Last weekend I found myself in a discussion about Microsoft and DRM technology at general. Because this is a polarized topic, I thought it would be good to know a bit more background about Microsoft, Windows and Digital Rights Management.
First of all, I am not a friend of such technology. I like to hear my music and to watch my movies with all my capable devices – whether they DRM or not. But I understand that content providers have the legitimate interest of securing their work and want to control what can be done with it.
Even if someone thinks about this different – from a customer’s perspective I am not forced to buy DRM protected content at all. I can decide to ignore protected content at all and go to alternative media formats.
Back to DRM, I was wondering that even Microsoft included Secure Audio Path (SAP) capability within Windows Millennium Edition. Because such technologies need time do be adopted by IT industry, this is nothing that can be dropped into marked by night.
Since Windows ME some time has passed and todays evolution Windows Vista includes latest DRM technology. And even if sites like this one here paint the devil on the wall when they write that all drivers in 64bit Vista has to be signed by Microsoft.
This is not a new feature to Vista at all. 64bit Windows XP only accepts signed drivers as well as this is primarily a security feature because it makes sure, that no malware can install a hidden driver to your system.
Back to DRM, there is one thing that can’t be denied: because of all the security boundaries and checks there is a lot of overhead that costs valuable CPU time and resources. In a perfect world where I have an original content media that is played with a DRM capable system, it doesn’t matter if CPU load is on 30 or 60 percent.
I will continue to follow the discussion about DRM from a distant position. On one hand I am a customer that I enjoy watching good movies or listen to high quality audio. On the other hand I am willing to understand the afford to protect my operating system against threads (signed drivers) and to protect the content I am viewing against copy theft.
From a customer’s perspective I believe that DRM doesn’t deserve a future. Following the latest happenings around Apple’s Itunes store, DRM free music is rising.
It seems to me, that content industry has listen to its customers for the first time (ever?)…
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