Protected Media Path, Component Revocation, Windows Driver Lockdown
"Welcome to the world of Windows... and the Protected Media Path, where Microsoft, copyright holders, and DRM licensors may grant or revoke permission to use your own computer and digital media."
"The PMP PE and its revocation list... give Microsoft -- and the movie studios -- tremendous power over what kind of software can be run in the kernel of a Windows machine. For the first time, Microsoft can directly impose costs on users who use software that Microsoft dislikes by breaking those users' media players unless the users uninstall the disapproved software."
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" PMP will create a kernel-enforced construct called a Protected Environment (PE) in which particular software modules, including drivers and other code, that are trusted by particular entertainment companies can run and enforce DRM restrictions. The construction and protection of the PE requires the further-reaching changes to the way that software, especially drivers, is developed for the Windows platform; it also gives Microsoft a new kind of power over Windows software developers.
"Components that are loaded into the PE by the Windows kernel must be signed and authenticated; software developers must also have produced them pursuant to a license with Microsoft, and their developers must have committed to follow certain policies that Microsoft promulgates. Publishers can associate policies with their published works indicating which components they trust, and the PE will enforce these policies.
"Perhaps most significantly, the PE will be subject to a
"global revocation list" maintained by Microsoft and
distributed through Windows Update and possibly other channels. Microsoft will maintain and sign the revocation list, and its updates will have ever-increasing version numbers. Works meant to be played back through PMP can require a particular minimum revocation list version number; the PE will not allow a restricted work to be played at all unless the computer has loaded a revocation list at least as recent as the one specified by the work. If a software component appears on the revocation list, the PE will not load it, or will warn applications that a revoked software component has been loaded."
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