One of Vista’s “features” is that it can downgrade high definition content if it decides proper licensing or authorization is not in place. That ties in with the restrictions designed into HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

It seems that this DRM has already been cracked. So the new HD disk formats and Vista are barely here, and the DRM can be defeated on all of them.

Boing Boing has a good piece on the Vista hack and the Montreal man that created it. One interesting angle is that he is afraid to release too much for fear of violating US law, even though he is in Canada, and it may not violate Canadian law.

Read the Boing Boing article

Read a Toronto Star article by Michael Geist that talks about Vista fine print and the DRM issue