DRM = Digital Rights Management

An all-encompassing term for anything the "big record companies" do, or demand that computer builders and users do, to make sure they get their "cut" everytime music is created, played, recorded, copied, or otherwise handled or manipulated.

Nearly all computer "music/video player/burners" have been pretty much forced to incorporate DRM hardware/software that examines everything that goes through your optical drives (CD/DVD ROM/Recorders) to detect, log, and usually to connect with web resources to see if it's something for which a copyright is claimed.

Microsoft has come up with their own "DRM system" that they're currently pushing, and it's invasively incorporated into Vista, and into the more recent versions of things like Windows Media Player etc. It "objects" if you are not connected to the internet when you insert a CD or DVD in your drive it "expects" to be able to check whether the disk has "copyrighted material" on it. It once identified a CD I'd burned of LiK's ancestors' pictures as being songs by some rap group I'd never heard of. (it ignored the .jpg filetypes, and probably "identified" the CD by matching "ugly quotients?)

The reference to Vista refusing to run older programs that don't incorporate the latest methods of "copyright protection" systems is based on my limited experience, and rejection by Vista of a couple of my own older programs - that run quite acceptably if I override the Vista "blockade" but are immediately disabled at the next reboot.

John