Longhorn To Require Monitor Based DRM?

::shrug:: There isn't a media protection to come out that hasn't been hacked to hell and back. This wont be any different. Afew months after it comes out it will be as inconvenient as a region lock on a DVD. And we all know how well that works. ;)
 
JARofHERB said:
ra-odin, because microsoft has made some stupid choices, and have become so powerhungry, they have brought this "Shitstorm" upon themselves.. Its only right to fight against these draconian practices that has become the common thing of microsoft,,by swiching to another platform completly..They are digging a hole faster than a mole..
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It was a rhetorical question ;)

S1nF1xx said:
DRM is the biggest pile of bullshit out there. But there's no reason for people to get their panties in a bunch and say "OMFG I'm never buying another MS product again!!11!". The OP was horribly vauge. It said nothing about what the feature would be used for. Nor did it say anthing about you having to buy a certain monitor to run Longhorn. Which would kill their sales and wouldn't happen anyway.

And it's not only Windows that has DRM. Apple loves DRM, it's one of the only things keeping them afloat. If you don't like DRM you have to not support it by not purchasing products that use it. No Napster, no iTunes, etc. Vote with your wallet.
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You say its no reason to get your panties in a bunch and never buy another MS product again. And they you say not to buy products that use DRM.

So which is it? Not supporting a COMPANY that promotes DRM is not much different than not supporting a PRODUCT that uses DRM.
 
You know, if Microsoft spent even a fraction of the money that they obviously spend on DRM into making Longhorn secure, then we might have the best OS ever.... [/SARCASM]

Seriously, this is a waste of time, for us and for them. Even if they did that, most of us wouldn't switch to Longhorn -- we would still be using whatever OS we had before the initial launch.
 
to all those people who think that this will somehow force legions of users to not buy longhorn and switch to an alternative, you are sadly mistaken.

the educated users (us) who realize how much of a problem this is only represent a small fraction of the market.. most users (the average users) wont know, and won't care about this when they buy their shiny new dell that comes with a monitor that is supported.

The solution to this problem is to somehow get appropriate laws to be passed that define fair use adequetely enough so that bs like this isnt a problem. However I'm highly skeptical that this can and will happen.

In any case, Microsoft is just a tool in regards to this problem. Many other corporations are part of the problem, and trying to shaft MS only ultimately won't solve this problem at all..

And if it matters, I'm a 90% linux guy myself.

-sp
 
Take me to jail right now. o wait let me burn the dmca first. I buy the stuff why do i have to deal with things like this, what more do you want from me. I'd rather see them put the effort into quality and cheaper components than this, think of how much money they spend protecting their content than providing it at a lower cost.
Its like windows xp activation
i own a ligit copy
i have the disk right here
i still use a corp disk that way i dont have to activate it once a month. fuck
 
if its true, and i fear it could be, this is absolute BS.

the more i read about longhorn, the less i like. i spent $2k(cdn) on a samsung 213t about a half year ago. and i do NOT wanna have to buy a new monitor again for some time.

this is just BS.
 
I am going to present a scenario for everyone.
Longhorn ships April 12, 2006
Hack for this stupid crap is in your downloads folder on April 10, 2006.
Losses Microsoft incurs because the HACK, not the technology to prevent copying is available: $0.

Microsoft will need this DRM crippling hack to push their OS. Because they already stripped the only feature from it that was gonna make me upgrade, WinFS, so now its no diff than 2K/XP, they can shine up a pile of shit, but its still shit, So till they can produce something that doesn't move at the speed of an iceberg with black holes of security, they won't see me purchase an upgrade.

Don't worry either, by 2007, Linux will have finally matured to the point where the average Joe PC User can use it. Someone is going to invent a distro that removes all the /usr /bin and all that "hard to understand structuring" and makes something that shields the user from that, and never really has to have them get involved with it.
They won't eliminate it, they'll just make it so useless to become involved with because RPM installers and the tools for them will dwarf the importance of all that stuff to the average user.
 
I want to say thank you microsoft. Thank you, for forcing me to get off my butt go to Linux. I just hope more of the game makers will follow.
 
microsofts got game developers on a choke chain, directx is far from easly portable to opengl from what i gather
 
"To be fair – it’s not just Microsoft. The next generation of digital content will, by and large, be protected to the display. Recently Toshiba released their HD-DVD specifications and have dictated HDMI/HDCP as a display requirement for playing back high-definition content. Most expect Blu-ray to have similar restrictions."
 
