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Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You and other jewels by Bruce Schneier

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urlwolf:
Bruce Schneier is a security guru. He's also a good writer:

Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You
http://schneier.com/essay-157.html

In general, all essays are good:
http://www.schneier.com/essays.html


edit by jgpaiva: fixed link

zridling:
And it looks like Mr. Jobs' "No DRM!" Apple is taking it one step further, building it into their monitors, so that certain content won't even play on their systems! Wow, if only they spent as much coding energy on things users perennially want.

epaalx:
These days, with pay-per-click and click-throughput statistics dictating renumeration, trusting a blogger is impossible because there's a financial motivation to attract contraversy or consensus.
Computers are getting more complicated and I reckon there's a deep misunderstanding of Vista and many people who can't handle it will scoff at it. Oh well, that's life and Microsoft is in computer business, so, they gotta live with it.

However, with a first paragraph:
"Windows Vista .. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They'll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working against you."
the blogger is obviously already preaching to Microsoft mongers. Personally, I don't know any one, except virus writers, who write software to work against the user, so, this is ludicrous. I admit sometimes software has some negative impact on the user, but never against the user.

However, the stupidest paragraph in the article:
"It's all complete nonsense. Microsoft could have easily told the entertainment industry that it was not going to deliberately cripple its operating system, take it or leave it. With 95% of the operating system market, where else would Hollywood go? Sure, Big Media has been pushing DRM, but recently some--Sony after their 2005 debacle and now EMI Group--are having second thoughts. "
Microsoft has not implemented Blu-Ray playback into Vista's Media Centre, and it seems, never will (perhaps until 7 and even that isn't confirmed). (There are messy 3rd party software, but when I read forums, owners are constantly having problems, in comparison to hassle-free Media Centre.) So, the result -  Vista (and Windows in general) cannot play Blu-Ray and what is Hollywood doing? Absolutely nothing - the PC/HTPC Blu-Ray playback is a mess, and Hollywood either don't care or likes it like that. So, where is it that Microsoft is dictating terms to Hollywood?

Oh, by the way... I don't mind DRM. Actually, I don't care about DRM. As long as impact of DRM is known (for example, with HDCP) my decision to use DRM products will be made on case-by-case basis just as any informed customer should. [Of course, same cannot be said for hacker's OSs, like desktop Linux, which will never support DRM.]

Eóin:
Personally, I don't know any one, except virus writers, who write software to work against the user, so, this is ludicrous. I admit sometimes software has some negative impact on the user, but never against the user.-epaalx (December 06, 2008, 06:13 PM)
--- End quote ---

Well the whole point of DRM is to artificially limit what users can do with content and their machines. That sound like working against users to me.

epaalx:
Well the whole point of DRM is to artificially limit what users can do with content and their machines. That sound like working against users to me.
-Eóin (December 07, 2008, 07:02 PM)
--- End quote ---
No, the point of DRM is to enforce an agreement that you implicitly make with the content provider. They own the content, so, they have right to dictate the terms.
Don't like the agreement (including the DRM)? Don't get the content! DRM issue solved.

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