Slashdot Mirror
Blogger Objects To Accusations Surrounding Vista DRM
Technical Writing Geek writes "Self-described 'professional paranoid' Peter Gutmann of the University of Auckland has become the most widely quoted source of information on DRM and content protection in Windows Vista. The trouble is, according to ZDNet Blogger Ed Bott, Gutmann's work is riddled with factual errors, distortions, contradictions, and outright untruths. From the lengthy piece: 'As Gutmann would know if he actually understood how HD hardware works, Vista will indeed display HD content on this monitor over the D-Sub and component video outputs, which are capable of outputting 1080p and 1080i signals, respectively. In the future, a content provider might choose to constrict the output to these devices, but that decision would apply only to a specific piece of media, and it would have to be disclosed on the package, giving the buyer the opportunity to choose not to purchase it.'"
Watching a protected video will just cause your network utilisation to drop below 0.3%.
is that it lacks credibility. He quotes other blogs and manuals of equipment - and is light on actual technical details. No one outside of the core development team at Microsoft can claim any competence on the DRM implementation - and again, no one can predict when MS can choose to suddely implement hitherto unknown features via Service Packs or Auto Updates.
Considering that playing audio on Vista cripples the network and I/O badly, Guttman's assertions appear far more credible.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
...they tend to be wrong.
I don't see how listing 4 errors would constitute as a debunking of a paper, much the less when after a cursory glance the last one is patently not debunked. The blog is trying to debunk Gutmann when he says that the DRM system is overcomplicated and might cause problems. The blogger basically says computers are fast enough to handle the DRM and equates Gutmann saying "polling every 30ms" with executing a single cpu instruction every 30ms and concludes it's not taxing at all.
Of course the "play audio and don't expect your gigabit card to work fast" easily disproves his whole counterargument.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Ha! That's game over right there.
That makes ALL the difference I suppose. I guess as long as the box is supposed to say you're getting screwed, then it's OKAY to get screwed. I mean, if that's the only format available to your honest consumer, the Take-It-Up-The-Rear Edition Gold, now with new and improved Paying the Middleman Features, then it's just plain good business, right?
....Right??
It's obvious that they can't immediately take away what you already have; otherwise they wouldn't be competitive with their own existing solutions. What's important is not what they block now. What's important is that they can auto update you later to take away whatever you have. Further, all of the media is being designed to block you out if you don't accept auto updates.
There are two sides to Microsoft. The business side and the technical side. The technical side is filled with people who want to build good things that are useful and enjoyable to use for many people (though it sometimes doesn't feel that way). The business side sells the technology to anyone and everyone, and makes promises that are too difficult to keep and in the process tarnishes Microsoft's reputation.
So what happens when Microsoft starts supporting industry standards is that the technical side gets it as right as they can while the sales side is selling clients the moon. All of a sudden, clients get their wildest dreams answered. In reality, that's not happening. But since MS has got that bad reputation, they make an easy target for anyone with an axe to grind. Small variances from the truth can be made with impunity for these complainers, because everyone already assumes the worst from MS.
By the type of comments I expect to see in this thread, most people have already made up their minds one way or another. Since this is Slashdot, they will obviously be negative towards Microsoft.
The fact that a content author might chose not to make use of the DRM is irrelevant. The issue Gutmann complains about is that the whole design is complicated to allow for the possibility that they might use it.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
Wrong.
for instance, Guttman claims you can't play HD DRM'd content on a DVI port as fact. That is complete and utter rubbish, as seen on this example http://www.samsung.com/au/products/monitors/tft/tvmonitor/275t.asp?page=Features - where it clearly states HDM is playable through a DVI connector.
That's just one example. This ZDNet guy has actually tried out HD content on Vista and is objecting because of actual real experience to the contrary of what this Guttman guy only 'theorises'.
A bug with audio + network speeds (which, btw, Microsoft has admitted is a bug they're working on fixing) has nothing to do with spreading FUD as fact about Vista DRM tech.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Restrictions on displaying the content
"would have to be disclosed on the package, giving the buyer the opportunity to choose not to purchase it."
Yeah, right. Who's gonna read the box? After WalMart hands in all the returned crippleware to the distributors, you'll wish you never came up with such an idiotic scheme.
