vista's content protection + drm implications

[pseudojazzer]

I've put a link to the whole article below, here are some chunks that might be of interest, it especailly affects video, but audio will be affected as well..

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.

Vista's content protection mechanism only allows protected content to be sent
over interfaces that also have content-protection facilities built in.
Currently the most common high-end audio output interface is S/PDIF
(Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format). Most newer audio cards, for example,
feature TOSlink digital optical output for high-quality sound reproduction,
and even the latest crop of motherboards with integrated audio provide at
least coax (and often optical) digital output. Since S/PDIF doesn't provide
any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing
protected content [Note E]. In other words if you've sunk a pile of money
into a high-end audio setup fed from an S/PDIF digital output, you won't be
able to use it with protected content.

Say you've just bought Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon", released as a
Super Audio CD (SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to
play it under Vista. Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is
regarded as insecure, Vista disables it, and you end up hearing a performance
by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd.



In order to appropriately protect content, Vista will probably have to disable
any special device features that it can't directly control. For example many
sound cards built on C-Media chipsets (which in practice is the vast majority
of them) support Steinberg's ASIO (Audio Stream I/O), a digital audio
interface that completely bypasses the Windows audio mixer and other audio-
related driver software to provide more flexibility and much lower latency
than the Windows ones. ASIO support is standard for newer C-Media hardware,
see for example http://www.cmedia.com.tw/?q=en/PCI/CMI8788. Since this
bypasses Windows' audio handling, it would probably have to be disabled, which
is problematic because audiophiles and professional musicians require ASIO
support specifically because of its much higher quality than the standard
Windows channels.

Vista's content-protection requirements eliminate this one-size-fits-all
design, banning the use of separate TV-out encoders, DVI circuitry, RAMDACs,
and other discretionary add-ons because feeding unprotected video to these
optional external components would make it too easy to lift the signal off the
bus leading to the external component. So everything has to be custom-
designed and laid out so that there are no unnecessary accessible signal links
on the board.

The "final thoughts" section is well worth reading as well - but i'm not gonna paste it all here.
Its not just about ripping stuff and piracy and not being able to do that.. but could have implications on stablity and quality for all of us...

Definition of DRM:
"Digital Rights Management" or "Digital Restrictions Management" or "Defective
Recorded Media". Combine all three and you have a general idea of what DRM
is.

There are no rights for the consumer - i think restrictions is more acurate!

There are some "funny quotes" at the end of the article... so its not all doom and gloom.

Article link: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/p ... a_cost.txt

Peace,
Tom

[valis]

Probably wasn't the most obvious thread title, but there's already some discussion under "general discussion" about this: Here's something we can all look forward to......

[at0m]

On the other hand... This week, EMI, as the last one in the row, has stopped copy protecting their audio CD's. After Sony's shamefull trial with the inserted kernel code, PC's crashing on Celine Dion's CD etc, they all seem to give up.

I guess they noticed there's always workarounds, and the extra incompatibility issues aren't worth the hassle of trying to protect the CD's.

[King of Snake]

There's also a counter-argument here

He is perfectly true in saying that the SACD version won't play under Windows Vista, but that's not because of Microsoft. It won't play on any PC, Windows, Macintosh, Linux or any other PC operating system because Sony won't licence the drive for use in a PC.

We'll assume he means the CD Audio version... Well he's wrong. The protected media pipelines in Windows Vista, don't apply for any content on the market today, which includes HD DVD and Blu-ray discs on sale at the moment.

The protected media pipelines will only be activated on content that requests it. HD DVD and Blu-ray both have this in the specification and the general feeling going around is the film studios won't start using this until at least 2011.

Windows Vista won't degrade or refuse to play your existing media, CDs, DVDs etc.

It won't decide to shutdown outputs to try and prevent copying with your existing media, it'll behave exactly like Windows XP.

The protected media pathways are only activated when protected content requests them.

HD DVD and Blu-ray films on the market today don't use this level of protection, and aren't expected to for several years yet.

The operating system doesn't decide what can play and what cannot play; it just reports the level of protection the system supports.

Full quality playback of protected content will only work on operating systems that support it. That means Apple will have to build a similar system for Mac OS, and something will have to be done with Linux, otherwise you just get low quality, or none at all.

[valis]

The possibility still exists that when protected content exists or is pointed to elsewhere in runtime system memory it could affect other subsystems. Since we have no information on this it's going to be up to runtime testing or someone with access to the full spec (ie, audio developers) releasing info to the general 'producing' public on what will & won't work. These are the people we gather a lot of our system tuning & usage info from anyway, so no big surprise there.

