Why Microsoft caved in on copy protection
ZDNet | at | by Mike
You would have thought that the Redmondians would have learned their lesson after Hailstorm (aka My Services) crashed and burned. As you may recall, that initiative was supposed to facilitate e-commerce and Web applications. But we haven't heard much about Hailstorm ever since people found out it would require them to hand over all their personal information (such as passwords and credit card numbers) to Microsoft for (supposedly) safe storage.
But Microsoft did not, apparently, learn from that little fiasco. When the company decided to add a personal video recorder to its new Media Center PC design, it designed the PVR so that content could only be viewed on the PC that recorded it. Which meant, for example, that you couldn't record a TV show, copy it onto a DVD, and view the disk on a consumer DVD player or another PC.