Intel to include DRM in new Pentium 4 series processors

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 19:40 12/09/2002 +0800, Brian Gladman wrote:

>Over the last two years I have been briefed in detail on TCPA developments
>and also briefed in detail (under Non Disclosure Agreements) on a number of
>implementations of TCPA being undertaken by major companies.
>
>I think Ross is right to suggest that the community at large needs to
>understand TCPA and its derivatives and hence make a judgement on the impact
>that this technology will have on the market.  I hence thought that it might
>be helpful if I set out my own position (TCPA is evolving so this is subject
>to change).
>
>At one level TCPA (I will use this term to cover both TCPA and the related
>implementations) allows a PC owner to have a higher confidence in the
>software that is running on their machine.  It will offer secure boot
>protection, secure driver loading and verification and OS metrics that allow
>a _machine owner_ to determine and verify what OS and what application
>software runs on their machine.  All of these facilities are under the sole
>control of the machine owner and they can if they wish switch them off (this
>is the default).
>
>It is true that a company can take GPL'd software and provide it in a form
>that allows the user to say that it is _this_ particular version of the
>software that they want to run.   The company providing this software has to
>comply with the GPL (assuming that this holds up legally) and this means
>that anyone else can compile and sign this software and a PC owner can
>choose to use this alternative.  They can do this themselves if they choose
>or they can take the software from any Free Software/Open Source distributor
>that wishes to supply TCPA signed OS or applications software.

This seems to imply that the owner of a TCPA machine can use it to verify 
any signatures he wants (i.e. import into TCPA any public keys he trusts) 
and will not be dependent on having keys signed by parties approved by the 
TCPA consortium or anyone else.

Is this in fact a feature of TCPA?

Regards

Nicholas

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