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Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Dec 22, 2006 01:11 PM
from the content-was-never-so-protected dept.
from the content-was-never-so-protected dept.
David Gerard writes "Security researcher Peter Gutmann has released A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection, a detailed explanation of just what the protected-content paths in Windows Vista mean to you the consumer: increased hardware cost and even less OS robustness. 'This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry ... The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.'"
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Microsoft Answers Vista DRM Critics' Claims 627 comments
skepsis writes "Recently there have been some stories on Slashdot claiming that Vista would downgrade the quality of audio and video for every application in a machine where protected content was running. One of the stories painted a scary scenario where a 'medical IT worker who's using a medical imaging PC while listening to audio/video played back by the computer' would have his medical images 'deliberately degraded.' A post has been put up on the Vista team blog explaining exactly how the content protection works, and it turns out the medical IT staff and audio pros can relax. From the post: 'It's important to emphasize that while Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios, this infrastructure is designed to minimize impact on other types of content and other activities on the same PC. For example, if a user were viewing medical imagery concurrently with playback of video which required image constraint, only the commercial video would be constrained -- not the medical image or other things on the user's desktop.'"
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Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
No need to put yourself through pains when you can improve security, save money and achieve a good deal of vendor independence all at the same time. Why support the Microsoft monopoly by paying ridiculous prices for bug ridden software with DRM restrictions, when you can run Free software on the industry standard (and thus inexpensive) hardware?
Knowing everything I know now, I only regret that we did not migrate to GNU/Linux sooner.
Re:Migrate to not Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not mandated by the OS.
Migrating a different OS doen't give you access to the protected content.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
True, but the degradation discussed is a requirement for non-encrypted content streams. My understanding is that if you connect your new Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player
Re:Migrate to not Vista (Score:5, Informative)
So non-opted content will display with full fidelity regardless of whether a non-secured or secured mechanism is used to display the content.
Re:Migrate to not Vista (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks for the clarification. What are the odds a content provider won't opt-in for protection? In any case, I can't really make any justification for Vista (or high-def DVD) at this point -- especially if this article is accurate.
My guess is that the tighter DRM proponents squeeze, the more things will slip through their fingers -- to paraphrase someone I heard somewhere, sometime ago...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the odds are pretty good for current HD media, because the publishers want more market penetration before they tighten the noose.
AACS vs ICT vs HDCP vs digital vs analog (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Migrate to not Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, this point is apparently harder to understand than you realize. After all, even some people who aren't affiliated with the publishing industry still support DRM, because they mistakenly think it'll help them "protect" their own data. They fail to understand that that doesn't require DRM, but works perfectly well with plain encryption (in which the owner knows the key).
Playing Idiot's Advocate (Score:5, Interesting)
[DISCLAIMER: The poster called 'eno2001' does not believe in what he stated above at all and is merely parodying the typical lies and misconceptions about GNU/Linux that come from the anti-Linux crowd. The poster called 'eno2001' expects many good responses to the false arguments presented above from the pro-Linux community. All anti-linux sentiments will be laughed at unless you're really good at what you do. The 'eno2001' has spoken.]
Re:Playing Idiot's Advocate (Score:4, Interesting)
However poorly they may perform the task of advocating Linux, to most members of the "pro-Linux crowd" the goal is to obtain what they believe to be a superior computing experience, both in terms of technical capability and user freedom. Whereas Microsoft would happily market an operating system that could run no 3rd party applications and popped up a dialog that said "Fuck You for Using Windows" every thirty seconds so long as people were still willing to pay for it. One is a fairly grassroots movement in which users are expressing their true feelings about a subject, while the other has its roots in a top-down corporate environment designed for the sole purpose of making money in a market where the vast majority of customers are extremely ignorant about the technical merits of the product.
There is such a thing as purity of motive, and it counts for a lot.
Incidentally, because this was mentioned in the GP, I will say that Linux (and *nix in general) is not at all difficult to use. It is more difficult to learn than Windows, but the effort required to understand how the system works is a one-time investment, after which you find yourself with a rather straightforward operating system in which it is a simple matter to perform most tasks -- my personal opinion is that this is because unlike Windows, Linux does not assume that the user is an idiot. It also does not assume that the user intends to use the same machine for months or years without ever learning more about it than what was learned during the first week of use (although perhaps I repeat myself; to me one symptom that someone is an idiot is that they do not value or even hate learning). In comparison, Windows is easier to learn how to use, but learning more and more about how the system works does not provide the user with fewer annoying explanation and confirmation dialogs to click through, nor does it make the "power user" options less buried in the user interface, to name just two examples of the tedium involved.
