SubscribeAlongside the all-or-nothing approach of disabling output, Vista requires that
any interface that provides high-quality output degrade the signal quality
that passes through it. This is done through a "constrictor" that downgrades
the signal to a much lower-quality one, then up-scales it again back to the
original spec, but with a significant loss in quality. So if you're using an
expensive new LCD display fed from a high-quality DVI signal on your video
card and there's protected content present, the picture you're going to see
will be, as the spec puts it, "slightly fuzzy", a bit like a 10-year-old CRT
monitor that you picked up for $2 at a yard sale. In fact the spec
specifically still allows for old VGA analog outputs, but even that's only
because disallowing them would upset too many existing owners of analog
monitors. In the future even analog VGA output will probably have to be
disabled. The only thing that seems to be explicitly allowed is the extremely
low-quality TV-out, provided that Macrovision is applied to it.
But like Blazecock said, they're not restricted for most everyday purposes. I can't see this Vista nonsense getting any more play then any of the other bonkers Microsoft DRM schemes.The key point I got from the article isn't that the DRM will inconvenience users who can't hack it; it's that it will dramatically increase the price of developing (and hence buying) hardware, as hardware will have to be fundamentally redesigned to support content restriction. The scope of the changes that need to be made (adding on-board encryption, avoiding motherboard designs that allow different components to be soldered in to create different products) is pretty incredible.
And if it does become popular, it'll be hacked. This kind of stuff is unenforceable.
I think the FUD comes in not where we predict that MS and the hardware vendors will attempt to do control-fr33k stuff but where folks hyperventilate OMG THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO. END OF NET PREDICTED!Has anyone actually said anything like that, here or elsewhere? Of course there's stuff we can do; it starts with helping make people aware of the situation.
shut off your damn television. visit the library instead of the fucking cinema. stomp that iPod and learn to play an instrument. have a conversation. play a board game. this shit is your fault.If I do, will you turn off your computer?
Gutmann writes:
"This document looks purely at the cost of the technical portions of Vista's content protection."
He should have said "complexity" because almost nothing he describes has a direct or necessary relationship with cost. There are complexities involved, but they're pretty much insignificant especially by comparison with Gutmann's hype.
"However, 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 point sounds important but he never backs it up, so I'll skip it too.
"Since S/PDIF doesn't provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content."
I believe this is wrong. I'm pretty sure Microsoft and the content creators aren't going to prevent people from playing high-quality audio over USB speakers and Bluetooth headsets. I'm pretty sure that digital audio may be transmitted at CD quality levels (stereo, 44.1 KHz, 16-bit samples).
"For example PC voice communications rely on
automatic echo cancellation (AEC) in order
to work. ..."
This is a very interesting point. If it's okay to get the downsampled CD-quality audio, AEC should still work just as well. If not, people may just have to give up on doing full-duplex voice communications while simultaneously using the PC to play protected high-def content. I think perhaps this is not a big problem.
"Alongside the all-or-nothing approach of disabling output, Vista requires that any interface that provides high-quality output degrade the signal quality that passes through it."
This is grossly overstated because it implies this happens all the time. It's true only when the content is protected and the selected output is inherently insecure.
In practice, once secure hardware gets out there, most end users will never see this problem.
In the meantime, yeah, Microsoft and the hardware guys shouldn't claim to support protected HD content if they don't have a complete solution.
"For example the field of medical imaging either bans outright or strongly frowns on any form of lossy compression because artifacts introduced by the compression process can cause mis-diagnoses and in extreme cases even become life-threatening."
This is grossly irresponsible and tantamount to invoking Godwin's Law. No medical-imaging system in the world is ever going to use the kind of content protection that Microsoft and the MPAA care about, and no medical technician would ever overlook the sudden downsampling-and-supersampling of medical imagery. Nobody's going to die.
"Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support"
"Elimination of Unified Drivers"
These sections are ridiculous. The only thing the open-source software movement won't get is enough information to let them violate the intellectual-property rights of the hardware vendors and content creators.
Users will be able to get closed-source drivers where there's enough demand. Nobody has the right to expect anything more than that.
"This means that a report of a compromise of a particular driver or device will cause all support for that device worldwide to be turned off until a fix can be found."
This is a clumsy lie. The only thing that has to be denied in the event of a crack is the ability of the compromised device to violate intellectual-property rights.
The truth hiding behind the lie is that this repudiation process could make enemies if it's invoked clumsily, inappropriately, or too often. This might happen, or it might not. If it does happen, the eventual result will be the relaxation of the content-protection requirements in order to protect the revenue stream.
"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."
Another clumsy lie. Nobody's building graphics cards with super-sensitive voltage comparators on the power-supply lines or bus signals. It's likely there will be software tell-tales. If these are badly implemented or exploited by malware, they'll be removed.
"'Cannot go to market until it works to specification... potentially more respins of hardware' -- ATI."
How is this different than any other generation of hardware? Sheesh.
"Apart from the massive headache that this poses to device manufacturers, it also imposes additional increased costs beyond the ones incurred simply by having to lay out board designs in a suboptimal manner."
Nonsense. This is like the old arguments against clean-burning engines. It turns out it's cheaper and easier in the long run to do it the right way. Plus, signals that can easily be intercepted have to carry encrypted data anyway. The only places that unprotected digital video could be intercepted are inside chips.
"Increased Cost due to Requirement to License Unnecessary Third-party IP"
This section is also nonsense. There are hundreds of chips in the world that contain unlicensed IP-- because the functionality is disabled. At least as a first-order effect, the only chip costs due to IP licensing will be for chips that actually expose the licensed functionality.
"Unnecessary CPU Resource Consumption"
Completely false. The only thing that really matters here is the effort required to decrypt pre-authored content. Apart from a stopgap solution here or there, this will always be done in hardware. Gutmann goes on to admit as much in the very next section, too. Every graphics-chip vendor is putting 100% of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray processing stack into hardware. CPU utilization will go DOWN with these implementations-- almost to zero, in fact-- not up.
Most of this section is just heartburn over the fact that marginal codecs aren't mainstream codecs. Oh, well. Better skill next time.
"Final Thoughts"
Well, that's pretentious. He never STARTED thinking clearly about the issue. It's all just knee-jerk mumbo-jumbo.
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``The worst thing about all of this is that there's no escape. Hardware manufacturers will have to drink the kool-aid...in order to work with Vista: "There is no requirement to sign the [content-protection] license; but without a certificate, no premium content will be passed to the driver". Of course as a device manufacturer you can choose to opt out, if you don't mind your device only ever being able to display low-quality, fuzzy, blurry video and audio when premium content is present, while your competitors don't have this (artificially-created) problem.'
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:05 PM on December 23, 2006