I've been beating the drum on the bozo DRM built into Windows Vista: PVP-OPM for awhile now. Finally, the trade press seems to have noticed. Computerworld has an article up detailing the many DRM *cough* features *cough* that Vista has, including my least favorite one:

Matt Rosoff, lead analyst at research firm Directions On Microsoft, asserts that this process does not bode well for new content formats such as Blu-ray and HD-DVD, neither of which are likely to survive their association with DRM technology. "I could not be more skeptical about the viability of the DRM included with Vista, from either a technical or a business standpoint," Rosoff stated. "It's so consumer-unfriendly that I think it's bound to fail -- and when it fails, it will sink whatever new formats content owners are trying to impose."

The annoyance comes from the way PVP-OPM works. If you don't have DRM compliant hardware all along the line, then how (or even whether) content will play for you is a decision made by the content owners. Have a legally owned HD-DVD that you want to play on your Vista machine, but happen to have a monitor without the requisite damage built into it? You could be completely SOL.

This is why I call DRM a bug - it doesn't stop the real bad guys, but it annoys the crap out of those of us who follow the rules. MS gave the lame excuse that they had to go along with Hollywood on this, or the content owners would have decided not to release their content. Oh really? You mean they would have abandoned the market and gone home? This was a golden PR opportunity for MS - one where, had they been thinking at all, they could have brained Apple in the music and video business - but no. Instead, they've decided that they agree with David Geffen (twit, Hollywood) - we're all thieves out here.

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