

Nasty Details of Vista DRM - nickb
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=390286&cid=21713610

======
utnick
That post has zero real world examples of things that Vista DRM has prevented
him from doing.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you, if you offer him immunity from the
lawsuits. Can you do that?

Remember that the movie studios maintain that ripping _your own_ HD-DVDs to
your hard drive is infringement. In the USA, describing that process to
someone else is a potential violation of the DMCA. You're helping them break a
protection mechanism, don'tcha know.

You can, of course, fight this stupid doctrine if you have lawyers. Software
companies, universities, and some big magazines have lawyers, but random
posters to Slashdot do not -- they prefer to spend their money on other
things. So I wouldn't be too quick to accuse them of ignorance. The vagueness
is often deliberate.

Do you hate that? So do I. I really hate living in a world in which vitally
important information about the functionality and security of our operating
systems is spread by samizdat -- traveling in the form of dark rumors posted
semi-anonymously on foreign-hosted IRC chats by guys with names like
"3l1m1n4t0r". Thank god for the occasional foreign security researcher
(warning: PDF link to Peter Gutmann's talk):

<http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/vista.pdf>

(Note that these slides contain some references to the kind of "real-world"
examples you're looking for... e.g. folks who can't play back their own home
movies. Feel free to follow these up.)

But even professional security guys don't seem to talk openly about what they
know. They get a lot of their information via quiet chats with each other,
because publication is risky. Meanwhile, Microsoft can fill the airwaves with
all the propaganda they want, because they occupy the legal high ground.

I wouldn't be surprised if, legally speaking, it's safer to upload footage of
yourself having sex than it is to upload an honest verbal description of how
you got the movies onto your Apple TV. God help us.

