DRM strikes again (another reason to pass on Vista)

[EagerMind]

So I recently learned about this white paper, in which a New Zealand security analyst takes a look at the implications of how DRM is implemented in Windows Vista. It's a bit long and at times kind of technical, but I really think it's a worthwhile read to see just some of stuff that's going on behind-the-scenes in Vista.

The "short short" summary of the paper is: "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history." And after reading through it, it really seems like Microsoft is trying to cripple your PC. All just so you can play HD movies on it. The worst part is that since Microsoft's policies impact hardware developers, everyone will end up feeling the effects of this. Really, all I can suggest is to at least skim through the paper and see some of the things he's talking about.

But I think the bigger story is that the arrival of HD media in general is just plain broken.

First, there's the issue of HDCP. Any device transmitting, receiving, or passing an HD signal through it must be compatible with HDCP encryption in order for you to actually see HD on your TV. The practical side of this is that pretty much everyone sitting here today - including those that may have already purchased "HD capable" devices - will have to upgrade to equipment that's compliant with HDCP.

The second part of this is AACS, which allows "compromised" HD devices to be put on a blacklist and stop working. So let's say some hacker uses the cryptographic keys from your model DVD player to make his own black-market player, or the company that made your player doesn't renew their AACS license, or the AACS licenser decides that the company that made your player "isn't doing enough" to protect HD content. That's right, for reasons totally beyond your control, your HD equipment could one day just suddenly stop working.

And of course the alleged purpose for all of this - to stop piracy - won't work, and in the end the honest customer is burdened with the additional cost of all of this "technology" that really does nothing. This article suggests a darker motive behind DRM, and I can't say that I disagree.

I'm really troubled by all of this. I'm prepared to move to Linux, but I don't really see Vista flopping. The majority of home users will end up using it as they upgrade their PCs (and Microsoft can force the issue by ending support for XP), so I don't see software developers and hardware manufacturers abandoning the platform. And as the US moves to HD within the next 10 years or so, sooner or later I'll be forced to purchase one of these DRM-hobbled devices. The consumer is being forced to support a technology that nobody wants and that doesn't work anyway. Really, what's a person to do? Thoughts anyone?

[LGM]

Just watch HD-DVD on a normal player and be done with it. IMO HD is overrated. YOu have to have just the right, perfect combination of equipment for it to look decent and be worth the cost anyway.

I've used Vista for over a month, and it has crippled me in no way whatsoever.

[scotch]

If you can't watch your HD DVD on your perfectly capable computer then that is a restriction, not everyone wants to buy a seperate device. I don't have a dvd player, I have a computer that plays dvds.

Coincidentally, today people released the first unrestricted pirate HD DVDs to the internet, and the program for decrypting them. They'll never beat the pirates, and it's sad that even moreso than before, the people buying the things are the ones that are suffering from the DRM. A pirate will be able to play the videos off their hard drive or disc drive, in open source players, on any device they like, any graphics card, to any monitor, they'll be able to stream the video around the network as they like or recompress it etc. Whereas a legitimate user is struggling because their monitor doesn't have trusted graphics card drivers or any number of other problems.

I don't blame MS for this one, though, it's the fault of the HD DVD consortium and the movie studios. MS don't really have a lot of choice but to support the security systems, same as any other player device.

[Darth Mandarb]

They just never seem to learn...

I can't believe, in this day and age, there are still people who think they can copy-protect stuff.

Such a colossal waste of time and money.

Morons.  All.

[LGM]

I see what you mean, Scotch. But I just hate it when the faults of other companies get pushed onto another.

Copy-protection will never work, because people will never agree to give certain rights away to be entertained... They should just eliminate it completely, make their products cheaper, and in the end more people will buy them. They may not witness major profit margins, but at least half of their consumer base won't hate them.

Course I know nothing of business practices, I could be totally wrong.

[EagerMind]

I've used Vista for over a month, and it has crippled me in no way whatsoever.

