DRM in Windows Vista
Donald Tabone
the DRM feature in Windows Vista.
DRM (Digital Rights Management) was recently introduced in Windows
Vista. The way and reason of why it was introduced is heavily debated
in the blog entry and I don't necessarily agree with all Bruce's
points. Primarily his argument revolves around the fact that Microsoft
has introduced this "control measure" to slowly move towards imposing
its dominance on the entertainment industry. This it can do because of
the large market share it has of desktop OS's. On this I tend to agree
-- however market share does not imply creating a monopoly.
Bruce.S: "Windows Vista includes an array of "features" that you don't
want. 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."
This is hitting hard at it...basically if you want to avoid these
problems (which i do not believe are a direct consequence of the DRM
implementation) simply don't playback HD/BluRay HD disks. Anytime you
want to watch a regular DVD, I would just make sure i have AnyDVD
running in order to circumvent any older-protetion schemes. Whether it
makes it the computer less stable -- I really don't think so.
However Microsoft; like all other money making businesses; is
basically looking at ways to increase sales through "features" for its
new operating system and find new sectors to try and penetrate. If we
look at the history of browsers for example, it clearly outran
Netscape and in doing as so virtually eradicated Netscape from
existence. Typical example of Bruce's point.
Bruce.S:"Microsoft put all those functionality-crippling features into
Vista because it wants to own the entertainment industry."
Basically Microsoft are serving the entertainment industry in a way
which is profitable to them and in turn to the entertainment industry.
Whether the technology will prevail is still left to be seen ---
however in any case Microsoft cannot be held directly responsible for
the technology. They are clever market leaders in this segment and as
a consequence the trend is that their technologies tend to be widely
adopted. Given this and their exposure they are never at a loss which
ever way the technology goes.
Bruce.S: "Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying
to figure out if you're doing something that it thinks you shouldn't."
Heh! We are at the point now where the PC decides what we can and
can't do. It's like the CPU is overriding the brain. Next Vista will
tell you what you can think according to a DRM scheme. The user should
manage the PC, the PC shouldn't manage the user.
geekWithA.45: "As the owner of a system, I, and I alone, am the final
authority on what shall and shall not run."
On this argument, I tend to agree that this has very little to do with
Vista, and everything to do with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray technologies.
Vista only uses these 'copy protection' code paths when you're playing
HD-DVD or Blu-Ray content. In my humble opinion if you want to boycott
the problem, boycott HD-DVD and Blu-Ray!
The bottom line to keep this article "short" is that turning to
another OS is probably only a short-term solution. If Microsoft get
their system adopted, this will force other OS's to follow or be left
behind -- similar as what happened to regional encoding.
Bruce.S:"Unfortunately, we users are caught in the crossfire. We are
not only stuck with DRM systems that interfere with our legitimate
fair-use rights for the content we buy, we're stuck with DRM systems
that interfere with all of our computer use -- even the uses that have
nothing to do with copyright."
Reference website: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/drm_in_windows.html
Sandro Gauci
chance to test it yet.
However Bruce does appear to have a point:
A lot of functionality was added to Vista to suite MIcrosoft and their
friends (hello good ol' entertainment industry!) - at the expense of
the customers. I guess most customers would rather have a more stable
OS than an OS that has all the additional features to apply
restrictions to their content. The argument is that the more
features .. the more complexity. The more complexity .. the more scope
for bugs. And bugs have a tendency to have security implications ;-)
There's the idea that you can stay with XP - and I guess quite a few
people will do that for a while. But new customers will eventually
have to use Vista because it comes with their shining brand new
laptop ... so long term.. there's no avoiding it.
Of course, it is true that Bruce is painting the situation in more
apocalyptic than ever. Maybe he had his PMS... who knows?
William Bell
using DRM has a negative impact on their revenue stream our pleas will
find themselves > /dev/null . Let us RISE up and crush the MAN!
Jeremy Pullicino
Jeremy.
William Bell
Donald Tabone
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/26/emi_drm_talks_breakup/
Netscape Navigator 1.1 or higher recommended. ®
On Feb 25, 11:35 pm, "William Bell" <william.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It has been cracked and fixe da few times throughout the beta process, a cat
> and mouse game will continue ad infinitum. They should be putting more money
> into code reviews and "patching" staff and leave the DRM behind, course they
> won't and they will continue to claim that it is demanded by other
> industries.
>
> On 2/25/07, Jeremy Pullicino <pullic...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > A search for "bypass drm vista" in google shows me that DRM in vista has
> > been cracked already...
>
> > Jeremy.
>
Donald Tabone
Lawson's Blog>
"The problem with encrypting code or data is, you gotta store the key
somewhere. Any place you can get the key, the attacker can get it,
too. The attacker doesn't even need to read code; she just scans
memory for randomized key-sized blocks"
"What you do here is called white-box encryption. The idea is
straightforward. Instead of taking a standard AES implementation and
feeding it your data and a key, you embed the key directly into the
AES code. In the process, you introduce a huge amount of noise,
abetted by a custom encoding scheme."
"White-box schemes don't just embed the key; they do so in a way that
makes the resulting algorithm hard to analyze, essentially by
injecting key-dependent noise (bijections -- random lookup tables)
into the AES rounds. This makes the resulting code bigger, much
slower, and much, much harder to analyze; ostensibly, way outside the
boundaries of what the XBox hackers or DeCSS people are going to
attempt."
Nate Lawson's Blog can be found here: http://rdist.root.org/
Sandro Gauci
Donald Tabone
EMI claims that it is undertaking the move after a careful experiment
it carried out with just a handful of songs, issuing them without DRM,
and it perhaps has a feel for the likely consumer behavior around
online purchasing with no DRM. By charging 30 cents more for each
track, and offering it in a higher fidelity than previous online
versions (up to 256 kbps AAC encoding, around double the previous
quality) it will stimulate replacement sales as well as reaping more
money from normal sales. Presumably all of that extra 30 cents goes to
EMI, so it will be quite an important increase in revenue in the short
term.
Complete article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/09/apple_emi_drm-free_analysis/