Windows Update can prevent the consumer from playing the media anytime MS want to.
This has happened before when Disney corp. convinced MS to deploy a "critical update" with WU to prevent the DRM of Disney's media to be circumvented.
Wording aside, Samsung themselves state quite clearly HDCP support is available through DVI. There's your trusted path.
throw new NoSignatureException();
If you don't want ANY signed drivers and you don't want ANY DRM then splitting hairs over the details of just how bad these features are is rather pointless.
It has problems both with and without DRM.
Either way, it's going to undermine Microsoft. With so few people willing to make the move from XP to Vista already, this won't help.
Why the hell would Joe Consumer lay down the coin to have a "multimedia computer", only to find out he has to pay again to be able to play Blu-Ray, or HD, or anything else?
And God Forbid if his... mo-vie... grinnnndddsss... to... a... ss-s-sssllooowww...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Rubbish: "...giving the buyer the opportunity to choose not to purchase it."
This is no good when the manufacturers form a cartel and decide that all devices will be locked this way, or when the content industry forms and decides that content will only be available for devices locked this way.
Then the free market can no longer express what the people want.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
"In the future, a content provider might choose to constrict the output to these devices, but that decision would apply only to a specific piece of media, and it would have to be disclosed on the package, giving the buyer the opportunity to choose not to purchase it." Says who? Software doesn't have its EULA on the outside of the box, why would this stuff?
The draconian DRM debacle that is called Vista is sounding more and more like the who's-to-blame catch-22 we've all experienced in the past: Your high definition video won't play in HD mode. Microsoft-it's the hardware's fault, PC maker-it's the content provider's fault, Content Provider-it's Vista's fault. Anyone else want to dance?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I commented about this yesterday.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
There is no much choice. You cannot go to a shop and ask a DVD without encryption, and you cannot go to microsoft and ask a optimized version of vista were all this drm crap is removed. You pay MS for this DRM crap and extra checks in the drivers if you want to or not.
This is not about your choice, this is about a MS choice. Gutman is explaining with a lot of text why he does not like it. And botte ed is picking on 4 points in his long text that could be explained different than the general point Gutman want to make.
But you have the choice to ignore the slashdot anti-M$ sentiments instead of trying to discuss against it.
What an annoying article: spread over 5 pages, each of which takes my browser 10s of seconds each to render, and a link to a print version that doesn't work if you have no printer! I usually surf without JS, and even after allowing some JS I still couldn't get to the all-on-one page version. So here's the full article (I've not read it, but it looks like just pro-MS propaganda, and the usual falacy with n00bs that computers are fast these days so it doesn't matter you're running bloat):
Everything you've read about Vista DRM is wrong (Part 1)
Last month, I wrote about the FUD surrounding Windows Vista and DRM. The FUDmaster is Peter Gutmann, a New Zealand researcher who wrote a paper last December that made a series of outrageous and inflammatory claims about Windows Vista. Since then, Gutmann has expanded the paper to more than four times its original size. The current version available on Gutmann's website clocks in at more than 26,000 words, making it longer than some recent works of fiction.
And length isn't the only thing Gutmann's paper has in common with the average pulp novel. Gutmann's work is riddled with factual errors, mistaken assumptions and unproven assertions, distortions, contradictions, misquotes, and outright untruths. In short, it's a work of fiction all on its own.
Gutmann is a clever writer, and he's able to string together nouns, verbs, technical terms,and acronyms in ways that sound persuasive. In this three-part series (look for Parts 2 and 3 later this week), I'm going to dig deep into Gutmann's work and show you just where he got it wrong.
I've been working on this story for months. Part of the problem is that Gutmann's paper is a rambling, sloppy, disorganized mess, and nine months of additions have made it even more difficult to pick out the serious arguments from the scare stories and snark. Gutmann's favorite technique is to string together anecdotes he's plucked from magazines and websites, juxtapose those stories with sentences from presentations by Microsoft engineers and developers, and then speculate on the implications, often with wildly incorrect results. And worst of all, Gutmann appears to believe everything he reads--as long as he can fit it into his anti-Microsoft world view.
