As a user, there is simply no escape.

Microsoft has way too much power.

Quoted from A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection :

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to
provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data
from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources.  Providing this protection incurs
considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical
support overhead, and hardware and software cost.  These issues affect not
only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the
protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever
come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for
example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server).  This document
analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral
damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry. 

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the
longest suicide note in history. 

As a user, there is simply no escape.  Whether you use Windows Vista, Windows
XP, Windows 95, Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, Solaris (on x86), or almost any other
OS, Windows content protection will make your hardware more expensive, less
reliable, more difficult to program for, more difficult to support, more
vulnerable to hostile code, and with more compatibility problems.  Because
Windows dominates the market and device vendors are unlikely to design and
manufacture two different versions of their products, non-Windows users will
be paying for Windows Vista content-protection measures in products even if
they never run Windows on them.

Here is someone else blogging about this article.

update :

Someone else blogging about it.