I’ll throw out my Windows machine AND my Mac

Why would I do such a thing?

Because both Microsoft and Apple are both in system lock down mode around music and movie content. Copy protection in the extreme. On the Apple side, they use DRM with iTunes that applies to any music you buy off the iTunes music store. If you don’t have an iPod and you want to listen to the music you purchased on iTunes, you’re out of luck. There’s an answer to that: open source music. Look for solutions to come from the same people who bring us linux and offshoots like ubuntu. As a consumer I dropped Apple once before due to their arrogance and proprietary infringement on me being able to do what I want with my computer and accessories,
including listening to music that I own. Piss off Apple DRM. Here’s more on the subject.

Cory Doctorow of boing boing reports here

The New York Times report is here.

ars technica reports here.

On the windows Vista front things may even be a bit worse. The Music and Movie industry (especially the movie biz) has managed to get Microsoft to be the fall guy in creating new software (and by extension hardware that the vendors make to be compatible with Vista) that will be highly sensitive to pirated movies. Again, I should be allowed to copy movies I own so when my kids trash them, I don’t lose the $20 to $30 I plopped down for a DVD. Beyond that, these changes will impact Vista users in the form of impeded system performance and instability that have never before been seen from an outside agent like copy protection. Hear about it on the Security Now podcast on twit.tv or do a search for Peter Gutmann and Vista and you’ll see about a 100 links on this story – like this one. Here’s the original content as published on Gutmann’s blog. Credit Gutmann for bringing attention to this and bloggers for amplifying it a hundred times over. Here’s the executive summary from Gutmann.

“Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista’s content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.”

And what will I buy when I throw out my old PC and Mac? Well, maybe there will be an Apache laptop by then…