Trusted Computing

Trusted Computing is the name for a set of security systems that "protect" data on your computer. In reality, they allow the content holders (i.e. Hollywood) to decide how you can use movies and music that you legally own. One piece of the Trusted Computing DRM puzzle is OCPM (Output Content Protection Management), which is a part of Vista by default. It prevents playback at full quality of HD content (such as that on HD-DVD or BluRay) except on a special HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection) monitor (they're not cheap). The worst part of all of this is that it doesn't prevent copying at all. Somebody who wanted to pirate the disk would just copy it, bit for bit, and it would play fine in an HD-DVD player. You can read more about OCPM and some other Trusted Computing DRMs that aim to limit what the consumer can do with his legally purchased movies and music at the links in this sentence. Also, the DRM Blog is always a good source for DRM information. I, for one, will not be upgrading to Vista until somebody out there cracks the OS to disable Trusted Computing.