Intel to Build DRM into Next-Generation CPUs

mdecerbo writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that next year's Intel processors will include hardware support for Microsoft's "Palladium" DRM system. There are chilling privacy implications. AMD, here I come."

I have an idea

Let's all just keep our current computers.

Re:I have an idea

Let's all just keep our current computers.

I have a better idea: just don't buy a computer with Intel Inside. Let 'em incorporate as many DRM gadgets as they want. Then we buy as many non-DRM compliant gadgets as we want.

In other words, let 'em spawn a whole new market and let theirs wither on the corporate cube vine -- the only place you'll find DRM 'puters in large numbers.

Re:Palladium is waaay overblown

Here's how it will happen. MS will get Intel/AMD to add circuits onto their chips that require the OS running on them to implement abstract thought patents that MS owns. Hence, they will make it illegal to run any OS other than Windows. It isn't a technological hurdle, but it is a legal one. Are you willing to violate laws to run Linux? You will have to.

Sorry but...

AMD has already agreed to support paladium.

Re:Sorry but...

From what I hear (father of someone I know is a big guy at AMD), many folks there are edgy about supporting it, but they're in it because they don't want to "miss the boat."

Which boat? The Titanic or the Lusitania?

Re:Sorry but...

That's the craziest thing that I have ever heard. The processor guys should be happy when someone "borrows" software or uses their computer to rip their CDs to Oggs. Every cent that Intel's and AMD's customers spend on software and media content is one more cent that they aren't spending on computer hardware. More importantly, sharing media and software is increasingly what people want to do with their computers. Given the choice of an old slow PC that allows them to rip MP3s and a new computer that doesn't (and that costs a pile of money) many folks are going to choose to stick with their old hardware. If AMD and Intel think that the PC market it soft now, just wait until they start treating their customer like criminals. Especially since you don't really need a new computer unless you are working with multimedia. If all you want to do is some word processing your old machine is almost certainly fast enough.

You want to know when Linux is going to be truly ready for the home desktop? It will be ready when Microsoft starts really pushing Palladium. Until that time users in North America and Europe will gladly pay a little extra to stick with what they already know (Windows). When Microsoft makes it impossible for people to use their computers like they want, all of a sudden folks are going to realize that Linux isn't that hard to use after all.

These companies are writing their own epitaph.

Re:Replace it when it breaks

I agree with you that the computer is becoming an appliance. But Intel and AMD shouldn't be accelerating this process along! They should be doing everything in their power to make sure that the computer is useable as a general purpose device, and the reason for this is simple, they would make a lot less money if computers had 10 upgrade cycles as opposed to 3 year upgrade cycles.

The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is happy to switch to the idea of the computer as an appliance because they are tired of forcing their customers along the upgrade treadmill. They want to charge their customers a monthly fee and then pare down their research to a much lower level. As long as the PC remains an open system this isn't likely to work in the long term because Linux will eventually pass them up if they slow down. So Microsoft is using their current market clout to close down the market.

Not that this is likely to work, but that's what is happening.

redhat and AMD.

According to AMD, they are doing a joint venture [amd.com] with Redhat on their x86-64 Hammer series processor. Do you really imagine Redhat going into this if they had to write closed-source DRM crap into their distro?

Say what you want about Redhat being the next Microsoft, but they always release their code. I don't see them going into this if there wasn't some non-DRM products coming from AMD.

--

Mike

Re:redhat and AMD.

The beauty of Palladium and the TCPA is that it can all be done in open-source. Microsoft Palladium will be open-source as well (senator Hollings thought that would make us all happy). You will still be unable to circumvent the system because a good chunk of it resides on a remote machine, and it will go all the way down to the CPU on your local box (hence this news story).

Welcome to the future, where you have to get permission to run computer instructions. The penalty for "hacking" this system is $500,000 and 5 years in prison. That's right. If you figure out a clever way to play an MP3 file on your TCPA machine, you're eligible for more time than a drunk driver that killed someone is.

Re:redhat and AMD.

