Windows Vista Content Protection
- From: "Brad White" <bwhite at inebraska.com>
- Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:52:15 -0600
Is this as bad as it sounds?
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
Summary: This document looks purely at the cost of the technical portions of
Vista's content protection
In case you don't read down that far, these quotes at the bottom
are pretty good:
Quotes
A few fun quotes, included for amusement value.
"I propose that each copy of the OS should ship with an orange jumpsuit
and sensory deprivation goggles, since all Vista users have been
unilaterally declared 'enemy combatants' by the content apparatchiki " -
Daniel Nevin.
"Windows Vista? And what a vista! All you see as you look around your
garden is a 60foot high brick wall" - Crosbie Fitch.
"When you download licenses for protected content, you agree that
Microsoft may include a revocation list with the licenses [...] content
owners may ask Microsoft to revoke the software's ability to use WMDRM to
play or copy protected content" - Windows Vista EULA.
"[Microsoft researcher] England has a bold plan to improve the PC and make
it a secure delivery system for audio and video. England's solution involves
making minor modifications to the PC's hardware to allow Microsoft to make a
secure version of the Windows Media Player. Essentially, this would turn the
PC into a record player as far as music is concerned" - Microsoft Research
News.
"This is obviously some strange use of the word 'improve' which I've
previously been unaware of" - Arthur Dent.
"welcome to the new world of DRM where expensive pieces of hardware across
the world could potentially be remotely rendered useless by over-zealous
copyright holders. Way to go, Hollywood!" - Chip Mulligan.
"I can not only say that the idea [of tilt bits] is basically insane, but
I can also see hardware manufacturers refusing to implement tilt bits, or
more likely, faking their functionality" - Dave Walker.
"I purchased a new DVD/SACD player (w/HDMI out), surround- sound
receiver/amp (non-HDMI i/o - they're still too expensive for me), & LCD TV
with HDMI input. My DVD/SACD player was connected to the SSamp via a nice
single simple optical cable (& HDMI cable to the TV). I figured that would
be all I need, keeping a digital path all the way to the SSamp (& TV).
Wrong! It worked beautifully until I played my one & only SACD. No sound
came forth! Huh? I read the DVD/SACD player manual: in brief small print,
'When playing SACDs, audio is output only from the 5.1ch RCA analogue
outputs' " - Anthony May.
"This is SACD silence, the purest silence known to man - It's premium and
must be protected at all costs!" - Paul Stimpson.
"I can't playback HD because I need to upgrade my 2 (SLI'd) Nvidia Quadro
4500's (~$2000) to a $200 FX7600GT because it supports HDCP. I can't wait
till someone cracks this DRM/HDCP/AACS crap" - "Sy".
"I've just had my first experience with HD content being blocked. I
purchased an HP Media Center PC with a built-in HD DVD player, together with
a 24" 'high definition' 1920 x 1200 HP flat panel display (HP LP2465). They
even included an HD movie, 'The Bourne Supremacy'. Sure enough, the movie
won't play because while the video card supports HDCP content protection,
the monitor doesn't. (It plays if I connect an old 14" VGA CRT using a
DVI-to-VGA connector)" - Roger Strong.
"when I disable my HD monitor, I can watch the movie, on my old VGA
screen, but, what is the point of having a HD monitor and not being able to
watch a HD movie on it" - "muslix64" (muslix64 was so upset at not being
able to play his legitimately-purchased movies on his legitimately-purchased
monitor attached to his legitimately-purchased player that he broke the AACS
protection just to be able to see his own movies, see Note D).
"With the HD-DVD, I wasn't able to play my movie on my non- HDCP HD
monitor. Not being able to play a movie that I have paid for, because some
executive in Hollywood decided I cannot, made me mad... I'm just an upset
customer. My efforts can be called 'fair use enforcement'!" - "muslix64",
author of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray cracks.
"Thanks alot, Muslix64 [author of the HD-DVD crack] you're not the only
one with a monitor/vid card that doesn't support hdcp, your work is greatly
appreciated" - "yodoso".
"The funny thing is that I cant see how HDCP will actually even prevent
piracy. In fact the only thing I can see it doing is encouraging piracy
because everyone whose bought a new computer/monitor/HDTV in the last few
years which don't have HDCP are now screwed out of the several thousand
dollar purchases. So instead of buying new products they will turn to
pirated/cracked Blu-ray/HD-DVDs which will work without the HDCP" - "Gizza".
