Today on reading the Macworld newsletter, an article immediately popped out at me and I knew I had to say something about it. This article is about NBC wanting to come back onto iTunes but they want Apple to implement software that will DELETE pirated content from user’s iTunes library’s, this includes music and movies.

Has anyone got a feeling of deja vu here. Some of Microsoft’s DRM measures used in Windows Vista are also very similar to this, though far more worrying. One of the measures put in place is to INTENTIONALLY degrade the quality in HD video content if not outputted via approved connections on the computer, so the poor content isn’t an unfortunate side effect of measures, it’s intentionally caused by the technology by running it through a software down-scaler and then an up-scaler to reduce the quality on purpose. Here’s an article which mentions this. There’s also the far more worrying technology, there’s even evidence that Microsoft will DISABLE the drivers of ‘compromised’ computers computers over the internet, rendering the machine in question effectively useless. These are just some of the crafty things that Microsoft are doing to windows vista and it’s users but trust me, I’m just scratching the surface here.

I do try to defend Windows and Microsoft over Apple and Other Software Alternatives but these mechanisms just seem unacceptable, they are SPYING on their users. Spying on their users and degrading video content is just wrong, I can’t really explain in words how disgusted I am by Microsoft and I can’t help getting the ‘I told you so’ feeling when I remember the times I denied the fact that Microsoft were becoming too powerful. The real problem with these DRM mechanisms is that very few people actually know about them.

Basically, I don’t want to see Apple fall in the same trap. I have always praised Apple on not restricting their users by not implementing these ‘invasive’ DRM enforcement techniques and is part of the reason I love OS X so much, Windows vista is a crippled, awkward and Incomplete OS which has had countless software conflicts as well as the unnecessary and needless to say plain wrong DRM measures. Whereas Mac OS X Leopard isn’t. In my 6 or so months of using Leopard I have found it to be a huge upgrade to Tiger, whereas Vista Appears to be a downgrade to XP. It is because of these things I’m hanging onto faithful old XP for as long as possible. Let’s just say I will not even be considering Windows Vista as a main OS for a long time.

Do you agree with MS’ measures? What do you think of vista’s DRM mechanisms in general? do you want apple to implement NBC’s suggested technology on iTunes? post a comment and let other readers know.

Thanks for reading this rant and until next time…

Happy Surfing

Further Reading…

• A BBC Article On HD Content Crippling
• Windows Vista Wikipedia ‘Criticism’ Section
• Wikipedia Links To Other Sites Addressing This Issue