hanging over their head.
...deliberate sabotage, any way you slice it, designed on purpose to perpetuate a business model developed when duplicating content was hugely more expensive than it is now from a strictly technological viewpoint. It is (very generally speaking of course) the work of those already rich and powerful to stay that way, and to seek to lock away technological advances only to themselves as much as possible, through obvious and unchecked wide scale cartel market manipulation actions and also through extensive lobbying to make the laws reflect the profiteer's paranoid-and elitist- neoluddism.
It's Ok for the rich and powerful to have any advances and advantages from modern technology-but don't let those slavering "masses" folk have the same, even when it becomes technically and economically possible. Cuts into that "bottom line" thing, or at least that is their paranoid theory.
Enforcing artificial scarcity combined with the broken-windows economic model is the height of their intellectual business acumen.
No one disputes this is immensely profitable for them, given our current social and economic infrastructure. It remains to be seen if this will always be the case.
We left the caves a long time ago, seems like maybe it might be nice to leave the medieval period some time soon. But I guess the aristocracy isn't quite willing to give that up yet.
I think people are forgetting who are Microsoft's customers.
The end users are not Microsoft's customers. The end users who purchase Windows are very much in the minority - the overwhelming majority of users get their Windows bundled with their PCs. Microsoft's customers are the computer vendors and big media. Microsoft's customers are demanding that content be controlled and that users are given an incentive to buy new hardware.
The customer always gets what they want.
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
As Guttman was claiming that this content protection would de-stabilize your computer even if you never played protected content, this seems to have been refuted.
i.e.
Driver revocation, tilt bits, image constricting and encrypting the PCIe bus only happen when you play premium content, and can only affect the content being played. If you're worried about all this don't play HD-DVD's on your PC, play them on your 50 USD Chinese HD-DVD player.
Ideas that your graphics card can be turned off remotely by Redmond, or that accidentally playing a web page with 'protected' content in the background will cause medical images to be degraded are plain incorrect.
Concerns about Audio and Video editing in Vista are unfounded as their content is unprotected and will not go through the protected video path. And if AAC is properly cracked then HDDecrypter.exe is unlikely to use a protected video path / HDCP montior is it?
Points about this open source graphics drivers are a bit more ambiguous, but it seemed graphics drivers were moving towards a closed source model anyway. And there is nothing stopping graphics manufacturers from producing non-HD-capable cards for the business market so it isn't going to drive up all hardware prices.
Having said this, *if* you want to play protected content legally then I think there will be pain.
People will be frustrated by the graphics card and monitor compatibility, and there is every chance that the 'Protected Video Path' will not work as smoothly as intended. Even now HDCP is causing problems with standalone players. And even if it all works concerns that you are no longer trusted on your own computer are valid.
However you can quite happily use Vista and not be affected by the 'content protection' at all.
If you thought Microsoft was going to be able to stop the draconian restrictions on HD-DVD then the think again - their biggest market is in standalone players rather than people playing the movies on their PCs so they could do without Microsoft if they desired. I don't believe Apple will be immune, although they'll probably roll it out on new iMac's and rely on its physical design to
In conclusion, there are issues with the DRM in Vista but if you never play protected content you will never experience them.
OK, so Vista gives content providers a way to lock-down and restrict their products. Microsoft has "added value" to a product for a segment of people that are not their customers.
So as a paying customer (I buy operating systems for personal use, and oh...by the way, I am responsible for IT purchasing for my ENTIRE company), what does Vista give me and my users, that should make me cut a check?
From what I understand, Vista works pretty much like XP, and now thanks to Volume Activation 2.0 Vista corporate copies will now all REQUIRE activation.....every time we re-image a machine. Activation now requires me to either run a key management server (and baby-sit all my roaming users making sure they connect to my network twice per year) OR use multiple activation keys....that means phone calls to Microsoft when eventually the keys stop working.
So microsoft, tell me, why should I fork over my (or my company's) cash?
-ted
But if it is true, and his shiny new computer stops working because of some stupid DRM, then negative word-of-mouth will kill Vista, at least for home users.
Which would be a pyrrhic victory at best. *DRM* is the real villain and proper copyright reform (if not complete replacement) is the real victory.
A pyrrhic victory would require some sort of substantial loss. I doubt many would call the loss of Microsoft's newest OS a loss.
Your post seems to imply that Microsoft is blameless for leading the DRM charge. DRM and bad copyright legislation are things that we need to fix but that doesn't mean we should ignore the villains who advocate them.
You never saw Microsoft attacking a filesharing program but Microsoft was first in line to implement DRM. Microsoft volunteered to implement DRM measures and led the technological way in the DRM arena. Some companies resisted but caved, some caved without a fight but microsoft is the only company I know of that actually volunteered before any content provider could even think about demanding.
Ever consider that it might be a driver issue? I can play both DRMed and non-DRMed videos fullscreen without problems on my Radeon 9800 Pro, including those that I've created myself. It sounds like you're blaming the most obvious target without providing much justification.