2007
The debate over what is actually built into Windows Vista w.r.t. content
protection has yet to be proven. As the situation is very complex it may or may-not work anyway!
Gutmann was only reading the specs! He is not paid by Microsoft to paint a rosey picture - to make out there
is nothing wrong with DRM!
Some might attribute the lateness of the release of Windows Longhorn (aka Vista) as being due to the fact that Microsoft had not worked out all the bugs with Content Protection for HD Video playback.
It is no secret that Micosoft would like the pc to be the main method by which consumers view their paid "premium" content. The coupling of the fact that the HDTV battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, have yet to be settled coupled with the hubub surrounding the launch of Vista has made people forget the issue of copy protection.
Peter Gutmann's analysis of the Microsoft Specifications for Windows Vista and the implementation of technologies such as PVP_OPM and PVP_UAB is still pretty much an academic issue. Drivers for compatable video cards were still being written (at the time of Gutmann's first paper), so whether the concept put forward by Microsoft is going to work in practice remains to be seen.
Nobody has to be told about the scarcity of drivers for Vista - case rests!
The comment on the "war of words" between Peter Gutmann and George Ou (and others) of ZDNet on Peter's page is very amusing. See More facts and less hysteria on Vista, please!
For what it is worth TF is of the opinion that George is too far up the Microsoft food chain to be objective and as Peter says it would appear that he has not done his research.
But what do you expect from someone who would post a blog entry with the title: "Vista puts Mac OS X font rendering to shame"
