more on Intel quietly embeds DRM in it's 945 chips firmware

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brad Templeton <btm () templetons com>
Date: May 31, 2005 2:23:21 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: Ip ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Intel quietly embeds DRM in it's 945 chips firmware


On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 08:17:59AM -0400, David Farber wrote:

> than I should.  What I do know is that Intel has been working very
> closely with the entertainment industry on a DRM that, I've been
> told, seeks to satisfy EVERYONE'S wishes.  Of course, such a system
> would mean, by definition, that it will satisfy either no one, or
> only the studios.

I used to wonder if you made a DRM system that was so well designed that
only a serious pirate would notice it was there, if this might be
a workable system.

But now I have come to realize that there's one very important community
which a DRM system can't avoid harming, and that's the open source
community, who as a largely philanthropic effort build linux, the  
bsds and
much of the software that runs the internet and is thus used by  
everybody.

One of the pillars of the open source community, written into several
of its most common licences, is that the end user must be able to
modify the software, both for their own use and to give away to others.
Of course, most end-users don't recompile their tools, but a sizeable
number do, and they provide innovations, fixes and improvements that
get used by all the users.

There is a fundamental incompatability between this ability to modify
and any DRM that has a software element to its enforcement.  You
simply can't have them both.

That leaves DRM where all the enforcement (ie. decryption and
display/presentation) takes place within physically secured devices.
This is not easy to do, and even if done, it bars the open source
software from any useful features that might be thought up which require
access to the media, only what the hardware does can be done.

The end result is to largely shut open source software out of the
media playing arena, and thus, if you believe in the convergence of
media playing devices and computering devices, out of the general
purpose home computer arena.

To those who use the open source software, the trouble with this is
obvious.  But in fact, all must be concerned, as the open source
software, aside from being one of the few competitors to forces like
Microsoft, is also becoming a source of significant innovation.  That
old style, garage-based innovation, where a loner or small team
develop something new on the cheap which changes the world.   DRM
systems can be architected to allow a Tivo, but they bar the "next Tivo"
which is a loss to all.

So the conclusion is that, as suggested, you can't pull off the
"make everybody happy" DRM.   Instead, you get DRM which mostly sits
as a barrier not to pirates or users, but to the small innovators of
the world, and what a tragedy that would be.



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