MicroSnot’s days are numbered. The handwriting is already on the wall. We are witnessing the beginning of the end for M$, although many are unable to see it yet. In the next decade, M$ will find out what karma is all about, and how their past sins will come back to haunt them with a vengeance. Should be fun to watch.

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Vista just isn't up to the task. And the next generation of customers and user-generated video has no use for Microsoft.

I really hope you're right.
But I won't be surprised if the short sightedness, apathy, and stupidity of the public win out in the end.

But then I'm known for my cynicism.

When it's you and me creating the content, DRM isn't even an issue.

Seriously, poke around on ourmedia.org | archive.org and you'll probably find something you like. And there's lots of it.

DRM as we know it stands to protect the "business" of entertainment, not the actual content. Anything you or I create and post is content, rich or not.

On the other hand, commercial music, videos, movies, etc., are all about the business of making the creator, producer, distributor and the like money. Big difference. The content can be crap as well, but they will protect it to within an inch of their lives because that's how they make money. It's not really about the "art" (ok, it's subjective, I know it, but look at most of the Top Billboard charts and they're just loaded with crap) it is about who gets what portion of which dollar a consumer spends.

The only way to break DRM once and for all is to stop buying any artistic content. Or hardware that supports it. That means TVs, computers, etc. In essence, we should devolve our society

Yeah, like that's going to happen.

Unfortunately, any system that Apple ships which can play Blu-Ray movies will have to abide by similar mandatory DRM restrictions.

I'm sure Steve Jobs would like to be able to play commercial Blu-Ray movies on his 30" Apple Cinema display, but if Apple were to ship a Mac that could do so, then it would have its Blu-Ray license revoked and would probably be sued.

Apple ran into the same problems with DVD technology: the DVD Copy Control Association requires that all DVD licensees - including Apple - preserve the DRM functionality; thus Apple is prevented from shipping region-free DVD drives and software, or adding DVD import capabilities into iTunes (even though it's a strange asymmetry that iTunes can rip audio but not video, when iPods are good at playing both kinds of content.)

Earlier versions of Mac OS X did have the capability to make playable images of commercial DVD movies (since they were bit images, they still had the DRM and region coding intact, in some sense), but Apple has removed even that functionality, probably under pressure from the DVD CCA (or perhaps Jobs decided that Pixar movies would benefit from stricter protection.)

Since Apple contributed to the Blu-Ray standard, one might optimistically hope that Macs might be exempt from some of the more onerous DRM requirements, but this is really just extremely wishful thinking: the restrictions have been announced, and any special exemptions for Apple would have the other vendors up in arms.

If you bought a new 30" Cinema Display hoping to play commercial high-definition movies, chances are you just threw your money away, since the DRM on *all* platforms - including Apple - requires that they be "fuzzed" when playing on non-encrypted (read DVI) connections.

This is why Apple is likely to be introducing new displays that have HDCP-compliant HDMI interfaces.

Once Apple introduced Blu-Ray, you'll have to buy a new display if you want to play commercial movies in high quality.

Actually this
http://mandriva.blogspot.com/2007/01/tamil-nadu-india-may-shut-door-on.html
if it grows is more likely than anything else to dethrone MS. India, China et. al. are the next big market. If these countries are smart and choose to develop without a dependancy on MS, that will break the stranglehold it has worldwide. We will benefit even here in North America.