Posted on 02/14/2007 6:35:54 AM PST by savedbygrace
This is a very long analysis of Vista & DRM:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
Well worth the read, with a few funny statements thrown in along the way.
I agree. Worse, the intellectual property regime in this country is unconstitutional. The Constitution permits Congress to grant the inventors and artists exclusive rights to their works for a limited term. Retroactive copyright extensions, and the complete transfer of rights to works to commericial interests which did not create them have the opposite effect of the Constitutional purpose for that Congressional power: to encourage science and the arts.
Vista's 'anti-piracy' features (completely consistent with MS's business-model, so the 'we had to do it' excuse doesn't fly) are just one of the more egregious examples. Scientific publishing is rotten to the core--though here the fight-back is easier: professional societies can start low-cost competition with copyright agreements that allow the author to retain full rights. Despite their claims, the RIAA isn't looking out for the artists--an awful lot of artists have to sue the record-labels for the royalties they are owed. And (actually some things that rankle me even more than MS's or the RIAA's behavior) rights to Robert Frost's 1928 poem "Fire and Ice" (Frost died in 1968) are still held by Henry Holt & Co., so the poem cannot be set to music and recorded or performed in the US, and blockheaded executors of artistic estates have prevented Martha Grahams dances from being performed until the dancers she herself choreographed have lost the muscle-memory of the original choreography.
All of this is a result of copyright and patent law being corrupted from their constitutional intent, all of them directly subvert the constitutional intent of promoting science and the arts.
Excellent rant. Well written.
Honestly, as a computer engineering professional
(I still perform these duties though I'm now a technical recruiter.) I can see the problems here, but on the flip side I also see the reasons behind Microsoft doing this.
Software piracy does cost the industry billions a year in revenue, and I'm sure it does cost the record and movie companies similar numbers.
I actually feel like people should get paid for their work, and get paid for the creations they produce.
Some one put in time and effort to produce that software/movie/music and they deserve to make money from that.
How would you feel if you built a house and then some one moved in without paying you a cent for that house because they believe it should be free?
I'll agree with the complaints of over restriction that prevents legitimate consumers from watching something because their hardware doesn't jive with a standard that was just released.
But as far as complaining because people expect you to pay for services or goods they created, you have no leg to stand on in this argument, especially if you consider yourself a free market conservative.
And if you don't like a company or product and feel they are giving you the stiffy, don't spend the money on the product, that's how the free market works, consumers respond to a company's ineptitude or lack of customer service by walking away and then the company will either correct it's mistakes or go the way of the dodo.
Just my opinion, nothing more
"Hacker Joanna Rutkowska has flagged a "very severe hole" in the design of Windows Vista's User Account Controls (UAC) feature. The issue is that Vista automatically assumes that all setup programs (application installers) should be run with administrator privileges — and gives the user no option to let them run without elevated privileges. This means that a freeware Tetris installer would be allowed to load kernel drivers. Microsoft's Mark Russinovich acknowledges the risk factor but says it was a 'design choice' to balance security with ease of use."
IMO, this is a very legitimate concern. I often install programs as a regular user under my home directory because no special privileges are required for that.
Why, I guess I would go in and smash their unlicensed furniture and break their appliances, then sue their grandmothers.
Matter of fact, maybe I would do that if I thought they MIGHT move in.....
Do I win a job at MS or RIAA now? :-)
ping
--Hey Bill, you know where you can shove DRM, yes?--
DRM is not MS. Why not vent your anger against the real culprits?
--Vista's 'anti-piracy' features (completely consistent with MS's business-model, so the 'we had to do it' excuse doesn't fly) are just one of the more egregious examples. --
Time to switch to a Mac? I am sure that they will not have to put DRM on their systems.
DRM isn't unconstitutional. It is cumbersome. It's a offensive way for the recording and motion picture industry to treat its customers. It's also an immature technology with a lot of problems. However, I don't see how it's unconstitutional.
