/. [Intel Adds DRM to New Chips]

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Sun May 29 02:05:47 PDT 2005


On Sat, May 28, 2005 at 11:26:28PM -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:

> (Continued)
> "Contrary to expectations, however, sales of the chip have been suprisingly
> low, with zero interest shown by major PC manufacturers. One major PC
> industry executive, who wished to remain anonymous sated: "There are 100s
> of millions of people trading files every day throughout the globe. I'm
> going to start using this chip and give up that market because...?"

What actually seems to be happening is that chipset DRM is being deployed
silently,
though not on a wide scale yet, and but for game consoles in a facultative
version. Of course, such dormant DRM can be activated with subsequent
software
upgrades (watch the sneaky software-DRM games Cupertino plays).

The billion dollar question is: will users let themselves lock in into the
DRM prison, just because of a dangling premium content carrot, and the "I
gots your IP, my lawyers 0wnZ0r Ur 455" litigation stick?

We're going to see soon, as HDTV on BluRay&Co is going to be that experiment.
The next-generation signal lanes to display devices are encrypted, so there's
only the analog hole left to the naive user.

Online activation of software is already quite widespread, so it seems
customers are willing to accept restriction to ownership and use.

> OK, Gov officials will eventually start trying to introduce laws mandating
> such technologies be used, but by then it's going to come down to a battle
> of lobbies: The Entertainment industry vs Telecom+PCs++Software. Which can
> pump dollars into Senatorial hands faster?

The entertainment industry has an order of magnitude less funds, but seems to
spend them far more efficiently. Also, the Far East market is increasingly
supplying itself, so Hollywood has less and less angle there. Let US and EU
get the crippleware, while the rest of the world gets swamped with plaintext
pirated copies (a single break is enough).

--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.leitl.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list