When Bruce Schneier, CTO and co-founder of BT Counterpane (formerly Counterpane Internet Security), talks technology, I tend to listen. You should too.

In a recent article writing for Forbes.com, Schneier elaborates on Vista’s draconian DRM (digital rights management), something all of us have heard about as Longhorn turned into Vista and eventally was released. Few of us really understand it, though. Microsoft has spun this stuff wonderfully, in the process making Hollywood out to be the bad guy, but that’s hardly the case. More on that later.

Put simply, DRM is a burden on you and your computer, and you should avoid it.

Windows Vista includes an array of “features” that you don’t want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They’ll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won’t do anything useful. In fact, they’re working against you. They’re digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry.

And you don’t get to refuse them.

Vista’s DRM adds copy protection for new DVD formats like HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks. High-fidelity output paths for audio and video are intentionally and artificially degraded unless you are using a protected device. Sometimes output is prevented entirely. Vista spends time monitoring itself and what you do, looking for things it thinks you shouldn’t be doing. If it finds something, it will limit functionality on you or, if you’re being really naughty, restart the video subsystem to prevent you from doing what you want.

None of this is good news.

Let’s go back to the Hollywood angle. Microsoft will tell you that they have this DRM in Vista at the behest of film executives so that certain content (meaning movies that are still making money) can be played on Vista, otherwise Hollywould would blacklist the platform and Windows users wouldn’t get the treat of such premium content.

That’s something we call bullshit. Where else would Hollywood go when Windows owns 90% of the desktop OS market? Would they turn a blind eye to the digital aspect of media? To the future of movie and entertainment distribution? Realistically court Apple or Linux?

No, it wouldn’t, and that’s why this entire Hollywood schpiel is nothing but a veneer for Microsoft’s real grab, a grab not unlike how it used its monopoly status and IE to beat Netscape into the ground.

(more…)