From Raging Bull [thanks to Wavetek]
The Open Box
One of the greatest virtues of the personal computer is that it is an open box. Anyone can look under the hood and see how it works, write software for it, and share files with other PC users. But the PC’s open nature is its greatest weakness, especially as its advocates seek to make it the all-in-one communications and entertainment medium of the future.
To see the problem, look no further than the MP3 phenomenon. MP3 is a digital encoding protocol for the PC that allows anyone to make a copy of any recorded music and share it with the whole world on the Internet. “MP3” recently surpassed “sex” as the most popular search engine keyword entry. Now that’s popularity.
MP3 is less popular with record company executives, film producers, and other content providers. They see it, quite correctly, as a nightmare, a threat to their very existence. They know that if everyone can download the latest hit record or movie for free with no fear of criminal prosecution, precious few will pay $15.99 for it. Free music on the Web is the subject of furious argument and legal action among record labels, artists, PC makers, and Internet service providers.
So when Microsoft Research cryptographer Paul England wants to persuade content providers that the PC should be the platform of choice for buying, viewing, and manipulating content from the Internet, he’s got some fast talking to do. But England has a bold plan to improve the PC and make it a secure delivery system for audio and video.
England’s solution involves making minor modifications to the PC’s hardware to allow Microsoft to make a secure version of the Windows Media Player. Essentially, this would turn the PC into a record player as far as music is concerned, while preserving the other open aspects of the computer. Record companies could release their records in an encrypted, unable to be copied Windows Media Audio format that would only work on the secure version of the Windows Media Player. A similar arrangement could be reached with the movie studios for film distribution.
“We must convince the record industry that the PC is better than the compact disc in terms of piracy,” England says, pointing out that any 14-year-old can now buy a CD, copy it with a “ripper” program and post it on the Web for all his friends to share.
Microsoft, which loses billions in revenue to software piracy every year, feels the record industry’s pain. England is one of Microsoft’s representatives to the Secure Distribution of Music Initiative, an effort at cooperation between the music and the PC industry to define the architecture for distributing music on the Web.
He says an agreement between software and hardware makers is near, and “we should see some hardware for content protection within a year.” Microsoft is already shipping a secure version of Windows Media Player. England is pretty sure that it will be cracked eventually, but he says it will do for now. The way to slam the door on the pirates lies in a modification of the hardware, he says. “We must make it immune to a software attack, and close the PC in that way.”
research.microsoft.com
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