Reminds me of the "Life for a Loom" law Luddites were subjected to in the late 1800s (I think) .. basically, if you attacked a loom, the penalty was death. (Luddites were seeing their jobs being usurped by looms and harsh factory working conditions, lower wages, etc, so they were attempting to stop the industrialization of the textile industry.)

It's pretty amazing, but this sort of thing has always happened in our technological state. Killing someone is one thing, but impeding "progress" (note the quotes) is severly punished. Of course, "progress" usually involves strenthening the position of the current winners, which is why its usually subject to resistance at some level by the population at large, and why people in power are far more interested in punishing people who impede the furthuring of their interests than punishing the DUI driver who kills somebody they'll never meet.

I think its crazy, but there you have it. This is pretty much a plutocracy (you need money to have your voice heard a la "lobbiest", "analyst", etc), so I'm not sure what methods we can use to oppose these things.

Does this really matter?

I mean if you do not plan to run Palladium, where's the problem? This would not stop you from doing anything you do now. Doesn't the OS have to support DRM also in order for this to have any effect?

Re:Does this really matter?

I mean if you do not plan to run Palladium, where's the problem? This would not stop you from doing anything you do now.

Currently, you can play DVD's on linux with a minimum of hassle, and you can do perfectly normal and legitimate things with them like make backups, copy and manipulate screen shots, etc. After the adoption of Palladium, DVD's (or their successors) could be designed to play only on trusted players that don't allow you to do these things, and circumventing these restrictions will require hardware modifications.

Do you see a problem now?

--Bruce F.

Re:Does this really matter?

Soon you will see web pages that you cannot load without Palladium enabled. Don't beleive me? You can bet that any media related plugin will support it, and stupid content providers will enable it. You'll see palladium enabled image formats, movies, interactive flash apps, all that will refuse to load without palladium enabled. The web will become largely text only for people without a new machine and windows.

Shortly thereafter, expect MS "enhancements" to IE that can allow web sites to disable the view source, copy, paste, and print functions on web pages. You'll have to have palladium enabled to view those sites.

You'll start see processor ads relating the processor to the internet that aren't lying. "See more of the internet with the new Intel Pentium 6 processor."

Welcome to the Microsoft only internet. You'll have to purchase a new computer and OS license to participate.

Re:Does this really matter?

Soon you will see web pages that you cannot load without Palladium enabled.

This will happen. DRM is "optional" in that you can turn it on or not turn it on. The trick, of course, is that anyone can ask and rely on the trusted client to tell it whether it is on or off. The countermeasure that we MUST be prepared to do is this: we must configure our web pages, content, and programs to require that it be off. That is, we must force users to choose whether they want to see our stuff or DRM stuff.

I would go so far to say that we should set up IP blacklists for people who are "caught" turning DRM on. Palladium is a nasty measure -- we are going to have to fight back with equally nasty responses.

I also predict that when this is finally cracked, somebody will write a virus that cannot be deleted.

Re:Does this really matter?

You can hide your head in the sand and pretend that you don't want to polarize people over this, but that will result in an "optional DRM" becoming the non-optional standard, and then in a few years DRM will become mandatory.

The critical factor is that we must have better content value than them. Disney and the "cool games" sites you refer to will be for pay, so I definitely think this is possible.

The other side has chosen the route of polarizing, not us. They will only deliver content to people who adopt a certain subserviant mentality and technology. We must make people understand that in addition to accepting shackles, they lose access to things they like.

The only route that leads to information freedom is to polarize and then extinguish the other side.

Re:Does this really matter?

I mean if you do not plan to run Palladium, where's the problem? This would not stop you from doing anything you do now. Doesn't the OS have to support DRM also in order for this to have any effect?

Their model is not based on locking people in at the hardware level. Rather they're trying to build a web of interdependence.

You need to decide if there's something you can't live without which is tied into Palladium (or anything else, for that matter.) If you decide you can't live without the latest Video game, which runs only under Palladium, then you'll be running Palladium. If some Top 40 boy band hit is your only reason for living, you'll either buy the DRM-protected CD, or you'll do without. Microsoft's strategy is to build a web (no relation to html or http) of interdependence which involves your paying money to them at some point. You can always choose to avoid microsoft, but you'll have to also choose to live without everything tied into them as well.

Some examples: Perhaps you've decided that you can't live without a call phone. So Microsoft builds a dependency between having a cell phone and using windows: an earlier slashdot story relates how this was done through Verison using the requirement for a Microsoft Passport.

Another common example is the proliferation of Internet Explorer-only web pages. If you can't live without a certain web site, and that site goes IE-only, then you'll be running Microsoft software for as long as you need that site, and you'll be running IE under Windows just as soon as Microsoft feels they can drop support for other operating systems.

It begs the question of how long it will be before such common necessities as voting, cashing a paycheck, getting a drivers license, applying for a job, paying your bills, accessing healthcare, etc will require an active account with Microsoft? I suspect it will happen rather sooner that most of us expect, after all, for the majority of people who already use a Microsoft product at home or at work, such a requirement is not a barrier because it's already met. For them that day has already passed, and we didn't even notice as it flew by.

It's the same model Red Hat is using to maintain and build their customer base, despite the claim that all of their software is free and open. Try installing a kernel source package from the Red Hat 7.3 distribution onto a system using Red Hat 7.2 without forcing against the dependencies. The package dependencies are built such that eventually you have to upgrade RPM itself to the 7.3 level, which cannot be done (AFAIK) using RPM on a live system. To use 7.3 packages, you have to install (or upgrade to) 7.3.

We already have the same dependencies built into the telephone; try to get a job, access government services, or get emergency assistance without a telephone. The result there was a monopoly (for decades) in a single, highly regulated, provider. The phone company was authorized to charge you out the wazoo for basic phone service, and develop new innovations at a snails-pace, prevent you from attaching unapproved equipment to their system (at one time it was illegal to attach a plastic cone to the receiver to block outside noise).

But I wonder: If we hog-tie our technology innovation as much as we did with the development of telecommunications, will the tech industries of our foreign compettitors be as willing to wait for us to get our act together? Or will they just write us off as yet anoyther former technology leader who couldn't keep their act together?

Re:Who cares?

First off, the odds, according to today's poll, are about 30%.

That said, this affects everyone. Mind you, I'm told that Palladium will always be able to be shut off via the BIOS, so you can always buy a Palladium-enabled processor and make it act as if it isn't. That's not the problem, really.

The problem is that Palladium is hardware-embedded Digital Rights Denial. It's paving the way for music and movies that won't play at all unless you have a Palladium-enabled processor. And if you do enable Palladium, you'll be subject to the same restrictive crap that the media cartels have been trying unsuccessfully to push over the last several years. Movies that you can't move to other computers, and that only work as long as you remain subscribed to MovieConglomerate.com or wherever your got them.

Will this all work out in the long run? Well, it depends on how people react. If they continue to reject hightly restricted content, we should be fine. If not, well, say goodbye to the Open Internet. It was fun while it lasted.

Point/Counterpoint

I think that the obvious reaction for the average Slashdotter will be (a) there will always be someone putting out non-DRM hardware (perhaps) and (b) I'll be able to use my current 2.5Ghz hardware for a loooooong time before it's "slow" (gamers obviously do not fit in here). This assumes that two things will not occur:

The vast majority of people (read; the EULA oblivious) will not adopt it anyway and;

Microsoft will not make it impossible to talk to untrusted machines.

I won't draw any conclusions from this and I won't talk about how the world is going to hell in a digital handbasket, but it's food for thought.

the same issue came up with the pIII

or does anyone remember that far back? the pentium III processor architecture was going to allow a special hardware code to be embedded on each processor, unique to each machine so that web transactions would be safer.

however, due to the public backlash about having "big brother" track what their computers were doing, they allowed users to disable that hardware code from being detected.

the hardcoded serial on those pentium III were just a precursor to palladium, however. think of it more of a proof of concept that such a device would work. intel was always heading toward palladium.

Everyone Should Read This

This is the most comprehensive read on Palladium available. Forward it to family and friends.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

Comprehensive Details about Palladium

That article was mostly speculation short on technical details but long on Micro$oft bashing.

