Slashdot Mirror
Intel Adds DRM to New Chips
Badluck writes "Microsoft and the entertainment industry's holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset.
Officially launched worldwide on the May 26, the new offerings come DRM -enabled and will, at least in theory, allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard rather than through the operating system as is currently the case..." The Inquirer has the story as well.
AMD++
I know I will be sticking with AMD.... wow... really bad marketing move.
A underperforming overpriced DRM-enabled furnace! I so want one...
For the U.S. consumer market at least.
Maybe this will be in the next gen consoles as well? It seems about the right time to reveal technology going in them and "forget" to mention this. Could outright kill mod chipping and pirated games.
I like muppets.
Is AMD planning to include DRM in their processors as well?
theefer
Remember the hoohah over CPU IDs a few years back? They were supposed to enable software suppliers to keep track of things. There was so much of a kerfuffle that most BIOSes now have a function to disable it. I can see this going the same way when it turns out it causes Windows to BSOD or something stupid.
What if the systems have to be retrocompatible ? The re must be a flag to detect if the processor is a 945, and if not, software decoding happens. By making the system believe the processor is pre-945, there must be a way to circumvent the protection (does not work of course if a 945 is required, but this will need another three to five years).
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Congratulations Intel, now your only real customer will be Dell, never buying another intel processor in my life.
idiots.
from TFA: Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.
lots of fun to be had with this I think..
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
I've been using AMD for years because of the price/performance ratio, their quality, and the fact that I like to support competition. I really hope that AMD doesn't bow down to the man and do the same thing. I'm really surprised that Intel would make such a move when they are battling AMD so fiercely.
This could be the reason that AMD takes over the lead. I know I'm not buying DRMed crap and I'm telling everyone I know the same thing.
Is it like how they used to have that identifiable number on the p3/p4 chips that everyone was so worried bout? And can it be disabled....
Well, its a good thing that that the IBM PPC processors don't have built in DRM Go Apple! :)
Tired of Apathy? http://apathyonline.net
How many more times will slashdot get it wrong?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Not much of a debate anymore in the reasons to buy AMD vs Intel.
Stick with the one that doesn't arbitrarily hamstring you.
p.s. intel's move is also exceptionally stupid in all non-US markets
I wonder if AMD will follow suit or try and go against the flow? Interestingly I recently acquired a Mac and have been using Mac OS X now for about a month. I like it a lot. If AMD follows suit I just may switch to Mac entirely. My old x86 machines will definitely have to be linux only if it comes to that. Right now they are all dual boot with Gentoo/WinXP.
Intel had better have a good lure to get consumers to buy this.
Consumers aren't stupid (for the most part), and if word gets out that they should avoid this chipset, lesser consumers may just avoid Intel altogether.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
I've been trying to stay on the Intel side of things for the past three years and they certainly aren't making it easy. I feel some sort of loyalty because they are paying (indirectly) for my education, but this is a little far. Well, I guess this seals it. My next computer is a Mac.
Is this LaGrande or something else? Intel promised that they would sell chips both with and without LaGrande; I wonder if they will stick to it.
Intel has a policy of not adding undocumented features to their products, so where's the documentation? Or have they changed their policy?
I know there will be a lot of slashbots condemning Intel for this great move, but I really think they should be commented.
First off all, as we all know, the only way to keep something like a cultural production going is DRM. All the experts, like RIAA and MPAA confirm that.
So if you are in any way interested in the survival of something resembling culture and thereby civilization, you have to welcome this.
Second, and even more important to me, let us think about what computers are made for. What is their purpose?
Simple, to make the live of the users more simple. Now how better to achieve this than by takeing as much control from the user as possible and giving it to responsible corporate citizens?
So in that regard, great move by Intel.
Hail Intel!
Their reluctance to talk about specifics on the technology is what worries me. What if their DRM mistakenly identifies something on my hard disk as copyright material and prevents me from using my own very legal data? We can't be sure it won't thanks to jolly old intel.
This ATM and IDE control scares me the most though. Giving some random Joe the ability to manipulate my computer at a level BELOW the operating system!?!? HOO BOY! I can't wait to see how long it will take to patch the security flaws in there, in the mean time the script-kiddies now have a truly cross platform way to 0wn boxes.
When will people learn, you can't make something 100% secure, and security through obscurity is a bad idea? Lets just hope the guys in the white hats can reverse engineer this crap first and figure out a way to save the millions of innocent and ignorant customers who will end up with one of these chips in their box.
It's actually quite interesting.
They're not only talking about on-chip DRM, they're also talking about a "feature" called Active Management Technology in their new chipsets.
By the sounds of it, it's a firmware-level mini-OS that allows an administrator (or presumably anyone with the password, or the appropriate exploit) to, and I quote:
"remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems
Frankly, that worries me quite a bit more than the DRM.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
"Secure hardware" is an amazingly difficult thing to achieve (by secure I mean secure from its user, of course). For instance, in the late 90s, smartcards were hacked by figuring out bits from their keys with differential power analysis.
The Raven
Provide a feature for someone other than those who are paying for your product? Yeah, um, lets see how that works out for you pal. I will personally avoid these things like the plague.
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
Soon BIG BROTHER will also include a governement spyware in INTEL processors for better control of Oceania.
Isn't this going to be close the unique ID numbers that were on chips a few years ago? So a media file or player can check and see what ID proc it's running on, and only ever run on that number again? Where is the outcry now? Don't people care about their privacy and rights? They fought so hard before, but now it's acceptable? People are suckers!
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
With recent DRM techniques as Intels next CPU, i can only predict trouble in the near future and hacks/reverse engineering to disable the DRM strict rules. Hopefully AMD won't take the same route of doom as Intel is putting in their corporate future. But then Intel maybe smart after all and allow consumers to disable at will the DRM restrictions! Lets see how far Intel and other companies go with DRM.
Anyone?
I think, therefore I thought.
I still think it might be possible to defeat this with an emulator.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Hasn't it been publicly stated numerous times that the whole reason China was pusing for localized Linux was to avoid having hidden backdoors on PCs in China that the government had no control over? If Intel is really installing a sub-system that is specifically designed to re-direct information it seems like a pretty obvious violation of that stated policy. It's hard for Intel to say they didn't know about it when it has been rolled out pretty much every time the topic of Linux and China gets mentioned in the IT press.
And is it just China? Don't a number of other countries have similar policies? This seems like it could have serious implications for Intel's global position. The US market is big, but it's not necessarily where the PC growth is coming from over the next few decades.
You're not 0wned, your system management has just been involuntarily outsourced.
I see no mention on DRM tech in either the Intel 955 chipset or the nForce 4, so I see no reason why I won't buy a motherboard based off these chipsets. I also don't see any mention of DRM in the first dual core cpu Intel released, the Extreme Edition 840. All you people saying "Boycott Intel" are jumping the gun, just as I would expect slashdotters to do... Besides, what is DRM built into a chip going to do? If I have an mp3 without a drm tag will it delete it for me? There goes my completely legal mp3 collection...
What you propably wanted to say:
DRM is bad until someone breaks it.
See, that's better now, isn't it?
Is it for current WinXP or for future versions (like Longhorn)?
In other news, shares in chipmaker AMD rose approximately 254798%.
lots of fun to be had with this I think..
Imagine the first virus/spy ware to come along that takes advanted of these "features". After a viruse sends itself out to create enough new drones, it wipes the disk. Alternatively, a piece of spyware might be able to use this to prevent itself from being uninstalled, in addition to installing even more crap on you system.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
From the article: However, Tucker ducked questions regarding technical details of how embedded DRM would work saying it was not in the interests of his company to spell out how the technology in the interests of security.
Also FTA: Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations...
Good grief, Intel, do you still believe that security through obscurity works? You're waving a big honkin' red flag that tells me this is going to be a hack magnet, and you think they're likely to be successful at it if they figure out how it works - and make no mistake about it, the blackhats WILL figure out how it works.
This is absurd. We all need to let Dell, Toshiba etc. know that if their systems have this functionality enabled, we will be shopping elsewhere.
#DeleteChrome
I guess you missed the news earlier this week that Apple may be using Intel chips in the future?
... CYRIX!
anyone see their new remote administration "feature" as a possible remote security hole regardless of OS? perhaps we just trust that it is 100% secure and unhackable. Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.
-John Fenley
The owner of a machine can always turn off the machine's Trusted Platform Module using BIOS Setup, though works of authorship distributed through Trusted methods will no longer play until the TPM is turned back on.
In the long term, is there any way Intel can make users need this? Like content that will only work with DRM. Or better yet, have the entertainment industry force people into this DRM hardware.