The other part of the problem is Gutmann's lack of hands-on experience with modern consumer electronics gear and with Windows Vista itself, which shows in nearly every sentence he writes. I've done extensive hands-on testing and have personally seen Vista do things that Gutmann says are impossible. Rather than write 26,000 words of my own, I'm going to pick out more than a dozen substantive errors in Gutmann's piece and explain why they're wrong.
With that introduction out of the way, let's get started.
ERROR #1: ARE SAMSUNG'S HD MONITORS WINDOWS VISTA-COMPATIBLE? YES.
In his role as self-appointed consumer advocate, Gutmann seems determined to tell you and me about products we shouldn't buy. Like Samsung's big LCD monitors:
One of the big news items at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2007), the world's premier event for consumer high-tech, was Samsung's 1920×1200 HD-capable 27 LCD monitor, the Syncmaster 275T [...] The only problem with this amazing HD monitor is that Vista won't display HD content on it because it doesn't consider any of its many input connectors (DVI-D, 15-pin D-Sub, S-Video, and component video, but no HDMI with HDCP) secure enough. So you can do almost anything with this HD monitor except view HD content on it. [emphasis added]
Wrong! Because Gutmann has no hands-on experience with this technology, he doesn't realize that DVI-D is indeed a fully compatible HDCP output. You can use a DVI-to-HDMI cable or a simple DVI-to-HDMI adapter. This monitor meets all the Windows Vista logo requirements for full playback of all high-definition digital media, protected and unprotected. Here's the information on this exact monitor, taken directly from Samsung's Australia site,
Ah, closed source strikes again!
If this is the argument you wish to use, then any individual with a modicum of intellectual honesty cannot accept either paper, because, after all, both are just speculation.
So that's a yes then. In the event that special content gets displayed on Vista there is a DRM subsystem all ready and waiting to restrict it.
He's also debunking silly things like stupidly large monitors, and he fills an entire page with it:
Well no, but it is a daft size for the vast majority of people, as indicated when he wrote 'computer monitor'. You devoted a whole page to this?
Regarding code signing:
Again, he uses an incredible sleight of hand here. He doesn't deny that certificate signing is required, and talks about buying a certificate, which he notes are not controlled by Microsoft but are listed on Microsoft's site:
Bottom line, ergo, you have to have a signed driver for use in the kernel one way or the other. He doesn't deny that at all, and it's an incredible piece of trying to tell us that the emperor is actually wearing clothes.
Notice that he doesn't tell us what content he has tested here, nor does he deny that there is a DRM subsystem in Vista preventing playback on certain outputs given certain content.
I don't know what kind of a rebuttal this is supposed to be, but you don't need HDMI for gaming as Microsoft has stated. However, Microsoft have not ruled out providing a HDMI pack which inevitably would include content protection for certain kinds of content. He doesn't deny this.
He doesn't deny anything here, but merely tells us that a modern PC can handle all this.
Depends on how you word it ;-). Why does Vista need to 'check the integrity of the vi
So, rather than dismissing claims of Vistas dystopian DRM-landscape they just make ad hominem attacks on mr Gutmann and his work. Right. Now move along , nothing to see here, especially if you're using Vista. :-)
Ed Bott is no more an impartial, unpaid person expressing their opinion about things they like than Laura Didiot is.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Exactly which law would require this disclosure? Because obviously voluntary disclosure isn't going to happen.
you had me at #!
People in the media are becoming such fucking pussies. I'd bet $5 that the submitter wrote "lies", and Zonk edited it to "untruths". Double-plus-unmanly, Zonk, you whore.
Let's get something straight regarding consumers. They are stupid. You know it, I know it, hell, even they know it. Saying that it will be on the "media" and that consumers will have a choice to buy it is sycophantic at the least, and dishonest if you examine it closer.
An excellent for-instance is the "secur-disc" technology that prevents copying. Go look at one of these boxes in Best-Buy. You will discover that "secur-disc" will prevent unauthorized copy of your copyrighted data to keep you safe! They don't mention that the average joe doesn't copyright or protect his DVD's. Nor do they mention that secur-disk invalidates the point of purchasing a dvd "Burner" - to copy DVD's, rip media, etc.
The technology was not put there to protect the consumer. The technology was not put there to simply "sit" and not be used. It was put there because hardware and media companies are demanding it. What is the alternative if you want a DVD and the only versions that have been released have this technology on them? You have none, aside from simply not watching the movie.
