[BadVista Advocate] [BadVista Advocacy] Vista Team blog.

[John Sullivan]

"Jacob Maynard" <indymaynard at maynard.homelinux.com> writes:

> I found this link while wiki-ing something else. While the article is very
> vague about some of the stuff, one thing that I noticed is that it
> mentions that certain outputs can be disabled for audio and video streams.
> It's kind of interesting to read it. While they claim that Vista doesn't
> restrict any of this stuff and it is all the recording industry's fault,
> it is up to them not to enforce the downgrade in playback quality. So the
> truth is that it is their fault.
>
> http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/20/windows-vista-content-protection-twenty-questions-and-answers.aspx

I've been wanting to write something about this (which someone else could do
and we would publish). How many different ways can you say, "it's not our
fault?"

This ignores the massive lock-in benefit that Microsoft gets when they set the
standard for these restrictions. Media companies have to make things that work
with Microsoft's platform in order to implement the restrictions. The flip side
of this is that the consumer then has to have Microsoft products in order to
play back the media. MS is being very disingenuous---the benefit to them is
substantial.

-- 
John Sullivan
Campaigns Manager            | Phone: (617)542-5942 x23 | http://badvista.org
51 Franklin Street, 5th Fl.  | Fax:   (617)542-2652     | http://www.gnu.org
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"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...It's all complete nonsense."
    --Bruce Schneier, "DRM in Windows Vista"