Another reason to stay away from Intel chips

[Gwarsbane]

http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4915

Intel quietly adds DRM to new chips

Microsoft and the entertainment industry's holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset.

Officially launched worldwide on the May 26, the new offerings come DRM-enabled and will, at least in theory, allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard rather than through the operating system as is currently the case.

While Intel steered clear of mentioning the new DRM technology at its Australian launch of the new products, Intel's Australian technical manager Graham Tucker publicly confirmed Microsoft-flavored DRM technology will be a feature of Pentium D and 945.

"[The] 945g [chipset] supports DRM, it helps implement Microsoft's DRM ... but it supports DRM looking forward," Tucker said, adding the DRM technology would not be able to be applied retrospectively to media or files that did not interoperate with the new technology.

However, Tucker ducked questions regarding technical details of how embedded DRM would work saying it was not in the interests of his company to spell out how the technology in the interests of security.

The situation presents an interesting dilemma for IT security managers as they may now be beholden to hardware-embedded security over which they have little say, information or control.

Conversely, Intel is heavily promoting what it calls "active management technology" (AMT) in the new chips as a major plus for system administrators and enterprise IT. Understood to be a sub-operating system residing in the chip's firmware, AMT will allow administrators to both monitor or control individual machines independent of an operating system.

Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.

"We all know our [operating system] friends don't crash that often, but it does happen," Tucker said.

Intel's reticence to speak publicly about what lies under the hood of its latest firmware technology has also prompted calls to come clean from IT security experts, including Queensland University of Technology's assistant dean for strategy and innovation, IT faculty, Bill Caelli.

"It's a dual use technology. It's got uses and misuses. Intel has to answer what guarantees it is prepared to give that home users are safe from hackers. Not maybes, guarantees".

Caelli said it was "critical Intel comes clean" about how the current DRM technology is embedded into the new CPU and chipset offering.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment at press time.

Digit Staff

[Quickening]

Or you actually pay for stuff and don't worry about it...

[fritoman]

haha coming from a guy that said in another thread he had burned 2 copys of some music of his because his friends like it so much :P

[Gwarsbane]

Quick you don't understand the problems with DRM, its not going to stop pirates. Its just going to stop the average person.


I suggest you read everything that we are talking about over on the Mektek forums. I would post what I said but it would be out of context with everything others have said.

http://www.mektek.net/forums/index.php?act...=1&t=40002&st=0



Basically its the fact that they are trying to tell you what to do with something that you bought. Would you like it if you bought a CD and could only play it on a single stereo?

What if you bought a game and could only play it on your current computer but wanted to put it on a laptop to take the game with you to play when you are away on vacation.

What if you made a song, on the DRM enabled machine, and it only allowed you to play that song on your machine even though you made the song and want others to have it for free.

What if you made a video and the same thing as above happened. You have kids one day and want to send a copy of their first steps to their grandmother, but when she gets them it says she has an illegal copy and won't play it.

Or you buy a game/program and for some odd reason the DRM kicks in and says you have an illgal copy of the program and locks you out of playing it.

Or there is a glitch that causes all of your legal software to be seen as illegal.

There are lots of problems with DRM enabled stuff.

[Miagi]

I don't see how they can limit/filter what consumers can or can't do on a pc.... Personally I think its a form of control.

So if I legally buy a cd and want to make copies of it for backup and also so I can have a copy in car and in my home stereo, I won't be able to? Thats a load of crap...

What next? They will filter what people can say/browse/download/play?

[NITRO!]

Is DRM like TCPA? That totally sucks. OpenSource software, free videos, free music and much much more would be "illegal". And all the minor companies would have to pay very much to get a license to copy their own program. So there would only be big companies like Microsoft who can survive.:cuss:
TCPA/DRM:bgf: