Vista Adds New Protection for Digital Media

Copying digital media content, particularly video, without the permission of content owners will become more difficult with Windows Vista (formerly code-named Longhorn), the next Windows client OS. When used with compatible hardware, Vista will protect video from its original source to its display, and it will be able to support a variety of copy-protection schemes under development in the entertainment industry, not just Microsoft’s own Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.

Microsoft is developing this technology because it needs content owners to trust a Windows PC as much as they trust closed consumer electronics devices, such as DVD players, particularly as the entertainment industry gears up for high-definition digital video. If they don’t trust Windows, Microsoft will be hampered in its effort to position the PC as a home hub for distributing video and audio.

Content Owners Wary

Microsoft hopes to spur consumers to buy new computers by positioning the Windows PC as a home entertainment hub. However, the PC has a relatively open architecture—users can add new hardware and third parties can write software that takes advantage of publicly documented APIs—while most consumer electronics devices do not. As a result, content owners are concerned that the PC can be used to pirate their material. For instance, audio piracy is widespread because of the lack of copy protection in the original CD format, which was developed in the 1980s and predates widespread PC use. Another example is DeCSS, a program that can be used to break copy-protection on prerecorded DVDs, which was created on a PC and posted to public Web sites.