"The HDCP scheme will serve to make the illegal product the most full
featured and least restrictive, and thus the most attractive to the
consumer. Add in the expense of buying new equipment to view the legal
content (when existing equipment is perfectly capable) and the performance
drain imposed by in-line encryption/decryption and they've put out the
biggest incentive to piracy yet" - "Greg".
"The HDCP (high-definition content protection) overlords are coming to get
us. They are basically saying you can't watch video unless you have a
digital monitor and a special video card that supports the end-to-end
content protection they have built; So that you, the
un-trusted-consumer-who- bought-their-expensive-product, can't possibly make
backup copies or anything else with that fancy new HD-DVD or Blu-ray disc
you have" - "verifex".
"Digital rights management technology will still fail to prevent
widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to
fly. I predict that every year, and it turns out to be true every year" - Ed
Felten.
"Microsoft wasted no time; it issued a patch three days after learning
about the hack. There's no month-long wait for copyright holders who rely on
Microsoft's DRM. This clearly demonstrates that economics is a much more
powerful motivator than security" - Bruce Schneier on Microsoft's DRM
re-enabling patch for FairUse4WM.
"As a not-so-long-ago electronics design engineer, I can imagine the rage
& pain felt by engineers & their employers [...] This is total insanity from
anyone's perspective except the content providers, and they don't care
because it's everyone else who's picking up the tab for it!" - Anthony May.
"Good job, industry! Spend an incredible amount of time and effort
developing the next generation of video quality only to step on it BEFORE
THERE'S EVEN A DECIDED UPON STANDARD in the name of Copy Protection which
will just be outflanked by a couple of 14 year old hackers and distributed
over BitTorrent anyway" - "SweetMercury".
"By any standard, Vista's new DRM capabilities hardly qualify as a selling
point; after all, it's hard to sing the praises of technology designed to
make life harder for its users. - Matt McKenzie, Computerworld.
"Sony, MS, movie studios... here's the deal. You've screwed up so bad that
i'm not buying either HD drive option until they're so cheap that I end up
getting one included with my computer because it was the minimum optical
drive" - "zweben".
"I was reminded of a quote from a Disney executive that I read a while ago
[in the Economist]. The quote is: If consumers even know there's a DRM, what
it is, and how it works, we've already failed. If I went to play premium
content and all that shows up on my monitor is a message telling me that
part of the display process isn't supported by content protection, this
would scream DRM to even the most unsavvy users" - Steven Grueber.
"I could not be more skeptical about the viability of the DRM included
with Vista, from either a technical or a business standpoint. It's so
consumer-unfriendly that I think it's bound to fail - and when it fails, it
will sink whatever new formats content owners are trying to impose" - Matt
Rosoff, lead analyst, Directions On Microsoft.
"The [AACS] design prevents legitimate purchasers from playing
legitimately purchased content on legitimately purchased machines, and fails
to prevent people from ripping the content and sharing it through
bittorrent. The DRM people wanted something that could not be done, so
unsurprisingly they winded up buying something that does not do it" - James
Donald.
"The net effect of these concerns may constitute the real Vista revolution
as they point to an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own
personal computers [...] Vista seemingly wrestles control of the 'user
experience' from the user " - Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in
Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law.
"I'm not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers,
both business and home, the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think
our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what
full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how
important current applications are, and really understanding what the most
important problems our customers face are " - Jim Allchin, Platform Products
and Services Group, Microsoft.
"There has to be a whole new division at Microsoft. The 'Office of
Consumer Apology' or something. Responsible for 'I'm sorry your content
didn't PlayForSure. That isn't meant to be literal you know' and 'yes, I
know you're supposed to be able to play HD at full resolution, but you see,
your cable has a kink in it, which changed the electrical characteristics
slightly and, well, I guess I'm just sorry'" - Blake Ramsdell.
"DRM causes too much pain for legitimate buyers [...] There are huge
problems with DRM" - Bill Gates (reported by blogger Michael Arrington).
"your latest girly moan bitch rant is making the rounds on every news site
just about isn't it? are you on cnn yet? are women throwing their panties at
you?" - A friend (who requested anonymity).
--
Thanks,
Brad.
.
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