Virtualization May Break Vista DRM 294
Nom du Keyboard writes "An article in Computerworld posits that the reason Microsoft has flip-flopped on allowing all versions of Vista to be run in virtual machines, is that it breaks the Vista DRM beyond detection, or repair. So is every future advance in computer security and/or usability going to be held hostage to the gods of Hollywood and Digital Restrictions Management? 'Will encouraging consumer virtualization result in a major uptick in piracy? Not anytime soon, say analysts. One of the main obstacles is the massive size of VMs. Because they include the operating system, the simulated hardware, as well as the software and/or multimedia files, VMs can easily run in the tens of gigabytes, making them hard to exchange over the Internet. But DeGroot says that problem can be partly overcome with .zip and compression tools -- some, ironically, even supplied by Microsoft itself.'"
Re:Whats more likely (Score:5, Informative)
JVC hdtv, name and shame.
Re:Said before (Score:3, Informative)
Big difference. The shell doesn't evaluate additional arguments of an "and" directive if the first argument evaluates to false. Thus, using && guarantees that the shutdown will not occur if the update fails. That's a good thing for any command in which a failure could potentially leave your system in an unbootable state (e.g. an OS update).
Re:Said before (Score:3, Informative)
Take a look at this: http://www.torrentspy.com/search?query=cam [torrentspy.com]
There are thousands upon thousands of people pirating some guy taping the movie theater screen. Yes, people really do want to watch camrips. If DVDs couldn't be digitally ripped, then people would just tape their TVs, and pirates would absolutely download that; the only reason you don't see camrips still being downloaded for movies about to be released on DVD is because DRM DOESN'T WORK!
Re:Not the whole story (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Microsoft has nothing to do with Hollywood (Score:2, Informative)
> MPEG-4 has no "content tax"
Really? How about that licensing fee that all MPEG-4 use requires [wikipedia.org]? The folks who own the MPEG-4 patents fully intend to make you pay for their use. Personally, I'd call that a "content tax", since anyone who sells an encoder or any device that embeds an MPEG-4 decoder (E.G.: a BluRay player) has to pay it.
> there is a free open source MPEG-4 streaming server
Really? I'd love to know what it's called. And does it do live streaming from real-time encodes?
Digital Rights Management is in Windows, in BluRay, and in iTunes because the copyright owners (MPAA/RIAA, but more importantly the mega-studios) won't allow their content on a box that doesn't have it. Microsoft can be blamed for bowing to the pressure from these copyright holders more willingly than they should have. But don't blame Microsoft for DRM itself- that's all the fault of Hollywood and the lawyers that slither there.
Microsoft's decision to reverse releasing their updated virtualization licensing may or may not have anything to do with DRM. Saying that the decision was DRM related is, at least for the moment, pure speculation.
Re:devil's advocate (Score:5, Informative)
I have as much reason to hate MS's operating systems as the next guy. No, scratch that, I have vastly more reason to hate MS's OS's than the next guy, having watched them attempt to undermine and destroy OS/2 back in the early 90's, back before it become fashionable to hate MS OS's. I remember having to put up with the constantly shifting Win32s extensions for Windows 3.1, which were modified for the sole purpose of breaking OS/2 compatibility. Or their (then new) "per-processor license agreements". I haven't run a Windows machine as my desktop since 1992, having run OS/2, Linux, and Mac OS X (in that order) since that time.
As such, it really pains me greatly to say -- Vista under virtualization is surprisingly decent and well behaved. I've been running the 64-bit Business Edition of Vista inside VMware Fusion on a new 2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 2GB of RAM, and it's surprisingly quick and agile. Sure, I don't get Aero (which just looks bad to me anyhow -- honestly, how is an alpha-blended window title a good thing?), and I'm not using it to play games, and I don't use it to browse the web or do e-mail or digital media, but overall it has been very well behaved, and has been surprisingly quick to boot and run. I've even experimented with it running digital video, and the performance has been very good.
