PEGRITZ(.com)!

Protect Media: Avoid "Protected" Media

January 19th, 2007

A few weeks ago, my boy Jeremy sent me a link to this thought-provoking article concerning the “cost” of the content protection schemes written into the core of the forthcoming Windows Vista operating system. Don’t let the title fool you, though: this is not an economic analysis at heart, but an exposé on the various DRM-supporting components written into the very core of the OS itself. The article examines the various ways in which Vista is designed to manage “premium content”–that is, content such as high-definition video and audio “protected” by various DRM schemes–and the many ways in which the default premium-content management routines in the system itself not only put a greater strain on a computer’s CPU but also serve to drastically limit a user’s ability to enjoy media on his/her system without having to shell out extra cash for all manner of new hardware specifically designed to interact with the content-protection stuff in the OS.

What does that mean in layman’s terms? Witness:

Windows Vista is being touted as the OS of choice for next-generation media. It features built-in support for HD-DVD content (if you have an HD-DVD drive to read it, of course), for example. So let’s say you’ve purchased an HD-DVD edition of Ghostbusters–the greatest film ever made–and want to watch it on your computer. You just got your computer in Summer of 2007, well before Vista came out, and because you are quite the mediaphile (like myself) who listens to lots of music and watches movies on your computer, you invested in a beautiful high-quality Samsung widescreen LCD monitor, a SoundBlaster X-FI soundcard, and a decent set of 5.1 surround speakers to go with ‘em. Then you upgraded to Vista, bought an HD-DVD drive to replace your box’s plain ol’ DVD drive, and now you want to watch your high-def version of Ghostbusters on your computer.

Wait a sec….Why is the picture quality so fuzzy? And why does the audio sound like crap? This is an HD-DVD, for christ’s sake, not a twenty-year-old VHS tape that has been played and rewound about sixty thousand times! So…what’s going on here?

Well, it’s Windows Vista’s entrenched “premium content” protection kicking in. Read the above-linked article if you want the specifics, but here’s the gist of the matter: Vista’s content-protection scheme is designed to interact with hardware elements, such that if one attempts to play protected high-def content on a monitor that is not equipped with the hardware specs to protect the encrypted video channel, then Windows Vista will “constrict” the quality of the media. In order to properly enjoy “premium content” on your computer, you’ll need to get a new monitor with the appropriate protection hardware to sync with Vista’s built-in protection, a new set of speakers that have controlled hardware specs as well, and so forth.

This is, of course, the logical next step in the teeter-tottering edifice of Digital Restrictions Management. In order to prevent “piracy”, Microsoft has given in to Big Media and not only laced its next-generation OS with tons of content protection bloat but also established a software standard that will require hardware manufacturers to include the necessary hardware-based protection elements in order for their products to be properly considered “Vista-capable”. Will hardware manufacturers actually do this? Of course they will. Regardless of the incessant whining of Linux and Mac zealots the world over, the world of home computing is completely dominated by Microsoft. As soon as Vista is officially released on January 30th, 2007, virtually every desktop and notebook computer sold by Dell, HP, and so forth in common retail or direct-sale outlets will all have Windows Vista pre-installed…just as virtually every computer sold today has Windows XP on it. If Creative wants to continue selling soundcards for Windows machines, for example, it would be economic suicide for them not to provide their hardware with the proper measures to interact with a ubiquitous OS.

Sounds scary, doesn’t it? Bill Gates can lament as much as he likes about how the current state of DRM “causes too much pain for legitimate buyers”…but the truth of the matter is: Microsoft has built Windows Vista to satisfy Big Media, which continues to believe that complex and annoying content-protection schemes are The Way To Go despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Does this make Microsoft the Bad Guy here? Not at all. Microsoft is a corporation, and its goal is to make money. As such, Microsoft is inherently conservative in its dealings with other corporations and corporate organizations–to incur the wrath of the RIAA, for instance, would substantially cut into Microsoft’s profit margins. So, they give Big Media just what it wants and sews DRM inextricably into the seams of its new operating system.

Sounds scary, doesn’t it? You’ll have to go and buy a whole new monitor and speakers and everything just to play a damned HD-DVD on your computer, won’t you? Microsoft and its friends in Big Media will completely control your computer, won’t they? Every piece of hardware you buy from Vista’s launch onward will have to be equipped to play nice with the OS’s content-protection schemes in order to properly display stuff and the Digital Rights of the entire world will be Managed through a well-locked-down delivery stream. Right?

