p2pnet.net news view:- Microsoft doesn’t merely use DRM. To all intents and purposes it is DRM, better known as Digital Rights Management, Digital Restrictions Management or or just plain CRAP for Content Restriction, Annulment, and Protection, as ZDNet’s David Berlind called it, eventually deferring to Richard Stallman’s Cancellation, Restriction, and Punishment. We call it, simply, CCG, short for Consumer Control Gear.

But whichever way you dress it up, and whichever side of whatever fence you’re on, bottom line, it’s all about bottom lines. It’s about finding ways to use legal systems around the world to force you do what the corporations want you to do, or not do, as the case is increasingly becoming, with applications and packages you mistakenly thought you’d bought and paid for, and usually through the nose.

“This June [2002] Microsoft started talking publicly about ‘Palladium,’ a system that combines software and hardware controls for ‘trusted’ computing and which it hopes to have in operation by 2004,” we said in an early p2pnet post, going on:

“In Microsoft terms, ‘trusted’ means total system control for Bill and the Boyz and in fact, Palladium looks a lot like a variation on the ‘Broadcast Flag’ scheme through which the movie, electronics and record companies want to use purpose-built technology to make sure consumers [you] can’t see, hear or use anything not owned, or approved, by them.”

The post centred on TC / TCG / LaGrande / NGSCB / Longhorn / Palladium / TCPA, an analysis by Britain’s Ross Anderson, professor of Security Engineering at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. In it, among other things, he says:

For years, Bill Gates has dreamed of finding a way to make the Chinese pay for software: TC looks like being the answer to his prayer.

There are many other possibilities. Governments will be able to arrange things so that all Word documents created on civil servants’ PCs are ‘born classified’ and can’t be leaked electronically to journalists. Auction sites might insist that you use trusted proxy software for bidding, so that you can’t bid tactically at the auction. Cheating at computer games could be made more difficult.

There are some gotchas too. For example, TC can support remote censorship. In its simplest form, applications may be designed to delete pirated music under remote control. For example, if a protected song is extracted from a hacked TC platform and made available on the web as an MP3 file, then TC-compliant media player software may detect it using a watermark, report it, and be instructed remotely to delete it (as well as all other material that came through that platform). This business model, called traitor tracing, has been researched extensively by Microsoft (and others). In general, digital objects created using TC systems remain under the control of their creators, rather than under the control of the person who owns the machine on which they happen to be stored (as at present). So someone who writes a paper that a court decides is defamatory can be compelled to censor it - and the software company that wrote the word processor could be ordered to do the deletion if she refuses. Given such possibilities, we can expect TC to be used to suppress everything from pornography to writings that criticise political leaders.

The gotcha for businesses is that your software suppliers can make it much harder for you to switch to their competitors’ products. At a simple level, Word could encrypt all your documents using keys that only Microsoft products have access to; this would mean that you could only read them using Microsoft products, not with any competing word processor. Such blatant lock-in might be prohibited by the competition authorities, but there are subtler lock-in strategies that are much harder to regulate.

Ross also says:

With existing MP3s, you may be all right for some time. Microsoft says that TC won’t make anything suddenly stop working. But a recent software update for Windows Media Player has caused controversy by insisting that users agree to future anti-piracy measures, which may include measures that delete pirated content found on your computer. Also, some programs that give people more control over their PCs, such as VMware and Total Recorder, are not going to work properly under TC. So you may have to use a different player - and if your player will play pirate MP3s, then it may not be authorised to play the new, protected, titles.

Does that look familiar?

The Net should be all about freedom of speech and freedom of choice. And it is, as far as millions of people are concerned. But Microsoft and the others of its ilk view both concepts with horror and are hell bent on making sure you consume, consume, consume only product they make and they sell.

Once upon a time, manufacturers and retailers lived by the credo, The Customer is Ways Right. Not any more. In the digital 21st century, customers are always wrong and have been reduced to mindless ‘consumers,’ drones with no will of their own who eagerly slurp down whatever the huge multinationals such as Microsoft, Apple, Intel, IBM, AMD, Adobe, and so on, care to dish up. And that’s the way the conglomerates and monopolies want to keep it.

Yesterday we ran a special from Peter Gutmann in New Zealand. It features a detailed cost analysis of Microsoft’s Vista.

In the executive summary, he says simply:

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

And in the intro …

… one important point that must be kept in mind when reading this document is that in order to work, Vista’s content protection must be able to violate the laws of physics, something that’s unlikely to happen no matter how much the content industry wishes it were possible. This conundrum is displayed over and over again in the Windows content-protection specs, with manufacturers being given no hard-and-fast guidelines but instead being instructed that they need to display as much dedication as possible to the party line. The documentation is peppered with sentences like:

It is recommended that a graphics manufacturer go beyond the strict letter of the specification and provide additional content-protection features because this demonstrates their strong intent to protect premium content”

This is an exceedingly strange way to write technical specifications, but is dictated by the fact that what the spec is trying to achieve is fundamentally impossible. Readers should keep this requirement to display appropriate levels of dedication in mind when reading the following analysis ….

Below, in order of appearance, are several clips from p2pnet Readers’ Write comment posts.

The underlying problem is that the homeputer has evolved from a device where information is created and shared, to a channel for “content consumption”. When it fails to handle the increasing flow of “content”, they ask you to buy a new one.

And …

… maybe MS should add an 11th Law to their list* to avoid confusion. Law #11: If you allow your computer to run Microsoft Vista it is not your Computer anymore.

And …

Could someone please define “premium content” for me? Because as far as I know, in all my years of computing since Windows 3.1, I’ve never ever had any use for this so called “premium content”. Personally I think the vast majority of PC users out there don’t either. I mean, granted the stuff Apple has been doing with their iPod and music service seems to have become pretty popular over the past several years, but this is about the only thing I can think of that sort of matters to anyone.

Hmm, perhaps “premium content” stands for anything that is afflicted with DRM then? Well if that be the case, then we really shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Because as far as I know, most folks avoid the stuff, which is easily done and has been for a very long time now.

Basically all this article amounts to is a rant of theoretics based entirely on something that, on paper anyways, looks a little bit scary. I’d rather wait until Vista has been out for a few months before making any judgments if you don’t mind. Until then I’m going to stick with my pirated copy of XP (which I’ve had since XP first came out in 2001) for as long as I can, thank you very much. Once support is pulled from that, which it inevitably will be some day (how else is M$ going to force everyone to upgrade?), then perhaps I’ll consider finally moving to either Vista or Linux. Which ever direction the world has taken I guess, though neither of those would be my first pick if I had any say in the matter. But the reason why I say that is a whole ‘nother ball of wax, so TTFN.

And …

What is MS planning to do if (or when) Ati and Nvidia refuse to play ball and support all these restrictions. Since this stuff is only needed for allegedly premium content, what real need do their high-end 3d adaptors have for it? Noone buys a 1950XTX/8800GTX just to watch movies on after all. Noone buys an X-Fi to listen to mp3’s either.

Unless MS offers to cover all these added development costs, i can see the hardware industry telling MS to re-insert it all back into whichever orifice it came from.

And …

The information I got from sources at (names-withheld) vendors indicated that this was going to go into their entire product line. Because MS owns most of the market, no vendor can afford to opt out. Refusing to play ball isn’t an option. - Peter (author of the article).

And …

That sucks ass. I’ll just use Linux when using XP is not an option anymore.

Also, who cares about this premium content shit? There’s anough stuff already released to entertain you ’till you die, many times over. Tons of DVDs I haven’t watched, and they can all be ripped, lots of CDs out there, the best music has already been made, current music sucks anyway. CDs can be ripped too. Not now, but eventually the cartels’ business model will collapse.

The more restrictions they all put on people, to secure their wallets are fat, the more people become fed up with the model. I feel like getting a couple of rentals right now so that I can rip ‘em, not because I need to, not because I want to, but because I can, I am in charge, and I will always make sure I am in charge, no mother fucking corporate assholes are ever going to dictate what to do at home, with my computer. No fucking way.

This is going to backfire on them, Blueray and HD-DVD movies have a nice copy protection mechanism, pretty strong, and if a device becomes compromised, they will just block it; do you think people who bought a brand X model Y high def optical disk player are going to be happy when their devices can no longer play any new releases, or if it becomes a brick after a non disclosed firmware upgrade. These people are going to be pissed. Because I simply don’t want to be on that boat, I won’t buy a high def optical disc player, therefore I won’t rent or buy high def movies. I will get free stuff from my local library though.

Do you want games, there are tons of games out there, many of their copy protections can be bypassed, just don’t get any Starforce games (that was really good to know, thanks Jon!). You want older console games, there are thousands of those. I still play pac man once in a while, the ROM of course, either on Windows or Linux, or Mortal Kombat, or Elevator Action, 1942. Etc… The point is there’s so much stuff out there that who cares about what the cartels’ future plans for content control are. It’s not that I encourage people to break the law, just to be a rebel, it’s that these guys are thugs, and I don’t do business with thugs.

Plus the number of creative stuff, mostly software, some movies and some music, that are being released under more friendly, and non greedy licenses, is incresing very fast. Open source software, creative commons etc…

OK, enough rant.

And …

That used to be my opinion too. Unfortunately it’s far easier said than done. The problem is that Linux can be a huge pain in the ass to get up and running smoothly, so much so that I don’t think the average user, whom probably makes up the vast majority of PC users our there, will want to bother despite all the great things that are touted about Linux. I know I’ve certainly lost a lot of sleep over the problems I’ve encountered with trying Linux out, and pulled out copious amounts of hair in frustration to match.

Me? Well I’m a more advanced user than your average joe, though I wouldn’t call myself hardcore or anything. In fact I’d say I’m pretty close to being an average joe too. I do build my own PC’s, do all my own software installs, my own troubleshooting, and so on. Despite for how long I’ve used some form of Windows or another, there are still vast parts of it that are a complete mystery to me. As much as I would love to switch to Linux and never use a Microsoft product again (and trust me, I would if it wasn’t such a huge PITA), it just isn’t going to happen. At least not any time soon anyways, with the way things are right now.