None of the hardware (and much of the software) out there right now has been specifically designed to be "Vista compliant." The white paper points out what fully-compliant devices may look like:

Once a weakness is found in a particular driver or device, that driver will have its signature revoked by Microsoft, which means that it will cease to function .... What this means is that a report of a compromise of a particular driver or device will cause all support for that device worldwide to be turned off until a fix can be found.

Windows' anti-piracy component, WGA, is tied to system hardware components.  Windows allows you to make a small number of system hardware changes after which you need to renew your Windows license .... If a particular piece of hardware is deactivated (even just temporarily while waiting for an updated driver to work around a content leak) and you swap in a different video card or sound card to avoid the problem, you risk triggering Windows' anti-piracy measures, landing you in even more hot water.

Vista's content protection requires that devices (hardware and software drivers) set so-called "tilt bits" if they detect anything unusual.  For example if there are unusual voltage fluctuations, maybe some jitter on bus signals, a slightly funny return code from a function call, a device register that doesn't contain quite the value that was expected, or anything similar, a tilt bit gets set.  Such occurrences aren't too uncommon in a typical computer .... Previously this was no problem - the system was designed with a bit of resilience, and things will function as normal ....  With the introduction of tilt bits, all of this designed-in resilience is gone.  Every little (normally unnoticeable) glitch is suddenly surfaced because it could be a sign of a hack attack, with the required reaction being that "Windows Vista will initiate a full reset of the graphics subsystem, so everything will restart".  The effect that these tilt bits will have on system reliability should require no further explanation.

In order to prevent tampering with in-system communications, all communication flows have to be encrypted and/or authenticated ....  Needless to say, this extremely CPU-intensive mechanism is a very painful way to provide protection for content, and this fact has been known for many years.

In order to prevent active attacks, device drivers are required to poll the underlying hardware every 30ms to ensure that everything appears kosher.  This means that even with nothing else happening in the system, a mass of assorted drivers has to wake up thirty times a second just to ensure that... nothing continues to happen.

I don't know, I guess it remains to be seen what the actual impact is on the user, but it seems pretty messy to me, and it looks like most of this will be going on regardless of whether or not you're even actually playing HD content. An awful lot of goodwill will be riding on Microsoft and hardware developers to not enforce the specification to its full extent.

Just watch HD-DVD on a normal player and be done with it. IMO HD is overrated.

This is really isn't a solution. HD DVDs won't play on a normal player. And in February 2009, the US will stop broadcoasting analog TV signals. So I'll either need to get a digital-to-analog converter or go buy an HDTV if I want to continue watching TV. Whether I want to or not, at some point I'll need to buy into this technology.

Or consider when Vista gets widely deployed. Hardware manufacturers will need to develop "Vista compatible" hardware. That means supporting the above-described "features," licensing HDCP and AACS for their devices and implementing all the cryptography into their hardware, and other potential expenses mentioned in the white paper. Whether you're running Linux, or even using Vista and plan on never playing any HD content, you're still paying for all of this in the cost of the device.

I don't blame MS for this one, though, it's the fault of the HD DVD consortium and the movie studios. MS don't really have a lot of choice but to support the security systems, same as any other player device.

He actually addresses this exact point in his white paper. Whether you agree with it or not, I guess that's another matter. But I think he makes a good point:

4. Microsoft is only doing this because Hollywood/the music industry is forcing them to.

"We were only following orders" has historically worked rather poorly as an excuse, and it doesn't work too well here either.  While it's convenient to paint an industry that sues 12-year-old kids and 80-year-old grandmothers as the scapegoat, no-one's holding a gun to Microsoft's head to force them do this.  The content industry is desperate to get its content onto PCs, and it would have quite easy for Microsoft to say "Here's what we'll do with Vista, take it or leave it.  We won't seriously cripple our own and our business partners' products just to suit your whims".  In other words they could make it clear to Hollywood who's the tail and who's the dog.

Here's an illustrative story about what can happen when the content-industry tail tries to wag the dog.  About 10-15 years ago, music companies told a bunch of NZ TV stations that they had to pay fees in order to screen music videos.  The TV stations disagreed, saying that they were providing free advertising for the music companies, and if they didn't like that then they'd simply stop playing music videos.  So they stopped playing all music videos.

