"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). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry."
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Member since:2005-07-06
The linked "article" makes a mountain out of a molehill, as does virtually every anti-protection piece I've seen going back to Stallman's failed crusade against passwords.
I do believe content producers should be paid for their work. Perhaps locking and encryption are legitimate ways of ensuring this happens. But crippling everyone's computer in pursuit of enforcing this, as the article demonstrates, is like solving the problem of drink driving by prohibition. The costs exceed the benefits by a factor of thousands, and the costs fall on all, while the benefits accrue to a very few indeed.
There's no "crippling" going on.
The author's complaints fall into two categories:
1. Encryption has a performance overhead
2. Playing protected content along an unprotected content stream affects other currently playing content (unprotected or not)
It's certainly true that decryption has a performance overhead. However, in practice, the overhead is negligible for most systems. Playing back iTunes DRM-protected AAC files does use more CPU cycles than playing back unprotected AAC files, for example, but not so much that millions of iTunes users have noticed, yet alone complained: the difference is less than 1% on older machines. This is even less important in the situations the author describes--any computer outfitted with a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive is going to have power to spare. I suppose that if one were to retrofit a Pentium III with a Blu-Ray player, this might prove to be an issue, but it will not affect the vast majority of users.
2. The second point, likewise, is overblown. The author uses the unlikely example of doing high-precision medical-imaging while watching a Blu-Ray HDCP-protected disk on a dated, non-HDMI device. Again, the situation is unlikely to arise in practice.
Tangential to all this is the price of the physical components used in the technology. Certainly HDMI-devices cost more than not HDMI-devices, all things being equal, but not excessively so (on the order of pennies). If ATi or NVIDIA use HDMI as an excuse to bilk early adopters, that's all it is: an excuse.
Given that no Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disks currently require HDCP--and won't for several years--the whole "issue" is moot. By the time HDCP is necessary, HDCP will already be present on the vast majority of applicable hardware.
Member since:2006-06-24
@eMagius: While I am not by any means a computing expert, I believe you are underestimating the issue.
The overhead described in the paper is several orders of magnitude greater than the decrypting of protected AAC files in iTunes: we are talking multiple encryption/decryption cycles within the path from the disk to the display, as well as a serie of device pollings.
The bits about driver revocation and tilt-bits, which you have ignored, are also scary to say the least: if an exploit is found the corresponding software or hardware component could be remotely disabled, without the legitimate owner of the system having any choice.
We are not only talking about losing access to one's media collection, we are talking about losing system functionalities not only related to protected media usage (having your video card only output in VGA affects more than just your ability to watch movies) through no fault of our own.
Member since:
2005-10-12
This is a truly wonderful and must-read piece. It clearly shows that DRM, and the associated issues of vendor lock-ins and proprietary formats, go way beyond IT; they are really fundamental issues about preserving our way of life in the digital era.
The basic agenda of the content industry, which is being achieved with the collusion of the two commercial OS vendors, is to take control of the desktop PC away from the buyer/user, and put it into the hands of the content supplier/OS supplier.
The problem is, the price we will all pay for this is in two categories. In financial terms, the costs this will impose on society because of crippled PCs will be astronomical. In constitutional terms, our ability to do what we will with content we have bought and PCs we have bought, will allow all kinds of limitations of access to information which are incompatible with functioning democracy as we have known it.
The article, by concrete examples, makes this wondefully clear. The thing the author does not point out is that only the US and some European countries are going to cripple themselves like this. China will not, of that you can be sure. China, remember, is where the PCs are all made. So the endgame of all this kowtowing to content providers is really serious competitive disadvantage for any company operating in the jurisdictions where their whims have been crystalized into legal standards for OS and hardware.
I do believe content producers should be paid for their work. Perhaps locking and encryption are legitimate ways of ensuring this happens. But crippling everyone's computer in pursuit of enforcing this, as the article demonstrates, is like solving the problem of drink driving by prohibition. The costs exceed the benefits by a factor of thousands, and the costs fall on all, while the benefits accrue to a very few indeed.