Microsoft Article

New output content protection mechanisms planned for the next version of Microsoft® Windows® codenamed "Longhorn" protect against hardware attacks while playing premium content and complement the protection against software attacks provided by the Protected Environment in Windows Longhorn.
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This makes perfect sense. That way, if you are being attacked, Longhorn will turn off your monitor for you so that you don't have to see all of your files disappearing. Then Microsoft can tell everyone that their OS is hacker proof... it's your monitors that are causing the security breach. :p
 
Looks like I will just be getting another Mac. So far, OSX has never done me wrong.

I really want to get a good PC too. but oh well. Why cant they just make OS's simple like windows 2000 was?
 
I'll be staying with XP until MS forces me to upgrade to LH which I'll move over to OS X and Linux. In the meantime I play on getting a Mac and playing with Linux some more.

This crap is really getting out of hand.
 
I'm sure you will be able to puchase some little daisy chain box from China that will mimick a protected monitor and then send it on to your old monitor. I'm not worried.
 
I never would have thought, but maybe Steve Jobs was right all along.

Mac is the way to go.... Sure they have controlled hardware, but thats not as bad as what MS wants to impliment with their DRM bs and what not
 
If Photoshop and Painter were fully supported for Linux, Windows would be gone in a second.








But I still wouldn't buy a Mac.
-Ed
 
So this is all meant as a means to prevent the pirating of digital content in a digital manner... but I haven't seen any sort devices that let you use DVI/HDMI/VGA as a means for recording. So WTF?
 
Screw Longhorn. People are stilling running Windows 98. Won't hurt me to run XP Pro till something better comes out our Microsoft get's their heads out of their asses. I'm sure we'll see a non-DRM version,
 
Hypothetical…
Imagine, for a moment, that you were Microsoft…

Your customers wanted access to more content of higher quality; purchasing high def copies of a movie over the net for instance, or playback of a HD/BR-DVD. You try and arrange that...

However, you don’t own the media that your customers want access to. What’s more, the people that do control that content won’t allow you to include a player for that content, because they don’t want it pirated.

Do you simply not let your customers play back Hi-Def content? That’d be a bummer… You’d be limited to the same content that other OSes can play back.

So you design a system to keep unauthorized people from viewing content that is restricted. It works fairly well, but because of the nature of the PC, there are always ways around it (like intercepting the content stream in the driver, or the video card output). So the content owner say to you, “that’s not enough, if you want to play our Hi-Def content, you need to protect it”, meaning a protected data pathway all the way from the source (disk or net) to the output (monitor or TV). Means a lot of work, but it’s the only way to give your customers what they are asking for.

</Hypothetical>

Note that none of this changes how normal media plays back; I have a normal monitor without any such media protection features (like 95% of people), and I know this isn’t going to affect me. This won’t affect the dvds and videos I play each day. What it will do is to convince those content owners to allow Longhorn machines to play the new generation of Hi-Def media, and give me the option of playing them at some point down the road. Sure I could stick with XP (or another OS) but all that really does is prevent the option of playing that Hi-Def content, it doesn’t gain me anything.


All of the above was based only on the public document already linked, and the knowledge that MS is in the business of helping it’s customers, not harming them. I have no internal information about the protected video features in Longhorn. As such, the above is my view based only on the available information, as well as other industry news.
 
Empyrean said:
... and if I created my own Hi-Def video, would I be able to view it?
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Hopefully everyone, including me.

If, however, you choose to encrypt your content and require me to pay my hard earned green in order view it, you can bet that I’ll pass. I’m sure that at some point I’ll pay for the right to play a couple of my favorite movies in 1080p, but for pretty much everything else, I’ll elect out.
 
It seems to me that the best solution for all of this is to stick with XP and pirate ALL movie and music content. I have been taking steps for the last few years to ensure that the movie and recording industry don't get ANY of my hard earned $$$. It is crap like this that makes me glad that years ago i was willing to spend 2 weeks downloading a single movie over a dialup connection, rather than fork out $15 for me and my girl to see it in some filthy, stinky theater.

Unfortunately, when the MPAA and RIAA loose tons of money because of stunts like this and copy protected CD's, price fixing, and other stuff like that, they blame it on file sharing and use it as an excuse to make even more restrictions.
 
stonedwaldo420 said:
It seems to me that the best solution for all of this is to stick with XP and pirate ALL movie and music content. I have been taking steps for the last few years to ensure that the movie and recording industry don't get ANY of my hard earned $$$. It is crap like this that makes me glad that years ago i was willing to spend 2 weeks downloading a single movie over a dialup connection, rather than fork out $15 for me and my girl to see it in some filthy, stinky theater.