After a few weeks, cracks stated to appear as the music companies realised just how badly they needed the TV channels.  One of the music companies bought an entire prime-time advertising block (at phenomenal cost, this wasn't a single 30-second slot but every slot in an entire prime-time ad break) just to play one single new music video.

Shortly afterwards, music videos reappeared on TV.  The details of the settlement were never made public, but I imagine it consisted of a bunch of music company execs on their knees begging the TV stations to start playing music videos again and let's please never bring this matter up again.

It's the same with Microsoft, the content industry needs them as badly (or more badly) than Microsoft needs the content industry.  Claiming that they're only following orders from Hollywood is a red herring - if Microsoft declined to implement this stuff, Hollywood would have to give in because they can't afford to lock themselves out of 95% of the market, in the same way that the music companies couldn't afford to cut out their primary advertising channel.

[Nikolas]

I do recall in 94 when Widnows 95 came in the market that everyone was completly unhappy!

The main point? : You could no longer choose between Dos and Windows as before with Windows 3.1! You had to BOOT FROM WINDOWS! How dare they?

Same here probably!

While all this things about Hollywood and DRM and evreything are completly right and I agree fully allthe way, in the end, I will be forced to buy vista. Why? Because new software simply won't work in XP! And all studios around me will have all new toys to play with and I will remain in the middle age! I can't afford not to follow vista (maybe late, but still  Ican't afford not to).

The only way to go would be to boykot Vista until removing those deep shit stuff, but when MS is offering FREE upgrades to anyone buying a computer now, what is there to do? I got a price for a new computer, and was simply told that "when vista are out, we will take your computer, fit the new vista without deleting anything else in 4 hours!" (Now that 4 hours part, is probably a lie, but for the rest...) At least this offer seems to be valid for ever, so I can still wait. But for how long?

I'd love to jump to Linux, or even unix or dos (not Mac though...) but Steinberg, NI, Adboe etc, don't run in Linux, do they? Not without tons of problems. And time is money, as well as bugs being extremely annoying.

[Radiant]

The longstanding fallacy of copy protection is that a hacked copy is almost always better than the original. For instance, with old games you had to look up word X on page Y of the manual, which gets annoying if your room is as cluttered as mine. A hacked version lacks the restriction and is therefore more convenient to the user.

While I'm not going into the ethics of it, it is a psychological fact that people really appreciate convenience. If you make it difficult for people to use a paid version, they can and will get a hacked version.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Radiant's right.  I've often been extremely annoyed by some dvd's I purchase which have forced (yes, forced) trailers for the company's other films, their logo, and the fbi theft warning.  Once you copy these and remove all of the protections these are immediately skippable, something I personally do with movies I own simply because I find it unacceptable that when I pay for something I should be forced to wait for 5 minutes to even see a movie.  If companies would screw their heads on right and stop forcing things onto consumers and making products friendlier they'd see better returns imo.

As for Vista, the articles I've read haven't convinced me of its superiority over XP, just that it's different (and in many bad ways).  At least XP was (for many) a stability jump over 98 and 95.  I think many of you are discounting the average consumer too readily.  If Vista is truly unwieldy and punishing, particularly for what I call 'casual' piracy, the majority of consumers will be upset.  For example, how many pc users do you know that have never used a p2p program--ever--or have never downloaded an mp3 that wasn't free, never downloaded ANYTHING questionable?  Not many, I wager.  With such tight thumbscrews in effect the public at large will take notice.

[Nikolas]

The one big thing that Vista will bring (not alone), is the LARGE BIG memory at last! And yes, I can eat up 2 GB of RAM like breakfast in 2 minutes (samples take up a lot of memory).

with Vista in horizon and NAMM on the way, I do fear for the future.

[Mr Flibble]

Oh yeah, that was another thing about Vista.

I don't care that the hell it's doing, but there's no way in hell it should need 2 gigs of ram to do it.