Pretty Pictures!
Copyrights are much more complex than mere assertion by an object that it cannot be copied. When my Dell CPU says I can't backup an object, or copy it for use in a different location of my own, or for criticism, satire, or other fair use, or streaming (which the Library of Congress Copyright Office says is not a "copy"), how do I protect my rights? Send the Dell back, fight for a refund? Who's going to compensate me for their wrongful infringement of my rights? For my lost time, opportunites, labor, value expected but denied? And what about in countries other than the US, where copyright laws are different, often much more complex, and sometimes nonexistent?
It's a mistake for hardware engineers to generate law-enforcement in mass-consumer products. At most, optional hardware support for user opt-in, to make compliance easy enough that most people agree, should be available. Copyright violation is a problem for the justice system, with its presumptions of innocence until guilt is proven, due process, and human interpreters of whether acts were crimes or not.
This DRM CPU tech should go down in flames, like Intel's mandatory CPU serial#. Intel's got a lot more problems just rolling out CPUs that do what we want, like faster Pentium4s. They shouldn't be wasting developer time, eating die space, and complexifying throughput with half-bright consumer traps like this. Of course, AMD (and others) have the opportunity to speed past Intel, and give customers what we want. Not just spin their wheels trying to woo back Microsoft, as it looks to other CPU platforms. Because we'll all leave Intel hanging when a CPU comes along that serves us better.
--
make install -not war
... everybody who buys a preconfigured "closed" intel box will get one of these CPUs and it will be tooted as an extra feature.
o rp.
My guess is that the first round is for testing and then it will probably be back portet to a level of CPU's that somebody want to use in a set-top box.
This is where functionality like this would really shine in the eye of the media companies. A chipset/cpu like this, Windows Media Edition 2007 DRM+, will probably give you a box that nobody normal (joe-consumer) would be able to hack, making it possible to subsidise heavily (e.i. give it away) as you would be sure that it wouldn't be used for anything but the content you sell.
Intel will probably be able live down the loss of sale to geeks, when they sell 700 million of these boxes to AOL-TimeWarmer-Sony-Vivendi-MegaGlobalHyper-ROC-C
TC - My Photos..
Buy AMD.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Well, well, Intel, I'm sooo dissapointed. I was expecting you to bless us with real DRM that actually works.
From the vauge wordings in the 2 articles it sounds like the TCPA stuff is in the *chipset*, not the CPU. Which means it's the same snake oil as the chip IBM is peddling in their laptops. Se my comments here and here on why.
And Intel knows they are selling crap. If it really worked, it would be because it's completly implemented on the CPU die and they wouldn't have to be spewing garbage like this:
/greger
P.S. Did I mention, I have this warehouse full of old computers. They are not for sale. Yet... Muahaha...
What happens if a large corporation uses DRM to enforce copyright it *claims* to own but in fact does not. I'm thinking of someone alot bigger than SCO doing what SCO did (attempt to steal software copyrighted by others) but also having the power (unlike SCO) to actually shut down use of software.
Now, before everyone gets their panties in a bunch, they are simply moving forward with what they feel the customers ( the *real* customers, not us techinal people around here.. we arent even a blip on their radar ) want.
In time, this stuff will be mandated anyway, either directly or indirectly, so its not suprising nor does it matter much in the long run.
Our 'freedom to compute' is on borrowed time.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Set top boxes will be prevalent with the use of Intel CPUs because of the inherent technology -- the RIAA and MPAA would work endlessly to see that they push the 'Intel' product; because in most set top boxes, speed isn't really an issue... Oh well, whatever. I'm still buyin AMD.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
If you can afford a fully loaded Pentium system, do you really need to worry about pirating things because you can't afford them?
...is that they have content worth protecting in the first place.
I'm really not too interested in "consuming" their content in the first place, let alone "stealing" it.
IMHO, this is more of a marketing spin then a feature.. but of course, you can't underestimate the power of marketing.
and what are the complications if CPU/MB died and you need to replace it? (well. almost same as software based DRM, but harder to do).
These Intel executives sure love to lose money. We should really help them.
I really find all of this slightly annoying. I buy music. If it's worth the money. If the music is crap, I don't think I should have top pay to discover that fact.
w00t
Yes, this is another nail in the Intel solution as far as I am concerned. When one considers price and performance advantages of the AMD approach, one has to be a real masochist to want to endure such vendor imposed restrictions merely for the empty promise of idoleogical purity.
My next CPU will be AMD Opteron.
That would make sense from a Microsoft point of view... No way to secure XP (in a piracy of various sorts sense, the other kind of security is another discussion, albeit with a similar conclusion), so they ship a whole new OS coupled with forced hardware DRM in the hopes that they can use it to curb piracy?
Another question one might have is can you turn the DRM off? I say the answer isn't particularly important, even if you can turn it off now, that doesn't mean you will be able to for "DRM v2" which comes out in 6 months and will be required for all hardware in a year.
The final, most important question, is what are they going to do about Linux? Will Linux still run on these processors without a hitch? Will it be forcefully ousted and really cement the Wintel monopoly? Are they going to make it illegal to run anything but Windows on these processors? Are they going to actually support DRM on Linux in some meaningful way? (odd idea, but it could happen)
Too many questions, not enough answers, I think it's about time to buy some AMD stock.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
The XBox has had a version of this since the beginning. It didn't stop it from being hacked.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
and they don't cut the copies!!!
Putting a $10 © protection is too expensive!!!
What better way to get people looking into OS X, Linux!!
.NET allows developers worldwide to harness the power of Intel CyberCop Digital Rights Management, even over the internet."
"Let the Intel CyberCop inside decide which files you can open, print, play and edit"
"Only Microsofts new drmAgent.dll for
"Next on Fox News at 10: Corporate Viruses -- Good or Bad. We'll give you the facts on the P2P Worm created by the RIAA."
Ohhh... the possibilities for total abuse/misuse are endless!!!
Just wait till some ransomware script-kiddy starts using DRM tools to digitally lock the contents of a hard drive and installs a tor-enabled online payperview system, to access your precious word docs.
And remember DRM is your friend! Next years Spyware/Adware will find exploits that gets it assigned a DRM-priveledged level and CAN'T BE REMOVED because the DRM system thinks it's part of itself.
I'm just damn glad I wont have to live with this DRM hell that's about to be unleashed to millions of walmart shoppers!
And the way I see it, if you use Windows, you must love being managed and restricted anyway so most MS users won't notice much difference and quite a few will actually love it.
OK, so what's going to clue you in that anything at all changed?
The "content moguls" have fucking ruined it for everyone with their whining control-freakery.
No, pirates have ruined it for everyone. The "moguls" are just reacting to piracy, there would be no motivation for DRM if people purchased what they used.
Note: this is something separate from downloading. How you get your purchases is irrelevant, it only matter that you purchase. IF for example the vast majority of people downloading music had done so to preview their purchases rather than amass huge libraries of music they would never buy then the "moguls" would not be on their crusade. Yes, some people download to preview and then go out and purchase but regrettably this was the exception not the rule.
Without details, there's really nothing more to say on this subject.
So while the current Apple lineup is DRM free, not all IBM PPC powered machines are quite so lucky.
It's always funny, when corporations forget their customers.
Does Intel really think that less kiss-ass companies won't be able to produce microprocessors without kiss-ass functions?
It will be funny when when Intel sales will be propelled by the member of the entertainment industry only.
The industry, which is bye the way quite used to ripping off intellectual property owners.
In fact, they have traditionally built their business on this method.
Mary F. Pols, Contra Costa Times writes that
Talkien was paid about 10.000 pounds in the late sixties for the movie rights, at that time he was already wastly popular.
"The real Tolkien boom started in about 1965. An American publisher, Ace, printed a paperback version, completely unauthorized and much cheaper. Sales took off, and a cult began on college campuses in the United States, with students turning up to classes wearing "Frodo Lives" pins.
Of course, Tolkien wasn't making any money off this unauthorized version."
This is just a recent example, people should read the story of the largest movie and recording companies to see for themselves how they made fortunes by ripping off individual intellectual property owners.
