A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection by Peter Gutmann

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Daze N. Knights

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

by Peter Gutmann, (e-mail address removed)
Last updated 23 December 2006

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

Well-known security and crypto researcher Peter Gutmann's analysis of
the possible consequences of Vista's enforcement of DRM content is
certainly far beyond my full understanding, but I suspect others will
also find it worth reading and discussing here.
 
Very interesting article. I have been so excited about the features of
Vista that I do like, and trying to ignore a bunch that I don't like, that I
had forgotten all about this - no doubt Microsoft's intention, huh? So
while Microsoft is pushing Vista's multimedia capabilities, those
capabilities are only good for someone whose best quality TV inputs are
still s-video and whose stereos still connect to the PC via their built-in
AC97 speaker output.

Back when this was first announced, I downloaded Sun Solaris and installed
it along with Oracle on a PC thinking I'd learn to develop in a new platform
and move completely out of the Microsoft Windows and SQL Server arena. That
box is still installed behind me. Hmmmmmmmm.

Does anyone know if Apple restricts hardware in this way? If not, Apple
should jump all over this. If Apple does have such restrictions, they could
own the home entertainment market by dropping that support. Could you
imagine a day when ATI, NVidia, etc. tell Microsoft "no thanks" and that
they're only going to support basic display functionality on Windows and
suggest all of their customers go to Apple for high quality?

And, as many have said, there's always Ubuntu. Of course, if just those of
us technically astute enough to hang out in news groups (and apparently
socially un-astute enough to do so LOL) switched to alternative OSs for
multimedia it would have little effect on Microsoft's grand plan. If any OS
maker were to invest a few million dollars in advertising, accurately
describing the built-in quality degradation Microsoft has required, they
could literally own the multimedia pc market.

Dale
 
In other ngs that I frequent, posters have suggested that this might be
a good time to invest in new hardware, before . . .
 
The multimedia restrictions demanded by the RIAA and the MPAA and over
enthusiastically implemented by Microsoft are a very serious limitation
of Vista. These implementations severely restrict legitimate user audio
and video functionality, deter the development of state of the art
multimedia hardware and significantly increase user costs.
 
I had a pretty big music collection when I went in the Navy in 1972. When I
got out of boot camp, my brother had moved out of the house and taken my
music. I rebuilt my collection and my kids used the LPs for frisbees LOL.
Then I rebuilt it and they used my CDs for frisbees.

So, finally my kids grew up and moved out and I felt like it was safe to
rebuild my collection again. Now I have been on a mad dash to complete
rebuilding my collection before DRM sets in. Luckily, since I like 60's and
70's rock and country, it is the last to get DRM (the biggest push is on
current production) but I have run into a couple old CDs remade with DRM.
Get it now or forever pay to use it later.

Dale
 
Excerpts from
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/a_cost_analysis.html


It contains stuff like: Denial-of-Service via Driver Revocation -

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. This means that a report of a compromise of a
particular driver or device will cause all support for that device to
be turned off until a fix can be found. If it's an older device for
which the vendor isn't interested in rewriting their drivers, all
devices of that type become permanently unusable.
 
Daze N. Knights said:
A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

by Peter Gutmann, (e-mail address removed)
Last updated 23 December 2006

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

Well-known security and crypto researcher Peter Gutmann's analysis of the
possible consequences of Vista's enforcement of DRM content is certainly
far beyond my full understanding, but I suspect others will also find it
worth reading and discussing here.
Click to expand...

I've written more about some of the claims mentioned here:

http://blogs.dasmirnov.net/paul/2006/12/31/windows_vista_drm_nonsense

Short answer is don't believe everything.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.windowsresource.net/
Get ready for Windows Vista: http://www.windowsvista.com/getready/

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