DRM Death Sentence

Peter Gutmann, security and encryption researcher at Auckland University has written an analysis of Vista which addresses the cost of the Digital Rights Management technology Microsoft have incorporated into the new Vista operating system. In Gutmann's estimation "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history." He continues to describe the deliberate degradation of capabilities users will experience when DRM protected content arrives on your computer.

One of the issues that direcly affects open source is the obligation on hardware manufacturers to not release specifications for their hardware. This will make life difficult for open source operating system developers. The problems impact more than open source developers however. If you purchase a device, and the driver is found to leak data that should be protected, Microsoft will be able to invalidate the driver, thus turning your hardware into so much junk. You will have to wait for the maker to release an updated driver. If its hardware older than four years the chances are you they won't ever release one, and so you will have a non functioning machine. Gutmann suggests that the "... implications of an external agent being empowered to turn off your IT infrastructure in response to a content leak discovered in some chipset that you coincidentally happen to be using is a serious concern for potential Vista users."

Do Microsoft really believe that these technical limiations will stop copyright infringement? The recently tabled copyright ammendement bill from Judith Tizard would tend to suggest that the technical aspect will be backed up with a legal framework which will protect large international corporate content providers at the expense of the citizens of New Zealand. It would seem that the provisions in the ammendment bill would be similar to the US DMCA which has been misued by large corporates in the US to protect their monopolies.

Gutmann says that "The only reason I can imagine why Microsoft would put its programmers, device vendors, third-party developers, and ultimately its customers, through this much pain is because once this copyprotection is entrenched, Microsoft will completely own the distribution channel." Are New Zealanders prepared to accept laws which serve only to entrench the large corporate monopolies in the world?