DRM takes some recent hits

[bhodi]

I'm preemptively putting this into politics, since I know that's where it will end up anyway.

Two pieces of news which you may have heard about, and if not, you should have.

First, HD-DVD DRM was cracked. Really. I guess that means HD-DVD will win the format war.

Second, a well known security design analyst whips out his bitch stick and smacks vista and some hardware companies around. If you haven't read or heard about this, it's worth the 15 minutes of time to read it and get informed. It's going to cost us all - especially gamers, who purchase high-end PCs - a lot of money.

[Merusk]

Executive Executive Summary
---------------------------

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the
longest suicide note in history.

For anyone outside of techies to take him seriously, he'd have to alter that.  All it achieves right now is turning someone like me away with the thought, "Oh look, another anti-MS zealot with an agenda."


ed: pwnd by typing skillz

[sinij]

Consumers can't win against corporate logic. If product flops due to DRM its due to piracy, if product succeeds despite DRM - its profitable only because DRM.

I hope there is special circle of hell for DRM execs, where they get to watch and copy Leonard Nimoy's Hobbit video over and over and over again for all eternity.


As to Vista - I have seen this coming and ready to weather it out, my PC should last me for 3-4 years on XP64 Pro. Hopefully Vista will be another ME by then and more sane version will come out, if not then it will be the end of PC gaming for me.

[bhodi]

Executive Executive Summary
---------------------------

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the
longest suicide note in history.

For anyone outside of techies to take him seriously, he'd have to alter that.  All it achieves right now is turning someone like me away with the thought, "Oh look, another nati-MS zealot with an agenda."

I totally agree. On the one hand you can argue that after looking at all the facts, it's clear something is a bad idea. However, comments such as 'the longest suicide note in history' and 'drinking the kool-aid' are better left to the newspaper/magazine headline writers. First impressions are important, and if you're going to write something like this, you need to put on your virtual interview suit and write dispassionately. The conclusions will speak for themselves, there's no need to try and help it along.

It's well worth the read anyway. Just skip past the blatant metaphors, the conclusions really do speak for themselves.

As to Vista - I have seen this coming and ready to weather it out, my PC should last me for 3-4 years on XP64 Pro. Hopefully Vista will be another ME by then and more sane version will come out, if not then it will be the end of PC gaming for me.

The problem is that Microsoft has forced hardware manufacturers to conform and add DRM overhead to essentially every pipeline and step, with it's associated design and performance costs. They used 'vista certified drivers' as a hammer, because vista won't support anyone who's not certified. This cost gets passed onto you in terms of performance degradation, straight price, and possibly system stability whether or not you even plan to upgrade... and you will have to upgrade your hardware at least, or you won't be able to play any of the games coming out next year :/

[angry.bob]

if not then it will be the end of PC gaming for me.

Yes, nothing puts the screws to MicroSoft like switching from PC to Xbox360. 

Still though, it seems a giant pain in the ass to go through just to add a week to the time that it will take a bored teenager in the Netherlands to crack and invalidate the whole setup.

[Krakrok]

DRM is snake oil techies make bank off of selling to media morons. Fucked users is just an unfortunate side effect.

The real question is will Vista be the straw that pisses off enough people to break the camels back or more of the same? You know Microsoft is going to make all new game releases from them Vista only just like they did with XP.  XP's media player has DRM to some extent but it wasn't enough to stop adoption. IE7 has some scary shit in it too like the built in ecommerce pay-to-play antiphishing certification system.

Will Vista DRM be restrictive enough to make people buy more Macs? Everyone has been saying businesses are holding off buying it and it will be the last major OS like OS from Microsoft. I'll believe that when I see it though.

There have also been some news articles rumbling about restrictive DSL upload speeds. Will that get mainstream enough to force ISPs to raise upload speeds? Possibly.

And then we have the RIAA which has been fighting MP3s for almost 9 years now and are no closer to winning than when they started. Not only that but they have lost ground. They killed Napster and Kazaa but PirateBay, AllofMP3, and YouTube are pumping out more than ever before. For a few million dollars in equity YouTube bought off all the record labels.

Nearly 60 percent of video files downloaded from P2P sites were adult-film content, while 20 percent was TV show content and 5 percent was mainstream movie content. -Pr0n 4TW!

[stray]

I hope the Zune is an omen for Vista's success (or lack thereof).

Anything that doesn't put customers first will ultimately fail. Sounds cheesy, I know, but it's true. Even for Microsoft.

[Trippy]

I'm preemptively putting this into politics, since I know that's where it will end up anyway.

Two pieces of news which you may have heard about, and if not, you should have.

First, HD-DVD DRM was cracked. Really. I guess that means HD-DVD will win the format war.

Blu-Ray uses the same copy protection scheme so it was "cracked" too, though the "crack" in this case in not the same as it was for DVDs with DeCSS. It's more a proof of concept at the moment and not a functioning piece of software since you still have to figure out how to extract the title key from memory yourself. Assuming this holds up, eventually there will be tools and services that the tools will connect to automatically fetch keys as needed, kind of like how FreeDB works for fetching CD track information.

