AMD's New DRM

DefectiveByDesign writes "Remember how AMD said they'd make use of ATI's GPU technology to make better technology? Well, not all change is progress. InfoWorld's Tom Yager reports that AMD plans to block access to the framebuffer in hardware to help enforce DRM schemes, such as allowing more restricted playback of Sony Blu-Ray disks. They can pry my Print Screen key from my cold, dead fingers."

Comments

Why do this?

[growse]

Ok, so AMD aren't doing this because it makes their customers happy. Given the choice between two identically performing chips, one of which restricts your ability to do something, I'd bet most people would choose to get the unrestricted one. Whether that's because they need it not to be restricted, or they think they need it in the future, or they just object to the principle, I'm betting few people would go "Gee, well, this one stops me doing this, so I better get that".

So the only reason AMD is doing this is to pander to the content providers. I wonder, what's in it for AMD. Money? Too simplistic somehow. Can't think what else..... Surely it can't just be because Sony/whoever turned up with a big cheque?

Re:Why do this?

[grub]

Given the choice between two identically performing chips, one of which restricts your ability to do something, I'd bet most people would choose to get the unrestricted one

In time mass acceptance by the techno-illiterate will destroy any choice. There are are only two major PC CPU manufacturers, both are big fans of limiting your control of what you buy.

Re:Why do this?

[growse]

Oh, totally, but my point was what's the business benefit for them to develop this. Their customers by and large are either indifferent or don't want it, AMD aren't a content producer, so it must just be a fat cheque. They're taking a very big gamble on their customer base, who, traditionally I would wager are the more technically minded type than the average intel customer. People who are more likely to object to this kind of thing.

Re:Why do this?

[shystershep]

It's probably to help them with PC builders like Dell, HP, etc. If those companies wanted DRM on the chip, it would be a powerful influence for AMD to do so.

Re:Why do this?

[growse]

Still not convinced. Dell / HP / etc are like AMD - they build / put together hardware. They're not content producers, they just want to sell metal stuff to the public. They know there's no benefit to the public for DRM, so what's their business benefit in doing this?

Re:Why do this?

[Barny]

I wonder, what's in it for AMD. Money? Too simplistic somehow.

Well, looking at their current cash reserves, and their first quarter issues, I would think a large infusion from particular sources would be a boon for them.

This will make choices much much easier when buying a card for a serious gamer, Nvidia or nothing, in particular people who want to use fraps or similar to make in game action vids.

I (in the past) purchased AMD products because from my testing, they were just as good for my uses as Intel and I wanted to help keep "the little guy" going by supporting them (so long as it doesn't cost me $$$), guess what, the little guy is playing the big boy games now, and not the fun kind.

Re:Why do this?

[airhed13]

I can only assume it's to comply with some niggling legal crap from the DMCA. Adding misfeatures like this costs them money, so they'd only do it if there's a valid risk/reward tradeoff. E.g., if they (a) fear major lawsuits or (b) expect the ability to play next-gen DVDs to play a major role in the marketplace viability of their products, it makes sense for them to do this.

Re:Why do this?

[MightyYar]

The fear of the competitor implementing it somehow and then having a marketing edge: "Only DELL computers can play back Blu-Ray!"

Re:Why do this?

[morgan_greywolf]

AMD aren't a content producer, so it must just be a fat cheque.

Maybe. Something to consider is that AMD's customers aren't you and I. AMD's customers are OEM PC makers, large and small. Now if one of their large customers were given a fat cheque, or if AMD were potentially interested in wooing a large PC manufacturer who isn't (yet) a customer who also happens to be a content producer, without mentioning any names *cough*Sony*cough*, then perhaps that could be the reason.

Re:Why do this?

[MBGMorden]

Via won't Seriously. They're a Taiwanese chip maker - the region/culture is famous for making devices that don't obey copy protections schemes in general. It's strange that I've noticed that the more expensive a DVD player is, the more likely it is to have trouble playing discs. Those $30 ones from Taiwan will play anything you through at them, usually even out of region stuff with little to no effort.