Being a geek I got more mileage out of reading the technical details on palladium by a member of the EFF (Seth Schoen) who was at a presentation [loyalty.org] and TCPA and Palladium: Sony Inside [kuro5hin.org] an article on kuro5hin by a former Microserf.


Disclaimer:The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not reflect the opinions, thoughts, strategies or plans of my employer.

25 Million Mac users stand up and applaud

Intel and Microsoft, between Windows Media Center and the forthcoming Palladium might as well just tack on "if you don't want all this crap, please see www.apple.com" at the end of each ad.

While i've been telling my Windows colleagues that this was coming - none of them believed.

And now - bonus - XP.5 and Intel both, in the same week - prove me right.

God.. its good to buy from the "most dangerous company to Intellectual Property today"

Re:25 Million Mac users stand up and applaud

Though if Office stays part of microsoft, they might not be too pleased that Mac's don't support DRM, and might be inclined to pull Office from the Mac.

Maybe not a big deal, but to me (someone pondering buying a mac) that's one of the big things seperating OSX and other *nix. Perhaps I've just not used it enough.

Not as funny as you might think

You're not kidding. I start reading stuff like this and I start wondering if its not too late to go analog and give up on computers and do something else.

I mean, once they hammer all the fun out of it by making it like cable TV what's the fucking point?

Re:Not as funny as you might think

"I mean, once they hammer all the fun out of it by making it like cable TV what's the fucking point?"

Hey, it was inevitable. Really.

Let's look at how the other "media" have fared:

• Print: While it requires a printing press to reach a large audience, people communicated on paper, one-to-one, since writing was invented. And as recently as the 19th century, it was fairly common to print and distribute pamphlets, if you had a message you wanted to get out, and most towns and cities had several thriving newspapers, each with a unique voice. Today the art of writing has been lost by nearly all but those paid to do it, people handing out leaflets on streetcorners are widely considered whackjobs, and all but a handful of cities have but one major newpaper.
  
  
• Radio: I think it's asafe bet that Marconi never envisioned ClearChannel. In fact, I doubt he ever thought that millions would actually sit and listen en-masse to a single broadcaster. Radio was originally intended as a one-to-one communications medium, potentially the first long-distance P2P medium. But the vast majority of people were quite content to merely listen to what others broadcast, rather than broadcast themselves. Control of broadcasting consolidated quickly, and by the 1920's a handful of broadcasting networks controlled much of the medium, aided and abetted by the government. Want to broadcast your own station? Good luck. Just ask the FCC for a licence, and you'll find you can't play with the big boys. Sure, a few bands are reserved for "public" use (FRS, CB), but are strictly limited in wattage (hence, reach) and content (did you know it's a federal offence to broadcsat music over CB?), lest you actually provide an alternative to the conglomerates.
  
  
• Television: 75 years ago this past May, AT&T demonstrated the first television transmission in the US. British researchers had staged a similar demonstration a couple months earlier. It was over wire, but was soon working over the airwaves. But, like radio, it was never intended to be a broadcast medium. For some time, the only television installations were point-to-point, videophones essentially. It took David Sarnoff of RCA (Radio Corp. of America) to realize the potential of television to become yet another corporate broadcasting medium, and that's exactly what he did.
  
  
• BBSs: Even before the 'net, people had begun to network using local dial-up BBSs, which later gained regional, national, and even international reach via FidoNet and the like. There were no corporate conglomerates dumping "content" into waiting eyeballs; anyone who had something to say or share could buy a modem and put up a BBS. People geographically distant could exchange words and ideas freely. Then came the corporations: CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online. Their improved networks, broad capacity and professional management put an end to the amateur FidoNets. As time went on, each of the nationwide BBSs migrated from merely allowing their customers to interract, and succumbed to the temptation to broadcast to them, to spoonfeed them corporate "content." For an advertising fee, of course.
  
