Windows Vista Content Protection and Digital Rights Management

A tad technical and a bit of a slog to read the whole thing, but a very enlightened and seemingly matter of fact view all the same.
Plus some great perspectives on technical detail vs tech titans control & PR propaganda.
Nice that it's out of New Zealand as well!

Check it out:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

PS. I didn't read the whole thing :-o

PPS. Go the $50 chinese device and muslix64 ;-)

PPPS. My favourite paragraphs:

1. Appeals to my experience and knowledge of encryption:
"In the case of premium content, whether video can play back smoothly when using regular AES with uncompressed video will be a function of the resolution of the uncompressed video and the power of the processor. It is unlikely to work well in 2006 for uncompressed HD premium content" from Microsoft document.

2. Appeals to the real-world implications of this sort of technical idiocy and what consumers will face:
Sure enough, the movie won't play because while the video card supports HDCP content protection, the [24" LCD] monitor doesn't. It plays if I connect an old 14″ VGA CRT using a DVI-to-VGA connector" — Roger Strong.

3. Relates to my musings of current LCD and Plasma vs CRT technologies:
"Use the CRT monitor for awhile, then switch to the LCD monitor for a minute or two. When you go back to the CRT monitor, does it seem faulty? Did you notice this before you looked over at the LCD monitor?"

4. Appeals to how "let's consider this" technical ideas turn into questionable real world scenarios:
"I can not only say that the idea [of tilt bits] is basically insane, but I can also see hardware manufacturers refusing to implement tilt bits, or more likely, faking their functionality" — Dave Walker.