Windows Vista DRM:

Science & Technology Software
1

It probably comes as no surprise that Microsoft is under heavy pressure from the film and music industry to implement robust digital rights management (DRM) into the very core components of it’s upcoming operating system, Vista. What is less known is the cost of implementing this on a complete gamut of software and hardware and the dangers it will pose to users, economically, and maybe even worse, when used in mission-critical applications. From that economic factor comes a lot of potential economic injury to the users who buy high end computer hardware, only to have the hardware key potentially-revoked because of a code leak and thus a security breach.

What made MS kowtow to the music and film industry, when they could have followed the attitude of NZ’s TV industry, which essentially did “an Atlas Shrugged” when presented with onerous DRM rules by the music industry there?

What sort of moral and legal quagmire is MS opening itself up to, by aggressively engaging in the implementation of DRM, including key revocation that could render a gamer’s $500 graphics card as useless as a brick, just by invalidating it’s key? The following articles are lengthy, but if you consider personal computers to be an essential part of your business life, this issue affects you, as it affects all computer users.

Some key points:

DRM will skyrocket the cost of hardware, because of the uniqueness of the method, it won’t be possible to use unified drivers, or one chipset for several models of peripheral. Each card model will need to be a completely unique chipset, or it won’t be accepted as secure hardware and get the digital signature assigned.

Small-time hardware developers will be driven out of business, because this hardware approval process will be way out of reach of small companies and hobbyists who build their own peripherals.

Keys can be revoked. As soon as one key is comprimized, all devices using that key will be rendered inoperable. The potential for class actions as a public caught unaware that their expensive hardware could be rendered useless by a few bits over the internet looms ahead.

DRM methodology in Vista is to degrade video and audio quality significantly, when outputting to high quality devices. S/PDIF audio devices would be disabled when “premium content” was present on the system. The article goes into great detail on the unimaginable and potentially catestrophic side effects of this scaled degradation method of DRM, when used in mission critical apps.

The overhead of all the many steps of encryption/decription will be tremendous. Users are already reporting that the performance hit is substantial.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

http://www.engadget.com/2005/07/21/the-cli…iny-red-button/

Should MS have told the entertainment industry to “stick it”, rather than genuflect to the industry, considering that 95% of entertainment content, in the age of Vista, will come through PCs?

Will the public be properly informed at purchase time, about these and many more subtle cripplings of their system?

2

I was about to reply and say that I think the problem is a non-issue for the vast majority of users, when I tried to play a DVD in my Windows Vista computer with digital video connections and got the following:

Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video card. Try installing an updated driver for your video card.

Edit: I could play the movie after installing the DVD player that came with it. Still, it’s disappointing that Vista can’t play DVD’s by default.

3

I’m not sure what the moral quagmire is, unless we are to substitute our judgment for Microsoft’s in determining what is in Microsoft’s economic interests. Other than that, Microsoft can make Vista a worthless brick and try selling it for $1000 for all I care, and I don’t see it as a moral problem. If you don’t like Microsoft’s product, don’t buy it (and don’t give me that bleeding-heart mumbo jumbo about how everyone has to use it so MS has special moral obligations - like hell they do - they have no obligation other than to themselves, and it’s not for us to scream bloody murder just because we may not like their choices). Deal with it. Start your own software business if you don’t like Microsoft, that’s what I say.

4

I was about to reply and say that I think the problem is a non-issue for the vast majority of users, when I tried to play a DVD in my Windows Vista computer with digital video connections and got the following:

Edit: I could play the movie after installing the DVD player that came with it. Still, it’s disappointing that Vista can’t play DVD’s by default.

I think the paragraph of most interest in your experience would be this one:

Alongside the all-or-nothing approach of disabling output, Vista requires that any interface that provides high-quality output degrade the signal quality that passes through it if premium content is present. This is done through a “constrictor” that downgrades the signal to a much lower-quality one, then up- scales it again back to the original spec, but with a significant loss in quality. So if you’re using an expensive new LCD display fed from a high- quality DVI signal on your video card and there’s protected content present, the picture you’re going to see will be, as the spec puts it, “slightly fuzzy”, a bit like a 10-year-old CRT monitor that you picked up for $2 at a yard sale [Note F].

