Vista Content Protection Interview

[DGhost]

Clicky Link

It's important to emphasize that while Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios, this infrastructure is designed to minimize impact on other types of content and other activities on the same PC. For example, if a user were viewing medical imagery concurrently with playback of video which required image constraint, only the commercial video would be constrained -- not the medical image or other things on the user's desktop. Similarly, if someone was listening to commercial audio content while viewing medical imagery, none of the video protection mechanisms would be activated and the displayed images would again be unaffected.

Doc - I would suggest reading this and adjusting your view on it. You've done nothing but spew FUD and hatemongering perpetuated by people who simply did not have any evidence to back up their point of views. Now it's time for you to get your panties unbunched and learn the truth of the matter.

[rylan]

Still sounds prettyt scary to me... most of the questions were answered by saying that the level of content protection enforcement and video quality loss is determined by the media being played... so essentially that means putting your system compatability and playback in the hands of the MPAA/RIAA.

[DGhost]

Indeed. It also means that if you strip DRM off of a protected file it will play back without restrictions - just like it would now.

Basically, MS caved to the industry. Not good, but it's the best compromise that will allow their users to be able to watch commercial HD content without imposing these restrictions on users that don't want to.

It is not the boogieman coming to eat you in the middle of the night. it is an annoyance that hopefully will become a little easier with time and prevalence of technology. Or even better, consumers will get pissed off and not put their money into the products that utilize this style of copy protection.

Realistically, any application that tries to use DRM technology in a way that is not consumer friendly will probably pay for it in the long run. The only market where this is not the case right now is the movie industry. Even the music industry has come to it's senses a little and is starting to realize that consumers do not want restrictive DRM.

Not that either is going to drop it any time soon. It's just not going to eat your computer alive *cough*sonyrootkit*cough* when it is in use.

[rylan]

lol... yeah I wonder how long until there is a drm based rootkit for Vista.

It was quite interesting listening to a lot of the device manufacturers and industry experts at CES talking about DRM and Vista... lots of skeptisism and worry that the average consumer will have lots of problems and be returning devices to their local best buy/circuit city etc.
The average consumer is basically dumb when it comes to this stuff, so if it doesn't work they're going to return it or not use it again.

[Dr Mordrid]

I have a better idea: SH*TCAN playback of commercial discs on PC's altogether and use decks. I'm sure drive logic could tell the difference. That should allow let those of us who burn our own to have an otherwise unencumbered system.

Drastic perhaps, but that's how tired I am of disc DRM. To me using computers for this has always been akin to squirrel hunting with a 20mm cannon anyhow.

[Technoid]

Posted by Panderso

Since when did you think that DRM would not apply to medical imaging. Speaking as a physician, we ALREADY have this problem. The medical image DICOM format has been split into various flavors by competing software vendors who do their best to make sure that you have to have THEIR viewer in order to see files saved in their version of the format.

Further competing hospitals are choosing not to install viewers that would allow MD's to look at films that were taken at their competition ( or perhaps their IT staff can't be bothered to install them -- either way the result is the same). This proprietary behavior is already hindering patient care.

Vista's enhanced DRM only aggravates this nonsense!!

thats from the coments on that page.

Now what says that those morons wont think that the premium flag is a great way to "enhance" thir security of their format?

[schmosef]

DRM and DICOM sub formats seem like separate issues to me.

[Wombat]

No, they're not. If you can only open a file (in what's supposed to be a standardized data format) with a certain application, then you're limited to what the specific vendor decides to limit you to. If they don't want you to be able to export/transform/duplicate/whatever your file with their app, and no other app can read it, that is indeed DRM. There's a similar issue right now with some cameras, as Nikon (I think) has custom .RAW formatting that they're not sharing, and you have to use Nikon's app.

[schmosef]

Ok, but that's hardly something that Microsoft has any control over.

The medical industry, especially the large HMOs, in the US are powerful enough to demand standards compliance from their niche software vendors. With their powerful lobby, they could even push for legislative enforcement.

[Wombat]

That's a different issue. You said it didn't seem like DRM, not that it didn't seem like MS implementing DRM.

It sounds like Vista's DRM is duly screwing people already, though. One guy's reporting that he can't view pictures that HE took at high res, and that trying to watch videos that HE recorded is being prevented, and his TV-out is not working right with his own videos.

[DGhost]

I honestly have had no DRM or content protection related issues with Vista so far. That includes displaying on TV.

that being said... there is a huge difference between DRM and the premium content protection scheme. There is absolutely nothing to prevent a software vendor from coming up with a DRM scheme to cover files created with their software - on any platform (Linux, MacOS, and XP included). Right now I know of nothing inside vista that would actually prevent you from breaking DRM protected files. What it does do is provide paths where software can securely pass information from the source to the destination.

A medical software vendor who uses DRM to ensure his files can only be used with their software is one issue. That cannot be prevented on *ANY* platform. A vendor who is stupid enough to try to open protected output paths to the display deserves anything they get.

Edit: gotta add this. DRM is a technological evolution off of the proprietary file formats of yesteryear. It's not a new issue - it's just become far more complicated and advanced as time has passed.

[Dr Mordrid]

Edit: gotta add this. DRM is a technological evolution off of the proprietary file formats of yesteryear. It's not a new issue - it's just become far more complicated and advanced as time has passed.

And they should die the same death, only faster

[cjolley]

...proprietary file formats of yesteryear...

God I wish.
Every friggin bank we deal with puts their check images in some bizarre format that only works with their software.
Like for example a single png with the header of the first image followed by the data for 1000 other images and some external index file with pointers to the other images.
And no export function, documentation, or explanation.
So we have to crack the thing if we want to export the images or our users to be able to view them in our own apps instead of the banks stupid viewer.
Some we are successful with and some not.
And banks aren't the only vendors we have this kind of problem with.
The question I have is WHY?

I just complimented a vendor of ours who produces a program for printing Certified Mail envelops, because, while they had no export function for the info they generated, they used a standard database (access). So I had no problem extracting the data for other uses.
It was just so unusual.

[schmosef]

That's a different issue. You said it didn't seem like DRM, not that it didn't seem like MS implementing DRM.

It sounds like Vista's DRM is duly screwing people already, though. One guy's reporting that he can't view pictures that HE took at high res, and that trying to watch videos that HE recorded is being prevented, and his TV-out is not working right with his own videos.

I still don't think of that problem with medical images as DRM. After all, there's no "rights management" infrastructure that's deciding whether to show the image at full or partial detail (or at all). It's a software compatibility issue. Similar problems exist importing lotus files into excel, etc. Edit: it's like DGhost was describing with "proprietary file formats of yesteryear".

For a non tech person, I agree that perhaps it's a "distinction without a difference".

[rylan]

I work with high resolution medical displays, and I'll just say that almost nobody in the field is even thinking about Vista yet... a lot of PACS vendors and hospitals are still using Win2K, with WinXP being the most common now, and the transition to XP64 is basically just starting. They don't want to deal with the added testing and validation overhead of Vista, nor with any of the content protection issues that may or may not break their software and DICOM correction.