Intel to Build DRM into Next-Generation CPUs

mdecerbo writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that next year's Intel processors will include hardware support for Microsoft's "Palladium" DRM system. There are chilling privacy implications. AMD, here I come."

Comments

I have an idea

[Taylor_Durden]

Let's all just keep our current computers.

Re:I have an idea

[CaptDeuce]

Let's all just keep our current computers.

I have a better idea: just don't buy a computer with Intel Inside. Let 'em incorporate as many DRM gadgets as they want. Then we buy as many non-DRM compliant gadgets as we want.

In other words, let 'em spawn a whole new market and let theirs wither on the corporate cube vine -- the only place you'll find DRM 'puters in large numbers.

Does this really matter?

[purplebear]

I mean if you do not plan to run Palladium, where's the problem? This would not stop you from doing anything you do now. Doesn't the OS have to support DRM also in order for this to have any effect?

Re:Does this really matter?

[ivan256]

Soon you will see web pages that you cannot load without Palladium enabled. Don't beleive me? You can bet that any media related plugin will support it, and stupid content providers will enable it. You'll see palladium enabled image formats, movies, interactive flash apps, all that will refuse to load without palladium enabled. The web will become largely text only for people without a new machine and windows.

Shortly thereafter, expect MS "enhancements" to IE that can allow web sites to disable the view source, copy, paste, and print functions on web pages. You'll have to have palladium enabled to view those sites.

You'll start see processor ads relating the processor to the internet that aren't lying. "See more of the internet with the new Intel Pentium 6 processor."

Welcome to the Microsoft only internet. You'll have to purchase a new computer and OS license to participate.

Re:Does this really matter?

[bwt]

You can hide your head in the sand and pretend that you don't want to polarize people over this, but that will result in an "optional DRM" becoming the non-optional standard, and then in a few years DRM will become mandatory.

The critical factor is that we must have better content value than them. Disney and the "cool games" sites you refer to will be for pay, so I definitely think this is possible.

The other side has chosen the route of polarizing, not us. They will only deliver content to people who adopt a certain subserviant mentality and technology. We must make people understand that in addition to accepting shackles, they lose access to things they like.

The only route that leads to information freedom is to polarize and then extinguish the other side.

Point/Counterpoint

[limekiller4]

I think that the obvious reaction for the average Slashdotter will be (a) there will always be someone putting out non-DRM hardware (perhaps) and (b) I'll be able to use my current 2.5Ghz hardware for a loooooong time before it's "slow" (gamers obviously do not fit in here). This assumes that two things will not occur:

The vast majority of people (read; the EULA oblivious) will not adopt it anyway and;

Microsoft will not make it impossible to talk to untrusted machines.

I won't draw any conclusions from this and I won't talk about how the world is going to hell in a digital handbasket, but it's food for thought.

25 Million Mac users stand up and applaud

[gsfprez]

Intel and Microsoft, between Windows Media Center and the forthcoming Palladium might as well just tack on "if you don't want all this crap, please see www.apple.com" at the end of each ad.

While i've been telling my Windows colleagues that this was coming - none of them believed.

And now - bonus - XP.5 and Intel both, in the same week - prove me right.

God.. its good to buy from the "most dangerous company to Intellectual Property today"

Re:25 Million Mac users stand up and applaud

[Dynedain]

And you think that in 4 years, when the new DVD-replacement format is what all new movies, music, etc. is being released on, is palladium/DRM only, that Apple won't follow suit and enable that feature into their OS/hardware. If you think that, then you are blind. Especially considering by that point, Hollings will have gotten something through congress that ensures that only DRM capable equipment is sold in the US. Saying this is a Wintel only problem is like saying that Macs are immune from viruses. Its blatantly false.

AMD will do whatever MS says

[exhilaration]

Did you guys forget AMD's CEO testifying on behalf of Microsoft in their antitrust case?

Did you guys forget the rumors that Microsoft's support of X86-64 was due to AMD standing behind them?

If Intel is doing this, AMD will be right behind them. They'll do anything to preserve their relationship with Microsoft.

Don't get me wrong, I love AMD, but they're just as corporate as the rest of the semiconductor industry.

Re:Who cares?

[teamhasnoi]

if you are reading Slashdot, then the odds are REALLY good that you run an alternate OS like Linux.

You might want to look at the poll today. At this time only 34% are Linux users and 47% are using 95 thru XP.

Besides, eventually Linux will not be 'allowed' to run on this processor. So you *better* care.

Re:Who cares?

[Lendrick]

First off, the odds, according to today's poll, are about 30%.

That said, this affects everyone. Mind you, I'm told that Palladium will always be able to be shut off via the BIOS, so you can always buy a Palladium-enabled processor and make it act as if it isn't. That's not the problem, really.

The problem is that Palladium is hardware-embedded Digital Rights Denial. It's paving the way for music and movies that won't play at all unless you have a Palladium-enabled processor. And if you do enable Palladium, you'll be subject to the same restrictive crap that the media cartels have been trying unsuccessfully to push over the last several years. Movies that you can't move to other computers, and that only work as long as you remain subscribed to MovieConglomerate.com or wherever your got them.