Imagine this: You buy an expensive HDMI flat panel display to use with your PC. You decide to watch a HD DVD (premium content). You find that either there is no video at all on the big, expensive flat panel display, but you can get mediocre quality out of the VGA port. Either that, or the image you get on the big, expensive display is, well, like watching an old VHS videotape.

The worst of this scenario is what happens if a hacker, somehwere, cracks the content protection key for the manufacturer of your component. The content industry may revoke the keys, rendering your hardware either downgraded to crippled levels (suddenly your 2560x1920 HD display is no longer ablet o go above 640x480), or is disabled completely and you get a message displayed to the effect that “the secuity key has been revoked, please contact technical support.”

What is of concern is that much of the public will not be informed of this behavior, until it bites them. It is not hard to envision that there will be cries of deception about the new system. Does MS try to appease the film industry, or its customers? That is the question that keeps surfacing in my mind.

5

I’m not sure what the moral quagmire is, unless we are to substitute our judgment for Microsoft’s in determining what is in Microsoft’s economic interests. Other than that, Microsoft can make Vista a worthless brick and try selling it for $1000 for all I care, and I don’t see it as a moral problem. If you don’t like Microsoft’s product, don’t buy it (and don’t give me that bleeding-heart mumbo jumbo about how everyone has to use it so MS has special moral obligations - like hell they do - they have no obligation other than to themselves, and it’s not for us to scream bloody murder just because we may not like their choices). Deal with it. Start your own software business if you don’t like Microsoft, that’s what I say.

The quagmire arises when the public, who will probably NOT be informed of the potentially unfriendly behavior of this OS, will scream that deceptive advertizing occured because only the positive aspects of Vista will have been touted by MS, and not the danger that their hardware could be rendered crippled or shut down because of a comprimised protection key. IOW, criminals in China could crack the key for one ATI video card, and then shortly thereafter, all copies of that model of ATI video card will have their one key revoked, rendering them useless. Why should 1,000,000 video card owners be penalized because a hacker in China, or the Netherlands, comprimised the key for that hardware to play protected content?

What happens when MS doesn’t clearly inform the buyer before purchase of such things as this:

Since S/PDIF doesn’t provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content [Note E].

Say you’ve just bought Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”, released as a Super Audio CD (SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to play it under Vista. Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is regarded as insecure for playing the SA content, Vista disables it, and you end up hearing a performance by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd.

“None of the AGP or PCI-E graphics cards that you can buy today support HDCP […]If you’ve just spent $1000 on a pair of Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards expecting to be able to playback HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies at 1920x1080 resolution in the future, you’ve just wasted your money […] If you just spent $1500 on a pair of 7800GTX 512MB GPUs expecting to be able to play 1920x1080 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies in the future, you’ve just wasted your money”.

(The two devices mentioned above are the premium supposedly-HDCP-enabled cards made by the two major graphics chipset manufacturers ATI and nVidia). ATI was later subject to a class-action lawsuit by its customers over this deception.

As well as overt disabling of functionality, there’s also covert disabling of functionality. For example PC voice communications rely on automatic echo cancellation (AEC) in order to work. AEC requires feeding back a sample of the audio mix into the echo cancellation subsystem, but with Vista’s content protection this isn’t permitted any more because this might allow access to premium content. What is permitted is a highly-degraded form of feedback that might possibly still sort-of be enough for some sort of minimal echo cancellation purposes.

The same deliberate degrading of playback quality applies to audio, with the audio being downgraded to sound (from the spec) “fuzzy with less detail” [Note G].

In order to prevent the creation of hardware emulators of protected output devices, Vista requires a Hardware Functionality Scan (HFS) that can be used to uniquely fingerprint a hardware device to ensure that it’s (probably) genuine. In order to do this, the driver on the host PC performs an operation in the hardware (for example rendering 3D content in a graphics card) that produces a result that’s unique to that device type.