Re:Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, but according to the article Microsoft is forcing vendors to manufacture more expensive "content protection" cards so the most popular cards will be made (more expensively) according to Microsoft's specs.
See the section on "Increased Hardware Costs".
[I]nstead of varying video card cost based on optional components, the chipset vendor now has to integrate everything into a one- size-fits-all premium-featured graphics chip, even if all the user wants is a budget card for their kids' PC.
So if you want to run that latest Radeon that all the gamers are using on Linux, you'll pay more and probably be hindered by all content protection junk it contains.
Re:Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
sounds like a plan to me.
stamp out the single super chip as fast and cheap as you can make it. build it into motherboards. video cards. set top boxes. market it as high performance video at integrated video prices.
it doesn't matter! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it doesn't matter! (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't have to look too far into the past to see that not every Microsoft OS product has been a raging success. *cough* *cough* Windows ME
Happy Windows ME users were few and far between in my experience. Not having native USB support as well as having a host of stability issues that were hard to debug, etc. few people upgraded to it or quickly upgraded away from it when XP became wildly available.
I realize that the document linked to is written with what seems to be an almost inflammatory bias, it does sound that the Vista Content Protection is a move in the wrong direction for the content publishing industry and lawyers rather than the consumers.
Not even Microsoft is immune to the forces of the market. They do have dominance in a field where migrations away from a product are often expensive and time consuming but, at the very least, if they produce a crap product, people will not upgrade to it.
People making new purchases are much freer to choose from a competitor that may not have the same problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:it doesn't matter! (Score:4, Insightful)
People making new purchases are much freer to choose from a competitor that may not have the same problems.
I see Apple having a very good year.
This is hardly an analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just simply a political blurb.
Re:This is hardly an analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
I was thinking the same thing - TFA is nothing but a long winded rant against Micro$oft. Reading a 'cost analysis', I expect the discussion to center around... costs. Which were significant by their absence.
Re:This is hardly an analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
Although some of what he said is new to me, I know he's dead right on some other bits. I know I'm very much prepared to give the man the benefit of the doubt on the parts that are new to me. Which sucks. To me, the best thing about Windows is that it was the central force that drove hardware into commodity status, and lowered all of our costs. Now we may have to give some of that benefit back. That isn't something I'm happy to do, particularly for the sake of Vista, which I'll never use.
I don't see how you can say the piece wasn't about costs. That thread was all through it. You expected actual numbers? That's *very* proprietary information to any vendor. Nor is it likely that the vendors themselves have much hard data yet, in the specific case of Vista, as it's very early innings. They can't even be sure of the adoption rate yet, so fabrication contracts, and a myriad other details are likely to change fairly rapidly over the next few months.
Yet it's very clear that the broader picture in one of increasing costs for hardware vendors. Some of that will probably just mean lower margins, but even that doesn't mean that only investors will be hurt. It also means less R&D, which isn't good for anyone, in the long term. And some of those costs *will* be passed on. Investors will demand it.
There are other issues, of course--reduced functionality and stability, yet more difficulty in avoiding binary blobs in GPL kernels, etc. None of this is good news to assorted non-Windows people, though much of it will hit Windows users as well. It's not the end of the world (and wasn't presented as if it were) but it's certainly bad news.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Excellent point about the non-premium content. Corporations (except those in the media industry itself) in particular mostly won't care about any of these Vista "features" - but they will end up paying extra in their budgets for new PCs for decades to come
This is absurd. (Score:5, Insightful)
But these analyses never stop to consider HOW MUCH will be more expensive and lower quality, or exactly what changes we're discussing. What will be lower quality and more expensive is the DRM-protected content. And DRM sucks. People will complain. Vendors will eventually listen.
At the moment, we have a lot of content providers who refuse to provide any content without DRM because they can't imagine making a profit otherwise. DRM gets them to provide something instead of nothing. Historically, unprotected content outperforms protected content; because you spend nothing trying to stop people from stealing it, you recover more revenue than you were losing to theft anyway. If we just let providers choose, they will eventually make the right choice. We can't force them to make the right choice NOW, because they won't make it. They'll provide zero content.
That's the false dilemma. Everyone seems to think the choice is protected content or unprotected content, but it's not - it's protected content or NO content. Fighting the protected content is not going to get you what you want. You have to let the providers make their stupid DRM plans and try them, so they'll see for themselves that it's stupid.
Re:This is absurd. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true. The content cabal claimed that without a broadcast flag, their government-mandated efforts to switch to digital broadcast HDTV would be tantamount to suicide, and they threatened to obstruct the production of content in HD until such a flag was passed. Here we are, three years after the FCC first tried to implement the broadcast flag by providential decree, and we have a bevy of digital broadcast high-definition programming with no broadcast flag.
The reason the content cabal will never provide "zero content" is because there's too much money to be made even without DRM. The only reason they want DRM is because it provides them with additional control over the content that they sell to us that goes beyond copyright and piracy prevention. It's the same reason they have things like User Operation Prohibited and Region Codes in the DVD spec. Neither of those forms of DRM have anything to do with preventing piracy. UOP is used to force-feed advertising (and the ubiquitously-ignored FBI warning) to the paying customer, and region codes are used to exploit worldwide market arbitrage.
They are fighting tooth and nail today to get DRM everywhere they can, because they know that once the technological dust settles and the standards that we'll be using for the next 20 years mature, if it doesn't have DRM in it, it never will in any meaningful sense.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Totally fine with me. I'll give them zero money and find other forms of entertainment, like going to a local theater. This is capitalism, why should
Media conglomerate thinking is absurd. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus do we really need more than normal CD or TV quality? A choice between that and freedom versus high-def and no freedom is easy.
As for new content, if the content providers stop producing, so what, we've got
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
very interesting analysis .. (Score:2, Insightful)
Counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.
If hysterical stuff like this is the best the anti-Microsoft forces can come up with (and this guy isn't the first one, just the latest in a long line of hysterical essays), it's pretty clear that Microsoft ain't that bad as a company, despite what some people want to believe. Maybe, just maybe, if you have to resort to that kind of rhetoric, maybe your position isn't that strong?
Disclaimer: I don't hate Microsoft. I am, however, frequently annoyed by their mediocrity, and unbelievably frustrated that someone doesn't have the balls to start a company dedicated to making an absolutely, positively 100%-compatible Windows clone based on a Unix-like operating system.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think it is legally possible to make a 100% windows clone....nevermind that those with the skills to do it would not want to.
Of course it is. Lest you forget, that's exactly what the Wine project [winehq.com] is, not to mention "mini clones" like the (name
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
well duh (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure it does not matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The idea that no new features in Vista are there to make the end-user's life
Yes, I read TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
You might claim it is apples and oranges. I think it's not. They design the product with more restrictive DRM knowing the consumer will not want ANY DRM. Then they 'listen' to the consumer by removing some, but not all of it. Thus arriving at a middle ground, but really closer to their originally planned position. This serves to possibly give them what they want while simultaneously making them look good in the eyes of the consumer.
Of course, most intelligent consumers decry
TLF
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> providers, or more specifically the RIAA and MPAA.
Why does Microsoft have to do their bidding?
Peter Gutmann (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, he tends to be a bit outspoken at times. He's also a veteran contributor to the security field and tends to know exactly what he's talking about. So before dismissing what he has to say, you owe it to yourself to check his reasoning.
Sharks circling (Score:4, Insightful)
In the article, he a section on the potential hazard of Vista disabling video resolution in medical imaging applications. Leaving aside any issues of playing CD's in a work computer, I can see one outcome of this. The first time a blown diagnosis can be blamed on this, the malpractice lawyers will be heading after Microsoft. It's something they've got to be salivating over: The ultimate deep pockets! (cue theme from Jaws)
Should have created a new hardware product class (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine a card that had a couple of SATA interfaces, a video pass through input, and an audio pass through input. The card would have its own OS/firmware, and it'd be easy to control from an external software API.
Unprotected input would flow into it, but only it could generate video/audio for protected media. It'd automatically substitute its own video/audio for protected stuff.
This way, if you didn't care about "protected media", your computer and OS wouldn't be encumbered. If you did, you'd pop a couple of hundred for the Media Accelerator, and go from there.
