Posted on Tuesday 2 August 2005 - Popularity: unranked
DRM (Digital Rights Management) seems to be an unavoidable hassle these days. Apple’s FairPlay is as the name correctly implies at least a fair DRM scheme where you actually can own the content you buy. Other examples, like the upcoming DRM scheme in Windows Vista, isn’t nearly as fair. Some examples:
“Device authentication is explicitly intended to break virtual soundcards and is projected to break emulators, or require the emulator developers to collaborate more closely with the developers of the hardware they emulate. Applications whose developers don’t want them to work under emulation will obtain new weapons in their technology arsenal for detecting emulation.” (EFF)
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If you try to listen to music or watch video that Windows hasn’t approved it may play in a degraded form or it may not play at all. Microsoft have already stated video will be shrunk and degraded if you try to play it on un authorised hardware.
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Windows Vista is all about enforced copyright protection. You can’t watch what you want or listen to what you want. It is no longer your OS or Computer.
Now it looks like Apple will use Intel’s DRM chip technology for their upcoming “Intel Inside” machines, so let’s all hope that they not forget to play as fair as they did till now and that the main use for this chip is mainly to protect OS X from running on non Apple hardware.
Fredi