Wrong.

This only matters if you buy protected media which requires content-protection to kick in. If you’re playing, say, a DRM-free unprotected mp3, none of those quality restrictions come into play. They may very well still be running in the background, eating up resources on your Vista machine for no good reason–but that’s a whoooooooooole different argument, there.

So how many times do I have to say it? If you buy “protected” media, you are an idiot. Period. When you buy protected media, you are supporting the industry whose grubby fingers are even beginning to intrude upon the operating systems you run on your computer.

My friend and colleague aRvin Clay, in a recent discussion concerning just this subject, noted: “So, Pegritz, you’re never going to buy another DVD?” Yes, all DVDs are protected…but that content-protection scheme was broken years ago: one need only take a minute or two with Google to find all manner of software, of varying levels of legality, that will disable DVD protection (as well as zone restrictions and many other ridiculous arbitrary market-protection locks) for any DVD played on a computer. It’s trivial to install one of these programs and then enjoy the freedom to back up your DVDs to Div-X files or other compressed lossy formats to safeguard your investment. Within the last few weeks, even HD-DVD’s much-vaunted AACS copy-protection encryption has been cracked (well, more or less) as well.

In the future, more and more hardware is going to be built to Vista specifications to take advantage of Big Media’s frantic attempts to lock down content with all manner of ridiculous protections. My response to this is simple: So what? For every hardware-based encryption system, there will be a software-based workaround. Vista can waste thousands of processor cycles locking down HD-DVD playback to “acceptably”-protected devices…but does anyone really think that this system won’t be cracked wide open within a year?

There is, however, a simple way to avoid all this hacking/cracking BS, which may be a little too sophisticated for Average Joe home computer uses to bother with. Don’t buy protected media. Tell the iTunes Music Store, Napster, any and all online music stores that chain up your purchases in DRM to go eff themselves. Shop at eMusic or any of a thousand other DRM-free online music e-tailers. And if you buy DVDs and watch them on your computer, invest a few bucks in a copy of AnyDVD to simply circumvent copy-protection. No doubt there will be a Vista version soon enough, and probably another for HD-DVDs as well.

So don’t be afraid to upgrade to Vista because of all its entrenched DRM. Yes, it’s going to eat up more processor functionality than it should–but that’s a whoooooooooooole ‘nother argument in itself…and I doubt anyone with a decently-powerful computer will notice much of a resource slowdown. Just never, ever give it protected media to slaver over, or the hidden ghost of the MPAA and RIAA living deep within Vista’s guts will rise from its tomb and haunt you!

Of course…you could also just give Vista a miss and stick with WinXP, or give up on MS entirely and switch to a Linux distro. Those are valid options. WinXP is a perfectly good operating system, as is Linux…but, no matter what the good folks at Ubuntu say, Linux is not a general-use desktop OS. Still, it is free!

UPDATE: I’ve recently come upon an extremely informative article, on the Windows Vista Team Blog, written by Nick White, one of the project managers for the division responsible for coding the above copy-protection functionality into Windows Vista. One of the things White notes very clearly is that:

Windows Vista’s content protection mechanisms are only used when required by the policy associated with the content being played. For Windows Vista experiences, if the content does not require a particular protection, then that protection mechanism is not used.

Again, simply avoiding protected media will make this functionality irrelevant. However, when asked whether all of this built-in DRM is going to have an impact on a CPU’s performance by taking up processor cycles that could be better utilized elsewhere, White answers:

Yes. However, the use of additional CPU cycles is inevitable, as the PC provides consumers with additional functionality. Windows Vista’s content protection features were developed to carefully balance the need to provide robust protection from commercial content while still enabling great new experiences such as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray playback.

Again, the resource cost of DRM is a completely different matter than that concerned in this article–but I think it fairly safe to make the assumption that the DRM infrastructure will run with a very small footprint as a background process until it is evoked by, say, plopping an HD-DVD in your drive. It may very well be completely unnoticeable on all but the oldest, most resource-strapped machines (which may not even be able to run the core components of Vista in the first place) in the absence of protected media.

Ohyeah, and Engadget today reported that, apparently, the Blu-Ray version of AACS encryption