The FUD over Vista DRM just won’t die
Over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, in between two-hour daily workouts with a snow shovel, I read a remarkable paper called A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. And I wasn’t the only one. According to Technorati, the paper has so far been linked by more than 250 blogs, and Google News finds more than 100 citations to the paper in mainstream online publications.
Too bad it’s just so wrong about so many things.
In fact, I read the whole paper – all 10,224 words of it - seven times that week, and lost count of the number of exaggerations, half-truths, unsupported statements, and flat-out errors in it. It’s a big steaming pile of FUD, with just enough truth sprinkled on top to make it seem like there’s some substance underneath it.
So why has it gotten so much circulation? Simple. Author Peter Gutmann managed to push not one but two hot buttons simultaneously, mixing an extreme anti-Microsoft rant with an extreme anti-DRM rant. It doesn’t hurt that Gutmann, an expert in cryptography who works in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand (his home page lists his title as Professional Paranoid), has a razor-sharp wit and a flair for incendiary language.
Gutmann’s thesis is simple: It starts with the fact that Windows Vista contains a new set of operating system components designed to handle encrypted “premium content,” such as the output of a Blu-Ray or HD DVD drive or a CableCARD tuner. He then goes on to construct theoretical arguments based on information from anonymous sources and a few preliminary papers at Microsoft technical conferences for hardware developers.
He concluded:
Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost.
I started investigating Gutmann’s claims last January but gave up on the idea of publishing a rebuttal because I didn’t have the equipment to test his theories. Well, today I do, and I can say categorically that just about every alarmist conclusion in that paper is wrong.
The subject came up again after Gutmann was invited to deliver remarks at the Usenix Security Conference last week. When I read news accounts of his talk, I felt like I had landed in the Twilight Zone, because Gutmann isn’t describing the Windows Vista I use to watch high-definition broadcasts and listen to music. In fact, in his papers and his talks he keeps telling me that I can’t possible be doing all the things I do with Vista every day, which is confusing the hell out of me. That’s why I prepared five questions for Peter Gutmann, which I’ve posted at ZDNet:
Busting the FUD about Vista’s DRM
I’m also planning to put together a FAQ on the subject. So, if you’ve got questions about Vista, video, and DRM (especially questions based on the assertions in Gutmann’s paper), post them in the comments here.
23 Responses to The FUD over Vista DRM just won’t die
Ok, my main Vista beef is as follows.
I have a core 2 duo, 2GHz, 2 GB ram and plenty of space with a nice nVidia card to run my games. Laptop, set up by dell, aero off, none of my little user tweeks added … yet. Basically, your out of the box experience, right? Ok, tell me, why does the system monitor show 15% proc usage and 1GB RAM usage when I’m idling? And don’t try to tell me that is a norm, XP idled much lower on a 1.7 gh pentium m with a gig of ram and LOADS of lil extras running in the background. Around 2% and half gig usage.
No, that’s not the norm. So why don’t you tell us what’s using the RAM? You have Taskman, Perfmon, etc.
I really never ran into drm before.Maybe just one time or 2 times.
And i really dont know that reason too.
I had some music files,in .mp3 which i wanted to use in my pocketpc,and becouse of size,i converted them into .wma.some of my files refused to play becouse of drm.I really dont know why some file them-like 2 or 3-,but maybe i did something wrong or….
But about windows vista,i purchased a laptop with vista,and just after a week i felt like downgrading into xp.
Why?well,simply lots of video driver crashes(with my 6600 nvidia).Cpu usage was high,and most important of them all,none of my applications worked ok on vista.
I am a civil engineer,i use ansys,etabs,sap,autocad(these are names of programs i use)and all of them had issues with vista.(maybe their developers fault,but why should i care,they dont work!)
Some of them failed at startup,some of them worked but with minor/major problems.
Had lots of issues making my home network work.Lots of issues with new internet explorer.
UAC was driving me crazy,and i couldnt turn it off.(i didnt know how,maybe i was lazy searching internet,or maybe it doesnt turn off,dont know!)
So i thought what are the benefits of vista?why should i even upgrade?i have no problems using xp for gaming,bussines,my work, anything.
And if i feel like using these aero and other stuff new in vista,i buy a mac,or ubuntu + xgl or compiz(these even have very cuter animation/effects),or simply install vistainspirant.
My experience was about 5 month ago,never tried it again,with updates,but why bother?!
And believe me,still i see lots of new peaple buying laptops with preinstalled vistas,they like it for first two weeks,and almost all of them install xp!
the reason i hear is application compatibility!