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

[allen]

Raymond McLaughlin wrote:
> 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
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>   
Towards the bottom of the article under "sources":

Sources
-------

Because this writeup started out as a private discussion in email, a number of
the sources used were non-public.  The best public sources that I know of are:

"Output Content Protection and Windows Vista",
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output_protect.mspx, from WHDC.

"Windows Longhorn Output Content Protection",
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/f/98f3fe47-dfc3-4e74-92a3-088782200fe7/TWEN05006_WinHEC05.ppt,
from WinHEC.

"How to Implement Windows Vista Content Output Protection",
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/9/5b97017b-e28a-4bae-ba48-174cf47d23cd/MED038_WH06.ppt,
from WinHEC.

"Protected Media Path and Driver Interoperability Requirements",
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/f/98f3fe47-dfc3-4e74-92a3-088782200fe7/TWEN05005_WinHEC05.ppt,
from WinHEC.