Tuesday, January 30, 2007

DRM and the new world order.

As a tech support representative I have been asked quite a few times in the past few months what I think about Windows Vista. As a side note, it should be noted that average caller in my support center tends to know about as much about computers as a squirrel does toasters. I have no problem with this as it pays my bills and I have reasonably good time doing it. In the past my responses to this dreaded question have remained trivial and and far from honest. I have found it much easier to respond with a simple "I'm curious to see" than to dig deeper into my philosophy on operating systems, open source, pirates and end users. Truth be told, aside from an episode of Security Now and a few articles here and there, I don't know much about Vista other than that it supports IPV6 and 64 bit processors.
What little faith I did have in Windows took a serious blow today when I read this article I found on Digg. http://polishlinux.com/gnu/drm-vista-and-your-rights/. I strongly recommend reading over this article. I used to think of DRM like the barking dog that never shuts up in your neighbors yard, yes its annoying, but if the music is turned up loud enough you won't hear it anyway. I am now realizing that this is not the case. The serious implementation of DRM into operating systems is a huge problem and will likely mark a whole new era of hell and headaches for the average end user. While companies like Microsoft and Sony struggle, kicking and screaming to hang on to old ways of doing business, it becomes more and more clear that the model of taking advantage people who don't know any better is not that all that cool. What I don't understand is how these companies really think that by implementing DRM they will be able to protect there products. The fact of the matter remains, no matter how hard they try, or how stiff the punishment, there will always be crackers and pirates. The end result to me really seems like Windows is polarizing the internet universe like never before. While typing this up at work, I recieved my first call on a Vista Machine. It was unable to connect to the internet, and I sent him off to the OEM for support. I only have one more day of work here and as far as I'm concerned I have no desire to learn about Vista unless I really have to.