Bill Gates has made it abundantly clear that he believes that support for DRM is very important. It's actually a part of their Trustworthy Computing initiative. Microsoft management has spoken about how DRM should be a good experience for the consumer, and that it is necessary in order to entice content owners to make their content available. Microsoft wants to produce the primary platform for content distribution, and would love to provide the platform that everyone turns to for content delivery in the home.
So what is Microsoft doing about DRM and content protection in the next version of the Windows OS - Vista? According to
DRM Blog, there is quite a bit of DRM support built into Vista through what Microsoft calls "Output Protection Management (OPM)". This is actually a category of technologies which includes:
* PVP – Protected Video Path
* PAP – Protected Audio Path
* PVP-UAB – PVP User-Accessible Bus
* SAP – Secure Audio Path
* PUMA – Protected User Mode Audio
According to DRM Blog, "If you want your new Vista PC to partake in 'premium content' then you must have a video card and driver combination that is PVP-OPM and PVP-UAB certified. At the 2005 WinHCE Microsoft handed out an interesting document that describes OPM in all its incarnations and what a video card vendor must do to be certified.
To get a certificate, a graphics card or GPU manufacturer will first have to sign a legal document (read contract) that specifies that the hardware or driver in question meets all of the specifications laid out in the 'Compliance Rules' document... and that certification can only be given to manufacturers who meet ['Content Industry Agreement'] rules."
Microsoft goes so far as to hold graphics chip manufacturers responsible for not selling chips to hackers, and encourages them to do encryption inside the chip.
The conclusion? In response to Microsoft's Trusted Computing intiative and all the DRM implmentations that it includes, DRM Blog says that "The only trust taking place here is between very large companies that want to sell you content, hardware, and software that violates your privacy, artificially inflates prices, and makes it illegal for you to tinker with." Some pretty strong words!
Contrary to popular belief, I would say that this is guaranteed to be an enabling technology. Yes, really. It's just that I'm not yet sure if Vista is enabling a pleasant multimedia experience for consumers, or a much more rapid and successful growthline for Linux as an alternative consumer OS. Time will tell.
Read the full article at
Output Content Protection (DRM) and Windows Vista.