They have invented "downloading" way earlier than Napster.
more die space and engineering resources spent for something that NO single customer wants, err if you don't count mega-corporations as customers...
now why would anyone want to spend money to reduce their existing functionality?
palladium and NGSCB has !!ALWAYS!! been about DRM.
and the only piece of evidence needed is the following: they hide the key from the ?legitimate? owner of the machine.
if this were about security, user security, then the user would know their own key.
simple as that.
thanks to Alsee and the other clear thinking individuals who help educate us against the evils of consolifying our computers.
just an extra note... seeing that AMD is also doing the same thing... and that IBM's cell processors are basically built from the ground up for DRM... where does that leave independant (HA!) cpu manufacturers who won't implement this garbage on their products? one has to wonder, there won't be any cpus left that function the way their owners want them to... err supposed owners.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
The Processor Serial Number is not necessarily relevant here. The CPU allowed the PSN to be disabled. The chipset may not allow the DRM to be disabled. The only hope may be that Intel offers chipsets with and without DRM, allowing the motherboard manufacturer to go with or without.
So the Digit Online article says:
"...features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will
allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format
or configure individual drives and reload operating systems
and software from remote locations, again independent of
operating systems."
Doesn't this sound just suicidally dangerous to every single
slashdot reader? Have we learned NOTHING about network
security over the history of the Internet?
Intel put this technology in at the hardware level and refuse
to tell us how it works!
So are we to believe that 'security by obscurity' is all that's
protecting us from random idiots reformatting our hard drives
and loading entire new OS's onto our machines? IRRESPECTIVE of
what OS I have loaded!?!?!
If the underlying security is good enough to make this even
REMOTELY bearable then there is no reason not to tell us (in
great detail) how it works.
If the security this uses is cracked within a year of the machines
appearing on the market, we'll have several million computers on
the Internet that are UTTERLY defenseless against hackers - and Intel
aren't even prepared to risk an open 'Peer review' of the technology!!
Think about this - if this can happen IRRESPECTIVE of the OS on
the machine - then there is no conceivable software defence against
hackers using this mechanism.
This is quite the most irresponsible idea I've heard in a very
long time!
www.sjbaker.org
Its time to investicate how to develop an open source fpga based motherboard that uses non-drm cpu chips, perhaps a parallel machine that uses lots of fast 400mhz jellybean processors or else use the sony cell processor?
Contrary to popular opinion, there are lots of ways to keep yourself entertained. Read a book, go for a walk or a drive, play a board game with your family, build a piece of furniture, or maybe even go on a date. I know the last one sounds pretty tough for some of you, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to strike up a conversation with a girl when you're not talking to her about hardware-enabled DRM.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
...after the first systems are sold.
However, [Intel's Australian technical manager] ducked questions regarding technical details of how embedded DRM would work saying it was not in the interests of his company to spell out how the technology [works] in the interests of security.
So, it's not like they are providing a general DRM enforcing capability that any copyright holder can use. Only those who are in league with Intel can use this. So they are clearly stating that this is solely a backdoor for the recording/movie companies and the "IP" companies. That's dandy.
Hasn't it been publicly stated numerous times that the whole reason China was pusing for localized Linux was to avoid having hidden backdoors on PCs in China that the government had no control over? If Intel is really installing a sub-system that is specifically designed to re-direct information it seems like a pretty obvious violation of that stated policy.
I believe you have completely misunderstood this tech. It is not a hidden backdoor, it is a tool for the Chinese government to monitor and control computer use. They have the physical and wired access to these machines.
happens when every embedded device is an agent of law enforcement. You can bet that if this goes mainstream, the end of Western Civilization is at hand. The term Ubiquitous Law Enforcement was invented by by noted science fiction author and computer scientist Vernor Vinge.
I STILL haven't bought Intel since the PIII Processor Serial Number Fiasco. Thought I realize that the 6 or so processors that I've bought in that time doesn't mean squat to Intel, there are lots of other people like me.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
CPU ID still works on every PC I've tried, as in it can still return GenuineIntel or AuthenticAMD and CPU features. Returning CPU serial is just a small part of it that's not supported by many CPU's. Depending of what infos you want when you use CPUID, you have to fill the EAX register with the different numbers (use 3 to get the 18 bit Serial Number in ECX:EDX regs, other values still work fine).
Just saying, it the BIOS doesn't completely disable CPUID, just the Serial Number part of it.
So now we have chip-level DRM and ATM/IDE redirection in the silicon from Intel, with AMD sure to follow. This means they can reformat, copy, delete, and reinstall your OS remotely if you're found to be "violating" Digital Restriction Management policies (which of course will begin to change over time to become stricter and stricter).
What's next? Biometrics "required" to use your PC, that checks some central database to make sure you're "allowed" to use your own content?
How far away are we from having centrally-controlled "computers" (Telescreens anyone?) or ones that require a sample of our DNA first before they'll operate properly?
Seriously, how else can they really start to control this? You know someone will write some sort of UML layer to run the OS on top of the OS, to abstract the whole DRM fu, and then they'll implement something more and something more... and then.. DNA required to operate your "computer" (which is all entirely hosted remotely, no local components at all).
Nice.
Add WOL and PXE to this, and imagine all the fun that can be had!
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created to serve the RIAA."
I have a dream that one day on the hills of the world the sons of former fair use advocates and the sons of former free thinkers will be forced to sit down together at a DVDs of our lame releases and pay for each second they watch (or don't).
I have a dream that one day even the state of the FSF, a heretic state, sweltering with the heat of communist cancer and zeolots, will be transformed into an oasis of profit and marketing.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live to rule a nation where they will not be judged by the restrictions we place on others but by the profit we can make for the RIAA.
I have a dream today.
Go RTF article and then think about intel's new platform strateget. I think Intel is making a brilliant move.
For x86-64 desktop - nothing will change.
For x86-64 in set top boxes - DRM
Fox x86-64 in emerging market icafe, edu compute lab, or enterprise - remote re-imaging.
+3 Funny
+3 Scary but true
Highly, highly, highly unlikely. You obviously have no idea how tough hardware-enforced DRM can be. Sure, such systems have been broken in the past, but that's just because it's in its infancy and takes time to get right. Within the next few years, it will be effectively uncrackable. Have fun with your head in the sand, though!
Well, this strategy may backfire on US companies, when the Chinese, sick of having US DRM imposed on them, form a huge market willing and able to buy DRMless parts. At that point there'll be fabs set up in China or other IP-unfriendly countries churning out unburdened CPUs - and they'll probably be pin-compatible with US company parts. Then they'll get plenty of revenue importing them INTO the US - until the US outlaws 'em, at which point they'll make for lucrative smuggling opportunities.
Don't know if they include DRM in their chips, but there's another CPU option, Via. Just needs a source based compiled distro with appropriate tweaking to run well on them from what I have read.
I just got a mini itx board so I guess I'll be doing this and see how it goes.
And for that matter nowadays are the newest intels or amds really necessary, what with good quality video cards doing a lot of the work? Seems like you could get by with what's out there now (for some years into the future) that doesn't have hard wired drm and just upgrade all the other stuff, drives, vid, ram etc for speed increases.
I don't game or do video editing whatever so I really don't have a use for any high end machines, and I've been playing with mini distros like Austrumi that load completely into RAM, this is some *fast* stuff now when you do that.
Look at your Real ID bill.
There is a global initiative to spy on citizens. This is starting to look like a "lockdown" on individual freedoms.
I have seen people praising AMD for not having DRM, and these people seem to forget about AMD's Presidio which is the same as LaGrange, which is the same stuff Intel is doing with these mobos...
http://www.overclockers.com/tips00664/
outdated article but explains my point
Okay. So Slashdot's all upset about this.
Slashdot doesn't matter.
The thing we really need to be asking here is, how can the general public be made aware of this? And moreover, be made aware of it in a way that they understand, something like new computers with these specific Intel chips are set up so that software companies, like Microsoft, can take control of your computer and stop you from doing things they don't like."
A bunch of slashdotters doing a boycott won't really have any impact. But a few tens of thousands of average consumers walking into Best Buy with furrowed brows and saying they want to buy some kind of new computer, but they don't want it if they have this new "Intel D-Ram" thing (if this can be made to happen), is eventually going to hit corporate consciousness, maybe make Intel think about the issue, and maybe even convince AMD that this for once is not a buzzword it's best not to bet on.
Unfortunately consumers probably won't realize why DRM support in hardware is a bad thing for them until the DRM hardware becomes commonplace, and viruses and malware start taking advantage of the DRM hardware to do really, really nasty things. And eventually, they will. DRM hardware exists, once you strip away the PR, to give software vendors control of the hardware in place of the actual hardware owner; in the long run this is a proposition which is going to be as attractive to Gator as it will be to Real.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Good bye Intel. As the purchaser for the IT department at our university I will make sure that we will not buy any Intel based machines anymore. AMD offers a better performance/price ratio anyways and has become the definite leader in the 64 bit area. In addition to that we can also expect CELL based systems very soon. From my experience price-comparable AMD machines are much faster than Intel but I haven't had the guts to change our buying policy. Now I am doing exactly this and Intel will miss out on selling in average 300-450 CPUs per year for the desktops and servers at our university.
I fully support this. Because I can't wait until some virus is created that destroys the contents of ANY computer using DRMed CPUs or Motherboards. At which point the massive backlash of dumb users who got burnt will force it out of the market forever.
But the virus shouldn't just wipe out the user's computer. It should inform them first. Redirect all web connections to a page explaining what is wrong with their computer ("Because of corporate greed, anyone with some knowhow can do anything they want to your computer."). Then tell them they have 24 hours to backup anything they want to keep. Then wipe every writable media clean.
Please disregard one of the instances of the word "not" in the parent post. It doesn't matter which.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
That's all folks. I just have to point out Fight Club. ...fight club... Ya....fight club....
Life is not for the lazy.
There are a few things I can see with this:
One, the more restruictions built-in that they put on the consumer will propmpt the consumer to look for something that 'works better' or 'does more'.
Two, Just like some of the new laws; when special intrests put things like that in in order to get more control and power, down the road such things turn out to be also an advantage for the ones they were putting the restrictions on in the first place (i.e. IP laws).
Three, sooner or later every DRM content has to be readable, viewable or playable, and until they can get the decryption circuitry implanted in people's heads (even then it is playable again), there will always be a weak spot.
Lastly, corporations are presently operating in a "Mikey Mouse" mode (aka Disney mode), instead of actually creating new things (that they claim is what they do) they instead sit back and milk the money off of things they have done long before. Eventually they will loose thier creative edge to their competition (amongst lots of whining to congress).
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
1) DRM is just a capability in the hardware which can be used for good or evil -like a lot of other things.
2)You can choose to execute OS and software stacks that take advantage of DRM or not. (I really doubt the open source community, for one, will adopt this uniformly)
3) Before you assume that all DRM is intended to enable some Orwellian conspiracy to smoke out you and your illegal MP3s and warez, consider that the many of the messes we're in for everything from stolen credit cards and identity theft to spam and other similar issues are the consequence of not being able to positively and authoratively authenticate users and systems and application objects across the internet. DRM is an unfortunate name for the ability to affirm authenication -since asserting IP ownership, whatever you think about the value of this, is just one of the lesser uses of what this technology actually is. Making authenication sloppy and untrustworthy is no solution to ensuring civil liberties.
I'm going to use the same argument I use when people are wanting to censor naughty words on the radio: change the channel. I'm not saying don't by Intel chips, but I don't see the problem with Intel offering DRM on chip.
This change does not require us to use DRM, just like using Windows doesn't require you to use DRM. If this technology will allow for faster decryption of the AES data, more power too them. This is currently performed by the CPU.
I say, if you don't want to use DRM, don't. The content companies weren't providing legal ways to purchase their content online in the past, and you can continue to not purchase your content online. In the end, it's Napster forcing the DRM on you, not Intel. Intel just sees a market opportunity, because DRM adoption is growing like wildfire.
If someone can explain how this new chip feature is an atrocity against man, I'm all ears. I used to have a big problem with trusted computing in the past, but I have had a change of heart.
What's everyone's current issues with these types of merchant systems?
That unique processor ID thing worked out real well, too.
Everyone's griping how DRM in an Intel CPU is as bad or worse than the unique ID's Intel tried to introduce into CPU's a few years back, that failed miserably with huge uproar.
... yet the world keeps on turning somehow.
Is no one aware that every PC Network card ever made, including the very card you used to view this website has its own unique MAC address?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
I agree it sucks heavily and that the public should be informed and everyone should steer clear of this, but I cannot seriously imagine that it will actually work in practice. I have read the article and I admit there are probably aspects I don't understand to it but I just don't believe it will work in the real world. And there are a lot of questions in my mind about this:
such as if the machine is booted into a non Windows OS ? Is the CPU requiring the presence of Windows (Longhorn) to know what content the user can and can't reproduce ?
Where is the hardware getting the list of 'banned warez/movies/mp3s from ?
Is this something that will have to be applied to all new software/movies/mp3 as some encryption or digital signature that the CPU can check ? If so then kill the encryption or signature in the software or data itself or patch the OS in someway to stop it feeding the CPU with what it needs for DRM to work.
Even if it is wrapping the entire booted environment in a DRM bubble how can it possibly verify that every byte of every piece of digitial content is ok to copy/not ok to copy?
Within days of the launch and customers finding they can't even copy something to another disc it's going to be hugely unpopular. It's a technology that will simply die, much like DVD regions are just a joke now, everyone and their dog patches their firmware to be region free.
You may feel I'm burying my head in the sand but Intel/MS's DRM scheme is doomed.
Quite simply there is no public appetite for DRM and people are just too used to the freedoms they enjoy on their computers, so either one of three things will happen:
1. It will be cracked
2. It will be 'turn offable'
3. It just won't sell properly and will damage Intel's bottom line. No one wants to buy into crippled compromised hardware. There is arguably a small market for crippleware when it comes to software, there is simply none for hardware. I suspect in time 'Trusted Computing' will be a footnote in computing history that hardly anyone will really remember, much like 'Cyberdog and OpenDoc' from Apple.
After the PIII serial number fiasco, I thought intel would have learned. No way I will buy an Intel CPU with this feature, or one designed or made in apartheid israel. I will also be ordering AMD for the 580 new PCs that I am in charge of buying for my company.
Your crazy post is the perfect example of why corporate ownership of culture is bad. As long as people communicate with each other, culture will exist in one form or another. What is harmful is when some corporate entity, not the public, owns that culture.
It used to be free in the past, but somehow corporations these days seem to think it's moral and good to buy and sell culture and ideas. The whole point of the information age is the free global exchange of ideas and culture.
I personally can't wait for the time where patents and copyright are abolished or strongly curtailed.
.
Of course just because I couldn't find one in a five minute Google session doesn't mean it's not there at all. But although I didn't find anything from Mainland China besides a lot of advisory legislation rather than mandates, I did find a surprisingly large and apparently growing list of other countries which do have mandatory open source policies. Those policies might quite likely specify security issues that could effect sales of these double-secret tap-tap-no-black-magic stick-a-needle-in-your-eye Intel chips.
If you want to check it out, here's the URL for the Google cached HTML version of a PDF on the topic.
There's some interesting info in there. Surprsing how many countries are moving on this legislation. South America seems to be quite active in this area as well as parts of Europe.
Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.
Forget DRM for the moment, what a fucking joke this is. If these people think that this will not become a security problem then they're seriously deluded. You've got the certain possibility of governments and organisations taking a remote peek at your PC, but also this will be exploited in a large way. I think we all know the reason for Longhorn's delay - they want this hardware out in the wild. They also think that by not talking about it they can slip it under peoples' radar.
It only takes a single architecture to be missed. If the users have fewer problems with it than with DRM encumbered systems natural market forces will eventually erode the market penetration of the encumbered systems.
Basically this means that DRM will never really become a problem, it will be easily bypassed by the majority. No matter what the MPAA, RIAA or anyone else want.
Deleted
This is not a feature that the customer wants. This is a feature of corporations and DRM rights holders having more control over the customer- at the customer's expense I might add.
Fuck you Intel and Microsoft. AMD and Linux now and forever.
DRM provides the perfect oppertunity for the PRC to implement civilian clearance levels and knowledge tracking, applying to everything from chat rooms to web pages to electronic books.
There's so many ways to take advantage of it, from their government's perspective, that I'd be amazed if they didn't already have massive development efforts underway.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
here's to hoping its disabled by default in bios
Use a firewall.
10: SIN 20: GOTO HELL
This thing *could* get off depending on its price. Would this result in PCs much cheaper than today's, for the average person?
Maybe not about generic computer... but what about company-paid small form factor PCs that can play a few movies, play a few musics, and then would allow installing some office programs for productivity. Instead of a "personal" computer, it would be a "disposable" computer that comes with the purchase of 5 movies.
Of course that will never happen unless the chips become cheaper than printing the wrapping paper...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
I have seen one, and it's an awful thing. It can work as a USB drive, but no mp3's copied to it will work. Instead, it only plays mp3's that have been first uploaded (scrambled) by it's proprietary software. That way the copies of mp3's on the player won't be usable for anything other than that specific player.
And yes, it's a particulary awful implementation of DRM.
E
so what do you do when your software requires an Intel chipset because of the DRM capabilities?
The same thing I have done when Wintel software was "required" for corresponding with certain businesses, browsing certain web sites, reading certain email, etc. (And the same thing I did with DVD players until I found one where the region lock could be bypassed.)
