Content in lockdown – An unbreakable link between media and its delivery end point is near – InfoWorld.com: I’m increasingly aghast at the erosion of the traditional freedom we’ve enjoyed to do whatever we please with our personal computers — but intrigued by the science behind it.
My latest revelation came during a recent visit to AMD for a day of briefings. During that visit, I got the briefest of updates on ATI’s new GPU technology. It will ship with software that plays movies on Blu-ray discs. The AMD rep spelled it out in words that would have been undiplomatic coming from me: He said that the new chips will “block unauthorized access to the frame buffer.” In short, that means an unauthorized party can’t save the contents of the display to a file on disk unless the content owner approves it.
There is a short list of parties who will be unauthorized to access your frame buffer: You. There is a long list of parties who are authorized to access your frame buffer, and that list includes Microsoft, Apple, AMD, Intel, ATI, NVidia, Sony Pictures, Paramount, HBO, CBS, Macrovision, and all other content owners and enablers that want your machine to themselves whenever you’re watching, listening to, reading, or shooting monsters with their products.
Let’s see. The RIAA kills a music community that spread music samples around to enthusiasts, sales of CDs drops, and the RIAA (and the politicians it has bought, like Diane Feinstein) blame the music communities they just killed. Right. (and now they’re after the sole remaining channel of non-homogenized music, the Internet radio sites. Yay, another music community killed and more music sales drops.)
By the same illogic, AMD decides to exclude its customers from their own graphic content. Will anyone be surprised to see the ATI brand die? I sure as hell won’t buy one. Or Vista. Or any other product whose maker assumes I’m a thief. Screw ’em.