DRM Based on Trusted Computing Chips

An anonymous reader writes "We've always know that Trusted Computing is really about DRM, but computer makers always denied it. Now that their Trusted Computing chips are standard on most new PCs, they've decided to come clean. According to Information Week, Lenovo has demonstrated a Thinkpad with built-in Microsoft and Adobe DRM that uses a Trusted Computing chip with a fingerprint sensor. Even worse: 'The system is also aimed at tracking who reads a document and when, because the chip can report back every access attempt. If you access the file, your fingerprint is recorded.'"

Comments

Amazingly shortsighted

[briancnorton]

It never ceases to amaze me how slashdotters can't see pas their own noses on things like DRM. There are people with legitimate security needs that don't give a rat's ass about your pirated copy of Brittany Spears. Keeping corporate proprietary info secure is a MUCH bigger deal than preventing you from watching pirated movies.

Re:Biased article?

[msobkow]

The objectives have not changed, people are just beginning to understand that if I protect my information, no one else can access it. The reverse side of that equation is that if someone protects their information, I can't access it.

i.e. The technology that allows the *AA to come up with usage-restriction schemes is the same technology being mandated by privacy advocates when your address, financial, health care, and other information is accessed. It is expressly stated in the Canadian requirements for such systems that you must log every attempt to access a document.

So stop your freakin' panicking already, you anti-DRM wankers! Take it to the courts and fight the problem where it needs to be solved -- on a social/legal level.

That includes whoever came up with this flamebait phrasing:

Even worse: 'The system is also aimed at tracking who reads a document and when, because the chip can report back every access attempt. If you access the file, your fingerprint is recorded.'"

Re:Biased article?

[Yartrebo]

Those people shouldn't be keeping secrets in the first place. I cannot think of anything in this world requiring more than a cursory amount of security.
  - nuclear weapons -> should be dismantled and made into reactor fuel, like the former USSR is doing.
  - trade secrets -> should be made open, to improve competition and make a freer market.
  - military secrets -> Shouldn't be carrying out assasinations and offensive wars. In case of an imminent or actual defensive war, I can see the point though.
  - privacy -> done on one's equipment. These chips will lower ones privacy.
  - financial information -> Once again, should be public. Fraud (both financial and mob) is nearly impossible when any concerned group can peer into anyone's or anything's (refering to corps/govt/military) financial info.

PS: I'm not in favor of much financial privacy, so long as it's applied very, very equally. I'd rather know every last movement of Delay's money and have my money movements universally known than not.

Re:*THIS* is what FOSS is all about.

[roman_mir]

Tell me, did you pay for your copy of Photoshop? How many people do you know that did not pay and are using it? Well, DRM is a great tool to keep people who are not paying for software, for music, for video, for books off those materials. Say it ain't so. Tell me, is it really the manufacturers' faults that people are dishonest? Do you think DRM would have ever appeared if people never broke copyrights? It would be very difficult for just one corporation (even Microsoft) to force hardware manufacturers to put DRM into their hardware. But when it is every single content company and software manufacturer that wants it, then it is a totally different story. Users who pirate stuff - this is the reason there is DRM.