My guess is that as Intel, Nvidia, and AMD start to implement stuff like this, a market for Via processors and more off the wall graphics ships like S3 and Trident (is Trident still in business) will open up amongst the hacker/enthusiast community. The question is will you accept a computer that might run a tad slower (and might not run some commercial software programs at all) for the price of using it how you see fit.

Re:Why do this?

[Jerry]

Because Microsoft WANTS it. And if they offend Microsoft their ad rebates will dry up, which accounts for a large part of their profits.

IAAM.

Re:Why do this?

[wytcld]

As TFA points out, it's not just the content providers who can benefit. Businesses want to be sure that their internal and client communications are secure. This would allow sending, for example, PDFs of sensitive documents that couldn't be easily copied by a rogue employee and sent off to a competitor. If you think corporate spies aren't a fact of life, you're either wrong or not in a successful enough enterprise to be worth spying on. Now, your rogue employee still might actually photograph their screen, if they're authorized to at least view the document. But that's not nearly as convenient as doing a screen capture, and can't be automated to run in the background.

If you're a major corporation with any trade secrets at all (which is to say, any major corporation), your obvious best choice is to buy systems with this technology. As home users we may have an ethical right to total root access to our personal systems; but when we go to work, if our sysadmins aren't locking down our systems from spying (which can be between divisions in a corporation, too), then they aren't doing their jobs. And you'd probably rather that the IRS were using security measures along these lines, too. This is good tech in a business or government context.

  We just need laws regarding hardware ownership clarified so that it becomes illegal to implement restrictions on equipment which the equipment owner - whether person or corporation - can't disable at will. That wouldn't interfere with corporate- and government-owned systems being properly locked down, while preserving the property rights of individuals.

Re:Why do this?

[jimstapleton]

actually, it's an interesting duality there.

AMD, the more obscure of the two (AMD vs. Intel) was usually only picked by the tech-knowledgeable (but by no means had a monopoly on this group), and the indifferents/I-don't-cares typically went to intel

So, while this hurts the AMD fan base, what we are looking at here is ATi related...

In the big GPU vendors, until recently, nVidia was the vendor that didn't get the 'I-don't know or care' crowd, while it was ATi who got that crowed as well as the 'I know and care' crowd. Lately, the 'I don't know or care' crowd has been shuffled over to intel (I won't say they moved, because that could imply their own intent and planning).

So, until recently, this would not have been a bad move for ATi, but as of 2 years ago or so, ATi, like nVidia does tend to get more of it's users from the 'I know and care' crowd.

Re:Why do this?

[Opportunist]

Well, like you said in your first paragraph, the chance that the crappy hardware from Taiwan is more likely to run the commercial program than the high profile Intel/AMD/Whatever chips, simply because they don't give a rat's rear about restriction crap.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of freedom comes out of countries you don't really consider "free". Boggles the mind.

Re:Why do this?

[norminator]

Customers aren't going to be really aware of any problems. Try reading the article summary to you mother or your sister, or some non-techie friend. They'll say "Wha? Huh? What are you talking aboout?" Then explain it to them in terms of how it limits what they can do with media. At least half of them will probably say "Why would I want to do that?".

Now take away the explanations, and tell them that AMD is coming out with some super awesome new AMD MegaLIVE!++ media PC that will automagically buy and download every movie and TV show they ever wanted to watch, and will let them listen to music and watch movies everywhere they go, and it will cure cancer, stop global warming, end our dependence on foreign oil, and bring about world peace. They'll say "That sounds cool, I don't really need it, but if it could be included in the next computer I was going to buy anyway, maybe I'd like that.

The marketing hype isn't going to mention the drawbacks, and it will be louder than any outcry from pissed-off Slashdot-reading customers.

Re:Why do this?

[Finuance]

Of course Americans don't consider those countries as "free." It's called branding. Corporations do it all the time and so do governments.

Bread & Circuses

[grub]

The drooling masses will eat up the slop fed to them so they can watch their DRM'd BluRay edition of Friends and Threes Company.

Re:Bread & Circuses

[Hoi Polloi]

[Sung to the tune of "Three's Company"]

"Come and buy our crap,"
"we're now shilling to you"
"Where the rights are only ours and ours and ours,"
"we're now a DRM company too!"

