UPDATE: Reader Bill Rickords emails:
That guy is right about the Feds getting into the “trusting” part. And Intels new motherboard and chips are the lynchpin in this. Called – South Bridge – They have a hard coded chip level anti copy thing that any info the TV and or Movie or RIAA folks label will simply be refused to run at the chip level and there is nothing you will be able to do. Software cant route around it. Nasty stuff.
And he is also right about the right and this anti neutrality trope that has been foisted out and about by ATT, CBS and all the other media as “regulating the net” is rubbish. ATT sent out memos to their troops to call Neutrality “regulation” and they knew the Right would glom onto that word and run with it. They are the ones that want to control the speed and most importantly they absolutely have to control “ACCESS” none of their business models work without controlling BOTH access and content. They want to control and sell the speed of your access and by prioritizing bits and letting them through the pipes based on who pays up first and most. Neutrality has nothing to do with “regulating” the net. It says they can’t do that. Best to try and keep the net as a utility open to all.
They’ve already deployed the most effective copy-protection of all from my perspective: They don’t make anything I’d want to copy anyway. But here’s my FCC Testimony on “network neutrality.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader sends this correction:
The reader email you published from Bill Rickords has one error that should probably be corrected. While Intel does make technology that could help enforce the “Trusted Identity” scheme, the name for that technology is not South Bridge, it’s Trusted Computing. A “south bridge” is simply a chip on the motherboard that helps with
input/output functions — *any* input/output functions. (The “north bridge” is the chip that delivers data from memory to the processor; the names come from the traditional diagram layout, where the processor is drawn at the top of the diagram, the “north bridge” chip below it, and the “south bridge” chip even further down the diagram). Just because a motherboard has a “south bridge” chip on it does *not* mean that it can enforce what you do with your PC; the name you want to look for there is the so-called “Trusted Computing” scheme.
Whatever it’s called, I don’t like it. If my computer doesn’t belong to me, why am I paying you for it?