[Dixielandjazz] Forbes Magazine - Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You

[Bill Haesler]

Dear Craig, Pat the Ladd, and others who had trouble opening the 'Forbes'
link, herewith the full article.
Kind regards,
Bill. 

*************************************************
Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You
Bruce Schneier  02.12.07, 6:00 AM ET

Windows Vista includes an array of "features" that you don't want. These
features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They'll make
your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support
problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral
hardware and existing software. And these features won't do anything useful.
In fact, they're working against you. They're digital rights management
features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry.

And you don't get to refuse them.

The details are pretty geeky, but basically Microsoft has reworked a lot of
the core operating system to add copy protection technology for new media
formats like HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks. Certain high-quality output
paths--audio and video--are reserved for protected peripheral devices.
Sometimes output quality is artificially degraded; sometimes output is
prevented entirely. And Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring
itself, trying to figure out if you're doing something that it thinks you
shouldn't. If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts
just the video subsystem. We still don't know the exact details of all this,
and how far-reaching it is, but it doesn't look good.

Microsoft put all those functionality-crippling features into Vista because
it wants to own the entertainment industry. This isn't how Microsoft spins
it, of course. It maintains that it has no choice, that it's Hollywood that
is demanding DRM in Windows in order to allow "premium content"--meaning,
new movies that are still earning revenue--onto your computer. If Microsoft
didn't play along, it'd be relegated to second-class status as Hollywood
pulled its support for the platform.

It's all complete nonsense. Microsoft could have easily told the
entertainment industry that it was not going to deliberately cripple its
operating system, take it or leave it. With 95% of the operating system
market, where else would Hollywood go? Sure, Big Media has been pushing DRM,
but recently some--Sony after their 2005 debacle and now EMI Group--are
having second thoughts.

What the entertainment companies are finally realizing is that DRM just
annoys their customers. Like every other DRM system
ever invented, Microsoft's won't keep the professional pirates from making
copies of whatever they want. The DRM security in Vista was broken the day
it was released. Sure, Microsoft will patch it, but the patched system will
get broken as well. It's an arms race, and the defenders can't possibly win.

I believe that Microsoft knows this and also knows that it doesn't matter.
This isn't about stopping pirates and the small percentage of people who
download free movies from the Internet. This isn't even about Microsoft
satisfying its Hollywood customers at the expense of those of us paying for
the privilege of using Vista. This is about the overwhelming majority of
honest users and who owns the distribution channels to them. And while it
may have started as a partnership, in the end Microsoft is going to end up
locking the movie companies into selling content in its proprietary formats.

We saw this trick before; Apple pulled it on the recording industry. First
iTunes worked in partnership with the major record labels to distribute
content, but soon Warner Music's CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. found that he wasn't
able to dictate a pricing model to Steve Jobs. The same thing will happen
here; after Vista is firmly entrenched in the marketplace, Sony's Howard
Stringer won't be able to dictate pricing or terms to Bill Gates. This is a
war for 21st-century movie distribution and, when the dust settles,
Hollywood won't know what hit them.

To be fair, just last week Steve Jobs publicly came out against DRM for
music. It's a reasonable business position, now that Apple controls the
online music distribution market. But Jobs never mentioned movies, and he is
the largest single shareholder in Disney. Talk is cheap. The real question
is would he actually allow iTunes Music Store purchases to play on Microsoft
or Sony players, or is this just a clever way of deflecting blame to
the--already hated--music labels.

Microsoft is reaching for a much bigger prize than Apple: not just
Hollywood, but also peripheral hardware vendors. Vista's DRM will require
driver developers to comply with all kinds of rules and be certified;
otherwise, they won't work. And Microsoft talks about expanding this to
independent software vendors as well. It's another war for control of the
computer market.

Unfortunately, we users are caught in the crossfire. We are not only stuck
with DRM systems that interfere with our legitimate fair-use rights for the
content we buy, we're stuck with DRM systems that interfere with all of our
computer use--even the uses that have nothing to do with copyright.

I don't see the market righting this wrong, because Microsoft's monopoly
position gives it much more power than we consumers can hope to have. It
might not be as obvious as Microsoft using its operating system monopoly to
kill Netscape and own the browser market, but it's really no different.
Microsoft's entertainment market grab might further entrench its monopoly
position, but it will cause serious damage to both the computer and
entertainment industries. DRM is bad, both for consumers and for the
entertainment industry: something the entertainment industry is just
starting to realize, but Microsoft is still fighting. Some researchers think
that this is the final straw that will drive Windows to the competition, but
I think the courts are necessary.

In the meantime, the only advice I can offer you is to not upgrade to Vista.
It will be hard. Microsoft's bundling deals with computer manufacturers mean
that it will be increasingly hard not to get the new operating system with
new computers. And Microsoft has some pretty deep pockets and can wait us
all out if it wants to. Yes, some people will shift to Macintosh and some
fewer number to Linux, but most of us are stuck on Windows. Still, if enough
customers say no to Vista, the company might actually listen.