[Riggswolfe]

I read most of that Vista article and while I don't claim to understand the specifics of content protection, the general conclusions seem logical.

Here is what I am curious about, it sounds like this is mostly to protect movies and music and such, "Premium content" as he called it. So will this have much effect on gamers and general consumers?

My only concern will be if this idea trickles down to general consumer electronics, so I have to buy content protected DvD players and TVs to be able to watch my own movies.

[Evangolis]

Part of the arguement, as I read it, is that Vista will increase overhead in the hardware, even if it isn't running on the system, hence making all compatible PCs (aka all PCs) run slower.

[eldaec]

The Vista article seems to break down to 2 arguments...

1) New software requires more hardware power. Film at eleven.

Solution : Don't upgrade immeadiately. Non-Vista software isn't going to turn into pumpkins at midnight.


2) The DRM solution is a kludge and will impact signal quality on films and music.

Solution : Buy films and music through non-Vista channels which will have to exist for years anyway.

[Akkori]

As long as I have to pay $9 or more to see a friggin movie, I will gladly steal from the movie studio's. I support any opposition to DRM. My question is this: Why is it so hard to siphon off the unencrypted content as it is being displayed? This was the big thing about music. It has to play over my speakers, which means that all I gotta do, worse case, is patch the speakers jack into a good recorder. Why can't somone just put in a "patch cable" that runs from the graphics card port to an HD recorder?

[Trippy]

As long as I have to pay $9 or more to see a friggin movie, I will gladly steal from the movie studio's. I support any opposition to DRM. My question is this: Why is it so hard to siphon off the unencrypted content as it is being displayed? This was the big thing about music. It has to play over my speakers, which means that all I gotta do, worse case, is patch the speakers jack into a good recorder. Why can't somone just put in a "patch cable" that runs from the graphics card port to an HD recorder?

That's the whole point of all the shenanigans in Vista -- they are trying to close the "analog hole" and make it so that only if you have end to end "copy protection" will the full digital content be played back otherwise you get "degraded" content or nothing at all.

[Strazos]

Isn't this sort of tangentially related to the whole "Trusted Computing" debate?

[Samwise]

Nothing tangential about it.

[Trippy]

Isn't this sort of tangentially related to the whole "Trusted Computing" debate?

Kind of. Without the underlying hardware getting in on the act it should still be possible in theory to work around all the crap in Vista eventually though depending on how well Microsoft did its job it may be more effort than it's worth. Once the hardware gets involved (e.g. in the form of a TPM chip) it becomes much harder if not impossible (with current computing resources) to crack. BTW, the Intel Macs now have TPM chips inside them so it's not only MS that's working to curtail consumer rights.

[Azazel]

Well at least this thread has stopped me from waiting for Vista before building my next PC (or buying it at all) next this year.

[Samwise]

Well at least this thread has stopped me from waiting for Vista before building my next PC (or buying it at all) next this year.

Ditto.  Vista was the last thing stopping me from building a new PC, because what's the point in buying a new copy of XP now and then having to buy Vista when it comes out?  Now I plan to hold onto XP for as long as I can.

[ahoythematey]

I said the same thing about 3.1.

Weep now so your tears don't streak over the install disc.

[Samwise]

It's true, I said the same thing about not moving off 2K onto XP.  On the other hand, my objections there were purely aesthetic, which go away pretty quick once you get acclimated.  Which is why I was all gung ho about moving to teh new shiney that is Vista. 

If Vista is going to require more expensive hardware and in return give me degraded performance and less freedom in media consumption, though, that's a much more bitter pill to swallow than moving from square corners to rounded corners.

[Righ]

It will only give you less freedom in media consumption for media that is appropriately locked down. That media won't even play on a non-TPM system. At the moment the Apple TPM chips are just used to ensure that you don't run Mac OS X on systems made by other companies without a lot of trouble. I can cope with that. When the day comes that Apple cripple Mac OS X such that only authorised media players run on it, and those players prevent me from using content that I've paid for in the way I wish to (ripping CDs to MP3, etc) then my Macs will run Linux fairly nicely. The real problem will come when Apple, MS, et. al. form a consortium to only allow licensed OS software to load on commodity PC hardware. That day is very likely coming, and it will spell the end of Linux in its current form (though you'll still be able to buy it from consortium members like RedHat, IBM, etc).

[naum]

It will only give you less freedom in media consumption for media that is appropriately locked down. That media won't even play on a non-TPM system. At the moment the Apple TPM chips are just used to ensure that you don't run Mac OS X on systems made by other companies without a lot of trouble. I can cope with that. When the day comes that Apple cripple Mac OS X such that only authorised media players run on it, and those players prevent me from using content that I've paid for in the way I wish to (ripping CDs to MP3, etc) then my Macs will run Linux fairly nicely. The real problem will come when Apple, MS, et. al. form a consortium to only allow licensed OS software to load on commodity PC hardware. That day is very likely coming, and it will spell the end of Linux in its current form (though you'll still be able to buy it from consortium members like RedHat, IBM, etc).

