MSGID: 1:379/45 bbb6d511
 TZUTC: -0500
 CHARSET: PC-8
From: "Rich Gauszka" 

Gutman:  "If I do ever want to play back premium content," he
wrote, "I'll wait
a few years and then buy a $50 Chinese-made set-top player to do it, not a
$1000 Windows PC. It's somewhat bizarre that I have to go to Communist China in
order to find vendors who actually understand the consumer's needs."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/28/vista_drm_analysis/

Gutmann describes in great detail the various measures Microsoft has taken to
lock down Windows on behalf of Hollywood. This isn't a comprehensive look at
all of Vista's DRM - Gutmann barely touches on Microsoft's new activation
framework; this is beyond the scope of his enquiry.)

To recap: in order to playback HD-DVD and BluRay content, Microsoft agreed to
degrade video and audio functionality in Windows. Gutman points out that when
"premium" content is being played, component video - YPbPr - and S/PDIF
interfaces are disabled. Third party hardware that fails to obey these orders
may have its be "certified" status revoked by Microsoft - leaving
the user with
minimal (eg VGA) functionality.

Additional hardware specifications decreed by Microsoft, which are intended to
alert the system that the "secure path" may have been
compromised, open up a
potentially devastating new vulnerability for net-connected PCs. As Gutman
describes it -

Vista's content protection requires that devices (hardware and software
drivers) set so-called "tilt bits" if they detect anything
unusual. For example
if there are unusual voltage fluctuations, maybe some jitter on bus signals, a
slightly funny return code from a function call, a device register that doesn't
contain quite the value that was expected, or anything similar, a tilt bit gets
set. Such occurrences aren't too uncommon in a typical computer... Previously
this was no problem - the system was designed with a bit of resilience, and
things will function as normal. In other words small variances in performance
are a normal part of system functioning.

This creates a new attack vector for malware:

Non-US governments are already nervous enough about using a US-supplied
operating system without having this remote DoS capability built into the
operating system.

With the introduction of tilt bits, all of this designed-in resilience is gone.
Every little (normally unnoticeable) glitch is suddenly surfaced because it
could be a sign of a hack attack. The effect that this will have on system
reliability should require no further explanation.

In short, the Vista specifications explicitly cripple the PC. We say
"specifications" quite deliberately, for in a sense this is a
game of chicken.

This DRM only affects the playback of next-generation DVDs; which isn't a real
problem for anyone quite yet: players cost $1,000 at the moment and there's
next to no content available for them. In the coming few months, far more
ordinary users will be affected by the DRM designed to prevent unlicensed use
of Windows itself, than by these Hollywood mandates.

Nevertheless, Gutmann calls Vista multimedia DRM the "longest suicide note in
history" - a phrase with some resonance to British voters

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