Take Ububtu for instance. Easy enough to install, and it even feels similar to Windows. But then you find you need a bunch of drivers, and as we all know, finding up to date bug free drivers is difficult even under the best of circumstances under Windows, where support is supposedly better. With Linux it’s an utter nightmare.

A nightmare as well is getting everything installed and running just the way you like, without all the extra junk you don’t want. On top of that you have all these gobbledygook config files that you will inevitably be forced to tweak before things will work correctly, if they ever do at all. Despite often having a nice GUI included in most distros, everything still requires command lines, the majority of which only the truest hard core geek could ever understand. Simply put, the switch from Windows to Linux is not something you can do over night. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself how long it took you to learn all the ins and outs of Windows and all the apps you use with it.

Ok, so if your will is strong enough to get past all of that, then you now have to track down alternative programs to replace the ones you were used to using in Windows. While it is certainly possible to do so with some effort, you also end up having to learn how they all work as some will most certainly be fairly alien to the average joe. Expect to do a lot of troubleshooting here as well. Maybe I’m just an unlucky fellow, but I’ve never ever found any bit of technology that just simply worked out of the box the way it’s supposed to without having to troubleshoot it first lol. Good luck if you have a lot of applications to replace too. The information overload, provided you can actually find decent information to begin with (I usually end up going in circles), can be enough to make your head explode.

Even if you are still willing to go through everything I’ve mentioned up until this point, one other obstacle remains. Not every Windows app has a counterpart under Linux (thank goodness for Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, and the like). In some cases there will be but one, and this means you have no choice but to use it. At least in Windows you have a great many applications to choose from, with costs ranging from a small fortune to completely free.

So basically you can choose to have freedom, or have freedom to choose, but you can’t have both. This is certainly an area where the ideals of free open source software (a movement that I love, don’t get me wrong) tends to hamper matters rather than help them. Sometimes the love to program just isn’t incentive enough to create applications, and keep them up to date. Out of everything this may be the biggest problem I have with Linux, in that it is only as strong as the weakest link. That would be the human aspect of it all. I’ve lost count of how many times a really fantastic app or plug-in has gone down the tubes simply because the author lost interest.

Of all applications, the most notable to me is all those DirectX games, all of which absolutely requires Windows. There is just no getting around that short of giving up on PC gaming altogether. I own a lot of games myself, many of which I haven’t even played yet (hard to resist the bargain bin lol).

It’s sad, but that is the way it is. There just isn’t any escape from Windows. No, I’m afraid that Linux will never ever take the place of Windows. Maybe several years from now, if we’re lucky, but definitely not today. So then, what to do now?

Well, like I posted before we should probably just wait and see what really happens. Once Vista is readily available to all and enough folks are using it, then that is when we should be forming a real opinion of it. Freaking out because of assumptions, assumptions that are mostly theory based on what’s on paper, doesn’t make any sense at all. Reality is what we should be more interested in. Besides, all of this only applies to so called “premium content”. I don’t think a whole lot of PC users out there care about premium content one way or another. Certainly not the kind of person that visits a place like p2pnet lol. I certainly don’t. Since Windows XP has always been more than capable of doing everything we need, “premium content” or no, we should probably just stick with what we already have and what we already know. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

And …

I know Linux used to be kinda crappy for someone coming from the world of Windows, but that was then, and this is now. And now, let me tell you, Fedora 6 and Ubuntu are working REALLY REALLY NICE. It is now trivial to download and install popular packages, and common open-source media players like VLC, mplayer, and Xine support way more formats than Windows Media Player. You can even run internet explorer and most win32 apps in Linux smoothly (I can use IE to watch youtube vids smoothly).

The only thing that Windows has going for it anymore is gaming, and that is taken care of with a dual-boot setup, especially since you don’t need to many updates to a WinXP install if you’re only using it for gaming. As well, there are just as many console emulators for Linux as there are for Win. I emulate snes/nes/neogeo/turbogfx/coleco/c64/atari/arcade games all the time on my FC6 system. There is also a growing category of open-source games that run in OpenGL, snazzy graphics and everything. I suspect one day Linux could surpass Win in this category as well.

In the end, an OS designed FOR THE USER instead of the corporate media monopoly is going to win, it doesn’t matter how big MS is. The open-source movement is growing, and in the end it’s going to be more efficient overall for everyone to have a free, well supported, publicly maintained high-quality OS platform. Eventually there will be more programmers putting more hours into open-source projects than Microsoft can keep up with.

If anyone needs some help getting Fedora 6 setup, there’s a good tips and tricks page at http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc6-tips.php that has the basic on installed media players and so forth….

Stay tuned.

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If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Also See:
eventually deferring - Apple and its C.R.A.P., March 4, 2006
early p2pnet post - TCPA | Palladium - The End? Or the Beginning?, 2002
make the Chinese pay for software - Microsoft in China: Clash of titans, February 23, 2000
Microsoft’s Vista - Cost analysis of Vista DRM, December 22, 2006

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