In order for this to work, the spec requires that the operational details of the device be kept confidential. Obviously anyone who knows enough about the workings of a device to operate it and to write a third-party driver for it (for example one for an open-source OS, or in general just any non-Windows OS) will also know enough to fake the HFS process. The only way to protect the HFS process therefore is to not release any technical details on the device beyond a minimum required for web site reviews and comparison with other products.

This potential “closing” of the PC’s historically open platform is an extremely worrying trend.

The author also references the potential problems that can happen with medical imaging, air traffic control and other mission-critical uses of Vista, caused by covert downgrading of image quality.

It is fairly easy to avoid MS’ products, if you don’t use a computer, or if you’re able to do your work with Linuz and open source programs, ie., word processors. It becomes more difficult when you are working with multimedia and have to share files and projects with collaborating staff. I know how tough this can be, as I started my graphic design business on a PC, and could not communicate with the Mac designers and even the service bureau to get my layouts to 4C film separations. There are just some professions where you simply must use what your partners and service providers are using.

Can you imagine trying to edit video on Linux? While there might be a primative open-source NLE application available (last I checked, there was not), one would not be able to produce the kind of sophisticated projects that professionals working on the Windows platform would. In order to remain competative and offer the latest that technology can provide, one would have to adopt the Windows OS, or lose business to their competitors who do.

And for those die-hard non-Windows users, this would affect you too. How? Because all the new hardware being developed will be developed for the OS with 95% of the market share. You who refuse to use Windows will be stuck using your pre-2007 motherboard, graphics cards and sound cards. If you are lucky, maybe a bootleg Chinese outfit will manufacture counterfeit hardware, so that you can replace yours with when it finally dies of old age, or a power surge. You see, the big peripheral makers are going to go where the volume and money is: Windows.

I use Windows 2000 on my main machine. My editing workstation also used Windows 2000. When I upgraded to Adobe Premiere Pro a few years ago, in order to keep up with competition in terms of workflow efficiency and quality of output, I found out that it would not install on Windows 2000. I was left with no choice but to install Windows XP. But Windows XP isn’t loaded with these “bombs” and so I don’t really mind. But if it were Vista that was required, I might well be using old Premiere on Windows 2000 today and wondering why I’m working so many hours and able to handle so few projects.

Another way in which Windows gets its steely tentacles into every computer is the pre-sale agreements. When you buy a new PC, can you buy it without Windows and NOT pay a Windows licensing fee built into the PC cost? When was the last time you could buy a new laptop or a new desktop PC with no operating system? Or with Linux preinstalled?

Sure, MS has every moral right to adopt this strategy–as long as they clearly disclose all of the potential caveates. The problem arises when Joe Consumer buys his new Vista PC and a $1000 graphics card and a $4000 50" flat panel display, hoping to watch the latest blockbuster DVD on his $5000 video display, only to get a fuzzy picture, or an error message like the one David got. Chances are, Circuit City, who is motivated to sell as many PCs as possible, isn’t going to provide a long list of caveates to the prospective buyer. They’ll just tout the positive aspects and then Mr. Consumer will find out that he’s wasted a lot of money later one when the system doesn’t perform as advertized.

I think that you’re not grasping the full potential reach and damage that this strategy could do to both the hardware and the software industry. It may mean that you’ll pay 40% more for every device you attach to your computer, as it will have to meet this stringent set of security scans and be certified and assigned a key. The possibility of revocation makes every piece of hardware a potential self-distruct candidate. Non-Windows users may not be able to use the upcoming crop of peripherals as they may not operate with a non-protected OS. Or, if they do, they may be severely crippled, and definately way more expensive than if DRM were not incorporated into the hardware.

This situation is a potential mess, if things progress in the planned direction. System reliability will go down the drain because of the “tilt-bits” that Vista uses to monitor the system for what it might mistake for tampering. All this monitoring, encrypting, constricting and decrypting will have a monstrous impact on system performance. In other words, it will be like the perfect model of a Socialist monarchy, so top-heavy and slow acting.