Unfortunately, when the MPAA and RIAA loose tons of money because of stunts like this and copy protected CD's, price fixing, and other stuff like that, they blame it on file sharing and use it as an excuse to make even more restrictions.
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While I'm all for fighting against companies where it hurts: the wallet, pirating content doesn't make things right. I personally didn't see any movie in theatres for over 2 years because of all the BS the industry made us put up with, and the only reason I saw some recently is because most of them are high quality movies/documentrys that are worth the bills. My feeling is that just as everything else thats been planned for Longhorn, this will get pushed back, be buggy, and will probably only be used by a few people. It will likely end up just as Intel's CPU identifier did: something that really isn't necessary but is there for high-security situations. If it ever indeed does become so mainstream that you require a monitor there is always another open solution (BSD, Linux, OSX will hopefully stay clean too) that is looking out for every person. I'm sure that the EFF is going to throw a shitstorm Microsoft's way and that there will be a fair amount of pressure put on MS and developers. Besides all of the "where are our rights" razz, theres also some more common questions like: where are all the low income families going to come up with the money to buy new secure monitors and systems? By enforcing all of these restrictions developers/MS will only cut away parts of the market, rather than including them. Security should be transparent to the user, and this plan is most definitely not transparent.

As for peoples references to the state of security of the OS itself (and in particular, its holes), if Longhorn is anything like 2003 then I'd be pretty happy with it since my 2003 system was incredibly secure as a workstation and exposed server.
 
hokatichenci said:
If it ever indeed does become so mainstream that you require a monitor there is always another open solution (BSD, Linux, OSX will hopefully stay clean too) that is looking out for every person.
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That’s what I think is often missed….

No computer, no mater what ths OS is, will be able to play Hi-Def encrypted content without the approval of the content owners.

You can switch to another OS to play un-encrypted content, but then again you can still play all that same content on Longhorn without having anything to do with any DRM. So switching to another OS does really change anything, it just deprives the option of using that Hi-Def content, at least this is what I gather from reading the doc.

I’m just trying to provide a little fact check here.
 
You think it will stop there?
NO!!!

The reason this has come abt is one of the techniques used to copy copy-protect DVD's is to play it on yr PC (and thus it goes to the monitor), but intercept the datastream ( mplayer /mnt/dvd /bin/video > some_file)

So if they will have a DRM-compliant Monitor, there has to have a DRM compliant Video card!!!


So now they have the technology coded in, what is to stop them with subsequent survace packs adding to the list?

A sertain DVD-burner that can copy DVD's now wont work on your computer.
Eqaully (tin-hat on) making ppl upgrade their hardware but via a patch certain hardware now deemed DRM-vulnerable.


ppl will buy Longhorn cause normal Joe dont know shite and new PC's would be shipped with it. Only plus note is this will be a major violation of EU rules and IF MS tried to sell a copy of Longhorn like that they will be shot down.
 
The more I hear about longhorn the less I like it.

Regardless, there will always be decryption software.
 
According to the article it will be up to the content providers to decide what level of DRM protection their content will receive. If a small percentage of users have unsecure displays then content providers will not be able to restrict viewing reasonably speaking. They may want to, but if 98% of people have insecure monitors they couldn't reasonable restrict that.

Between that and DvdJon.. I'm not too worried about this.
 
Heck, with all the crap that comes out of hollywood then maybe along with Linux/BSD we should use "open source" entertainment. :rolleyes:
 
The DRM they're speaking of on the monitor side of things is HDCP. The PVP-OPM stuff in Longhorn is designed to work with HDCP hardware. As long as the monitor has HDCP-protected digital inputs(like DVI-HDCP and HDMI), you'll be able to view things like Blue-Ray/HD-DVD and other protected content in all its glory. Most HDTV's being sold today have at least one of these protected digital inputs. Of course, most desktop monitors being sold today do not have HDCP, and most likely will have limited ability to display next-gen content on them.

If anyone is interested in reading the details of this DRM scheme, read this document from M$'s website. Here's a few kibbles of info inside:
To work with PVP-OPM, a graphics card manufacturer must provide for the following:

• Output Protection Management capability on all board outputs—at a minimum, provide the ability to turn off every output.

• Device driver capability to report reliably about the board outputs and their settings.

• HDCP protection for DVI and HDMI outputs and Macrovision and CGMS-A protection on analog TV-out outputs. Otherwise, outputs will be turned off by the PVP-OPM software.

• The ability to pass video through a constrictor—that is, a downscaler followed by an upscaler—so that the information content of premium video can be reduced when an unprotected output such as analog VGA is present.
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DVI (Digital)
DVI is a high-speed, high-quality, digital pixel interface, developed by the PC industry. It is used in place of analog VGA to connect to PC monitors. It can provide very high resolutions by paralleling separate channels.