It's not that I don't intend to have 2 gigs of ram available anyway, but thats beside the point. There's nothing that I want my OS to do that takes 1 or 2 gigs of ram as a starting point, before even counting applications.

[ManicMatt]

I miss Workbench!  :'(

[esper]

What's wrong with Mac, Nik? In fact, I've seriously been considering "switching sides." Everyone I know uses a Mac, and every time I let them on my computer it seems as though they want to hurl it through a wall. Plus, I'm informed that Mac has a decent, free windows emulator that takes up nearly no system resources so you can continue to use all your favorite non-Mac software.

Not to mention the fact that, when I was around 12 years old, I knew a man who had a mac as powerful as my computer is right now...

[Radiant]

I don't care that the hell it's doing, but there's no way in hell it should need 2 gigs of ram to do it.

On the other hand, most Linux versions still run on a 486...

[Darth Mandarb]

Not to mention the fact that, when I was around 12 years old, I knew a man who had a mac as powerful as my computer is right now...

If your profile age is correct ... you're saying that a guy 14 years ago (in 1993) had a mac as powerful as your computer is now?  Are you still using a 386?

[esper]

one would think....

It was really a spiffy setup, though. The guy used it to run a screen-printing business. My first PC (before that I had a Commodore 64), which I got in 1996, couldn't run the original version of Caligari Truespace, but that guy had and screwed around with some 3D program with which he could rock out stuff I still can't do with v. 6.6 on my compy today. I never remember it locking up or slowing down, as mine is wont to do when performing even the simplest of tasks.

I'm also of the understanding that Macs are just about entirely virusproof. This may be hype, but like I said: Mac users hate every PC in my house, and I've got a couple higher end models.

[Nikolas]

My problem with Macs is the price!

Then it's that I'm used in Pcs, and don't see the reason in changing something you're sooo used to.

Third it's a monopoly which can only be bad! If IBM had done the same then we all would be screwed!

Fourth it's the matter of 1 button mouse (although you can get a second).

Generally I'm just not used to Macs (although I have been using them for over 2 years now in studios and stuff...) Just can't get used.

There is nothing wrong with a MAc (except the rpice which is ridiculous!) But other than that nothing else. The problem lies on my end.

[Mr Flibble]

The Windows/Linux argument suddenly makes me realise why people will stay in marriages where they are the victims of domestic abuse.

[Darth Mandarb]

I'm also of the understanding that Macs are just about entirely virusproof. This may be hype, but like I said: Mac users hate every PC in my house, and I've got a couple higher end models.

I assure you ... if Macs had the user-base that PCs have, they'd be just as virus prone.  Run a mac if you want, but put an Antivirus program on it.

[blueskirt]

I would probably change to a Mac or Linux if it wasn't for the fact I would be back to stone age gaming speaking, with little to no games to play, and forced to use countless emulators just to cover my gaming needs, which last I checked, could only fully support an hundreds games at best in the ocean of games released so far. Pretty much like DosBox was a 4 years ago when you were lucky if you could run, without sound and music, one of your favorite game with it. Add to this all the indie games I play, plus AGS games which, like a friend of mine constantly remind me, can't be runned on Linux when they use DLL.

And from all the persons I chat with and who are using Linux, I have yet to not hear one of them saying "I'm re-installing Linux" every 3 months and hear one of them say "I've finished to config Linux, everything went flawlessly" because I can easily listen at them cursing their module configurations for 3 whole days until it is installed for them, and this every 3 months. Sound like the good old Firefox Vs Opera debate to me. Whenever come the subject of Firefox functionality "You can install 20 extensions to make it work like Opera" and whenever come the subject of Firefox stability "Firefox work fine for me, it must be those 20 extensions you installed".

That's why I stick to XP. It's not like XP is screwing us, it's not like we were forced to move to Vista. Hopefully, in the following years Bill will retire and the next dude taking over will notice there is absolutly no company that are willing to change all their hardware just for an OS, or nobody who want to see their additionnal 1GB of RAM support (The sole reason, with better DirectX support, to use Vista) wasted in the shiny interface, and they will produce something that will be to Vista, what Win2K was to WinME.