Now of course, I can see why they'd be worried about their DRM stance. As the VMware audio and video go through a virtualized driver/device to the Mac's hardware, it would be easy to use readily available tools to hijack the stream (like Rogue Amoeba's excellent Audio Hijack Pro [rogueamoeba.com].
Now there is no way in hell I'd ever run Windows as my primary OS -- still think their UI scheme is garbage, and don't like the fact they have both systematically loaded their systems with crap to appease other corporations while punishing their own end-users (DRM), and that they've frequently promised features they've never delivered (anyone else remember when they promised a stand-alone MS-DOS v7? Or when they promised an OODBMS-based filesystem for Cairo starting back in 1996? That same filesystem they didn't deliver with Vista? Or how about when they finally decided it was time to introduce a new filesystem for the 9X line that instead of using a well-designed FS they owned all the rights to, like HPFS or NTFS, they instead exacerbated the problem with a band-aid solution and invented FAT32?). It's still not what I look for in a desktop OS, but as much as it pains me to say it, on a modern machine (and the latest MacBook is hardly top-of-the-line, although it's certainly quite a capable system), under virtualization, Vista actually runs pretty acceptably. If I had to use it as my day-to-day system (and I don't use it much at all -- it's there to support a development toolset for some embedded programming I'm peripherally involved in), it certainly wouldn't be slow or painful to use -- it's instantly responsive, and has so far behaved very well (i.e.: it hasn't crashed yet).
Strange but true.
Yaz.
Re:Whats more likely (Score:2, Informative)
It is possible that content providers can blacklist/revoke the encryption key for a HD-DVD or Bluray player, but this would only brick the disc player, not a TV.
In short, no signal - either junk or deliberate - can permanently disable the hdmi port on a tv unless there is something wrong/faulty with the tv design itself.
Re:devil's advocate (Score:4, Informative)
To run the ATMEL development suite primarily, which I can't run otherwise, to program an ATMEL AT90USB microcontroller. It runs an IDE, compilers/linkers, AT90 simulator environment, Subversion, and the FLiP microcontroller board programmer.
I've experimented with a number of other applications, including IE7, WMP, and several of the other built-in tools. I still don't like how they organize their OS, or the crappy UI, but system responsiveness has not been an issue.
I don't advocate anyone use this as their gaming or media environment -- hell, I don't avocate anyone use Vista for anything. But in response to the GP's claim that someone might want to evaluate Vista under a VM and get a poor opinion of its performance, Vista 64-bit actually stands up quite well under virtualization, at least on my system.
(I will note here that the 64-bit version of Vista appears to run slightly quicker than the 32-bit version on my MacBook, both under VMware Fusion, but I suppose YMMV).
Any other questions?
Yaz
Its about content path, no VM images (Score:3, Informative)
Is stupidity abound or something? The comment from the article about copying multi gigabyte images is ludicrous and makes one ask if the guy has ever used a VM let alone knows anything about the basics of DRM.
First things firsts. Virtualization means that the physical hardware and virtual hardware are not linked. That means, in no simpler language, if you want to use a TV, monitor recording device or whatnot to view your VM: you can, and the VM doesn't know. This is a technological threat to DRM implementations inside a VM, because they cant guarentee the path outside the VM.
Why you would copy potentially dangerous VM images from one PC to another when you could simple capture the output, i don't know.
Once upon a time NES ROM carts implemented their own I/O multiplexing - the vast majority still aren't emulated today because it's tedious work. Guest OSes inside VMs will continue to find ways of obfuscating their data (after all the guest inside a VM doesn't even have to be the same architecture as the host!)... its anybody's game once you're outside of the Guest.
MS don't want people to virtualize their software for the same reason DRM is a CEOs best friend: they can charge more for less restrictions.
If you have to pay $100 extra for the Ultimate or Pro versions of Vista to get virtualization, and people want virtualization, it can be seen as a valuable extra. Extras, not to be confused with added value, increase price premiums through added cost to the purchasing party.