Absolutely.

Sounds like Vista will be crippled when it comes to HD to prevent any ripping/copying of HD content, even through capture via audio out channels... ...and if OS X follows suit, it will be Linux for me...

[Triforcer]

The Internet and attendant technologies were never going to remain an eternal emerald fairyland of rainbows and leprechaun gold.  Much like the Industrial Revolution and environmental laws, regulation will lag but always catch up.  Expecting 1995-2000 to never end is an unreasonable position. 

[Evangolis]

Expecting 1995-2000 to never end is an unreasonable position. 

I've been hearing that statement since at least 1985.  The dates keep changing, but not much else does.

If you build a shittier mousetrap, someone will build a better one, one that does what people want, rather like Zelazny's bit in Lord of Light about the constant re-invention of the flush toilet.  Damn capitalists.

That said, there is usually some noise like this about some feature in every new Windows' release. 

[Krakrok]

Vista will have a bunch of new scary dialogs to scare people when installing web games. One more reason to use Flash or Shockwave. Sucks to be WildTangent though.

And a second article predicted 600 million Vista installs by 2010. Also said something like Vista won't play existing HDDVD or Blue-Ray if your digital monitor isn't plugged in via HDMI or whatever the copy protected interface is.

[Trippy]

And a second article predicted 600 million Vista installs by 2010. Also said something like Vista won't play existing HDDVD or Blue-Ray if your digital monitor isn't plugged in via HDMI or whatever the copy protected interface is.

Your setup needs to support end to end HDCP (i.e. software DVD player, video card, monitor) to playback HD-DVD/Blu-Ray content at full resolution. The overwhelming majority of video cards installed today do not support HDCP.

[Engels]

Sounds like we'll all be watching DVDs on Ubuntu.

[stray]

Microsoft seems to always find a way of coaxing people to use their technology.

Mainly because everyone's a lazy coward (I'd go so far as to say that it's your civil duty to not be).

[Engels]

Dude, if game companies put out stuff for Linux as much as they do for MS, I'd switch in a heart beat. I MUCH prefer Linux. Yet here we are. Fuck, not even EVE has a linux port yet, despite the trumpting of said development.

[Samwise]

All Linux has to do AFAIK is implement and support DirectX.  Most distros of Linux don't even come with OpenGL, though, and most Linux implementations of OpenGL are buggy as shit.  I can't really blame game developers for avoiding the platform.   

[Righ]

Of course, if one group of games developers were to make a set of (curiously similar to DirectX) graphics libraries for Linux and sell them to other games developers, they'd be laughing all the way to the bank. Games companies used to code a lot more of that shit anyhow. Half their board members are probably former assembly language coders.

[Samwise]

I suspect that sort of thing was more doable when you didn't have to worry about optimizing for different graphics cards.  Software rendering is relatively easy because you're working on top of some reasonably common interface.  Writing your own graphics library that performs comparably to DX would require you to write new drivers for any card that you want your game to support.  (Or convince hardware companies and/or hardcore Linux weenies to buy in and do it for you.)

[Trippy]

Dude, if game companies put out stuff for Linux as much as they do for MS, I'd switch in a heart beat. I MUCH prefer Linux. Yet here we are. Fuck, not even EVE has a linux port yet, despite the trumpting of said development.

What, you mean like this?

http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/screenshots/single.mhtml?screenshot_id=1029

Note this is not a port -- EVE is running under Cedega in the screenshot.

[eldaec]

Vista will have a bunch of new scary dialogs to scare people when installing web games. One more reason to use Flash or Shockwave. Sucks to be WildTangent though.

I have no truck with this nonsense.

Windows damn well should display scary dialogs when running arbitary code downloaded off the teh internets, espeicially when you run it with admin privileges. And I don't imagine anyone smart enough to be intelligently running arbitary code downloaded off the teh internets will have any difficulties clicking through them.

LUAs should really be the default position if you want to hold out any hope of securing home PCs.


The ESRB 'not rated' thing can probably be ignored, as happily people are smart enough to realise this sort of parental control system is never all that effective, and that the only real parental control is putting the PC in the living room; even if anyone does use this feature I gather parents can allow/disallow speicific games anyway. Vista parental controls will be about as effective as the V chip.


The Game Explorer thing looks incredibly annoying - but that's more my inner geek objecting to any OS making rules about how my files or UI shall be organised than anything else.

[Engels]

Dude, if game companies put out stuff for Linux as much as they do for MS, I'd switch in a heart beat. I MUCH prefer Linux. Yet here we are. Fuck, not even EVE has a linux port yet, despite the trumpting of said development.

What, you mean like this?

http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/screenshots/single.mhtml?screenshot_id=1029

Note this is not a port -- EVE is running under Cedega in the screenshot.

What is Cedega, exactly? From what you're saying, its not a Wine emulator, but some other conversion method?