Is DRM really limiting in Windows Vista?
There’s a lot of discussion about Digital Rights Managment or DRM in windows Vista.? I just came accross this article over at ZDNet that discusses whether or not it’s limiting? (drm).? So the author has been running Vista for over a week, and reports that he’s able to view and play both DRM’d and non-DRM’d content in both mp3 files and DVD’s.? He also talks about the the discussion of DRM being used for gaming and it slowing down video playback performance – but no games really seem to be doing this.? The only DRM they seem to use is for copy-proof CD’s and DVD’s.
The thing I find surprising is that he doesn’t mention anything about the apparent driver “lockdown” of the CD/DVD drive in Vista.? I too have been testing Windows Vista on a new laptop and I had a DVD of my own video footage.? I wanted to “rip” that to the hard drive for editing.? I installed 3 different programs (that I used to use to rip video in XP) and each one generated an error saying that it “didn’t have access to the drive” (my internal DVD burner drive).
So sure – I can play non-DRM’d content all I want, but only certain software programs (approved by Microsoft) are able to “access” the optical drives for ripping content.? Now – that’s DRM at the hardware and driver level isn’t it?
March 18th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Sorry if this is redundant (I made the same comment on your first ever post upon checking out this site), but I think the gravity of the implications of Vista’s hardcore DRM deserves more attention.
The following URL links to a technical, well sourced and well written essay (it’ll take some 2 hours + to read, so get a coffee) that explains in relative detail the extent to which Microsoft has designed Vista to control what the user can do with his PC. Vista’s DRM scheme is truly Orwellian in scope:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
Via Vista, Microsoft hopes to strip users of the inherent freedoms of a relatively open PC platform and turn the personal computer into a proprietary information delivery appliance, much like a high-tech microwave oven, whereby Microsoft controls what you can and cannot do with your PC.
Every computer literate person I know who has read this essay has gone ballistic, in some cases, to the point of vowing never to install Vista, or to uninstall it from their machines, whichever being the case for the individual in question.
It sounds over the hill, but read it… you’ll thank me later.
For the skeptics: The author was one of the contributors to the popular open source PGP encryption and is a researcher in the computer science department at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. As such, he is quite qualified for the delivery of this information.