Do without.
Just as I have done with ALL Microsoft products since day one.
(I realized that Microsoft had a problem back in the very early days, when a letter appeared in Byte magazine describing how they had responded to a user report of a bug in their FORTRAN complier's formatted output handling - by eventually telling him that not only hadn't they fixed it, but they never would. I went straight from CPM on 80xx/z80/etc. to Unix on a Motorola 68xxx, and never found a need to bite Microsoft's wax tadpole.)
Humanity got along just fine without Internet Explorer, MS Office, Powerpoint, and Windows Media Player for millions of years. Individuals who have no attraction to them can continue to do without if they please for as long as they please.
Meanwhile, I have no worries that adequate DRM-free processor power will be available for the forseeable future. (If nothing else, FPGAs are getting to the point where you can program them to be a moderately powerful machine - and some models have decent DRM-free processors - ARM, Power PC, etc. - included. Try to tell a hardware engineer he has to work around a DRM-crippled processor in his FPGA and see how many designs use your part. B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Playstation, Xbox, Gamecube, Playstation 2, "tamper-proof" IBM cryptographic processors have all been cracked. What makes you think this will be any different? It won't be cracked in 10 minutes but there will be modchips for this within a few months if not less.
How can this possibly work? Even though the protection is now embedded in the hardware, the data is still software, and there will always be some old computers around, along with people that can think of some way to disguise the data so it will work on the new computers. It all boils down to 1's and 0's, and I believe there are more conceivable ways to arrange them than can be tested for.
...
This has been a long time coming. The supposed concern over piracy and itellectual rights is whats behind it.So consumers are told. Last I checked this was MY computer and any other machine I purchased was MINE. to do with whatever I see fit.
......?
Not to sound like a zealot but this is another reason to turn from Wintel.I spit on your DRM and your Trustworthy computing initiatives. We could learn a few leasons from the French and Chinese on these matters.
I'm a hairsbredth away from completely never needing a windows machine again.Both Apple and Linux are more than viable alternatives in this day and age.
Fear not my fellow countrymen.Good hackers of the world will devise software/Hardware hacks to defeat these nefarious villians.
Ya thats a little dramatic but it's the way I see it. The only things microsoft and perhaps intel products will see in my household is the heavy end of a hammer.
If we as americans don't like this heavy handedness we must write our congressmen,our senators,the president. Put money only behind products that will be good for you. Protest. Don't just moan and groan on boards like this and keep taking it in the @$$.
Only through actions can we enact change.These tyrants do NOT know what is good for the end-user.We tell them.they don't tell us.Without our money they are nothing.they will be nothing.
I've said enough,now I think I know where theres maybe a few xbox in need of some alterations.anyone seen my hammer
https://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/home
Note the bottom ("Promoter Members"): AMD, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sony, Sun.
AMD will be releasing their own "NGSCB"-compatible chip.
Just one more reason why Apple will stay with IBM...
Someone makes a new format, like maybe a picture format, and it has in it a chance that some images may have the same ID characteristics as say some copyrighted music; now the chance is designed to be small, so that the format is somewhat widely adopted before 'hits' become common. Then you get a bunch of people filing a class action suit against chip makers.
...
Then with a WINK about anti-virsus and a concerned "deep voice" about terrorism, they Govt. will make it clear that only criminals woudld CPU (etc.) withOUT DRM...
http://www.hawknest.com/
This whole idea that adding bulletproof DRM to entertainment products is going to increase total revenue for the entertainment companies (all five of them) is just so, so wrong.
It is based on the flawed concept that all pieces of entertainment product have the same basic utility to consumers and therefore should have the same price. And, the business model continues, when consumers won't pay that price and seek an alternative, they are stealing from the entertainment companies (all five of them throughout the world) and defrauding them of their legitimate profit.
This model was a convenient fiction in the days not too long ago when entertainment product was sold by individual units of the physical medium through which the product was distributed. But today, it is a fatally flawed perspective. Fatal that is, to the entertainment industry.
Because there is, in reality, a near-infinite number of levels of entertainment value. There is the individual consumer's matrix of taste, i.e. what each person is willing to pay for an individual entertainment title according to their likes. There is the near infinite number of titles of entertainment product. And there are billions of consumers, each with a different entertainment budget.
The entertainment industry has created their present dilemma by having only two prices for their products: High and free.
Ending the free entertainment channel by encrypting product in bulletproof DRM is not going to send greater amounts of entertainment budgets to the consumption of product at the High price! If people wanted to buy entertainment product at the high price, nothing is stopping them from doing it.
But they don't want to, they want a flexible pricing structure for entertainment product.
My point is, adding DRM is going to channel discressionary income that was going to buy 20th- century entertainment product into 21st-century products that are not owned, controlled, or understood by the five corporations that currently control the global entertainment industry. I don't really doubt any more that these fools will be successful at creating DRM. It's just that I don't think that they really understand that they will be destroying their own industry when they succeed at finally doing this.
The root cause of their problem is the lack of a flexible pricing structure for their product, and DRM is not going to solve that problem.
Be careful what you ask for, 'cause you just might get it!
If enough promote these as crippled chips then what chance have they?
Whichever label owns Beck didn't lose even a penny because of my downloading because I would NEVER pay for such a terrible album. I just wanted to see how it sounded.
The whole "lost sales" idea is a joke, seriously. People are still buying just as many albums as they ever were, as sales figures demonstrate.
"The mac revolution is coming just around the corner!"
I think you got confused when people said the Macs were revolting. They weren't referring to a revolution!
*ducks*
I really can't. This is like Ford saying "Since the national speed limit is capped at 75 mph, all of our cars will have a built in governor that will prevent them from exceeding the speed limit, even in states without a speed limit". Only this is far more insidious.
Assuming that pirating protected IP is wrong (I'm not getting into that debate... let's say for the sake of argument that it is), this is still a very, very bad move, because:
A) Due to changes in pirating methods, DRM is probably going to change. Hard wiring DRM into the CPU would be something that would either become useless very quickly, or so restrictive that media that the user plays could easily be mistaken for being a pirated copy. (or both)
B) DRM in any current iteration doesn't do very well at determining illegal copies of media from legal ones. (Wait, because I copied this CD I *own* onto a CD-R as a backup, and the physical CD I *own* and paid good money for the rights to listen to got scratched, I can't listen to the music anymore on my new computer?)
C) Hardware should *NEVER* have restrictive control over the type of information stored on a hard drive or the type of information that can be sent over any network unless users are given an understanding of how that control works, and it can be %100 modifiable by the user, as well as being shut off. "Hey, this old file from an old legacy application won't load on my new computer because the CPU thinks it's a pirated game instead of statistical financial information. And you're telling me there's no way around it for 'security' reasons?"
D) The nature of DRM is that it's set by media corporations who have demonstrated over and over again that they are unethical and prone to abuse any power they have for their own ends. (Ask any up and coming recording artist that's been screwed over by an RIAA member record company). I'm sorry, but I really don't feel very good about my CPU looking into what files I'm trying to access from my HDD or send over the Internet when it's been programmed by what I believe to be a bunch of crooks.
Of course it's a bad idea, and one that will probably die a horrible death. Tech savvy end users will avoid chips that have DRM, and buyers for larger organizations will probably shy away from putting machines on their networks that restrict information in ways they can't control. As long as there's decent alternatives, it's not something I'm too upset about.
Then again, I've not purchased an Intel product for my desktop since the 8088 chip I had back in '87 (AMD has always seemed, to me, to offer a better deal), and while most of my laptops currently run Intel chips, if DRM is implemented on them I'll find another brand.
Note: I'm not an expert on this and thus might be wrong on some points, so I'm admitting this right now before a dozen replies come in saying I'm wrong and overzelous mods don't select 'Flamebait' or 'troll'.
The Internet is generally stupid
Let them tie things up. Fuck them. We'll make our own media. Unless, of course, you really are addicted to Star Wars 9: The Vengance of Revenge of the Clones of the Clones, or similar offerings.
I forget what 8 was for.
Looks like I just bought my last Intel CPU. How's that for a clear message!
You can always use their flaws in the dual core caching to circumvent any DRM stuff in their chips!
Thanks Intel. The backdoor's really handy!
I wonder how on earth are the Intel marketing drones going to market such a bulshit. Because for DRM to work someone will have to buy these chips and:
1. the "ability" to NOT be able to run the programs you want
2.the "ability" to get r00ted even without an operating system.
Is this really that "Trusted Computing" means?
I think that Intel just shot itself in the foot but didn't notice because they are so high.
