LXer: A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
 

Published at LXer:

A physician and medical imaging specialistspeaks out on VistA content protection or digital rights management in a medical environment:'...the field of medical imaging either bans outright or strongly frowns on any form of lossy compression because artifacts introduced by the compression process can cause mis-diagnoses and in extreme cases even become life-threatening. Consider a medical IT worker who's using a medical imaging PC while listening to audio/video played back by the computer (the CDROM drives installed in workplace PCs inevitably spend most of their working lives playing music or MP3 CDs to drown out workplace noise). If there's any premium content present in there, the image will be subtly altered by Vista's content protection, potentially creating exactly the life-threatening situation that the medical industry has worked so hard to avoid.

Read More...

Very worrying. I have e-mailed the link to Jack Schofield, Technology Editor, at the Guardian newspaper, and to Risks Digest. We need to get some publicity for this.