[access-uk] Article Windows DRM is the 'longest suicide note in history'
- From: "Catherine Turner" <catherineturner2000@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Access-UK" <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 23:23:37 -0000
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Original URL:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/27/windows_drm_monstered/
Windows DRM is the 'longest suicide note in history'
By
John Leyden
Published Wednesday 27th December 2006 11:29 GMT
Copy-protection features in Windows Vista make the operating system more
bloated while giving few benefits to end users, according to a new security
paper.
Peter Gutmann, a medical imaging specialist, argues in the paper that
Microsoft's cumbersome approach to DRM is doomed to fail and will only
succeed in
pushing users towards buying faster hardware to cope with degraded
performance, effectively imposing collateral damage on the rest of the
industry.
Many of the criticisms Gutmann makes will be familiar to those who have
followed the development of Vista's copyright protection features however
his hard-hitting
prose style and warning that the Vista Content Protection specs could "very
well constitute the longest suicide note in history" has reinvigorated the
debate.
Gutmann argues, for example, that in order lock down High Definition
content, Vista limits the number of connectivity options to users. 'Windows
Vista includes
an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content
protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray
and HD-DVD
sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of
system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and
hardware
and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the
entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to
cover
all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even
if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh
computer
or on a Linux server)," Gutmann writes in an abstract to his paper
here
(http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001).
Microsoft is risking annoying its customer base and users in a bid to corner
the market for home distribution of premium content.
Gutmann argues that hackers will find it just as easy to bypass the content
protection mechanisms of Vista as they have with other versions of the OS.
These ultimately doomed efforts will lead to a more expensive and less
functional operating system for users, he argues. ®
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