The longest suicide note in history
"The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history." So runs the 'Executive Exective Summary' of a document penned by Auckland-based security researcher and "professional paranoid" Peter Gutmann.
Gutmann's A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection has set the web alight. I urge you to read it. Irrespective of whether or not you use - or will ever use - Vista, computer hardware is going to cost more as a result of Microsoft's decisions to tow the Digital Rights Management (DRM) party line. And it's not just a dollar cost. The very thing that sparked the PC revolution - the open specification of hardware and drivers - vanishes under Vista's dark shadow.
Even if you use Vista and never attempt to access any content-protected material you'll still pay in terms of reduced reliability, stability and processor overhead. The Vista operating system for example polls all components 33 times every second to check they're not being tampered with by DRM bandits. If a voltage fluctuates or there's a little unexpected noise on a data bus, the least you can expect is a graphics system restart. You may even be faced with a reboot.
Gutmann appeared on a recent Security Now podcast, [mp3 link here, transcript here], during which co-host Leo Laporte described Vista as "...an operating system that is essentially insanely paranoid."
On the same podcast Gutmann scotched suggestions Microsoft were held to ransom by Hollywood;
| Microsoft owns, I don’t know what it is, 95 percent of the market or so. And particularly for desktop OSes, they own pretty much the entire market. They could quite easily say to Hollywood... we’re not going to put this stuff into the operating system because it severely degrades the performance and reliability and stability and so on and so forth. Take it or leave it. ... If Microsoft said we refuse to do this, Hollywood can’t afford to ignore 95 percent of the market. |
What makes the whole charade laughable is that Vista's High Definition DVD (HD-DVD) copy-protection for has already been cracked. A user signing themselves Muslix64 posted the code on the Doom9 forums [link] along with a YouTube video demonstration (subsequently taken down at the request of Warner Brothers). The code, a 17.5Kb piece of Java called BackupHDDVD.zip, was written not by an arch cracker determined to overturn the system but by a pissed-off user with legitimate content! Muslix64 notes;
| I
just bought a HD-DVD drive to plug on my PC, and a HD movie, cool! But
when I realized the 2 software players on windows don't allowed me to play the movie at all, because my video card is not HDCP compliant and because I have a HD monitor plugged with DVI interface, I started to get mad... This is not what we can call "fair use"! So I decide to decrypt that movie. I start reading the AACS specification I have found on the net. I estimate it will take me about 4 weeks of full time job to decrypt that. I was wrong, it was in fact, easy... [link]
|
The genie's out of the bottle before the operating system has even been released! But that doesn't mean Vista users in particular - and the computer community at large - won't end up paying for Microsoft's DRM folly. At the risk of repeating myself repeating myself, yet another reason to move to Linux.
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Comments
I thought Gutman's article was good until I read the other side of the story, and it seemed Gutman had based his article on rumour and speculation that was mostly wrong.
So, Vista can play DRM protected HD movies at full resolution if you have the right hardware. It seems that the added overhead required to enable that only kicks in when the DRM protection requires it.
While you're watching a DRM protected HD movie, that "checking" overhead is probably not even noticeable. You'd have to be using a high end PC anyway and it's not like you need to be doing other stuff on your PC while you watch movies.
Not all systems will support full HD resolution (nor does your DVD player), but at least it's enabled for the future.
After reading both sides, I wasn't sure what the problem is here, seems to me Microsoft has just given people the option to do something cool and the "downside" is all to do with requirements of the DRM protection which don't seem to be Microsoft's fault.
I don't think it's reasonable to say Microsoft should crusade against the recording studios on this. Those studios don't need Microsoft. They can just sell HD DVD and Bluray players which are what 90% of people will use to watch HD movies.
You say this is a reason to move to Linux, but I don't understand your logic. On Linux you can't watch these DRM protected HD movies at all. Unless you get a hacked copy, which is inconvenient and probably illegal. And let's say you did get a copy without DRM, it would play just as well on Vista too with no extra overhead. I don't see how Linux has an advantage here, it seems Vista has the advantage over Linux.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 4, 2007 3:34 AM
Hmm.... as Baldrick might say, "I have a cunning plan...".
As has been described in Peter GutMann's excellent article, if Vista is used to play content, it degrades the quality of said content. Hmm...
The site "allwords.com" defines "vandalism" as -
"The action of wantonly damaging or destroying property".
"Damaging" - I'm sure that "degrading content" could be argued to be "damaging". Certainly damaging to the experience of the end-user.
"Property" - (The crux of the matter) - something that someone owns.
Maybe "possession" would be a better term here,as there is no doubt that Joe Bloggs "possesses" a CD with music.
Certainly, there's no doubt that Vista is "damaging" to the experience of the end-user, especially when it comes to media playback. Maybe a bored lawyer or twenty might be interested in seeing if they can get the Vista-as-vandalism thing to fly... ;)
Posted by: Andy | January 25, 2007 10:26 PM
This not only makes an ass of Microsoft, its bad for PC manufacturers who bundle MS OS with the systems they sell. The frustrated unknowing consumer will blame Dell, HP, or whatever label is on the front of the PC.
Hopefully these big PC makers will start offering Linux ( even their own version of it) as an alternative to Vista.
Posted by: Chris | January 17, 2007 9:50 AM
Hasta la vista!... DRM is going to screw everything, particularly "usability". This is going to hurt consumers! What gets me, is how we end up having the US DRM legislation forced upon us via software (and the web, it's virtually everywhere). Surely every country should have it's own "fair use" scheme under the OS. If MS & Hollywood were trying to make ends meet, I could well understand a draconian system to extract every ounce of blood from every living soul on the planet. But as we all know....$$$$$$
Posted by: Marcus | January 14, 2007 8:45 PM