  
• The Internet: Not long ago, it seemed that everyone had a web site, or at least a home page. People would spend hours just following links in hopes of stumbling across the interesting, the wild, the thought-provoking, the just plain dumb. As the volume of such pages grew, the sheer volume created a demand for an easy way to find sites that fit the viewer's interest. Two methods came about: Web rings and search engines.Web rings were strictly amateur; but investors saw the potential of search engines to "aggregate eyeballs" for sale to advertisers. Then came (and went) "push," a brutally clumsy attempt at TV-style broadcasting; but then the search engines became "portals," attracting users with actually useful functionality. These relatively few "onramps" to the Internet attracted the media corporations, and after several years of consolidation and buy-outs, a mere handful of corporations control what are for many people the only way they know of to get online.
  
  

"Knowledge is power." But knowledge doesn't travel by itself, it must be communicated. He who controls that communication controls everything. The wealthy and powerful know this, and will always strive to control what we see, hear, and hence, what we think. That's why every means of communication will inexorably move from one-to-one to a broadcast paradigm.

Why should networked personal computers be any different?

AMD will do whatever MS says

Did you guys forget AMD's CEO testifying on behalf of Microsoft in their antitrust case?

Did you guys forget the rumors that Microsoft's support of X86-64 was due to AMD standing behind them?

If Intel is doing this, AMD will be right behind them. They'll do anything to preserve their relationship with Microsoft.

Don't get me wrong, I love AMD, but they're just as corporate as the rest of the semiconductor industry.

Time to bug out!

All the more reason to stop using the Wintel platform (or should that be wintelamd now?).

This will only encourage my move towards Apple stuff - or Motorola and IBM announced hardware DRM as well?

Sorry Connectix...

I almost forgot - so long Connectix. :-(...

No more Virtual PC - well, not any Virtual PC's which require Le Grange.

Unless they come up with some way to emulate a valid key that changes with each install.

I don't know - how is Connectix going to deal with this? Can they?

See Cringely Commentary

Once again, Bob Cringely was way ahead of the /. crowd on this one. This article was written the end of June entitled "See I told you so: Alas, a Couple of Bob's Dire Predictions Have Come True" [pbs.org]. Bob originally warned of Palladium back in August of last year.

Bob said it much better than I can.

The point of all this is simple. It may actually make the Internet somewhat safer. But the real purpose of this stuff, I fear, is to take technology owned by nobody (TCP/IP) and replace it with technology owned by Redmond. That's taking the Internet and turning it into MSN. Oh, and we'll all have to buy new computers.

You said it Bob. Thank you.

Two omissions in the article

I suppose they're making a decent effort at reporting on this in an even-handed way, but the Globe missed two important points.

1. Palladium does nothing to protect against malicious code. It's the hardware equivalent of ActiveX "signing," which only verifies (somewhat) that the requested code comes from a known source. As we've seen already with ActiveX, code signing isn't a panacea; it can be subverted at many levels. On this the Globe is incorrect.
2. Privacy is only half of the downside concern. The other half is that DRM-enabled CPUs and system boards could easily become DRM-required devices at the whim of a major hardware or BIOS vendor. On this the Globe just failed to notice the issue, or to mention it.

What will China and other countries do?

Not everyone in the world is enamored with DRM. China already distrusts Microsoft products enough to fully embrace linux as their OS of choice. Will the same thing happen to Intel products in China?

It doesn't seem like a very smart business decision to lock yourself out of the fastest-growing market in the world.

Peripherals are the real problem

As peripherals become locked unless you have MS's DRM Linux or Apple becomes even less of an option. And by peripherals I mean every peripheral: CR-ROM/DVD, Floppy, monitor, video card, printer, the works. What hapens when you can't buy a printer or monitor that won't work with out MS's DRM. THey have the market dominance to make this happen. This is more dangerous than it first looks.

I encourage this. Here's why ...

Actually, I encourage Microsoft's work on Palladium.

Why?

Because it will herald a great (and much needed) rebirth of "personal computing." It'll launch (IMHO) a fairly comprehensive reassessment and reappraisal of why we use computers in the first place. And it'll most likely start a significant portion of us back on (or near) square one -- the late 1970's where the notion of "personal computing" really took off.

I'm serious. For those of us alive in the late 70's, it was a great time to be a "hobbyist." There weren't geeks and no real "hackers" or "script-kiddies". Just a bunch of people who -- especially here in America -- shared a common passion for building little boxes out of solder, wires, and circuit boards so that -- after everything was assembled correctly -- we could watch a couple lights blink on and off.

