Hollywood controlling parts of Windows Vista

From Prof. Edward Felten at Freedom to Tinker: Hollywood Controlling Parts of Windows Vista Design. Excerpt:

A recent white paper (2MB Word file) from Microsoft details the planned “output content protection” in the upcoming Windows Vista (previously known as Longhorn) operating system product. It’s a remarkable document, illustrating the real costs of Hollywood’s quest to redesign the PC’s video hardware and software.

The document reveals that movie studios will have explicit veto power over what is included in some parts of Vista. For example, pages 22-24 describe the “High Bandwidth Cipher” which will be used to encrypt video data is it passes across the PC’s internal PCIe bus. Hollywood will allow the use of the AES cipher, but many PCs won’t be able to run AES fast enough, leading to stutter in the video. People are free to design their own ciphers, but they must go through an approval process before being included in Windows Vista. The second criterion for acceptance is this:

Content industry acceptance
The evidence must be presented to Hollywood and other content owners, and they must agree that it provides the required level of security. Written proof from at least three of the major Hollywood studios is required.

The document also describes how rational designs are made more expensive and complicated, or ruled out entirely, by the “robustness” rules Hollywood is demanding. ...

These are just a few examples from a document that describes one compromise after another, in which performance, cost, and flexibility are sacrificed in a futile effort to prevent video content from leaking to the darknet. And the cost is high. As just one example, nearly all of us will have to discard our PC’s monitors and buy new ones to take advantage of new features that Microsoft could provide — more easily and at lower cost — on our existing monitors, if Hollywood would only allow it.

Read it and weep. Or better yet, get angry. Hollywood will be in total control of your viewing experience.

I know this much: I won't be buying a new PC monitor just to please Hollywood. Ever.