Windows Vista HDCP DRM

[Dominus Atheos]

I used to hear a lot about how Vista was going to include a whole lot of DRM that prevents you from doing things with your media content, like play back your files that didn't have Windows-specific DRM (A moderator from this site was actually telling people it wouldn't play DRM-less music). Much of the blame for this FUD can be laid at the feet of several FLOSS-pushing trolls like Peter Gutmann who were going around telling outright lies about what Vista was going to do. Peter Gutmann in particular wrote a paper all about how the DRM support in Vista was actually going to cause a noticeable performance hit, even when it wasn't activated. That paper has since been debunked several times, but people still continue to quote it. (Although to be fair to Mr Gutmann, he probably isn't accountable for his actions, what with being completely insane and all. Don't believe me? Google "Gutmann Method" for one of the most paranoid computer practices I've ever seen)

After using Vista for so long, I haven't run into any DRM preventing me from doing anything at all. I can play all the music I have on any player app I want to (except the music purchased from iTunes. Fucking Apple, I really hate them...). And since I'm not the only one who found out first hand that all those trolls were all lying, most have since shut up about most of it. They've invented new reasons to hate Vista, like the huge uproar when Service Pack 1 came out and "dozens" of people were having problems with it. Yes, thats dozens, as in multiples of 12. Maybe 60 people out of the hundreds of millions of users of it were having problems with it, but within hours all the troll websites like Slashdot and ZDnet were alight with "lol vista is teh sux0r, use xp". I never thought I'd see that day when Slashdot encourages people to use Windows XP, but nowadays they seem to run more stories doing just that then encouraging them to use Linux. I had long since realized that almost all of the users of that website were trolls who didn't actually give a fuck about FLOSS, but it wasn't until their Vista coverage started that I realized the owners and operators were just as big of trolls.

However, one common DRM-related criticism that remains is Vista's inclusion of HDCP support, or High-Definition Digital Content Protection. What I know about this technology and Vista's support for it is gleaned from several different sources, so I may not have the right picture. I'm just going to lay out what I know and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on any point.

HDCP is a form of DRM, or Digital Rights Management, that was developed by the movie studios to protect their content against piracy. It does this by certifying all components the content travels across as being safe against pirates. Certification is obtained by having the movie studios look over your product and making absolutely sure it is unpiratable. If the testers are sure of this, they give the product maker a set of keys to be exchanged during the HDCP handshake process, which is started every time HDCP enabled content wants to play. If any component is not HDCP-compliant, and doesn't have any keys to exchange, the movie invoke what's called an "Image Constraint Token" or ICT. The ICT downgrades the movie to just above DVD-quality, which means you might as well not have even spent all that extra money on the HD player, HD disks, and the HDTV.

Windows Vista had to include this DRM because without it, all High Definition movies watched on it would only ever be displayed in Standard Definition. This is also the reason you can't buy a Blu-ray drive for an Apple computer, despite the fact Apple is a member of the Blu-ray Consortium, and the OS prides itself on media content creation, because OSX is not HDCP complaint.

However, due the the fact that most of the early HD equipment sold didn't have HDCP support, the movie studios agreed to not release any movies with the ICT enabled at least until 2010. Due to the fact that no movies have it, HDCP support is a non-issue. All devices can play all HD movies at full quality. Surprisingly enough, whether or not the Image Constraint Token ever gets activated may rest on whether or not Microsoft ever releases a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. The HD-DVD player it previously released used a USB cable to connect to the Xbox, and so was not HDCP compliant. If Microsoft releases an Blu-ray drive using the same method, since it will probably end up being the second best selling blu-ray player (After the PS3 of course), the ICT may never be activated.

But of course Microsoft had no way of knowing this is how it would turn out when they were first designing Longhorn. And even if the ICT never gets put on any disks, and HDCP becomes meaningless, it won't matter at all, because there's no way to notice the HDCP unless it's being used.

Did I get all that correct?

[Xon]

Yup.

And the kicker is Blu-ray and HD-DVD are both crackable and have been cracked so you get to watch high-def stuff without even triggering the HDCP path.

Basicly pure FUD, Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.

[RThurmont]

Regardless of the degree to which Vista's DRM is an actual problem, one is still quite correct in pointing out that Vista would be one heck of a lot better if MS engineers had spent that tiem actually improving underlying functionality, or heck, just doing proper testing of some of the changes they did make (see the file copying debacle).

[Lisa]

the main issue i deal with at work is that vista will randomly uninstall hardware and software for no reason, software that has been signed by microsoft. i don't know the percentage but i deal with it often enough that it is a known issue. another pain is ms updates breaking things, like mouse control (rare but it has happened) and bouncing printers out of the system.

[Uraniun235]

Regardless of the degree to which Vista's DRM is an actual problem, one is still quite correct in pointing out that Vista would be one heck of a lot better if MS engineers had spent that tiem actually improving underlying functionality, or heck, just doing proper testing of some of the changes they did make (see the file copying debacle).

I would be hesitant to make that sort of argument without knowing more about how Microsoft manages itself; it sounds perilously close to the "well if we stopped spending money on NASA that money could go to feed hungry people" argument, which is mostly false because that's not how the federal budget is created and spent.

If Microsoft had not chosen to implement DRM in Vista, would the people tasked with DRM have been assigned to other teams? I would imagine that, given its enormous resources and its desire to get product out as quickly as possible, the various teams within Microsoft would be as big as Microsoft wants them to be, regardless of how big the other teams are.

But I'm working without any evidence, so I could be wrong.

[Oskuro]

Not to slippery slope or anything, but my main concern with the whole DRM issue is the trend it sets for the future.

Sure, right now it's just a minor inconvenience, but in the future our asses (and that is, our personally owned hardware) could be theirs to do as their like.

And yes, there will always be cracks and patches, but as a legitimate user, I find it an outright insult to have so many hurdles to use my legally adquired software.

We'll see.