Five bucks says the plan to add something called Output Content Protection Management to Windows Vista is going to fail. The plan is simple—create an army of PCs and monitors that are compliant with High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP). This copy protection allows premium, red-hot content to appear on an HDCP compliant monitor in all it’s HD glory while it will look like cat puke on a standard I Bought This At A Store (IBTAAS) monitor.
But then again, we’ve been talking about potential hardware DRM under different names for years now, from Janus to Palladium to Ninjateeth to BillGatesSecretDRMFetish, and most of this crud has fallen by the wayside. Janus makes sense, I suppose, and so will other software DRM choices in order to dissuade the average consumer not to steal HD content. But let’s just see if Microsoft can convince Taiwan and China to DRM up their hardware. That’ll be a hoot.
Microsoft Buffeted By Criticism Over Vista DRM [InformationWeek via LockerGnome]