6

For one thing, once the first Joe Consumer gets screwed, he’s not going to just beat his head against the wall. He’ll go public and join with others to let everyone know how badly he got screwed, then everyone will know - and then there will be no more hidden caveat. Word will spread like wildfire, and MS can watch its market share tumble to exactly the extent that they screw everybody and someone else comes along with a superior approach to protecting content.

Second, maybe the prices for hardware will go up at least temporarily - and maybe they should, so that the content industry can protect its ability to ensure that it gets paid as it should for each unit of content sold to consumers.

Third, if MS behaves really, really badly, the market will punish them by finding other ways to run computers. I am not saying I think this will happen, because I think that MS won’t go all out to screw everyone with a key revocation blitz as fathomed here. They, like everyone else, ought to and will act to protect their profits. They will weigh what’s in their interests and (I expect) be careful in revoking keys. They are banking on this OS, are they not? Why would they go out of their way to screw their customers?

Fourth, why in hell are the hardware manufacturers writing all of this easily-hacked code anyway? They’ll get their comeuppance too, as word spreads and people stop buying their products.

The alleged fraud against poor Joe Consumer will not exist, and even if it does, word will spread to counteract it. The companies will correct themselves to stay profitable. Freedom will work, as it does every time its tried.

7

For one thing, once the first Joe Consumer gets screwed, he’s not going to just beat his head against the wall. He’ll go public and join with others to let everyone know how badly he got screwed, then everyone will know - and then there will be no more hidden caveat. Word will spread like wildfire, and MS can watch its market share tumble to exactly the extent that they screw everybody and someone else comes along with a superior approach to protecting content.

Quite possibly, “Vista could be the longest suicide note ever written,” to quote the article. But I think you’re right–MS will correct it’s mistakes if it goes too far against consumer wishes.

What does the consumer wish? For the product to work. And also for the ability to do as they please with their copies of whatever content they paid for.

The author talks about a scenario in which a Vista OS and Vista-approved hardware would make it impossible for independant filmmakers to produce their films. Now we’re not only talking about content protection but racketeering by the entrenched film industry. The potential for abuse is just staggering.

8

What does the consumer wish? For the product to work. And also for the ability to do as they please with their copies of whatever content they paid for.

The author talks about a scenario in which a Vista OS and Vista-approved hardware would make it impossible for independant filmmakers to produce their films. Now we’re not only talking about content protection but racketeering by the entrenched film industry. The potential for abuse is just staggering.

For one thing, the “wishes” of consumers as such should not be the primary concern of Microsoft. Many people “wish” they could download all the movies and songs they like for free. They wish the never had to pay for software again. But their wish to violate the intellectual property rights of others should have no bearing on Microsoft, morally speaking. In fact, Microsoft morally should refuse to knowingly abet such crimes.

Now you can argue whether or not DRM is the best business model for the various parties involved and whether the current implementations of DRM are ideal or not. But you can’t simply toss aside the attempt to protect intellectual property because it violates the wishes of the consumers. I don’t know the details of all this, but there is one massive contradiction in your complaints, namely the fact that Microsoft *wants* people to use its software for multimedia, and that it has committed millions of dollars and man-hours to achieve this goal. Unless you have some special inside knowledge, I think its borderline absurd to suggest the Microsoft would spend years to implement a product that would be found frustrating and unsatisfactory to “Joe Consumer”. Do you propose that the entire leadership of Microsoft is ignorant to the user experience, or that they just don’t care, or that they’re actually trying to commit business suicide?

As for your allegations of “racketeering”, it is not a crime to sign business agreements. “Independent” filmmakers have no right to Windows, even if Microsoft did decide to lock them out (again, what would motivate them to do this?).

9

As for your allegations of “racketeering”, it is not a crime to sign business agreements.

Regrettably, this is actually not true. See 15 USC 1 et seq. for the underlying law and 18 USC 1961 et seq. for the racketeering applications. There may be other sections that get involved.