Re:print screen?

[SighKoPath]

Disable hardware acceleration of video, and you'll get your printed screens just fine.

Abstract of article

[Bearhouse]

From the article: '...ATI's new GPU ... will ship with software that plays movies on Blu-ray discs. The AMD rep ... said that the new chips will "block unauthorized access to the frame buffer." In short, that means an unauthorized party can't save the contents of the display to a file on disk unless the content owner approves it.' Looks like things are going the same (unhappy) way that the HD-TV did. The web's full of dire stories about people suffering from IBM (Incompatible Bits of Machinery) - most of it shiny new and very expensive. Imagine Vista on this... *shudders* How long after release before DVD-Jon or someone else breaks this? Not long. It's just piss of the legit, non-expert user, like most DRM.

Re:AMD.

[LWATCDR]

"Now I have another reason (other than processor heat) to stay away from AMD."
So I am guessing you used a P3 for all these years and just now upgraded to a Core2Duo.
AMD isn't known for making hot running chips Intel is. I also guess you haven't heard about Intel's trusted platform...
Plus this is just a rumor.

Man you can jump high enough to reach any conclusion you want too.

Re:AMD.

[Anonymous Coward]

You might just be joking, but... Intel is already doing DRM. They're building the features required for TCPA into CPUs now.

This is a non-story really, because this is called "curtained memory", and it is a part of the TCPA specification. TCPA hypervisors can prevent programs accessing memory at a level that you, the user, cannot circumvent. At least, not without breaking the "trusted" nature of your system and stopping some applications from executing.

Given AMD's commitment to TCPA, shared with Intel, ARM, MIPS, IBM and most other processor manufacturers, it is no surprise that they are allowing the GPU memory to be curtained. Your next CPU is defective by design.

Does this even work?

[lavalyn]

Just as audio has the Analog Hole that can never be plugged, framebuffer access restrictions can't continue once it gets out of the DVI cable.

Not for long.

[Lethyos]

HDCP.

It's not about the customers

[norminator]

Oh, totally, but my point was what's the business benefit for them to develop this. Their customers by and large are either indifferent or don't want it, AMD aren't a content producer...

I think it's fairly obvious that it's about AMD Live! versus Intel's Viiv. Each of those two brands is trying to be the ultimate living room multimedia PC. I think that customers haven't really caught on (why would we... who needs an expensive fully decked-out hot and noisy desktop PC masquerading as a media appliance in their living room?), but they seem convinced that this is where the market is going with or without the consumer. I think the whole media center PC has very little thought for the customer, and this AMD DRM issue highlights that very well.

It's funny how Vista is being hailed as the future for the media PC... I used to be able to watch DVDs perfectly well on my P3 (600MHz, 128 MB RAM) back when it was running Windows 98. But a few years ago I "upgraded" to XP, and now it won't play the same DVDs. It has a very hard time with most video content. But MS (along with AMD and Intel) wants us to believe that we need the next super-shiny version of their software, which gets less and less efficient with each release, in order to keep up with the time and have the media experience of the future. Sure, HD content requires more horsepower to decode and display, but if they didn't keep fattening up the OS, and the player software, and the whole Media Center environment, it wouldn't need that much more horweposer. From my experience, my 2.6Ghz P4 with 2GB of RAM can't even play videos in the Vista Media Center at all. Any PC related living room media devices should be small, quiet, run cool, and be inexpensive, and not have lots of bright lights. But of course all the hardware manufacturers want to push the latest hot, fast hardware... because it's the fastest. They want your attention to be drawn to the PC so you know how cool it is. Lame.

So to make a long story short, AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and all the rest want to cram the media experience down our throats... This seems to me like it's the equivalent of Circuit City's DIVX, only the players involved are much bigger, and mostly working together to make an inescapable dragnet. They want to make their own brands successful (Win MCE, AMD Live! Viiv), and they know that the average consumer doesn't even know why he or she would care about Viiv or Live. So they want to make all PCs move in this direction, and if they can't get the consumers excited about it, they can at least get the content providers excited about it, so they don't have the same fate as DIVX.