To go one step further, the average consumer doesn't read those labels, any more than the average consumer reads a Eula, or reads the FBI warning at the beginning of a DVD. You could claim that it is the consumers fault if they are not informed. I would beg to differ. In this day in age, everything from buying a Turkey sandwich at the local gas station to purchasing a game online has so many licensing agreements, privacy policy sign-offs, warnings, and other various "messages" that no one in public will ever look at them. We are so deluged with the warnings, messages, and reminders that we tune them out the same way we do commericals on TV - you simply have no choice.
Finally, nine consumers out of 10 don't know HDMI from component to DVI. They expect to be able to purchase a TV system and get a great picture - or purchase a computer and watch their movie. They aren't going to understand that if that particular media has a particular label on it then they need a specific DVD-rom drive, cable, monitor/lcd, etc for the anti-copying quality degradation to be prevented.
They need to do the smart thing. Ignore Vista. Stop buying movies and CD's. Stop going to the movies. Teach these people that they don't own you - it's the other way around.
...how comments like this get modded insightful. The only insight, aside from pure speculation, is about WinFS....which has what to do with network/audio problems?
throw new NoSignatureException();
You know the commment he makes about crypto signing? The one where he says you don't have to go to Microsoft?
Well, if you look at the Microsoft site, you will see that what are being refered to are 'cross-certificates'. My crypto knowledge is not all that I would like it to be, but it looks as if these certificates have been derived from a master certificate owned by Microsoft.
In other words, Microsoft DOES have a controlling hand in the pie. Now, what I want to ask slash-dotters is, is what I have said above true, or not?
You know, he has several points that are worthwhile. Unfortunately, they're nitpicky little things; all of the underlying issues that can happen when those bits get switched are still there.
He's also right; 30 checks per second is terrifically insignificant. However, the code surrounding all this, to do that, is measurably more complex than it needs to be, and will undoubtedly have bugs.
It all boils down to the simple fact that a system has been designed to meet artificially complex goals that really are worthless in the end. All of the pains associated with getting HDCP working right obscure the fact that if I did the right thing, and purchased HD media, I could have issues because they're worried about me stealing this media.
Simpler is better. It always is in computers. After 20 odd years playing with PCs and unix, windows, macs, etc., that's the one inescapable truth I've learned. Text files rock. Simple communications are easier to fix.
Sigh. You'd think the billions that are made from DVDs would show them that people are willing to buy movies. I'd rather buy it than steal it. It's just easier, it's less work, and heck, it's the right thing to do...
stored on computers from birth to the grave
First off never trust someone who makes their living off of Microsoft products to give you an honest opinion about Microsoft. Ie Bott is without a doubt a shill for Microsoft. Got that? Good.
Now with regards to what I thought was funny. It's funny that Microsoft had to drop WinFS and other technologies from Vista because they either ran out of time or couldn't get them to work. Yet they had no problem what so ever tightly integrating DRM into every single nook and cranny of Vista. It is sadly apparent that from day one Vista was designed to treat the user as a criminal and treat the Entertainment industry as the customer and overlord of your computer. That Mr. Bott is the reason for the shitstorm about Vista and its DRM. All of your talk about "not turned on yet" and "doesn't impact your computer much" is cold comfort after what we have discovered about about Vista and DRM. Don't you get that?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Add the tag "outrightlie". I tried to play a standard, legit DVD on a Toshiba laptop, and Vista refused to display the video for "lack of a protected content path". That was an out-of-the-box setup.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Just like how Tivo used to have a 30 second skip button. Then it was disabled, but don't worry you can always enter the "secret code" to make it work again. Until they removed that functionality as well.
Just like how DVD producers *could* disable skip and menu buttons before letting you get to the disc menu, but don't worry, they won't do that except for things like copyright legal notices. Until some DVDs started forcing you to sit through all the previews on the disc, even if they're years out of date.
Just like how income tax was a temporary measure to fund the war, don't worry, they'll never make it permanent. Until now when we have taxes withheld automatically and the only argument seems to be should that amount go up slightly or down slightly.
