Microsoft is going to control the market
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. They may even require you to
upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And
these features won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working
against you. They're digital
rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest
of the
entertainment industry.
And you don't get to refuse them.
The details are pretty geeky, but basically Microsoft has reworked
a lot of the core operating system to add copy protection
technology for new media formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray disks.
Certain high-quality output paths -- audio and video -- are
reserved for protected peripheral devices. Sometimes output quality
is artificially degraded; sometimes output is prevented entirely.
And Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to
figure out if you're doing something that it thinks you shouldn't.
If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts
just the video subsystem. We still don't know the exact details of
all this, and how far-reaching it is, but it doesn't look
good.
Microsoft put all those functionality-crippling features into Vista
because it wants to own the entertainment industry. This isn't how
Microsoft spins it, of course. It maintains that it has no choice,
that it's Hollywood that is demanding DRM in Windows in order to
allow "premium content"--meaning, new movies that are still earning
revenue--onto your computer. If Microsoft didn't play along, it'd
be relegated to second-class status as Hollywood pulled its support
for the platform.
It's all complete nonsense. Microsoft could have easily told the
entertainment industry that it was not going to deliberately
cripple its operating system, take it or leave it. With 95% of the
operating system market, where else would Hollywood go? Sure, Big
Media has been pushing DRM, but recently some -- Sony after
their 2005 debacle and now EMI
Group -- are having second thoughts.
What the entertainment companies are finally realizing is that DRM
doesn't work, and just annoys their customers. Like every other DRM
system ever invented, Microsoft's won't keep the professional
pirates from making copies of whatever they want. The DRM security in Vista was
broken the day it was released. Sure, Microsoft will patch it,
but the patched system will get broken as well. It's an arms race,
and the defenders can't possibly win.
I believe that Microsoft knows this and also knows that it doesn't
matter. This isn't about stopping pirates and the small percentage
of people who download free movies from the Internet. This isn't
even about Microsoft satisfying its Hollywood customers at the
expense of those of us paying for the privilege of using Vista.
This is about the overwhelming majority of honest users and who
owns the distribution channels to them. And while it may have
started as a partnership, in the end Microsoft is going to end up
locking the movie companies into selling content in its proprietary
formats.
We saw this trick before; Apple pulled it on the recording
industry. First iTunes worked in partnership with the major record
labels to distribute content, but soon Warner Music's CEO Edgar
Bronfman Jr. found that he wasn't able to dictate a pricing model
to Steve Jobs. The same thing will happen here; after Vista is
firmly entrenched in the marketplace, Sony's Howard Stringer won't
be able to dictate pricing or terms to Bill Gates. This is a war
for 21st-century movie distribution and, when the dust settles,
Hollywood won't know what hit them.
To be fair, just last week Steve Jobs publicly came out against DRM for
music. It's a reasonable business position, now that Apple
controls the
online music distribution market. But Jobs never mentioned movies,
and he is the largest single shareholder in Disney. Talk is cheap.
The real question is would he actually allow iTunes Music Store
purchases to play on Microsoft or Sony players, or is this just a
clever way of deflecting blame to the--already hated--music
labels.
Microsoft is reaching for a much bigger prize than Apple: not just
Hollywood, but also peripheral hardware vendors. Vista's DRM will
require driver developers to comply with all kinds of rules and be
certified; otherwise, they won't work. And Microsoft talks about
expanding this to independent software vendors as well. It's
another war for control of the computer market.
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.
I don't see the market righting this wrong, because Microsoft's
monopoly
position gives it much more power than we consumers can hope to
have. It might not be as obvious as Microsoft using its operating
system monopoly to kill Netscape and own the browser market, but it's really
no different. Microsoft's entertainment market grab might further
entrench its monopoly position, but it will cause serious damage to
both the computer and entertainment industries. DRM is bad, both
for consumers and for the entertainment industry: something the
entertainment industry is just starting to realize, but Microsoft
is still fighting. Some researchers think that this is the final
straw that will drive Windows users to the competition, but I think
the courts are necessary. In the meantime, the only advice I can
offer you is to not upgrade to Vista. It will be hard. Microsoft's
bundling deals with computer manufacturers mean that it will be
increasingly hard not to get the new operating system with new
computers. And Microsoft has some pretty deep pockets and can wait
us all out if it wants to. Yes, some people will shift to Macintosh
and some fewer number to Linux, but most of us are stuck on
Windows. Still, if enough customers say no to Vista, the company
might actually listen.
Sources:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37091
http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/2007/01/23/microsoft-on-content-protection-in-vista/
http://www.schneier.com/essay-094.html
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Now you know why Vista drivers are so scarce? Yeah... this is the
reason. Open source still rules. 