I’m pretty much persuaded of two things. First, this will end up being a transparent, easily usable, rights-protecting system. Second, it won’t be until we’re a couple of versions into Vista. Since I dislike having to pay to be a beta tester, I have a policy of never switching to the new MS version of anything until it has been out for at least two years, I don’t expect any problems.

10

I am suspicious of DRM. DRM is more than just a technology; it is something that requires accommodations in the legal system and in international copyright treaties.

Considering the anti-conceptual way that legislators deal with other issues, and their well-known inability to understand computer and technical issues, I would find it completely astonishing if DRM and the maze of laws that go with it could be found to be completely Objectively valid.

I think that DRM, as it is being implemented, is a product of the mixed economy, and that it is right to regard it with suspicion.

I am suspicious that it is targeted toward “Joe Consumer,” who, qua consumer, doesn’t produce anything.

Because of advancing computer technology, it is becoming cheaper and cheaper for talented individuals and groups to produce high-quality music and movies and release them directly to the public over the Internet, and even make money. The traditional media companies find that this competition is eroding their revenue. If you play a guitar and record it with your computer and post the recording on the Internet, there is no way the computer can tell whether you are playing your own composition or someone else’s. And if you play well, it is now technologically easy to produce a recording in your own home that is better than the recordings that were produced by professional studios 20 years ago. You can even become rich without the help of a media company. So it is convenient for the media companies to claim that, in general, they are having to compete with bootleg versions of their own work, and to make it less convenient for individuals to post high-quality material of any kind whatever, on the presumption that any such material could be an illegal copy.

I predict that production equipment is going to fall into two classes: equipment which licenses the DRM and is out of the reach of all but the big media companies, and equipment which is affordable but either produces low-quality recordings which anybody can copy, or high-quality recordings which nobody, not even you, can copy, even if you own the copyright. (The presumption being that if you cannot access the production-licensed equipment, you are a “consumer” and therefore you are probably re-producing someone else’s work rather than producing your own.) It will become illegal to produce high-quality recording equipment that does not license DRM and enforce it in some way, because such equipment could be used to make high-quality illegal copies.

Independent producers of music and movies will find that they cannot protect their own work the way the big media companies protect it – unless they either go through one of the existing media companies (allowing it to make an unearned profit), or license the technology under terms that only a big media company would be able to comply with. I predict that written licenses will no longer be legally binding; if your work is not protected by DRM, the machines with DRM will copy it without limitations, and this will constitute an implied license.

As soon as most computers have DRM built-in, it will become illegal to make a computer that does not have it. By that time, it will be possible to argue that the computers being banned are no longer being manufactured, anyway. After all, the argument will go, the only reason to build or use such a computer would be to make illegal copies.

The media companies pushing DRM are not going bankrupt because of illegal copying. They are going bankrupt because they are becoming obsolete. It is a matter of economics that the bankruptcy of a single company or industry, if caused by its own obsolescence, works out better for the economy as a whole, as it allows the company’s resources to be released for use in more productive ways. However, the mixed economy allows the media companies to avoid bankruptcy by manipulating the laws. That is what is happening here.

It would be nice if DRM made it possible for anyone to apply protection to his work and prevent it from being pirated, but I do not think that is what the media companies have in mind for it.

Are the media companies willing to protect everyone’s rights at the expense of their own bankruptcy? In today’s political environment? Think about it.

(It is unfortunate also that the anti-copyright people are helping to cause the above events to take place, by making the media companies’ cover story sound plausible. I think the anti-copyright people are a very vocal minority; most people do want to reward the producers of their favorite media.)

11

DRM is more than just a technology; it is something that requires accommodations in the legal system and in international copyright treaties.

What new laws / accommodations does it require?

12

What new laws / accommodations does it require?

One new law required by DRM is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provision, which basically makes a machine’s judgment about copy protection legally binding. If copy protection prevents you from making a copy, and you circumvent the copy protection and make the copy anyway, then it’s illegal, even if it would have otherwise been legal for you to make the copy (such as because you own the copyright). Even possessing (or trafficking in) a tool to override a machine is illegal under the DMCA.

