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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.
From that link to Intel's website:
So it's not Digital Rights Management, it's just Content Protection. I feel better.
Just another proletarian malcontent.
I will say that Intel Insider is NOT a DRM technology.
So Intel created Intel insider, an extra layer of content protection
Talk about doublethink.
Palm trees and 8
Ars had a nice writeup of this yesterday, referencing a 2006 post of theirs. The basic gist is/was that DRM simply CANNOT be a good sell for tech companies, and given that Intel and the other consumer electronics companies are so massive when compared to production costs, why don't they just buy one? Intel could piss on its shoes and come out with the budget for a dozen major films, which they could then release DRM free, to the joy of all of their customers. Hollywood is big, but there are only six major production houses and a number of smaller ones... all of which are worth far less than the major tech companies. Want more movies on iTunes, Apple? You've got the cash, so BUY a production house.
I didn't mean to editorialize, but I think I started to convince myself by the end there.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Duh? Of course if you are using a CPU that doesn't implement the technology that the service is based on you wouldn't be able to use it. This is like saying that "Intel Faces Monopoly Investigation" because x86 code only runs on... x86 processors.
Congratulations, you just proved the point. Intel DID face monopoly investigations for x86 instruction sets. That's why AMD exists, because Intel was forced to license the i386 instruction set.
If Intel doesn't license out this technology, and it becomes the dominant media distribution platform, they'll likely face the same problems again. However, Intel has learned, and these days AMD and Intel cross-license quite a bit. x86_64, for example, is AMD tech that Intel has licensed.
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The bigger joke is, pretty soon this DRM-crap will be in just about every new processor. So it'll only be people with older CPU's (read: anything not 1-2 years new) that lack.
Sort of the way that people with Windows Vista or Win7 get fucked for video quality hooking a laptop or HTPC up to a TV or projector that happens to have a VGA input rather than DVI or HDMI.
Welcome to "the future", where DRM is fucking everywhere and your rights as a consumer mean precisely Jack and Shit. And if you wonder how we got there, look no further than the two-party system where both sides are bought out by the same businesses.
Once Intel solved their heat problem and stopped adding latency layers, and thus began beating the pants off of AMD in benchmarks,
At what price point? The $900-per-processor range?
I've been extremely happy as an AMD customer. And every time I run price-for-performance, AMD comes out king even today. They haven't won the "fuck it I'm a millionaire money is no object" speed crown in a while, but I can get a much faster AMD CPU for the same price in the $100-200 range every time.
It has been said before, but it needs to be repeated by high-profile writers until Hollywood listens.
DRM will always be cracked. You are not stopping pirates. You are punishing paying customers by treating them like criminals. Hollywood is convinced (like the music industry was) that no one would willingly pay for digital content if they have the capability to pirate it. The reality is that iTunes is the #1 seller of music, with Amazon #2. People do actually like paying for legal, digital content.
People will pirate. DRM isn't the solution. Finding ways to reward paying customers and treating them well is the solution.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Just take a look at Sony - they are even more paranoid about piracy as a result of owning a movie studio.
my understanding is that if you own a bd player and 'risk' putting bd discs into your system (maybe even network) that it can detect hardware and handshake down and disable (!) hardware it does not, uhhh, like.
if you do not ever mount a bd disc then the block-list part of the bd spec won't ever run. I think your hardware won't ever get on a local blacklist.
but if you DO mount a new enough bd disc, it could very well detect some rogue hw and try to stop it.
evil!
I boycott bd. bd is just not for me. thanks though ;)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
There is nothing really wrong with Itanium. It's a perfectly viable 64-bit instruction set. It's only major fallback was that well, it wasn't x86. Technical problems had little to do with it.
That is a load of dingo's kidneys. Intel can not get anything like the promised performance out of Itanium and where they get close it requires massive code changes because they have not managed to get enough magic into the compiler, which is why everyone and their mom is dropping it. Nobody bought Itanium on purpose, it was all crap like being forced to upgrade to it because the old system is on Alpha and the only upgrade path for the software you are running is to go to Itanium. I saw this happen personally at a community college which is now hosting their student info on an 8-way itanium that is maybe using 10% of its capabilities. A two-processor system would have covered their needs nicely for decades.
AMD basically shoe-horned 64-bit instructions into the x86 architecture. A far less creative and less impressive feat,
That's a load of nonsense because "the x86 architecture" is a meaningless phrase. x86 is an instruction set, full stop. amd64 processors bear no resemblance whatsoever to an i386 except that they can handle processing the same code. Everything that makes Hammer look like an x86 is in the LSU and op-decode.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You message insinuates that the actions of producing a computer chip with some technology is clearly and inexcusably morally wrong.
In this case, that insinuation is considered by many to be correct.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
Once a hugely-powerful system like this is fully-implemented, "stupid DRM tricks" are actually the least worrisome aspect. What government can accomplish in the way of control of everyone's information & digital communications is far more worrisome.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.