Technocrat

What's the scope and impact of Vista's DRM?

Beryllium Sphere(r)
Sat Dec 23 22:25:55 -0800 2006
Security.
manage

A recent Peter Gutmann essay about the cost of DRM in Vista claims that there will be heavy costs to hardware manufacturers, to consumers, and to system security.

Can people informed about Vista please comment on how accurate this is?

As well as overt disabling of functionality, there's also covert disabling of functionality. For example PC voice communications rely on automatic echo cancellation (AEC) in order to work. AEC requires feeding back a sample of the audio mix into the echo cancellation subsystem, but with Vista's content protection this isn't permitted any more because this might allow access to premium content.

That's the first of many allegations about how general-purpose computers will lose functionality under Vista's features to prevent copying commercial music and videos. Gutmann also argues that the Hardware Functionality Scan, a system to detect and avoid emulated devices that might disobey anti-copying policies, will hinder access to hardware specifications:

Obviously anyone who knows enough about the workings of a device to operate it and to write a third-party driver for it (for example one for an open-source OS, or in general just any non-Windows OS) will also know enough to fake the HFS process. The only way to protect the HFS process therefore is to not release any technical details on the device beyond a minimum required for web site reviews and comparison with other products.

No more situations like DECSS: allegedly Microsoft retains the right to revoke driver signatures in the event of a compromise.

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 (details on this are a bit vague here, presumably some minimum functionality like generic 640x480 VGA support will still be available in order for the system to boot). This means 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.

Speculation follows about the answer to everybody's question, which is why Microsoft would knuckle under to the "content industry":

The only reason I can imagine why Microsoft would put its programmers, device vendors, third-party developers, and ultimately its customers, through this much pain is because once this copy protection is entrenched, Microsoft will completely own the distribution channel...because they will then represent the only available distribution channel they'll be able to dictate terms back to the content providers

What's the scope and impact of Vista's DRM?
Roy Schestowitz
Sun Dec 24 07:22:58 -0800 2006
 manage
I suggest you look at the followup article/s:

Cost analysis of Vista DRM: Part II

Microsoft doesn't merely use DRM. To all intents and purposes it is DRM, better known as Digital Rights Management, Digital Restrictions Management or or just plain CRAP for Content Restriction, Annulment, and Protection, as ZDNet's David Berlind called it, eventually deferring to Richard Stallman's Cancellation, Restriction, and Punishment. We call it, simply, CCG, short for Consumer Control Gear."

http://p2pnet.net/story/10827

Merry (and DRM-free) Xmas!

Roy
What's the scope and impact of Vista's DRM?
Chris Hopkins
Sun Dec 24 08:36:48 -0800 2006
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Can someone please explain to me how DRM as envisaged here doesn't violate the laws around fair use?
I thought the VHS home recording case in the 80s set precident here - I don't understand how they can ignore it...
What's the scope and impact of Vista's DRM?
Bruce Perens
Sun Dec 24 12:43:41 -0800 2006
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Fair use is not a law, just a legal defense.

Fair Use

James Keebaugh
Sun Dec 24 13:54:37 -0800 2006
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Fair Use is the law in the United States -- see Title 17, Section 107 of the United States Code. However, this is a very limited right, and the boundaries are not all that well defined. The Code is mostly concerned with publication rights, so the right of an individual to make copies for private use can only be implied. Other countries (such as Great Britain) do not have a Fair Use law at all, so there would be no problem at all there.

In any case, Microsoft could successfully argue that they are not preventing fair use, since you could use some other method to make your copies, such as running Linux, or building your own hardware device. You still have your fair use rights, you just have no practical way of exercising those rights. The law would allow this sort of argument. The courts could change this, but I suspect that it will need a change in the law to actually make what Microsoft is doing illegal. Given Congress' attitude towards copyright law in the past, this is probably too much to hope for, at least in the US.
What's the scope and impact of Vista's DRM?
Mathinker
Sun Dec 24 21:56:27 -0800 2006
 manage
> Fair use is not a law, just a legal defense.

I think what you meant to say was:

*> Fair use is not an obligation on the content provider, it's just a legal defense.
 

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