This is just another part of Microsofts ongoing DDIS program...
- DDIS (Digital Dictatorship Imposition System)
Why is anyone surprised? This is simply a continuation of Microsofts long-standing, general, attempt to forcibly impose, and maintain, complete control, and insinuate itself [Microsoft], as ultimate gate-keeper (and, thereby, toll-collector) of everything digital. This has always been Microsofts plainly-stated goal. In fact, it goes all the way back to Microsoft trying to get Intel, and IBM, to individually identify each, and every, PC (way back in the early 1980s, check the history of the IBM-PC).
The plain truth is that Microsoft has never wavered, one-bit, in this goal. And, year after year, Microsoft has successfully imposed step, after step, after step, in achieving this obscenity... Look at "Product registration/activation", "Trusted Computing", "DRM", "WGA", etc. Every one of these elements was opposed by the vast majority of customers, yet, Microsoft has simply continued pushing-forward (and eventually gotten) everything that they ever wanted. And, when you realize what a WHORE Microsoft is... hopping in bed, so readily, with any powerful interest that will pay them (or, let them off the hook for repeated criminal-violations)... then, youd have to be an idiot to think that the final goal isnt complete, and total, control of every single "user".
And, for those that think that, mere, "consumers" could stop this... You really are ignorant. Microsoft has ALWAYS simply used the tried, and tested, method of integrating, or retrofitting, each new step of this long-term plan, irremovably, into every MS-product... whether customers approved, or not (just look at 2/3rds of the actual function of XP-SP3 for very a recent example). And, then, Microsoft inevitably manages to work several back-room deals with "hardware manufacturers" (to irremovably install compliance with Microsofts, self-serving standards, directly into the devices itself). And finally, various political, and commercial, interests then effectively make acceptance virtually mandatory (through Laws, regulation, guidelines, and policies).
So, do you really think that Microsoft is going to stop now..? The only bright-spot, is that Microsoft is so incompetent at actually producing products... that they usually dont work worth a damn.