It’s clear from several stories on CNET this week that the security technology variously known as “trusted computing,” “Palladium,” and “NGSCB” will be deployed to some extent in the next iteration of the Windows operating system, now code-named “Vista,” due to be shipped sometime next year. In a nutshell, this technology creates secure areas of your computer that you can’t access, touch, or control, except to a limited degree. It’s sometimes referred to as a separate “sandbox” for you to work and play in on your computer — a sandbox that may be used to isolate viruses and to thwart hacker attacks, but that is primarily designed as space for playback of entertainment media in ways that keep that content safe from you, the user.

What it will mean is that, in order to have access to the entertainment media you purchase, you may have to load it into this separate sandbox, which is under the control of somebody other than you. Controls built into entertainment content may determine that your computer isn’t a safe enough environment for the content to be viewed in, and may shut playback off if, for example, you are piping the content out through analog rather than digital connections. (Analog connections are famously more difficult to control than digital ones are.) Alternatively, it may shut off analog connections altogether while the content is playing.

I am less troubled by Microsoft’s impulse to develop a new approach to digital-rights management than I am about what this new DRM, if it becomes the norm, may mean for the computer revolution. Twenty-five years ago, the impulse that kicked off the development of the personal computer — and all the related markets that have sprung up since then — was the ability PCs gave to any user to control and inspect every aspect of the computer’s hardware and software. This openness was a huge source of innovation and exploration, and it fueled the digital economy. What happens when we turn the personal computer, even to a limited degree, into just another conduit for someone else’s content, aimed at your eyeballs? I don’t pretend to know the answer to that question, but I will say that limiting my ability to tinker with and control my own computers is disturbing to me, to say the least.

I will say I am amused at this description of Vista’s potential for “downresolution” of high-definition content:

Alternately, Vista will include a “constriction” feature that can decrease the resolution of high-definition video on the fly, outputting a version that is slightly fuzzier (about the same as today’s DVDs) than the pristine original. This can be used as an alternative to blocking a connection altogether, if a content company won’t let high-definition video play over the lower-security outputs.

I’m afraid I’ve reached the age where downresolution to “mere” DVD quality doesn’t strike me as very frightening, since I might not even notice the difference.

Of course, my primary complaint here is about the closing of what used to be the open architectures of personal computers. Cory Doctorow makes a different, equally important point about what this change in the personal computing platform may mean for copyright and consumers.

—–