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
If DRM becomes more commonplace, then there will actually be less business for the large Entertainment companies. The reason is very simple, if DRM is sucessful, and more importantly becomes open to everybody to publish their own material and ensure that it is protected online, what is the point in using a large Entertainment company to distribute your product? None - you don't need to produce CDs/DVDs and distribute them to shops, you just need a website and a method of accepting payment.
Yeah, you might need to organise the publicity, yourself, but then so many large organisations have poor understanding of publicity that they leave to to independent agents anyway. And I'm sure if you talked to these agents in the right manner, they may do a deal on future profits.
There is also a question of whether a pirate could then use DRM to build a virus that is undeletable from your system. As I understand DRM is about restricting the movement of files, which in turn may cause considerable problems with virus checkers in the future.
Away, call me old fashioned, but if I really want to buy a piece of music, I would much rather go and order the CD from Amazon, or go round the corner to my local record store or supermarket. At least then I am reasonable confident that I will have music to play the day after the all the PCs in the world with DRM enabled connected to the internet mysteriously fail causing complete chaos.
The fallicy of that agrument is the implicit assumption that they even want to "protect" their content. They don't, copyrights have nothing to do with "protecting" content, and everything to do with controlling how people use and distribute information.
When you controll the distribution channels, you don't need to compete on merit against things like Linux. Instead you compete on who can garner the most controll over distribution.
the processor and chipset market is reasonably competitive so non-DRM'ed equipment will probably remain available. What concerns me is that the MPAA won't stop until the Feds mandate functional hardware DRM on everything. I have the feeling that, should that come to pass, hardware sales will plummet. The entertainment folks were (as always) way too late ... we've been accustomed to a non-DRM world for some time now, and I think it will be a hard sell to get people to accept it in any significant way.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Sure, Hardware is beneath the OS, but if the OS *simply ignores* the hardware in question, then how useful is it?
Let's say you have some media: it may exist on a hardware substrate (say, a DVD or CD) and so you stick it in to your computer and attempt to copy it to your harddrive. The harware o nthe chip senses this, *but* it doesn't do this through gears and wires and similar devices. It will use SOFTWARE to do it, and this software will reside somewhere in the OS. All one needs to do is find that part of the OS that does that and hack it to always say YES or find some other work-around.
IT will certainly be a slwer process - these hacks aren't simple or easy - but I would think that they are inevitable.
Also, there is the single generation loss method - use an external recording system and then use that copy. Certainly, there is loss involved, but it's worth it if it's important.
Also, if this does go through and it does form some kind of real wall, it will be a real impetus to the popularity of FOSS and independent media channels. Unfortunately, given how the future is likely to have to exist on some TINY fraction of the energy we presently comsume, I seriously doubt that much, if any, of our present culture will be viewable or listenable in 100 years. As painting has been shunted aside by the New Media juggernaut for the past 30 years, it will be amusing to think what people 200 years from now will think of us. (other than cursing us for using up all the resources, and forcing them to live in late iron age penury with some solar power accoutrement)
The original documents locked up in DRM'd encrypted files, using bizarre and irrational video standards (like NTSC) and these objects falling apart over time, unrecoverable and lost. I think the people of 2505 (at least, the ones that survive the die off from the oil crash, the resulting civil wars, starvation and pandemics) will have a better grasp of the people of 1505 than the people of 2005.
The paintings of Renaissance Europe (or Asia, for that matter) only require a pair of eyes, a little light, and an open heart. Not DRM, Trusted Computing, DVI, COM, RI/MPAA and a nuclear power plant to operate the aluminum smelter to build the machines that permit a pair of eyes and an open heart to see our art and know us as people.
All these guides to oblivion - we live in a plague of lighthouse keepers.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Believe it or not, history is repeating itself here.
History teaches that during the 1800's there were many people who believed that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically just the opposite was true;the industrial revolution demanded a mobile and skilled workforce.
First, they responded by making slavery last forever, and making laws so harsh you couldn't even teach a person of color how to read. Then they responded by trying to micro-regulate the northern states, then they responded by trying to break off from the Union and fence themselves off from the rest of the world causing all hell to break loose.
Today many in media circles believe that the entire meaning and purpose of the information age is to use inventions like the Internet to leverage their copyright holdings to the far reaches of the Earth for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically, just the opposite is true; the information age demands the unrestricted flow of information.
First, they responded my making copyrights last effectively forever, then they responded by making it so that illegal copying could be punished worse than rape, then they tried to micro-regulate the technology industries with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and now they are trying to fence the information they control off from the rest of the world with Digital Rights Management (DRM). We are now at the point where society must tell them to go to hell.
If someone can explain how this new chip feature is an atrocity against man,
I haven't followed it in years but wasn't one of the concerns with DRM, or more specificially "Trusted Computing", was that you wouldn't be able to install just any software you wanted? I don't know about others but I don't want anyone else to control what programs I install and use.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm sure AMD's announcement of identical features is no more than a few weeks off.
If there was ever a time when the Federal Government should do its job and stand up for the citizens it nominally represents, this is it.
Actually not. Though I don't like and will try to avoid DRM and "Trusted Computing", the federal government in the uSA has no business getting involved. The purpose of government is to protect those who can't protect themselves and to protect the country from foreign enemies. Government is too bloated as is, much like Windows, having government do more would increase the bloatware.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Best looking computer equipment ever. Straight out of sci-fi. Combined with the name, the sexiest hardware ever.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The OEMS don't give a damn about your pathetic little outlaw markets, they don't re-align billion dollar fabs and ship product to rust on the LA docks because it will never clear customs.
They won't have to "rust" on the docks, if there is a market there will be a way. If it comes to it and there's a market parts will be smuggled in, afterall if drugs can be smuggled many other things can be as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
how pissed most teens will be about this?! I know that almost anyone with a computer in my high school copies CDs (Not me, I got iTunes :P ). When this no longer works.. I mean.. jeeze! Especially since Dell has a huge marketshare and uses Intel chips!
I'm glad I like (and have) macs over PCs. DRM is just wrong.. Grr!
(Sidenote: Pleaase use a more generic font in the image confirmation!! That C looks like an E!!!)
Why is an ID card a scheme to spy on people? Do you want them to take you to the police station and interrogate you to see whether you actually are a citizen of the US and that your papers aren't fake? Why don't you complain about, say, state issued driver's licenses or social security numbers? Those things are just made by the gov to spy on you, right? I mean, can't they just believe you when you tell them you have a driver's license?
Guess you didn't live in Soviet Russia where they required internal passports. You couldn't go from one town to another, heck you couldn't even walk aroung town, without your passport.
Collectivization
One more detail should be mentioned. An internal passport system was established in 1932 to control the mobility of labor and to prevent peasants from deserting collective farms. Most peasants did not receive passports, they were permanently attached to the land. This administrative move was, effectively, the reestablishment of serfdom.
Comparing very poor French farms (visited in late 1950's) with the state farms in Poland (where I worked one month each summer in early 1950's) I can say, without hesitation, that poor French peasants were much better off than typical agricultural workers on Polish state farms. My personal experience with Soviet collective farms goes back to the difficult period of WWII. Those who visited USSR in 1950's told me that the standard of living of Polish agricultural workers was much higher than that of their Soviet counterparts.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Actually, Intel is a corporate genious. This feature will be worth billions of $.
:
This is an excellent feature for
Education Lab.
Emerging Economy I-Cafe (China, India).
Corporate IT OS image.
If you have dealt with the hassles of any of these environments, this feature is going to make you life alot easier.
Sales: AMD++
This is exactly what you shouldn't be saying. The article is almost completely empty of details, but if this is Trusted Computing, you REALLY don't want to get sucked into the fantasy that you can keep control of your computer by just buying something else.
You can always switch off TC, so not buying it isn't going to give you any technical benefit. You should boycott it, for sure, but you have to do more than that.
The real power of TC to take away your freedom is in its "attestation" feature. Bascially, when it's activated, a chip on your motherboard will produce digitally signed summaries of the software that has (or has had) control of your computer (e.g. Kernel, drivers, boot loader, bios, stuff running in as-yet-to-be-introduced "Ring -1", etc.). Your computer can produce these on request, but it cannot fake them (e.g. claim to be running Windows 2005 DRM edition when it's actually running Linux).
Now, because TC hasn't yet gotten a foothold, your ability to interoperate with the world is only limited by your software's ability to speak a particular protocol (email, HTTP, whatever). After TC is embedded (and turned on by default) in most computers, other computers can be programmed not to talk to you unless your OS is the one chosen by the company that makes the software that your associates use.
The message is: fit in or butt out.
