Peter Gutmann from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, has a credible and extremely scary account of Vista's content protection systems and their overheads. (It might be even scarier if I understood more of it.) As a result, claims Guttman:
Microsoft will totally control the premium-content distribution channel. Not only will they be able to lock out any competitors, but because they will then represent the only available distribution channel they'll be able to dictate terms back to the content providers whose needs they are nominally serving in the same way that Apple has already dictated terms back to the music industry: Play by Apple's rules, or we won't carry your content. The result will be a technologically enforced monopoly that makes their current de-facto Windows monopoly seem like a velvet glove in comparison.
How true and how significant all this might be remains to be seen. After all, I've had no problems enjoying music while never being an iTunes Music Store customer, and like everyone else, I will be able to play HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies on standalone players and games consoles, should I so desire.
The major question Gutmann leaves unanswered is how far all this goes beyond Vista, if at all. It's not very useful to the content owners (mainly the Hollywood studios) to have content protection on Vista if every other system is wide open. Since most (or all?) of us hate copy protection, offering far more content protecton than rivals would ultimately not help Microsoft. It would be commercial suicide.
I could see Sony trying this because it owns a big chunk of the music and movie production industries, and because it already used insane content protection to cripple the MiniDisc audio format, leading to its untimely death. But Microsoft usually goes where the money is....