Of course, this would have benefited the rest of the non-MS industry, too. Guess it is a bad idea.
jh
More like Lock-Out than like Lock-In (Score:2)
Wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Content protection in Vista will not hurt Microsoft or their sales. Two reasons for this. Consumers are not educated enough to understand digital restrictions management. They will interpret it as “just how it works” and deal with it one way or another. Claiming these impedences to copying will damage Vista is similar to claiming that content scrambling of movies will damage the DVD market. The second reason comes from established expectations. People appear used to dealing with technology not working how they want it to or think it should. Crashing computers and malware are just part of life. Pretty soon, the inability to copy files will become subject to the same perception. That is, not being able to copy media will be seen as a technical limitation or just another failing on the part of the industry. People will buy it all the same because the water is being brough to a boil slowly and we all seem to have such ridiculously short-term memories.
Mancur Olson again (Score:5, Interesting)
All special interest groups will find it in their interests to impose on society costs hundreds, thousands, millions of times greater than the benefits they receive.
In the present case, Big Content, to protect its rents, is imposing measures which will end up costing the US and the West enormously more than any benefits to Big Content.
But they don't care, of course, because even if we are all worse off, they are a little better off.
And so, you discover if you examine economic history, that revolutionary convulsions every 50 years or so benefit economic performance, by abolishing encrusted priveliges of various groups. And this is why 19c France in constant turmoil outgrew 19c stable Britain. And why the post civil war South did so well in the 20c... And why Germany grew so fast in the fifties.
And why the US is falling into paralysis today....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dont need rocket science to guess that its so (Score:3, Insightful)
Now they are putting strong elements integral to os that are able to block, modify, permit or limit usage of some elements of os, software, 3rd party software, and even hardware. They are this way decreasing the workload of hackers/exploiters - now they just need to find a way to exploit the mechanism already present there.
Its no guessing that this will make using computers with vista both a pain in the ass, but also a security risk.
Competition (Score:3, Insightful)
In a country far far away, a series of specifications, hardware manufacturers and technology folks band together to build the impossible: To make a machine decrypt the "high quality" content and push it to a jack. Nothing more, nothing less. They use a non-MS embedded OS and cook their scheme into an IC and viola! We have an unencumbered HD-DVD/BluRay player.
The market for this is illegal - in certain countries. But no matter, since once tapped on the above device, said port burns a new HD-DVD/BluRay disc, without licensing scheme. Some Volks-haXXor posts code to read port, strip tags from the raw stream, and pump back into a disc. Cheers from the masses, "it's been hacked!". Said streams make their way onto existing distribution mechanisms (torrent,p2p,the corner cart downtown) and you've got (wait for it) THE STATUS QUO.
Currently, only the tech-enlightened really got through the ever-lowering hurdles to download copyrighted content. Scare tactics and ethics keep most people in the DVD isle of the buy-it stores. I'm sure that will stay the same.
So, we'll simply have the MS bundled-systems with their crazy bugs, people complaining and conforming media for high quality. On the flip side will be folks not so much skipping the DRM in Windows, but getting non-DRM content to begin with. Windows has simply gone the way of the yes-man for DRM enforcement, leaving you with two choices: Lower audio/video resolution or playing only proper discs. Guess what you do with your big collection of "improper" discs: Play them on Linux. It could reinforce the sentiment that "Linux is for hackers, aka criminals" but I doubt that'll fly for long.
MS, like the media players before, will have to allow for "personal" content to be played at "high quality" eventually, since consumers are also media generators. Like now with audio, if you can get source content out of the DRM shackles, making it look personal, the entire SYSTEM from disc to monitor is bypassed quietly.
I'm prepared for a long period of relative component stagnation, while all this DRM for Vista gets sorted out. I doubt the legacy cards and peripherals will go away anytime soon.
Vista will improve your social life guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Higher Requirements for New Media (Score:5, Informative)
But in reality that $2000 LCD monitor you have isn't going to help because it can't tell the video card that its a protected device, well you need to go buy a new monitor.
Wait that $500 video card can't detect trusted monitors, better go buy a new card that can.
Oh yeah, and that all digital surround sound system, well it isn't going to work at all so you need to go buy an analog one.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Raising hand.. Of all the media players I have, I have no wish to replace it all. I buy compatible content and leave the other stuff
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Bandwidth_Digita l_Content_Protection [wikipedia.org]
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