NBC & Microsoft Team Up To Bust "Pirates"

Many people were and are still upset about NBC yanking their content from Apple's iTunes store.  The feud has been going back and forth, with rumors flying it may return, or may not, or whatever the case may be on that particular day.  In the meantime, NBC has pimped their shows out to just about everyone ELSE, including Amazon's UnBox service, Hulu.com, cell phone video streaming... you name it.

NBC is now teaming up with Microsoft to sell their shows on the Zune (Microsoft's MP3 player) video store.  Not really that big of a deal, except that NBC is demanding Microsoft install some kind of filter on their Zune devices which will somehow block the device from playing any video file the filter believes is "unauthentic."  Never mind the consumer's legal right to rip their own DVDs, for example.  If NBC doesn't like it, it won't work.  Why Microsoft is bending over and taking this isn't a big mystery (they're desperate, and have already kowtowed to Universal Music's demand to give them a cut of sales... a "pirate" tax, if you will), but it seems to me to set a pretty dangerous precedent. 

EDIT:  According to the NYT article, Microsoft is apparently denying they agreed to do anything more than "discuss" the issue with NBC.