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Why would I be lying? I have already said that no-one knows how DRM works. I have already said that this is speculation. What we do know is that Vista has lethargic performance on high-end hardware that gets considerably worse for lower-end hardware. I have speculated that the DRM polling is a good candidate for what has caused this lethargy. So far, no one has been able to say that it isn't, despite the desperate attempts to do so.

This right here says it all. You are arguing out of ignorance and acting like nobody at all knows how the DRM subsystem works. If you don't understand the intelligent way to implement such a system then don't talk about it like it's a given everyone else is as clueless as yourself. There is no system-wide poll every X amount of minutes or seconds to see if DRM content is playing. The only time the system checks for DRM capability and then enables the protected path is WHEN YOU LOAD MULTIMEDIA THAT DEMANDS IT, DRM-ED MEDIA.

It makes absolutely no sense to constantly check to see if anything has asked to enable the protected media path. This would be like Valve Anti-Cheat or PunkBuster or Warden running full system assessments every X amount of minutes/seconds in order to make sure you aren't cheating in any of the games that utilize them. It's freakin' stupid because you aren't always going to be utilizing them, they are only brought into the mix when you play a game that uses them. Does the protected media path have the potential to cause slowdown? I guess we might find out when any media producers begin to use it in the years to come. For now, nobody's making use of it and it's pretty much just sitting there unused until Hollywood decides they want to start shipping Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs that will only play on a protected system.