Will this all work out in the long run? Well, it depends on how people react. If they continue to reject hightly restricted content, we should be fine. If not, well, say goodbye to the Open Internet. It was fun while it lasted.

Not as funny as you might think

[swb]

You're not kidding. I start reading stuff like this and I start wondering if its not too late to go analog and give up on computers and do something else.

I mean, once they hammer all the fun out of it by making it like cable TV what's the fucking point?

Re:Not as funny as you might think

[Gryffin]

"I mean, once they hammer all the fun out of it by making it like cable TV what's the fucking point?"

Hey, it was inevitable. Really.

Let's look at how the other "media" have fared:

• Print: While it requires a printing press to reach a large audience, people communicated on paper, one-to-one, since writing was invented. And as recently as the 19th century, it was fairly common to print and distribute pamphlets, if you had a message you wanted to get out, and most towns and cities had several thriving newspapers, each with a unique voice. Today the art of writing has been lost by nearly all but those paid to do it, people handing out leaflets on streetcorners are widely considered whackjobs, and all but a handful of cities have but one major newpaper.
  
  
• Radio: I think it's asafe bet that Marconi never envisioned ClearChannel. In fact, I doubt he ever thought that millions would actually sit and listen en-masse to a single broadcaster. Radio was originally intended as a one-to-one communications medium, potentially the first long-distance P2P medium. But the vast majority of people were quite content to merely listen to what others broadcast, rather than broadcast themselves. Control of broadcasting consolidated quickly, and by the 1920's a handful of broadcasting networks controlled much of the medium, aided and abetted by the government. Want to broadcast your own station? Good luck. Just ask the FCC for a licence, and you'll find you can't play with the big boys. Sure, a few bands are reserved for "public" use (FRS, CB), but are strictly limited in wattage (hence, reach) and content (did you know it's a federal offence to broadcsat music over CB?), lest you actually provide an alternative to the conglomerates.
  
  
• Television: 75 years ago this past May, AT&T demonstrated the first television transmission in the US. British researchers had staged a similar demonstration a couple months earlier. It was over wire, but was soon working over the airwaves. But, like radio, it was never intended to be a broadcast medium. For some time, the only television installations were point-to-point, videophones essentially. It took David Sarnoff of RCA (Radio Corp. of America) to realize the potential of television to become yet another corporate broadcasting medium, and that's exactly what he did.
  
  
• BBSs: Even before the 'net, people had begun to network using local dial-up BBSs, which later gained regional, national, and even international reach via FidoNet and the like. There were no corporate conglomerates dumping "content" into waiting eyeballs; anyone who had something to say or share could buy a modem and put up a BBS. People geographically distant could exchange words and ideas freely. Then came the corporations: CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online. Their improved networks, broad capacity and professional management put an end to the amateur FidoNets. As time went on, each of the nationwide BBSs migrated from merely allowing their customers to interract, and succumbed to the temptation to broadcast to them, to spoonfeed them corporate "content." For an advertising fee, of course.
  
  
• The Internet: Not long ago, it seemed that everyone had a web site, or at least a home page. People would spend hours just following links in hopes of stumbling across the interesting, the wild, the thought-provoking, the just plain dumb. As the volume of such pages grew, the sheer volume created a demand for an easy way to find sites that fit the viewer's interest. Two methods came about: Web rings and search engines.Web rings were strictly amateur; but investors saw the potential of search engines to "aggregate eyeballs" for sale to advertisers. Then came (and went) "push," a brutally clumsy attempt at TV-style broadcasting; but then the search engines became "portals," attracting users with actually useful functionality. These relatively few "onramps" to the Internet attracted the media corporations, and after several years of consolidation and buy-outs, a mere handful of corporations control what are for many people the only way they know of to get online.
  
  

"Knowledge is power." But knowledge doesn't travel by itself, it must be communicated. He who controls that communication controls everything. The wealthy and powerful know this, and will always strive to control what we see, hear, and hence, what we think. That's why every means of communication will inexorably move from one-to-one to a broadcast paradigm.

Why should networked personal computers be any different?

What will China and other countries do?

[anonymous loser]

Not everyone in the world is enamored with DRM. China already distrusts Microsoft products enough to fully embrace linux as their OS of choice. Will the same thing happen to Intel products in China?

It doesn't seem like a very smart business decision to lock yourself out of the fastest-growing market in the world.

Palladium is waaay overblown

[0x0d0a]

Or buy new computers and turn off Palladium. Or just ignore the Windows people and keep using Linux.

Palladium comes down to copy protection of *Windows* software and music in *Windows*, and can, in any event, be disabled.

Worst case Windows users can crack software to make it play even with Palladium turned off, which is pretty much what people already do to attack copy protection on software.

How does it affect us? Why should we care?

And answering "Because MS will make Windows not talk to Linux and isolate it", as some other poster did in these responses, is not good enough. MS has been trying to keep Windows from talking to Linux for a long time.

