is the users.

If Microsoft spent some of their prodigious resources concerning themselves with how they could better serve their users then they might have a chance of producing a product that sells.

All this waffle about being "sympathetic to copyright holders" and the like is entirely irrelevant if nobody is using the product in question.

The could create the worlds best DRM system ever and the rest of the world would still be using iPods.

Paris, because she knows how to serve the needs of her users

Their Soapbox sounds like British CCTV, they don't trust their own users so they watch and monitor them and users are supposed to be sheep and baa along with it?

People use youtube precisely because it does contain bother user generated and copyrighted material. I as a user don't care who's arse you have to kiss, I want what I want. If they aren't going to give it to me, I'll go elsewhere.

If MS aren't willing / able to follow suit, they may as well get out of the business now and save some money.

Pete

The Microsoft Corporation...

Sympathetic to copyright holders, but famously found to have stolen 39 separate patented technologies from the Burst.com corporation and built them into Media Player 9, after having negotiated with them for many months to get the details, then walking away from negotiations and just stealing the technology without paying a penny... except, of course, for the 60 million dollars paid by Microsoft after Burst.com sued them and settled the case out of court...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/14/microsoft_settles_suit/

Who is Sigall or Microsoft trying to kid?

Jules was hired for his connections back into the USCO and is now being positioned asa tool to try and beat content management into politicos head with regards to the public Internet.

M$ seems to adore DRM, it is conspicuous that DRM as a "feature" that made it into Vista when so many other better, features did not. Microsoft and others would pack DRM up the noses of "consumers" if they thought they could get some dumb ass to buy the things.

"We think very hard about how we can protect their interests."

And if you can pony up the cash, they'll think about protecting your interests too.

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Re: DRM and Vista

DRM is just one facet of Trusted Computing (aka Palladium or Next Generation Secure Computing Base), and Trusted Computing is Vista's primary raison d'etre.