Power to control is always argued in terms of slight increases for temporary times or only mild inconvenience, but eventually once it is in place and the sheep are used to it, it inevitably is used for that which we feared. I should point out I'm NOT trying to equate Vista DRM with government erosion of rights, those are rather different in scope and morality. However examples of restriction-creep abound, I merely pointed out 3 to illustrate my point.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
In the future, a content provider might choose to constrict the output to these devices, but that decision would apply only to a specific piece of media, and it would have to be disclosed on the package, giving the buyer the opportunity to choose not to purchase it.
That's good enough for me. Thanks for proving Peter right on only the 2nd of 5 pages.
Took'em long enough to get started with the counter-FUD astroturfing.
Am I badmouthing our fine friends in redmond? Well, it's a bit more complex, even if I admit I really don't think of them as "friends".
You see, from not reading the article but having read Gutmann's writing —including RISKs digests—, I would agree with his "professional paranoid" qualification, and he isn't so much as bashing as imagining the possible consequences of this fine technology. And as anyone who regularly works with software should know, if it can break, it will for someone, somewhere.
So it does behoove us to be aware of the worst case consequences. We can insist the damage is solely restricted to "bad content" or "evildoers" or whatever, but that is wishful thinking of a very bad kind. Such blanket assessments are on the same level as deciding that the mere indication you are driving 2km/h over the speed limit warrants an intervention by some black box, like shutting down your motor. Too bad it didn't factor in other circumstances, like you're busy taking over a lorry driving downhill and you need your motor to slow down again, too. Sure, far-fetched. Also already proposed as a good idea by politicians. And enough to get you killed if it does happen to be you.
The problem is that for such widely impacting technology you cannot possibly factor in all possible circumstances—something all software security officers and release engineers know only too well. So the question isn't "Is it likely to happen?" but actually a few quite different questions: "Can it conceivably happen?", "What are the consequences?" and "What are the guarantees to make them not happen?". From my reading, the first is a "yes", the second very conceivably bad enough not to want them to happen in eg. medical applications, and the third... no answer.
No amount of handwaving and accusations of bashing should be excuses to discard the objections. If "but you are just bashing" is the argument, it is itself worse than bashing.
The issues are real and need to be addressed, by anyone who insists on using complex limiting technology, for any to-be-limited victim technology. I for one would be much happier without the artificial limiting at all. We don't need to have someone's greed kills others in need, even if by the remotest of proxies.
Too French for being sure, but "using" this kind of bug can be a criminal act under DMCA. Mhh ?
(Sorry my bad French) Je fais parler les Guignols de l'Info. Le pied, quoi.
That's a Hobson's Choice., or in other words: total B.S.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I agree with you. But I wanted to hang a TV on my wall and not have half my living room occupied by my old 27-inch behemoth Sears TV, so this was my solution. A new 28-inch, 1080p wall-mounted HDTV. A cheap, RCA 5-disc DVD player full of Chinese electronics that does DivX and upconverts to 1080p. A cheap, no-name brand HDMI cable that functions just as well as an "APPROVED" Monster cable or whatever. No Blu-Ray, no HD-DVD, no arcane nonsense. And all my DVDs look and sound awesome upconverted on my relatively small screen.
Plus, if I ever want to hook my computer up to the TV, the video card has an S-Video output. Done. No headaches, the whole setup cost less than $1,000 and I'm set for years to come. Because the day studios stop releasing standard DVDs is the day I stop buying them and really start taking advantage of the player's DivX feature (which, upconverted, looks pretty good.)
As for Windows, Vista offers nothing I need bad enough to have to upgrade just to have more horsepower to run all the DRM and other redundant crap running behind the scenes. I'm prepping for a dual-boot Linux system. My goal is to have my wife trained on using Linux by next year. When XP gets phased out, I'm phasing it out. I'll only be keeping it around for gaming. I'm with you - I don't want to have to deal with the headaches that come from supposedly better technology.
they ARE fixing it, because it IS a bug and NOT an intentional hack.
They can say that all day, but it doesn't make it the truth.
God is real unless declared integer.
Is there no one on /. who can verify whether Vista actually restricts HD?
Boy, it's great to know that Vista DRM enforces what is put on the package, and that no sleazy group will ever be able to sell us DRM encumbered content if the DRN is not clearly disclosed on the package.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.