Re:Palladium is waaay overblown

[kasperd]

Are you willing to violate laws to run Linux?

I don't have to. Even if Microsoft owns some patent, it doesn't change anything. Their patent is not valid where I live. It even seems to be the case, that I'm allowed to reverse engineer their software, if that is the only way to get Linux running.

And then you might say, Microsoft can do enough lobying to get other products forbidden by law. Now I'm gonna compare this to countries that already have laws limiting peoples freedom. What do we say about people breaking the laws in those countries? Do we call them criminals? No, we don't, we say they are fighting for their freedom.

I guess in case laws are changed in favour of Microsoft, I'm willing to violate them, because I think that is the right thing to do.

Re:Sorry but...

[Jason Earl]

That's the craziest thing that I have ever heard. The processor guys should be happy when someone "borrows" software or uses their computer to rip their CDs to Oggs. Every cent that Intel's and AMD's customers spend on software and media content is one more cent that they aren't spending on computer hardware. More importantly, sharing media and software is increasingly what people want to do with their computers. Given the choice of an old slow PC that allows them to rip MP3s and a new computer that doesn't (and that costs a pile of money) many folks are going to choose to stick with their old hardware. If AMD and Intel think that the PC market it soft now, just wait until they start treating their customer like criminals. Especially since you don't really need a new computer unless you are working with multimedia. If all you want to do is some word processing your old machine is almost certainly fast enough.

You want to know when Linux is going to be truly ready for the home desktop? It will be ready when Microsoft starts really pushing Palladium. Until that time users in North America and Europe will gladly pay a little extra to stick with what they already know (Windows). When Microsoft makes it impossible for people to use their computers like they want, all of a sudden folks are going to realize that Linux isn't that hard to use after all.

These companies are writing their own epitaph.

Re:redhat and AMD.

[ink]

The beauty of Palladium and the TCPA is that it can all be done in open-source. Microsoft Palladium will be open-source as well (senator Hollings thought that would make us all happy). You will still be unable to circumvent the system because a good chunk of it resides on a remote machine, and it will go all the way down to the CPU on your local box (hence this news story).

Welcome to the future, where you have to get permission to run computer instructions. The penalty for "hacking" this system is $500,000 and 5 years in prison. That's right. If you figure out a clever way to play an MP3 file on your TCPA machine, you're eligible for more time than a drunk driver that killed someone is.

It's easy to disable, but it won't help

[Animats]

It's really an OS issue, or a Microsoft one. Palladium hardware is easy to disable. In fact, the whole point is that any "tampering" with the boot process disables the hardware-stored authorizations. This only matters if the OS cares about it.

The real question is how obnoxious Microsoft will make the OS restrictions.

Incidentally, we ought to be seeing some Palladium-enabled games soon, ones where modified clients can be detected by the server. That will be how the technology gets debugged.

Sorry, Mac will lose too

[xant]

Microsoft monopoly+Media Monopoly=Palladium for everyone.

Very simply:
1. Palladium-encrypted (broken) content media helps keep Content Industries (contrast with: Artists) alive by giving them control, so they like it.

2. As soon as it's profitable to do so, the CIs will Palladium-encrypt (break) every piece of media they can.

3. When Palladium is available everywhere, it will be profitable for the CIs to digitally Palladium-encrypt (break) every piece of Mass Market Content that they create.

4. Any piece of Palladium-encrypted content--DVD, Music CD, software program--that is not signed will fail to play unless Palladium is there to decrypt it.

5. The MS monopoly (and Intel's and AMD's respective complicity in that monopoly) can make sure that Palladium is available almost everywhere at once.

6. When broken content is the norm, Mac and Linux will not be able to use that content any more without supporting Palladium.

7. Mac and Linux will have to either support Palladium or (illegally!!, in the US) circumvent it to be useful.

8. Linux is not an organization, so it will likely go in both directions at once.

9. Mac is an organization, and it will probably not support circumvention.

This is very, very bad. Our best hope is for a severe Microsoft anti-trust penalty, and for our legislators to wise up and stop passing laws to prop up business plans.

What to do with friends who pirate?

[MobyDisk]

I have a friend who spends lots of time on newsgroups, Kazaa, etc. copying movies. At the same time, I read articles like this, and spend $10 sending certified delivery confirmed letters to congressmen like Mr. Hollings and businesses like Intel and AMD. This is highly counterproductive. My friend saves $10/month on movie rentals, and I spend $10/month on letters.

I've talked to this person and they say "Oh, I just copy movies I wouldn't rent anyway." (I assume because they are too expensive) They have a valid point since some products are just ridiculously expensive. But they are not helping the problem. If they spent their effort protesting, or finding alternatives as they did pirating, we would be in good shape. I would probably be better off paying them $10/month and having them rent the movies, than to spend it writing letters.

What should I do? Do I turn them in? Do I hassle them? Do I pay them to stop doing it? It's my rights they are taking away, but turning them in seems ridiculous. Is there somethnig we can do in mass that could prevent this problem?