And once you have to run an unmodified copy of someone else's OS of choice, that's the end of your computer obeying you. In order to maintain your own freedom, you have to make sure that nobody you will ever want to communicate with uses TC hardware.
Please, please don't spread the "I can avoid it by not buying it" misconception.
this.
Imagine if the governments of some nations (which probably have a tight reign over their press corps) tell the media to put in copyright and expiry dates on their sites, in the cookies, and in the html formatting of news. The only way to then preserve content as you last saw it would be to take a screen shot of it or print it out immediately.
But, that won't solve any questions about immutible states of information.
Hmmm, maybe my tinfaryl hat needs some adjusting...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Video cards that determine if the game your playing is pirated and locks you out of it?
Image in three or four years when most PCs in use have this enabled. If it is hacked:
1. The black hats will 0wn most of these PCs and nothing short of replacing the hardware will fix this. Intel may then be forced to replace every CPU with technology they can prove in court doesn't pose such a risk (under consumer rights laws that require products to be fit for purpose which suppliers can't escape via a click thru license etc). If the vulnerability is in the support chips it would cost even more as the recall would require the replacement of hundreds of millions of motherboards!
2. If someone hacks the DRM component and frees everything by removing all the restrictions, the content owners who relied on this technology could sue Intel.
It's the US-M$-Intel-IBM WAR against the world!
Sounds like this is a threat to fair use rights.
someone ought to suggest that to the www.fairuseday.com folks!
Ahhhh, only if they still printed "Byte magazine". As far as I'm concerned it was the best computer magazine. I especially loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar".
FalconShould there be a Law?
XP SP2 has a firewall. Too bad it won't stop an exploit at the BIOS/hardware level though.
What it will stop, however, is millions of users from buying a hardware firewall because they think they're safe with just one.
In certain neighborhoods, most of the jr. sr. high school kids are just getting together and making their own private internet, using wifi and also old bbs programs such as wildcat and others , using the POTS.
Rip CD's, put on bbs, share.
It is going to be kinda hard to stop it, as the riaa and mpaa would have to get fbi warrants to tap a lot of private phone lines.
In certain neighborhoods, most of the jr. sr. high school kids are just getting together and making their own private internet, using wifi and also old bbs programs such as wildcat and others running under dos, using the POTS.
Rip CD's, put on bbs, share.
It is going to be kinda hard to stop it, as the riaa and mpaa would have to get fbi warrants to tap a lot of private phone lines.
I guess the apple cpu's have the most proted apps.. but that can change.
What other cpu's would be cheap/fun? Aren't there mature 64 bit architectures with neat hardware; like passive backplanes instead of a complicated motherboard that needs a new kind of power supply every week. Can't you get this stuff on ebay really cheap?
I know that DRM is lame and the consumer should know, still, I just use linux now (for many years) and I wasn't going to get the P4 anyways 'till somebody gave me a motherboard - I wanted to get an old SGI workstation for less than a hundred bucks on ebay. That sounds like it might be fun; I wonder if they can do some fast opengl or what.
I guess Intel just want to die. This will kill their sells. I guess you do not need sells as long as M$ keep paying the bills.
"...how can the general public be made aware of this?"
Blogs.
Lots of Blogs.
~X~
~X~
...tied up on a row boat headed out to sea. Really, we need to get rid of these whiny anti-consumer-freedom fuckups.
I was beginning to think about purchasing a new CPU to upgrade from my current AMD Athlon 2700XP+ and had considered going with an intel chip so I could make use of hyperthreading. Instead, Intel has made my choice so much easier. As a result of their idiocy, I will never ever buy another Intel product of any kind ever again. No laptops powered by Intel, no CPUs, no network cards, nothing. AMD will now be my sole source for CPUs. I will now buy the newest and fastest AMD I can afford to buy myself time (in case AMD goes stupid too) and give myself some future proofing. There will be NO DRM anything on any computer I own, period. I will not stand for anyone other than myself controlling what I get to do with MY computer or MY disks. Mine, absolutely and without reservation, to do with as I see fit.
Intel can go fuck itself.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Pirate: "I pirate games because the price is too high. If the price were lower, I'd buy more."
Largely untrue. Most people will pirate what they want if they can do so. Low-price and other reasonable terms are largely red herrings, they don't really change things. Seen it all before with software sold in university bookstores. A textbook comes with a coupon for a heavily discounted commercial software package, one that has no anti-piracy. Sales of the software are negligible. The publisher then adds trivially defeated copy-protection, sales of the software approaches the number of textbooks sold. As long as a DOS "diskcopy" command could copy the software it was pirated, when a crack was need sales jumped wildly.
If DRM can defeat spyware and viruses and help me keep my kids' computer safe for them to use, I'll consider it. Bonus if it helps drive down the price of legal online music and movies.
Don't believe me?
A pirated version of a game doesn't require a key disk to operate.
A pirated version of music doesn't require Apple's permission to play in any device.
A pirated version of software doesn't require me to track license keys.
A pirated version of software doesn't give up my identity to the company to use.
When I buy software, I always track down a keygen because I've paid the company my money. They have no right to determine who I am simply to use it.
Dude,
We know. Its called a MAC address and you can change it in software.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Jeez. The whole intel platform is sucking worse and worse every second. I mean, AMD is years ahead of them in processor technology now, at least on the server level. With no HT or on die memory controller the intel platform just can't compete in the server arena. Opterons running a full 1Ghz slower than Xeons are blowing them out of the water. What is Intel doing now? Begging AMD to take more desktop market share?
We. don't. want. crippled. hardware. and There's always a way (tm)(C)([insert legally binding indicator])
I am Spartacus
Microsoft already proposed the plan with Palladium years ago. palladium 2002
EPIC article on Palladium
I ran into thousands of people who knew about the "Palladium Scare" - Microsoft being able to control what you had on your computer. Microsoft finally had to stop active work on Palladium because too many people were scared of it.
Now that is the exact same technique that should be used here. Its interesting in my American Heritage and Economics class in college, my teacher is using this episode with the backlash at the recording industries as proof that we don't listen to history.
He points out that the in general the reasons people pirate music and copy programs is the same reasons in general that led to the American Revolution, also that if someone doesn't wake up the recording and film companies they are going to find that no one will listen to them.
Everyone pretty much will ignore them and download as much as they like, just like the early americans did to england. Now there are a few hardcore "pirates" but in general when the teenager logs onto napster or morpheus and downloads a mp3 its not cause they are a pirate, but its cause they dont' like being manhandled by huge prices etc.
The message the industry doesn't want you to hear:
Meanwhile... the world kept using MPEG-4, DivX, MP3, and AAC.
If these people could offer us a better alternative, then we might think about using crappy DRM-bloated files. But no! They spend the money they should instead use for researching better compression on researching ways to stop people from copying stuff, which is ultimately futile. Why? There can be no unbreakable copy protection, because the quality of recording devices always catches up with that of the output devices. You can record bit-accurate digital streams and digitize analog audio on consumer-level sound cards, and you can record digital and analog HDTV on consumer-level video cards. All you have to do is either have two computers, two decent quality I/O cards, or loop a digital output back into a digital input and press Record. There's no shortage of sites out there that detail the procedure.
Meanwhile, I'll continue to enjoy my 192 KBps Shoutcast streaming radio stations, MP3 collection (which I ripped myself at 192Kbps, at about 3 songs per minute), DVDs, and DivX encoded video clips.
Think that's a fair assessment?
Well,
I for one can see legit use for these technologies, as for example to sign every binary package of a given Linux distribuition, so my servers and workstations will only run "legit" code from a trusted repository. This can really increase security.
And while Microsoft might use it to cripple users rights, the open source community can turn this technology into something really usefull.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
its probably more of a pr thing since they don't actually mention how the technology is supposed to prevent copyright violations. Much like the cpuid crap...
From what little information is available, the following appears to be the case:
- Unconditional Power Down
- Force Hard Drive Boot
- Force CD/DVD boot (may be redirected to net)
- Lock Power/Reset/Sleep buttons.
- Lock Keyboard
- Blank Screen
- User Password Bypass
- Remote Control Device Action (control peripherals)
There are also, of course, many functions for examining the state of the target machine.This system is not all that badly designed, provided it stays turned off except in corporate environments that really want it and understand its implications. But if implemented dumbly (with, say, the same keys on all machines, or an insecure administration machine) it opens huge security holes. For example, if all the help desk machines have the master RCMP keys to all the machines in the organization, it's almost inevitable that there will be a leak. Compare Kerberos, where there's a central machine that has to be physically secured, but all it does is key management.
