[mdlug] ...recommended that graphics manufacturer go beyond the strict letter, of the specification...

[Raymond McLaughlin]

Have you guys seen this?

<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt>

The one thing missing is a clearer description of just what documents he
is quoting from.


Introduction
------------

This document looks purely at the cost of the technical portions of
Vista's content protection.  The political issues (under the heading of
DRM) have been examined in exhaustive detail elsewhere and won't be
commented on further, unless it's relevant to the cost analysis.
However, one important point that must be kept in mind when reading this
document is that in order to work, Vista's content protection must be
able to violate the laws of physics, something that's unlikely to happen
no matter how much the content industry wishes it were possible.  This
conundrum is displayed over and over again in the Windows
content-protection specs, with manufacturers being given no
hard-and-fast guidelines but instead being instructed that they need to
display as much dedication as possible to the party line.  The
documentation is peppered with sentences like:

  "It is recommended that a graphics manufacturer go beyond the strict
letter of the specification and provide additional content-protection
features, because this demonstrates their strong intent to protect
premium content".

This is an exceedingly strange way to write technical specifications,
but is dictated by the fact that what the spec is trying to achieve is
fundamentally impossible.  Readers should keep this requirement to
display appropriate levels of dedication in mind when reading the
following analysis [Note A].


http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt