UNINNOVATE / Engineering At Its Finest

Peter Gutmann, a computer scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, recently posted a paper online that chronicled the costs of new DRM technologies in Windows Vista, “in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost.” As an overall message, Gutmann declared that “The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.”

The paper received a massive response online from tech communities like slashdot. The response was so great that Dave Marsh, a Lead Program Manager responsible for Windows’ handling of video crafted an official response from Microsoft. The overall message of the response was:

• Yes, DRM in Windows Vista has costs and complications.
  
• However, Microsoft must cripple Vista to deliver HD-DVD and Blueray playback to consumers because of rules set out by the entertainment industry.
• And don’t get mad at Microsoft. They are just doing the same things that every other computer electronics device has to do for Blueray and HD-DVD support.
  

But the important distinction is that Microsoft’s software runs the majority of general use computers on this planet, while consumer electronics companies make stand-alone movie players that are going the way of the dinosaurs. Microsoft has a much higher responsibility because the devices they run are so much more important. In other words, Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, is allowing the movie industry to design subsystems of the most widely-used software on the planet in order to deliver support for what Bill Gates himself has called “the last generation of physical media”.

Microsoft’s helplessness to direct the industry is clearly noticeable in Dave Marsh’s opening comments:

“Windows Vista includes content protection infrastructure specifically designed to help ensure that protected commercial audiovisual content, such as newly released HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs, can be enjoyed on Windows Vista PCs. In many cases this content has policies associated with its use that must be enforced by playback devices. The policies associated with such content are applicable to all types of devices including Windows Vista PCs, computers running non-Windows operating systems, and standalone consumer electronics devices such as DVD players. If the policies required protections that Windows Vista couldn’t support, then the content would not be able to play at all on Windows Vista PCs. Clearly that isn’t a good scenario for consumers who are looking to enjoy great next generation content experiences on their PCs.”

Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions

Why is Microsoft accepting ultimatums from the movie industry? Sony was in the same position in the late 70’s and early 80’s when the movie industry famously tried to kill the VCR. Sony stood up and faced possible legal battles in order to deliver a product that people wanted to buy. If Sony had backed down, HD-DVD and Blueray would not even exist. But now in a nearly identical situation 30 years later, the newer and less self-confident Microsoft is unwilling to see any option but take orders from the Movie industry.

This exact scenario was covered in a famous talk given by Cory Doctorow three years ago to Microsoft Research:

Sony didn’t make a Betamax that only played the movies that
Hollywood was willing to permit — Hollywood asked them to do it,
they proposed an early, analog broadcast flag that VCRs could
hunt for and respond to by disabling recording. Sony ignored them
and made the product they thought their customers wanted.

I’m a Microsoft customer. Like millions of other Microsoft
customers, I want a player that plays anything I throw at it, and
I think that you are just the company to give it to me.

Yes, this would violate copyright law as it stands, but Microsoft
has been making tools of piracy that change copyright law for
decades now. Outlook, Exchange and MSN are tools that abet
widescale digital infringement.

More significantly, IIS and your caching proxies all make and
serve copies of documents without their authors’ consent,
something that, if it is legal today, is only legal because
companies like Microsoft went ahead and did it and dared
lawmakers to prosecute.

Microsoft stood up for its customers and for progress, and won so
decisively that most people never even realized that there was a
fight.

Do it again! This is a company that looks the world’s roughest,
toughest anti-trust regulators in the eye and laughs. Compared to
anti-trust people, copyright lawmakers are pantywaists. You can
take them with your arm behind your back.

Cory Doctorow’s Talk to Microsoft Research, June 17, 2004

Unfortunately, the Microsoft of today seems to share more in common with the corporate IBM of the 1980’s than the adventurous Microsoft of the 1980’s. Instead of leading, they have decided to appease.