Vista's Content "protection"

There seems to be a bit of a fuss around Vista's Content "protection" mechanism going around the 'Net these days; someone made some review of it in terms of the effects this will have on the hardware industry, which was mentioned by a few people on Planet Debian, and also on Bruce Schneier's blog.

The argument, basically, goes like this:

• To view "Premium Content" on Vista, you must have a computer that consists of drivers and hardware that are vetted by Microsoft as being "ok".
• For this hardware and these drivers to be "ok", you need to have created your hardware to implement cpu-to-device encryption, and have done a number of other things that require huge gobs of money to properly develop.
• Hardware manufacturers will do this, but that will require them to ask more money from consumers.
• As a result, everone will pay, even those who don't run Vista (such as Linux and MacOS users)

Personally, I don't buy that argument. "Premium Content" (really, Crippled Content) will only be available to those users who actually have hardware and software which is capable of viewing Crippled Content. While it might be a problem for home users not to be able to view Crippled Content, I can't think of any reason why you would want to be able to view Crippled Content on your enterprise desktops. As a result, Enterprise users will continue to buy the cheapest hardware available that still accomodates their needs, much as they do now (I have yet to see the first enterprise desktop with one of those extreme 3D-capable cards...). And if just one manufacturer decides that the Enterprise market is enough of a market for them not to support Crippled Content with (a subset of) their hardware, then I can't imagine there being a problem in finding affordable hardware anymore. Eventually, people will understand that Crippled Content is much more of a trouble than it is worth—a DVD player is just as cheap, and doesn't require you to have a humming, noisy PC in the living room—and Vista's Crippled Content will go the way of the dinosaur.

Where it belongs.