I would like to see congress step in and place some limits on the exclusive rights of content providers rather than giving them pretty much anything they want.
With the current state of things, truly honest people have to pay what I feel is an unreasonably high cost for content, and it seems the majority have lost faith in the system and simply steal a large portion of the content they use, shifting more and more of the costs to the honest minority.
The recording industry keeps pushing new cumbersome ways to try and expand the percentage of people who pay for the content, because due to the size of the market, even a small shift in the percentage of people paying for content represents vast sums of money.
They way things work now isn't working well, but it's easy to understand why the recording industry isn't willing to try lowering prices and loosening control to attempt to attract more paying customers. It is very difficult to regain control that has been relinquished if it doesn't work, and the current trend in society doesn't instill a lot of faith in people taking personal responsibility for their actions and stepping up to pay for things they can take for free with little chance of punishment.
Much if not most of society appears to think that they somehow deserve to be able to get whatever they can take for free, and that it's ok to steal from people that make more money than they do.
We started exploratory committees for Vista in our business environment, and after reading this, I'm hoping the scuttle the idea, esp. considering most of our HP-branded desktops use TNT2 video and other pieces.
Just wow... I'm one of those folks who spent $700 on 2 Radeon 7800GTX for Dual-SLI to my 23" Apple HD Cinema display... and now I'm certain I won't be using Vista for anything!
Wonder what Longhorn has in store for our servers?
But I do also agree that the IP law is flawed to the point of unconstitutionality.
Congress has granted retroactive copyright extensions to content companies who did NOTHING to create various characters, and, in the case of public domain characters like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White have actually helped content companies misappropriate public property for private exploitation, not at all to promote the progress of science and useful Arts.
And, to make it worse, they have done so for naked and open bribes.
The real culprits? You mean like Bill who bent over backwards to include anything and everything the RIAA/MPAA requested into VISTA? Heck, Microsoft basically turned off the WiFi function on their Zune because of the RIAA.
The RIAA and MPAA screaming for something is one thing, making it happen at the cost of your consumers is something TOTALLY different. Microsoft is VERY complicit in this whole thing, no matter how much you don't want to admit it.
And a very good one it seems to me. Let the market work and wonderful things happen. It is self-correcting so glitches or mistakes soon disappear.
Sitting around complaining about inconviencies and saying "Make someone fix it!" only invites more trouble. As you say, the answer to the present situation is not to buy. Then the artist/creator will be on the consumers' side in correcting the problem.
thanks for the info. does this also mean they can do it even if you are off line???
Maybe UpAllNight works a help desk for MS.
One example I like to point out as it regards how rediculous the terms of copyright has become concerns "The Jungle Book", by Rudyard Kipling.
Mr Kipling died in 1936.
In 1967, Disney put out a cartoon based (roughly) on the book written by Kipling, and also called it "The Jungle Book". Disney paid not one thin dime to the estate of Mr. Kipling
No problem with that, as it was released a year or two after the copyright expired.
If copyright in 1936 had been as insane as the copyright is today, Disney would not have been able to release a royalty-free bastardation of the Jungle book until 2006! (Life of the author +70 years)
Is that freaking insane or what?
Disney has purchased enough congresscritters to keep copyright (essentially) perpetual so "Steamboat Willie" will probably never enter the public domain, as it should have over 30 years ago, yet they make a vast amount of their money off of public domain stories and characters. The Jungle book is just one example. Others are Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, and more.
Seems Disney is the father of hypocracy.
It appears I'll be using XP for the next several years, why switch. There's nothing to be gained. If I wanted a MAC like interface, I'd by a MAC for the real deal. In fact, MAC's laptops are getting damn close to my price point. They're almost as low as some PC laptops, yay!
--Heck, Microsoft basically turned off the WiFi function on their Zune because of the RIAA.--
...because of the RIAA.
Maybe wizecrakker works a help desk for Apple.
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