The entertainment industry's war to conquer our computers with DRM is obviously getting into high gear. But while it's good that a warning was sounded this week about a sneak attack from Sony, we shouldn't focus so much on that we ignore the juggernaut that's coming at us from the other direction.
The revelation by Mark Russinovich at Sysinternals that Sony BMG was infecting customers' PCs with rootkit-like DRM from some of its music CDs was certainly an eye-opener. We've seen this attitude on the part of Sony's music arm before (see Dumb DRM Gets Boost From Sony Music CDs), but it's still pretty flabbergasting when you think about it. That a media giant like Sony would so blithely put its customers at risk for all manner of security and performance problems, punishing those who actually bought their CDs while not hurting the P2P pirates one bit, seems almost incomprehensibly stupid. That is until you realize that, as always seems to be the case with DRM, the vendor's goal isn't really stopping piracy but gaining control over their customers.
And speaking of media giants gaining control our PCs, PC World had a very interesting story last month about another effect of the entertainment industry's DRM. It appears that the next generation of DVDs, be it the Blu-ray specification Sony is pushing or Toshiba's HD-DVD format, are going to require devices that support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), a content protection scheme devised by Intel. Attempting to use the disks on devices that aren't HDCP compliant will result in either a low quality display or no display at all.
One problem with this is that almost all computer displays and even many HDTVs that people own now aren't HDCP-compliant. You may have just spent a couple of thousand on a wide-screen desktop monitor in the reasonable expectation you would be able to watch high definition video content on it in the future, and that's just too bad for you.
Even if you do have a monitor that supports HDCP, you're also going to need to use an operating system that implements DRM to police it. Windows Vista will include this copy protection scheme, known as PVP-OPM (Protected Video Path Output Protection Management). That means that XP Users who want to view the HD disks will have to upgrade to the new OS. Now, this isn't Microsoft's fault, but they probably won't be too unhappy if it gets some customers to migrate to Windows Vista who wouldn't otherwise. And since Microsoft never saw any DRM it didn't like, how long will it be before PVP-OPM is added to its own growing array of Windows copy protection schemes?
That's what really scares me about this whole deal. Personally, I can live quite happily without the movies Hollywood cranks out these days, and I don't see how anyone would want to purchase a CD from Sony BMG now. But if enough of the institutional powers get behind these various DRM schemes, how long will we actually have the choice of saying no to them? After all, not only is there a possible payoff for Microsoft, but the other parties who have been wrangling over the future of digital content may well like the idea of forcing us all to buy a mew heavily-DRMed generation of computers and other electronic equipment. The electronics and PC manufacturers can sell us a host of new gear while the movie and music industries get to dictate how that gear is designed. Hey, there's a little something in there for all divisions of Sony.
And there's one other institutional power that might have a hand in making sure we have no choice but to accept this DRM-laden future. Congress is desperate to push digital TV on us all so it can auction off the analog spectrum. And there no doubt will also be a lot of paydays for individual Congresspersons when the lobbyists from the media giants come around to thank them for all their good work. Hey, it looks like it could be a win-win-win-win ... unless you happen to be a consumer who wants to have some control over the technology products you buy.
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