Later, once stuff like the TRS-80 and AppleII gained ground, it was really pretty cool. I still remember hanging out in the arcades and trying to write stuff like a TRS-80 version of Pac Man or Donkey Kong in Z80 assembly language with -- what? -- 127 X 47 blocky, black and white graphics.

(Insert snide comment here about old, outdated graphics, but if you do, you miss the point.)

I see this sort of "community hobbyism" in the Linux community (even though they don't call it that) but I think if Microsoft pushes forth this Palladium, we'll see a pretty significant split between those who embrace whatever new technology comes down the pike and those who take a hard look at where we've been and what we've achieved vis a vis Palladium and realize that better technology doesn't necessarily mean much. It means better technology, maybe, but it certainly doesn't herald or promised a better "user experience."

Palladium will also, I think, significant a fairly radical leap in the notion of "personal computing." This DRM technology is not personal computing. It's corporate computing. There's nothing personal about it. There's not much fun about it either. It leaves the "hobbyists" -- now called geeks, I guess -- out in the cold and looking toward all the nifty retro-tech.

The retro-tech movement, I think, will be stronger than ever if Palladium -- or something like it -- comes to pass. What that means -- retro-tech -- I'm not entirely sure, but I think it will be a gradual awareness that "good enough" really is "good enough" and something along the lines of "personal computing is dead, long live personal computing!"

It's easy to disable, but it won't help

It's really an OS issue, or a Microsoft one. Palladium hardware is easy to disable. In fact, the whole point is that any "tampering" with the boot process disables the hardware-stored authorizations. This only matters if the OS cares about it.

The real question is how obnoxious Microsoft will make the OS restrictions.

Incidentally, we ought to be seeing some Palladium-enabled games soon, ones where modified clients can be detected by the server. That will be how the technology gets debugged.

What to do with friends who pirate?

I have a friend who spends lots of time on newsgroups, Kazaa, etc. copying movies. At the same time, I read articles like this, and spend $10 sending certified delivery confirmed letters to congressmen like Mr. Hollings and businesses like Intel and AMD. This is highly counterproductive. My friend saves $10/month on movie rentals, and I spend $10/month on letters.

I've talked to this person and they say "Oh, I just copy movies I wouldn't rent anyway." (I assume because they are too expensive) They have a valid point since some products are just ridiculously expensive. But they are not helping the problem. If they spent their effort protesting, or finding alternatives as they did pirating, we would be in good shape. I would probably be better off paying them $10/month and having them rent the movies, than to spend it writing letters.

What should I do? Do I turn them in? Do I hassle them? Do I pay them to stop doing it? It's my rights they are taking away, but turning them in seems ridiculous. Is there somethnig we can do in mass that could prevent this problem?

BS aside, here's a serious question.

Okay, this is something I don't understand about this proposed scheme. Let's say media server A wants to send content to client B. A of course asks B to confirm that B is in secure mode, so that the owners of the content about to be transmitted can sleep well at night knowing that the recipient has paid. What prevents B from running a nonsecure client/OS and reponding "yeah sure, palladium enabled" and receiving the content and storing it unencumbered?

My first thought would be some sort of cryptographic challenge/response would be used to signal this fact. But client B is totally under our control, since we've disabled the secure mode of the CPU, or we're running a non-DRM OS, or we have a legacy CPU, or whatever. So now it appears that we're back to the same situation as the content scrambling system on DVDs. There's some secret key or challenge/response protocol imbedded in the secure OS that's supposed to be running on client B. But we've hacked that software, found the key, whatever. As long as we have the binaries to this OS, someone will eventually find the secret key and that will be the end of that.

In short, how could this form of digital rights management ever work? The situation is almost exactly analogous to DVDs, as far as I can tell -- you have the "trusted" clients (consumer DVD players -> Microsoft's future palladium OS) and the "untrusted" clients (standard PCs with DVD ROMs -> standard PCs running non-DRM OS.)

How does this protect anything? Why go to all the trouble?