Linux support for all this is possible; the interfaces are documented. And definitely, someone needs to explore RCMP messages on port 623 and find out what is enabled at by default.
And if anybody breaks into your corporate help desk machine, they 0wn the company.
Has ANYONE considered that other countries, even US friendly ones would be WORRIED AS HELL over this? Imagine a scenario where the US wants to force a treaty with, say, CHINA, and says "if you dont sign this agreement your stock echange will stop", or, "by the way, we just disabled all DRM computers just preceeding our ATTACK" What occurs when you wish to renegotiate your licence? does the origianl company TURN OFF your access to all documents to "encourage" you to resign?????? Does anyone also NOT see this as a HUGE ISSUE?
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
Has ANYONE considered that other countries, even US friendly ones would be WORRIED AS HELL over this?
Imagine a scenario where the US wants to force a treaty with, say, CHINA, and says "if you dont sign this agreement your stock echange will stop", or, "by the way, we just disabled all DRM computers just preceeding our ATTACK", or your computer STOPS WORKING a few minutes before the CIA shuts down your BUSINESS
What occurs when you wish to renegotiate your licence? does the original company TURN OFF your access to all documents to "encourage" you to re-sign??????
Does anyone also NOT see this as a HUGE ISSUE?
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
Meanwhile, I've seen a zillion attempts to restrict my computing freedom backfire and blow up in the perpetrator's face. This will, in the end, be just one more bug to program around.
Prediction:
Some of the first buyers of this tech will be malicious corporate spies, who will work day and night to crack it.
Want to setup a secure server? Use DRM to make sure that only a signed kernel will run and make sure that kernel will only load binaries which are signed in turn.
Want to setup a secure server? Configure then lock your Bios to only boot from a READ-ONLY MEDIUM (like a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM, locked USB key, locked floppy, locked flash ROM, etc..) to make sure that only a signed kernel will run and make sure that kernel will only load binaries which are signed in turn.
No need for a DRM that will allow greedy corporations to tell you: if you want to have an Internet Access from the ISP cartel, you have to use the latest trusted Windows OS.
All this fabrics are china and taiwan.
It would be great if people started new company and new fabric there and start a new company which makes high-performance, low-cost, low-energy consumption, low-heath DRM-less CPU's.
Intel will recall the damn things faster than I can type "damn."
Intel is heavily promoting what it calls "active management technology" (AMT) in the new chips as a major plus for system administrators and enterprise IT. Understood to be a sub-operating system residing in the chip's firmware, AMT will allow administrators to both monitor or control individual machines independent of an operating system.
Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.
This alone speaks volumes. People pressured Intel to abandon its serial number nonsense, and that was just a privacy issue. This little monster gives remote abusers the ability to circumvent software security measures and install all kinds of nasty stuff beneath the operating system layer.
And how does intel plan to keep the technology up-to-date? Might they also include some kind of flash memory that could store the DRM programming? Is it possible that such could be just as easily used to create the next-generation rootkit?
Does the rootkit even need to run locally?
Pshht! I don't think this initiative will last once the initial round of DRM-virii come around.
The Penguin Producer
For sale: one sig space, gently used. Inquire for details.
That's not "Google" defining "slippery slope", that's some random bozo's opinionated pseudo-dictionary.
To quote what you were quoting:
Of course it's not a natural right! An artificial concession was made granting protection, granted. But what did this concession grant them? Legal rights! Artificial rights if you mind you, rights that are revokable, so to speak.
Basically, we agree in principle, but my point is that, whether you like it or not, copyright owners do have legal rights under the system, and as such, until the law changes, calling DRM for Digital Rights Management is entirely fair, even though it is a case of euphemistic marketing-speak.
That doesn't stop anti-DRM people from calling it "Digital Restrictions Management" though. It's pretty clever, using their own acronym against them that way.
> ... are leading us into a new dark age, ...
> where knowledge itself is restricted to
> a select few, a tyranny of DRM
Don't worry! It would be short! (and would be followed by a global war).
When you have laws that people (or countries) cannot live with, people (or countries) first try to get by. When they decide they've had enough, they change the rules. If violence is necessary, it is used (think 1776...)
VHS, Cassette, etc. are poor analogies. Copies degrade at each generation, you can't get too faz from the original. Digital audio on the other hand copies perfectly.
DAT, etc are poor analogies since they never became mainstream.
Your analogies are also generally poor in that they do not have the convenience of downloading a file off of the net. All those other technologies require actual personal interaction.
P.S.
There were many points that I didn't bother incuding referrences for, but references do exist. If need be I can document the US's desire and efforts towards this, and it's not hard to Google the UN's Work Groups for the NextGenerationNetwork (NGN), and the EU seems to be absolutely swarming on the entire DRM issue and building a new "Information Society".
And if you have been paying any attention there have been a number of Slashdot stories lately on taking ICANN and other internet regulatory bodies out of US control and turning Internet Governance over to the UN. Obviously the world will not allow the US to impose Trusted Computing on them, instead it will all be done under the UN by international consensus and standards, and be "imposed" on the US along with everyone else.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
DRM due to its implications and to make it work widespread, accross many media types, would require a vast change in the perceptions of fair use.
The choice for the media giants would be to phase it in slowly. But technology changes so quickly, that obviously the formats for the DRM would hold, I think, storage media and systems behind.
I think this will fail.
I know there is no way I am buying equipment with secret backdoors plugged into its hardware so the media giants can have thier way with my budgets and systems that have my data on them.
You can also bet, the far east won't buy a single computer manufactured by an American company. The Chinese are incredibly paranoid about data and fair use as is.
So, to gain that extra 10% of revenue lost by copyright infringement, they will sacrifice billions of customers?
Obviously this won't work, and I am not scared about it.
-hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
But feel free to bandy the 'it will help catch criminals' argument around some more, when you wake up from your dream it will probably be too late to do anything about it.
The Germans during the occupation had access to ID cards, but not to all powerful computers that were capable of tracking individuals movements, and if they would have I can tell you that the resistance movements in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain wouldn't have stood a chance of staying in one piece very long because the various collaborators would have been easily tracked through proximity analysis. ID card technology of 2005 would no longer be forgeable by someone in their kitchen either, and fakes would be instantly detectable the moment they're swiped.
Citizen JM6553542 wishes you a great day.
MP3 Search Engine
You walk up to your house with a few grams of weed, your door won't unlock.
... etc.
Trying to pass a transport truck down a hill so you aren't stuck behind him up the next hill, your car's governor kicks in and keeps you limited to 55mph so you can't go by (leading to more people passing up the hills and causing more low-visibility accidents on short hills).
Your wife, who's pregnant, calls on your cell phone to tell you to go home and get her because she thinks she might be in labor and your car shuts down because you're trying to talk on your cell phone while driving.
As you swerve to avoid an accident that just happened in front of you, your car reports you for an illegal double lane change.
Cruising down the street on your brand new mountain bike with its new knobby tires the street turns on the spike-belt feature at the stop sign because your tires aren't road-regulation causing you to wipe out.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I don't think the audience for blogs is that much different that the audience for Slashdot. In fact, I don't think "most people" (i.e. Average Joe) would see the blogs, no matter how many you had.
I'd say the answer is less techno-savvy distribution. Letters to the editor. Flyers. Word of mouth.
The question I have is: how will we avoid the McCarthyist sentiment, i.e. "you are against DRM so you must be a pirate." Even if nobody says that to my face, I feel like it must cross their minds while I'm explaining to them why this is a problem.
(P.S. What if we can't read the Captcha? Does that mean I'm actually a script trapped in the body of a man? *tiny tears*)
I would disagree. I think more people are familiar with blogs than some think. The media covers them, the younger audiences flock to them.
They're pretty popular. However, you're probably right. They're not popular enough.
I wonder if when Rome fell, anyone said "here comes the Dark Ages".
~X~
~X~
Take a look at Intel's "AMT"... By year's end little 12 year old Bobby in Idaho will be able to turn your HDs on and off, format them, and change whatever he wants via "AMT" and a program written by "sk1pt k1dd13" he downloaded on the Intarweb.
Thank you Intel.
"Protecting copyright" is a red herring, designed to distract you from the real purpose of DRM, which is to ultimately be able to control which vendors are and are not "trusted" to run software on the platform. In other words, it's a hardware system designed for the current industry giants to, in the long term, forever lock out potential competition. It has little to do with "media content".
Of course they will wait until the majority of computers are based on the new hardware, and people have become "used to" the idea of DRM on their systems and have been lulled into a false sense of security that it's harmless.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/06/05/1833241.shtml ?tid=155&tid=118&tid=137