"You can only play with our toys if you follow our rules", Re: Intel to include DRM in new Pentium 4 series processors

[Ben Laurie]

Brian Gladman wrote:
> In principle, and if you switch it on, this depends on what you agreed to
> when you purchased TCPA dependent rights to some software or content. In
> practice I think the authorisation tokens linked to machine metrics will
> have to be fairly crude if they are to have any chance of success.  Very
> sophisticated metrics would very likely mean that the software would fall
> over pretty well every time it was used and here experience with copy
> protection shows that users won't tolerate this.

That's a good point - as I understand it, the marketplace showed it 
wasn't prepared to accept even defeatable copy protection for software, 
which is why almost no serious software is copy protected today. 
However, this doesn't seem to apply to games, which appear to be heavily 
protected with little resistance (modulo "mod-chips" for Playstations, 
etc). The jury is still out on protecting entertainment (e.g. music 
CDs), though people don't seem to happy about it...

This tends to suggest that DRM applications of TCPA/Palladium are not 
likely to be welcomed with open arms, and certainly controlling use of 
critical software would appear to be a total non-starter.

At least, I live in hope.

Cheers,

Ben.


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