Also new are the FCC’s repeatedly-proposed regulations regarding the Broadcast Flag and the requirement that devices honor the flag. (This flag is supposed to prevent copying, when it’s turned on. The FCC tried to mandate recognition of the flag; courts ruled that the FCC doesn’t have the authority to make that mandate; the media companies are now trying to get Congress to grant the FCC the authority.)

Also new are some proposed laws that would “close the analog hole” by requiring analog recording devices to use some kind of watermarking scheme to recognize “copyrighted” material and refuse to copy it.

The World Intellectual Property Organization has been trying to create a “broadcast right,” recently, that would allow broadcasters to own what they broadcast apart from whether it would have otherwise been copyrighted by someone else or in the public domain. In other words, if I make a movie, copyright it, and a television network airs it, then the television network, even apart from any contract with me, would have the broadcast rights, and even I wouldn’t be allowed to rebroadcast it. This broadcast right is designed to work with DRM and things like the broadcast flag.

13

One new law required by DRM is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provision, which basically makes a machine’s judgment about copy protection legally binding. If copy protection prevents you from making a copy, and you circumvent the copy protection and make the copy anyway, then it’s illegal, even if it would have otherwise been legal for you to make the copy (such as because you own the copyright).

But I thought that was already the law, that it’s illegal to thwart a copy-protection method, that is, this is already in 17 USC 1201. In other words, the technology follows the law, and not the other way around. I thought you were referring to new laws, not existing laws.

I am not entirely in favor of this restriction because it depends on a dubious notion of “effective control”, but remember that “would otherwise” is not a legally valid concept. Possession of a machine gun or atom bomb “would otherwise” be legal, except that it’s illegal. I tried to untangle the remedies, but from what I can tell, there are no criminal penalties, so I think that a person who owns the copyright has the option of not suing themselves for working around a prophylactic. Is there a good reason to not revoke the concept “fair use” as applied to digital works? I think that is what this objection comes down to, that it may limit “fair use” copying without permission. Se “fair use” non-permission copying is an exception to a general law (thus only allowed because of a more specific law), and an even more specific law seems to say “but the original law may be strictly enforced in this case”. Is that bad?

And of course, in order to fully implement the technology, there probably will be new laws passed to give the FCC new powers, so don’t get confused and think that I support this nuttiness. Still, Congress is not at all required to pass such a law – they have to choose to add a new class of interferences in business.

14

necrovore makes a clear and compelling description of the problem here, so I don’t need to add much but to bring up the aspect of ‘fair use’ that protects the consumer’s right to transfer media to convenient means of playback, such as making a cassette copy to play in the car, or making an mp3 copy to play on their portable mp3 player. Under the new DMCA law, this would become illegal, as the content would be blocked from copying by the Vista OS.

This raises the ethical question, is it moral for a corporation to dictate where and how a media file can be played? (Does it justify selling the consumer three different versions of an album, one as a CD, one as a cassette and one as an MP3?) Or should the consumer be free to decide how he will use that media and copy/convert to the appropriate media formats?

15

This raises the ethical question, is it moral for a corporation to dictate where and how a media file can be played?

Why does it raise an ethical question? What evidence have you that it might not be moral? Spell it out, please.

Edit: To clarify, since we are discussing what a corporation ought to do or not do, please describe what facts in reality lead you to think it might be an issue.

16

Why does it raise an ethical question? What evidence have you that it might not be moral? Spell it out, please.

Edit: To clarify, since we are discussing what a corporation ought to do or not do, please describe what facts in reality lead you to think it might be an issue.

Here is the angle I’m thinking along: the computer is intended to be our servant–to perform as we instruct it. What DRM does is make the comptuer our master, putting Big Brother in every CPU, there to judge what we can do and not do with our computers. We buy our computers, so therefore we own them. Therefore, I think it is only reasonable that our computers should not twart our every attempt to creatively modify media for our own edification, or to create content of high quality.

