Blogger Objects To Accusations Surrounding Vista DRM

Technical Writing Geek writes "Self-described 'professional paranoid' Peter Gutmann of the University of Auckland has become the most widely quoted source of information on DRM and content protection in Windows Vista. The trouble is, according to ZDNet Blogger Ed Bott, Gutmann's work is riddled with factual errors, distortions, contradictions, and outright untruths. From the lengthy piece: 'As Gutmann would know if he actually understood how HD hardware works, Vista will indeed display HD content on this monitor over the D-Sub and component video outputs, which are capable of outputting 1080p and 1080i signals, respectively. In the future, a content provider might choose to constrict the output to these devices, but that decision would apply only to a specific piece of media, and it would have to be disclosed on the package, giving the buyer the opportunity to choose not to purchase it.'"

Anything you have may be taken away.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obvious that they can't immediately take away what you already have; otherwise they wouldn't be competitive with their own existing solutions. What's important is not what they block now. What's important is that they can auto update you later to take away whatever you have. Further, all of the media is being designed to block you out if you don't accept auto updates.

Re:Please don't link to blogs "debunking" stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of course the "play audio and don't expect your gigabit card to work fast" easily disproves his whole counterargument."

How on earth did elevation of certain services end up beeing connected DRM in any way, you guys are unbelivable.

I would point out

[Toreo asesino]

Wording aside, Samsung themselves state quite clearly HDCP support is available through DVI. There's your trusted path.

Re:Vista 'will' or 'will not' display HD content

[Barraketh]

I think this is an important distinction that has to be made, so I'm glad Ed Bott is making it. The provider is *choosing* to make his content only playable through an encrypted channel, and the consumer is again *choosing* to buy this content. Microsoft is merely providing the option to do so. Including the option of playing drm'd wma files in media player doesn't mean that your system suddenly won't play mp3s, and similarly this doesn't mean that Vista won't play regular h264 files over d-sub. Now, many slashdotters hate the entire idea of drm, and so they might think that even giving the content providers this option is somehow "evil". Well, guess what - this is capitalism, and Microsoft thinks that the ability to play HDDVD/BlueRay is good for business. They have no obligation to uphold some undefined ideal of freedom - if the consumers want media without drm, they'll buy media without drm.

Re:The problem with Ed Bott's response

[Anonymous Coward]

You can just grab a bunch of text from here in the comments; a bunch of what is written here is by people who have never even used Vista and have no clue what they are talking about. That would play well on your new blog.

Speaking as someone who has used Vista, the audio bug that people mentioned is actually worse than what I've seen in the press. I was using robocopy to transfer several GB of data (Windows Images actually and other large ISO files like the Windows AIK, Office, etc. from my desktop to my notebook over a GB switch the other day. Transfer was at about 4% network utilization. Then I exited from the Free Cell game I was playing while the files transferred. Network utilization jumped immediately up and ran between 15%-20%. Curious, I opened Free Cell again and the transfer utilization dropped back to 4%. So it isn't just Windows Media Player using these API's that drop the interrupt rates down. Other Windows elements like the built in games can do it too.

Re:Giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt

[GuyverDH]

- Tongue in cheek mode -

Microsoft has used up it's and everyone else's share of "The benefit of the doubt", and that was before 1990.

There's none left to be had, anywhere.
Talk about being a monopoly. What are all the poor Senators and Representatives to do?
- End Tongue in cheek mode -

Okay, now that that's said, we can proceed.

MS has pretty much used up it's share of sympathy from the masses.

Windows Vista should never have been released. Ever.

They should have chucked it up as a mistake, taken it apart and worked on it some more, eventually releasing it as something else. This time with things working, like networks that don't come to a halt for listening to a song, graphics that don't crash the system when attempting to play a game. Screens that don't go black when attempting to watch a movie.

Funny

[bogie]

First off never trust someone who makes their living off of Microsoft products to give you an honest opinion about Microsoft. Ie Bott is without a doubt a shill for Microsoft. Got that? Good.

Now with regards to what I thought was funny. It's funny that Microsoft had to drop WinFS and other technologies from Vista because they either ran out of time or couldn't get them to work. Yet they had no problem what so ever tightly integrating DRM into every single nook and cranny of Vista. It is sadly apparent that from day one Vista was designed to treat the user as a criminal and treat the Entertainment industry as the customer and overlord of your computer. That Mr. Bott is the reason for the shitstorm about Vista and its DRM. All of your talk about "not turned on yet" and "doesn't impact your computer much" is cold comfort after what we have discovered about about Vista and DRM. Don't you get that?