Quote - There is nothing in there that the content providers have to pay Microsoft for.  The content is already protected.  BD+, AACP and HDCP already exist, and none are under the control of Microsoft.

There's no existent protection, only exist some information writen in the DVD, any computer is able to copy or play this protected DVD. To exist a protection the software running the computer must read and process this writen information in the DVD and then tell "you are not allowed to make a copy", but any computer software that ignores this information as Linux or Windows XP, 2000, 98 continue to be able to make the copy.
Content providers only depend on Vista for not allowing making the copies.

Quote - Microsoft apparently wants to merge the home entertainment center with the PC.  The content providers have said no go unless Microsoft can protect the content.

This is something that is not decided by the content providers neither Microsoft, it's only decided by people that use the computer to hear music and Watch videos.

Quote - Any digital protection scheme consists of two components - the encryption of the data itself, and policies for allowing the data to be decrypted and presented.  The content necessarily must be decrypted in order to be played, however any device or piece of software capable of decrypting the data has the potential to completely blow away the content protection.

The data in the DVD/CDs is not encrypted, the encryption is done by Vista when reads the DVD, here is the reason that the DVD players must not have the digital/video output, ifnot you always are able to send this data to any external or internal device.
Vista reads the data and encrypts it in the device driver, then the encrypted data flows in the computer and then is decrypted again, this is ridiculous resulting in a slow computer with degraded quality.
Windows 98 has no CD driver, Windows XP has and Windows Vista will use this driver to encrypt the data, but this is stupid, you always can access the data of the CD sending commands and reading the port 3F0H  (if it in the secondary master IDE).

[quoteThe only way you get a key for decrypting the data is if either you developed the DRM scheme yourself, or obtain a license for it.  In order to obtain the license one has to agree to the licensing terms, which include keeping their key secret and to not leak or otherwise allow unauthorized copying of content.  Under more recent protection mechanisms, it is possible to revoke a key if it is found that the player that uses it is found to violate the license agreement.
This is flawed, the encryption is done by Vista, it doesn't matter how sofisticated is the encryption algorithm, if you write a device driver that ignores the content provider information, Vista will not encode it and treat as the data as unprotected.
You can be sure, soon as Vista appear there also will appear patches available to download every where to turn off Vista's DRM and also DVD burner softwares that will allow you to copy protected DVDs.
Even in the imaginary case that Vista have success with the protection, users that are not able to copy DVDs with Vista can always turn back to XP, 2000, 98 or Linux for making the copy.
You can see that all this will have no effect on piracy, who wants to make illegal copies, watch illegal material or share it through P2P will continue doing without any problem using XP or a patched Vista.
People that don't do this "illegal" activities can continue to using Vista and pay the price of a slow a degraded computer.
In other words ii's only a fantasy of Microsoft and RIAA, a fantasy that the legal users must pay .
Pirates will continuewith their pleasurous life and legal users will have their life turned into an Inferno.

Stupidity also evolves!