This has been going around, but it’s important: Peter Gutmann explains how radically Vista has been architected to protect Hollywood’s content, incurring “considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. ” His “executive executive summary” reads: “The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.” We can only hope.

Pardon me while I state what’s been dead obvious for years now: Microsoft wants to be—is—in the entertainment business. Microsoft thinks it will win if it can be the preferred player of Hollywood content. So, to persuade Hollywood (and other Big Content providers) to offer their goods in Microsoft proprietary formats, thus locking the audience into the MS platform, Microsoft has spent billions of dollars devising the uncrackable platform. If that means turning your PC into a player rather than a computer, so be it. Vista is all about protecting Hollywood from its audience, even if that means degrading the utility and performance of the PC that runs Vista.

Oh, and Vista also has some eye-candy…like the treats the vet gives your dog to distract it as she wields the scalpel.

Happy freaking new year. Grumble grumble…

[Tags: microsoft vista drm copyright copyleft hollywood peter_gutmann ]

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