Intel’s HDCP protection is available for DVI, but is not always implemented by hardware manufacturers. HDCP is approved by the content industry, so DVI with HDCP is a great output solution for protected content.

In contrast, DVI without HDCP is definitely not liked by content owners, because it provides a pristine digital interface that can be captured cleanly. When playing premium content such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD, PVP-OPM will be required to turn off or constrict the quality of unprotected DVI. As a result, a regular DVI monitor will either get slightly fuzzy or go black, with a polite message explaining that it doesn’t meet security requirements.

HDMI (Digital)
For video, HDMI is approximately the same as DVI, so when HDCP is used it will be great for premium content. HDMI is the CE industry-led standard, built on DVI electricals. It includes digital audio multiplexed into the video blanking intervals. One draw back is that its video resolution is a little limited, so it is not suitable for some of the ultra high-resolution displays starting to appear in the PC industry

VGA (Analog)
Analog VGA is the traditional way to connect a PC to a monitor, and consists of three analog RGB signals. There is no protection scheme available for analog VGA, and it is a high-resolution signal, so some content owners have significant concerns.

There have been some successes in getting content owners to make some allowances for this ubiquitous interface. Consumers would certainly be unhappy if it were immediately outlawed; so instead, many content owners are requiring that its resolution be constricted when certain types of premium content are being played. Eventually they may require that analog VGA outputs be turned off completely; but for the moment, it is possible to provide the necessary level of protection by constricting the information content.
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Monitors without HDCP will work fine with Longhorn, you'll be able to do the same stuff you currently do. Where you'll potentially run into problems is if you try to try to display next-gen content such as HD-DVD/Blue-Ray, ect. Everyday computing will be otherwise unaffected. This type of developement on the desktop has been written on the wall for a while, especially since the announcement that DVI-HDCP and HDMI transmitters were being manufactured for future video cards.

In the big picture of things, this isn't just M$ pushing this. Its PC hardware makers(Intel, ect.) and Hollywood along with M$ in some type of unholy trinity.....(if anyone is driving this, its Hollywood) If you think Apple products will avoid this type of thing, you are mistaken....
 
Though, is there anyone here who doesn't think it will be broken fairly quickly? any by broken, I mean hacked.
 
dekard said:
Though, is there anyone here who doesn't think it will be broken fairly quickly? any by broken, I mean hacked.
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How? Do you even know how HDCP works? :rolleyes:
 
You guys should stop hating on MS and hate on the RIAA/MPAA . As stated, all platforms will be incorporating DRM if they keep shoving it down everyone's throats.
 
CrimandEvil said:
How? Do you even know how HDCP works? :rolleyes:
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No, and I don't understand the technicalities of how dvd encryption works either. My point is that humans have not yet distributed encryption at a consumer level that can't be broken. There's no question its possible, just that no one wants the overhead of doing it. Especially in the case of such a large stream of data like HD video.

Again, its only a matter of time before this is cracked and becomes a non-issue.

Having said that, what a PITA!
 
Ill admit to not reading the full thread, but DVI has had drm like things in it for a good while, as does hdmi, and this will only be for premium content, just as the ps3 xbox 360 will only output the superduper high res stuff down a hdmi cable.
 
BuGaLoU said:
You guys should stop hating on MS and hate on the RIAA/MPAA . As stated, all platforms will be incorporating DRM if they keep shoving it down everyone's throats.
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What, you think that we don't have the right to be angry because they're being complete tools?

The sole responsibility of a corporation is to its shareholders. Now, given that most of us are probably not shareholders, and that those of us who are have a negligible voice, the only way to stop this is to cut into the profits of everyone we can that is involved. Now, that said, how likely is it that the unwashed masses will willingly give up their corporate-fed crack-media?

Therefore, given that uncertainty, I think that those of us who know about what is taking place must compensate. Cut into the profits.

But don't cut into the profits by silently "pirating" everything. That's already going on, and they don't exactly give a damn, because the system of "trust" they are rolling out will end that (theoretically). Cut into their profits by leaving their platform (by "platform," I mean the combined interdependency of hardware, software, and data/media). Support anyone who is not becoming an accomplice by joining their platform. This will have the effect of amplifying the punishment handed out to those who comply and are simply following the money trail (like Microsoft, but also all others owing fealty to them) to a level they will certainly notice.

Do not look at this as trying to punish Microsoft because they are Microsoft; instead view this as a corrective action taken to shape their behavior back toward the needs of their customers.
 
BuGaLoU said:
You guys should stop hating on MS and hate on the RIAA/MPAA . As stated, all platforms will be incorporating DRM if they keep shoving it down everyone's throats.
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i just hate them all equally... :p
 
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