In an article in the excellent Vista Team Blog, Nick White interviews Dave Marsh, a lead PM for video handling on Vista about the concerns of consumers on Vista's DRM.
Marsh's answers to Nick's questions are illuminating as to the lengths Microsoft has gone as a company to appease content producers/providers while shirking its fiduciary duty to buyers of Windows.
Forgive me, but WIIFM?
The answers by Marsh just reek of the Costco scenario: all our customers must be thieves so we have to re-check their trolleys at the exit.
With all the visible, and not so visible benefits in Vista, all this talk about DRM and DRM benefitting consumers is not just utter nonsense, but is on track to defeat the humongous amount of benefits Vista delivers to users.
For example, as it stands right now, I can take HD content freely broadcast over the airwaves and record it to any medium and media I want. However, I will not be able to do so with Vista.
In what way does this constitute an upgrade?
How is Vista, and by proxy, Microsoft, able to arbitrate between our congressionally mandated and constitutional rights, and the reduction/violations of said rights by content providers?
Why doesn't Microsoft go to the courts in order to get a directed verdict on behalf of consumers with regards to content?
Anybody with the right tools, and the time, can create a shim to bypass the controls in cable- and sat provider-supplied boxes in order to retain control over their legally acquired content. For which I have no doubt that such a workaround will pass judicial muster.
Must we have to go this route?
Microsoft definitely has kowtowed to content providers on this issue to the detriment of consumers and in so doing had completely and utterly failed in its commitment to consumers. Any argument to the contrary is specious at best, and dishonest in the very least.
It is virtually safe to say that this seemingly tiny issue will get a lot of ink as when Vista lands and consumers start banging their heads against that wall