Re:from MPAA to DELL

[CelticWhisper]

Except that the MPAA doesn't manufacture the drives either. Granted, you have a point where movies on HDDVD/BD are concerned, but corporate users can still back up 50+ GB of data without the need for any licensing from the movie industry. In fact, wasn't that how DVD+R came into being in the first place? Companies wanted the storage benefits of DVD-R without having to pay tribute to the "king" that was/is the DVD Forum.

Then again, Dell/HP/Compaq/Gateway do stand to make or lose quite a bit based on "Ooh shiny!" from home/residential/non-corporate users and their desire for HD-everything. Dell, though, should be able to make something of a stand given how many companies I've seen that have massive Dell-based infrastructures in place and doubtless have contracts with Dell for all their kit.

Hmm, I wonder if any media companies are among Dell's corporate customers. That could make for an interesting scenario. Almost mutually-assured destruction. "Want to force your DRM terms on us/our chipmakers? That's funny, we can't seem to find any records of your volume discount or, oh, what's this, even your on-site service agreements."

Is it DRM'ed if I'm not playing protected content"

[dpilot]

One poster mentioned that this is essentially covering the framebuffer with the TCPA "curtained memory" spec.

TCPA is and has always been a 2-edged sword that can also be sheathed. I can completely ignore it, I can use it to my own benefit.... or I can surrender control of my computer to The Dark Side.

Is this "hidden framebuffer" the same way? In other words, if I'm not touching protected content can I still access the framebuffer as I wish? Is it also possible that I can use this as extra security? We've taken to encrypting filesystems and swapfiles, and moved from xhost to xauth, it seems to me that the framebuffer could be considered another leakage point. (Won't comment on the difficulty of exploiting.)

Theoretically TCPA can be a good thing, and most of people's fears center around it being required and locked away from the owner. I'm not sure I ever see that being an issue, simply because of implementation and legal difficulties. What I can see is "If you want to use ??AA media, surrender control of your computer, for this boot." As long as I can reboot and have complete control of my own computer, that is.

Re:It won't be just AMD

[Bullfish]

Oh, I don't know. Ultimately there will be mod chips carrying custom bios etc if things get to that point. People will find a way. The thing about computers is that nothing at all happens without software, and that software can always be diddled. If you are having trouble getting the crowbar in, you just need a better tool to chisel out a gap.

Re:Power to the empire

[PDanger]

Psalms x64-x86
"And God said unto the Israelites
'Blessed is he who protects content
and, ye, shall the masses loath it
but God shall smile upon you,
and bless your blu-ray player
and the copy of Batman Begins
housed within it.' "

Not really

[gillbates]

I work for a major corporation. Why don't we bother with this DRM sort of thing? The short list:

• It means employees can't work from home, or work at home. The prospect of unpaid overtime is too valuable for a corporation to give up.
• It doesn't prevent someone from photographing their screen, or even hand copying the information.
• It doesn't prevent the employee from picking up the phone and describing the invention to their competitor.

Often, the truly valuable things in a company are the ideas and business strategies. This is low bandwidth information. The others - such as code, source masks, etc... already have the legal protection afforded trade secrets and copyrights. While it might not be practical to hand copy source code, this kind of espionage is rare and not very valuable. If company A stole company B's source code, company B would probably have a pretty good legal case against company A. However, the case for stealing ideas is a bit murkier and harder to prove.

But, but... the RIAA needs Print Screen

[fahrbot-bot]

They can pry my Print Screen key from my cold, dead fingers.

If Print Screen is disabled, how will the RIAA gather evidence?

Re:Vista: the cowtow starts now

[NSIM]

Implementing DRM functions in the CPU is not cowtowing to Vista, it's responding to the same rights management pressures that VISTA had to accommodate. VISTA's DRM is there to satisfy the demands of the content providers so that Vista can play back DRMed media from those providers. I know you want to blame MS for all the ills of the World, but you'd do better directing your misplaced anger at things like the BluRay consortium which make the DRM demands that Vista meets.