Intel Insider DRM Risks Monopoly Investigations

Blacklaw writes "Intel's Sandy Bridge line of processors is impressing the tech community with its power, but a sneaky little feature designed to appease Hollywood has some concerned about Intel's intentions: Intel Insider. If a major video streaming service, such as Lovefilm or the US-based Hulu, were to implement Intel Insider technology on their movie streams — as a way of convincing Hollywood to release films sooner and in high definition without worrying about piracy — it would mean that only those who use Intel's very latest Sandy Bridge CPUs would be able to stream movies. Not only would those using older Intel chips that don't support the technology be cut off from the service, but those on systems featuring CPUs from rival manufacturers such as AMD and low-power specialist VIA would also be excluded." In a blog post about this new feature, Intel denies that it is DRM.

Comments

Astounding Hypocrisy

[dr.newton]

From that link to Intel's website:

DRM means 'Digital Rights Management' and is used to control the use of digital media by controlling access, and preventing the ability to copy media such as movies. ...Intel Insider is NOT a DRM technology.

...Intel insider, an extra layer of content protection...

So it's not Digital Rights Management, it's just Content Protection. I feel better.