I do agree with the second quote, and in terms of alternative hardware the real issue here is that non-compliant hardware is going to become harder to find over time (what will it mean for our pro audio gear to be 'compliant'? A second system just to watch the content you've created?) and using OSX really isn't any escape from the situation as they've led the charge on implementing hardware DRM so far, and are fully in bed with Intel. That means that as the vast majority of peripherals (and core components) start requiring support for DRM locking technologies the mainstream computing platforms will either shift or be require to develop alternative hardware (all major graphics card hardware already supports HDCP for instance, although it isn't implemented yet in runtime code so it's a bit of a misnomer).

If you keep up with 'tech news' you might recall that Linus was trying to de-politicize GPL v3 by having the gnu authors remove the Anti-DRM clauses. Gnu was basically saying "keep your hardware away from here or keep it fully open" and Linus was stating the desktop realities he faces. So while Open Source is definately the last bastion of resistance to some of the DRM changes we're going through, with the removal of the clauses from the GPL v3 it's really only a matter of time. It's also worth noting there are quite a few DIY 'open source' hardware solutions out there now too (a graphics chipset implementation, etc) but I can't imagine this is going to be a good solution for your average producer, as it leads us back to the last few decades where the 'black box' reigns and is usually rather costly.


Personally, my main reason for avoiding Vista for the time being has little to do with DRM, and mostly has to do with the fact that a default install has hundreds of running processes that consume close to a gig of ram during runtime. Even with optimization you'll be lucky to have most functionality still going and hit 640Mb ram usage on boot. And if you go to the effort to strip it down to Xp's level of functionality, you still wind up with close to 500Mb ram usage on boot (versus the 150-200 I get on my machines under Xp!)

[Counterparts]

PC's crashing on Celine Dion's CD etc

That sounds like perfectly normal behaviour to me.

Probably a form of self-protection...

[pseudojazzer]

Apologies for double posting this link. The link King of Snake put to the counter argument seems reassuring...

[erminardi]

Stay in WinXP!
Scope 4.5 works on it, all my audio apps works on it without problems... why switch to a new plattform that requires a lot of more resources and introduces additional (and very stupid *) limitations?!

* very stupid because, a month after the official vista launch, applications that will revolve the obstacle will inevitably appears. This is the law "found a protection, found a deception", all of this with a further consumption of time and resources

Minimal requirements for Vista: 1GB ram?!!!!! A 3D GFX card!!! A huge CPU power!!! That's minimal?!
This means that for decent DAW U need at least 2 or 4 GB RAM, 4GHZ CPU and Geforce with noisy fan?!

Listen to me, musician, stay in WinXP!
Vista is more like a "opulent" Windows for the masses (games, office, home fun...)
This will be also the good occasion to go out of the upgrade dependence to all the costs!!!

[Counterparts]

Stay in WinXP!

I disagree; stay in W2K!

[katano]

i still use the best windows version ever: windows 98se

[erminardi]

i still use the best windows version ever: windows 98se

Disagree, Win98 was (IMO) very frustrating because of his continuous blocks and of his kernel instability (someone remembers him the blue screens or the explorer windows frequent refresh?)

Win2k is pretty good but (just as it will happen among a lot of time (i hope!) to windows xp compader to Vista) he suffers from osbolescence respect the actual programs/drivers.

XP is actually, for DAW, the best equilibrium between actuality, necessity of resources, and maturity.

[katano]

hehe, sorry, i forgot to set ironic_mode to OFF Windows 98se is the worst so called "os" i've ever installed...

[garyb]

the us government is openly discussing putting people in camps. it's discussed in tv shows like 24, and the good news about vista is this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36814
Government spooks helped Microsoft build Vista

Helping a Vole out of a hole


By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 09 January 2007, 14:26

THE USA GOVERNMENT'S cryptologic organisation, the National Security Agency, has admitted that it is behind some of the security changes to Microsoft's operating system Vista.
According to the Washington Post, the agency which was once so secret that it was jokingly referred to as 'No such Agency' has admitted making 'unspecified contributions' to Vista.

Tony Sager, the NSA's chief of vulnerability analysis and operations group, told the Post that it was the agency's intention to help everyone these days.

The NSA used a red and a blue team to pull apart the software. The red team posed as "the determined, technically competent adversary" to disrupt, corrupt or steal information. The Blue team helped Defense Department system administrators with Vista's configuration.

Vole said that it has sought help from the NSA over the last four years. Apparently its skills can be seen in the Windows XP consumer version and the Windows Server 2003 for corporate customers.

The assistance is at the US taxpayers' expense, although the NSA says it all makes perfect sense. Not only is the NSA protecting United States business, its own Defense Department uses VoleWare so it is in the government's interest to make sure it is as secure as possible.

Microsoft is not the only one to tap the spooks. Apple, with its Mac OSX operating system, and Novell with its SUSE Linux also asked the NSA what it thought of their products. The NSA is quite good at finding weapons of mass destruction that are not there.



so, knowing how spies work, when they protect you, what is the probability of a serious backdoor? what was the title of the book? 1948? what year is it anyway?