However, the meat of the issue is not that people spoke out about DRM in such obvious and clear cut language, touting the anti-competitive stance MS has taken, but bloggers and writers are steering the focus to Linux which is offering a mirad of virtualizations for free. The only sensible stance is to do the same - just like MS did with VirtualPC... MS can't afford to be completely leapfrogged in any area.
The thing the irks me is that people are constantly barking up the wrong tree with regards to industry ties with companies and DRM. The "MAFIAA" (as it's been put) is convincing companies to make DRM provisions, but they can't force the implementation on to end users if companies can't/don't want to/disagree. MS allowing virtualization is nothing more than a technology response to Linux. No one is warming to DRM, DRM is not dying any time soon. This is market forces at work. Granted market forces are slow, and cause no end of problems for us now...
Re:xkcd has to be mentioned here.. (Score:3, Informative)
Come on! Why not link to the xkcd page [xkcd.com] itself? There is an alt text to those comics which will be missed if you directly link to the png.
Re:Nesting VMs (Score:3, Informative)
Second, Palladium is based on phoning back to the mother ship. *Every single Palladium key* is revocable, and replaceable by the registered key owners or their upstream signatories, including Microsoft itself. The upgrade and shift to new keys is designed to be vendor controllable. This makes a single signed key of limited usefulness and limited lifespan.
Re:Said before (Score:2, Informative)
DRM makes piracy *harder*. Not impossible, just harder, and that's all it takes to be effective.
DRM doesn't make piracy one bit harder for the average user:
Without DRM: User goes online and downloads pirated work.
With DRM: User goes online and downloads pirated work.
Yeah, I can see how DRM is really helping there.
DRM makes the creation of the work a bit harder, but it's a one time cost, and, actually not even that. It's a one time cost to set up a rig that breaks DRM, and from then on it's automatic.
And people saying 'No, they wouldn't do that', are sorta ignoring the fact pirates already do. They have nice TV recording setups hooked to their digital cable, they clip out commercials, etc. Yes, cracking some DRM schemes would appear to need specialized hardware, but unless that hardware costs thousands of dollars, you're still at a price that pirate groups are willing to spend.
The great irony is, right as they've finally coming out with 'encrypted all the way to the screen' DRM, the price of such hardware is getting low enough that, by the time people actually want all that data that in their rips, which will be in about ten years, they'll be cheap enough for pirate groups to rip apart.
Right now, people are more than happy at HD resolution ripped off digital cable, about 3 megs a second.
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:4, Informative)
Want to reply? Try my a little reading comprehension first.
Point 1: I didn't say I'm upset with Vista. What I did say is that I don't like the Widows Platform. As such, moving from running my embedded dev tools on XP instead of Vista really makes no difference to me -- I don't like either one, have a free license for 64-bit Vista Business Edition, and so use it in those few instances where I have to.
Secondly, I was defending Vista as actually running quite well under VM. So where do you get the idea that I'm upset with Vista? I dislike Windows because the entire line has been poorly designed, I don't like the UI at all, and MS routinely over-promises and under-delivers (how is WinFS, which was most recently supposed to ship in Vista and was yanked roughly a year ago "10+ years ago"?), but I don't have any particular hatred for Vista beyond it being another flavour of Windows crap.
As for your accusation of hypocrisy, Mac OS X doesn't have anywhere near the level of RM Vista has, and OS X's DRM is pretty easy to avoid: just don't buy songs from the iTunes Music Store. It doesn't have secured pathways that require handshaking with your video display just to play encoded videos, and it doesn't have a kernel you can only plug signed, vendor-validated extensions/drivers into (and which refuses to ply such content if you don't). It simply has a DRM decryption module built into a codec. That's it. It's easy to void and remove, and doesn't impinge developers abilities to develop applications or drivers for the system. Don't like DRM on the Mac? Drag and Drop iTunes to the trash and it's effectively gone. Then go and play your media in VLC.
So, before you post, at least use some reading comprehension first before you go foaming at the mouth?
Yaz.