What MS appears to be doing is working in collusion with the film and music industry to create a closed system where only the powerful corporations can produce content on PCs. If the article I posted is accurate in the least, these new technologies would prevent “indie” filmmakers and musicians from producing high quality content. They would be forced to produce degraded quality audio and video, because the DRM systems within the OS would instruct the devices to feed the data through the costrictor to degrade it. What this issue boils down to is licensing your PC to control what content you can view/listen to and produce.

Anything that reeks of a reversal of the progress that technology has made is abhorrent to me. With the advent of faster CPUs, the industry wants to hobble that performance now, to incorporate this ‘policing’ of our daily behavior. Where does it end? How far will it push if we don’t oppose it in large numbers?

17

I think it is only reasonable that our computers should not twart our every attempt to creatively modify media for our own edification,

That’s an interesting euphemism for “steal”, isn’t it? I think the basic question is do you subscribe to the notion of copyright or not?

This raises the ethical question, is it moral for a corporation to dictate where and how a media file can be played? (Does it justify selling the consumer three different versions of an album, one as a CD, one as a cassette and one as an MP3?) Or should the consumer be free to decide how he will use that media and copy/convert to the appropriate media formats?

Well, that depends on whether you believe in the idea of the copyright. If so, then the corporation owns the right to copy the media. And they can sell you the media under whatever terms you are willing to accept. You are free not to buy under those terms, and they are free not to sell the media to you under different terms. Is there an issue with this?

18

Well, that depends on whether you believe in the idea of the copyright. If so, then the corporation owns the right to copy the media. And they can sell you the media under whatever terms you are willing to accept. You are free not to buy under those terms, and they are free not to sell the media to you under different terms. Is there an issue with this?

In mweiss’s defense (and if I’m wrong, correct me), I don’t think he’s saying that it is criminal(i.e. rights violating) for Vista to be set up this way, but that it is immoral(i.e. against the rational self-interest of Microsoft)

19

Ok, I think I understand your differentiation.

It is his characterization of MS in “collusion” with with music companies correct then. It certainly is in the music companies self interest to have computers aid them in securing their copyrights, correct? The cost to them of piracy outweighs the cost of “enabled artists”. If it is in the music companies’ interest for this, then the MS self interest has to be viewed in the context of two transactions. How can music companies assist MS, and how does MS benefit by giving their customers what they want. It is not necessarily true that if you satisfy your customer and serve none of your other partners interests that you can benefit. Sometimes, your partners self interests and their ability to help your company succeed outweigh the customer need.

I don’t think it is immoral at all. It is contextual.

20

Cogito is correct in stating my intent with regard to the morality of Microsoft acting in favor of the film & music industry.

By creating many difficulties for the common user to access and enjoy media (and to create media of their own, original ideas), MS has backed themselves into a corner, where on one hand, they’re damned if they don’t deliver on their appeasement of the music industry, and on the other, they risk losing market share to a less restrictive OS like Linux, if they don’t allow computer owners to be master of their own PCs.

The public resents having “Big Brother” inside their PC, deciding what content will display on their $5000 flat panel, and what content will display on their 14" CRT from 1990.

As with the example of the New Zealand TV stations in the link I provided at the start of this thread, MS is in a position of controlling access to the audience and can very well say “up yours” to the music industry. Given that it is predicted that 95% of the audience for content will be using a PC, MS is in a very strong position to dictate whether it wants to be bothered with DRM or not and the music industry be damned. They can lose that 95% audience share by refusing to cooperate with MS, but they’d be foolish to do so, because they would be limited to a shrinking audience of people who listen on traditional vintage means of playing recordings. The new world is in personal computers, and MS is not legally or morally compelled to modify their OS just to protect those industries. Yes, they could tell the MPAA and RIAA to ‘take a hike’ if they don’t like it.

What stands to happen is a lot of counter-productive code, hardware development and other distractions to meet this set of onerous requirements. Instead of using resourses to improve computing speeds and quality of graphics and sound, they will be utilizing huge resources just to do the opposite.