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.
DRM for those who aren’t familiar is a scheme to control the use of legitimately downloaded media. It is what prevents you from putting music you bought onto your CD player; what prevents you from listening the music on MP3 players; or putting it on any hardware other than that specified by the manufacturer. Its implementation kills legitimate online music sales. However its also insisted as a requirement by the Music Industry (who later cry foul… go figure).
But this isn’t all:
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.
In other words, anyone from the outside will also be able to utterly destroy your computer. Without your assistance. Personally, I’ll just continue to stick with the arguably better and cheaper AMD Chips.
Update: Intel has dismissed the original article from Computerworld Today Australia. Full story here.