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I spoke with an audience of Intel executives and security folks
in November 2000 about its copy-prevention technologies, at
the invitation of Pat Gelsinger. Brian Snow of NSA, a respected
colleague, spoke along with me (about building integrity into
products). I have not been shy about telling Intel what I think
of their efforts to prevent users from making legitimate uses
of their products.

The heart of the difference between Intel and I on this
point is on what you called "the need to protect content". I
believe that there is NO need to so-called protect so-called
content. In fact, both the structure of our society (free
speech and capitalism) and the structure of our technologies
(open standards that plug together in innumerable ways to
satisfy innumerable desires) require a lack of restrictions
on who can transmit what information to who.

Intel builds machines that process data. "Content" is just
data. Every piece of data that an Intel processor or networking
component handles is copyrighted by somebody, under the Berne
Convention. It's all "content". You could talk about "protecting
data" but people would realize that preventing it from being
copied does not "protect" their data. Frequently you NEED to
copy your data -- e.g. onto a backup tape -- to protect it. So
instead you use this made-up word "content". Since nobody knows
a definition for "content", you can say the most outrageous
things about it and get away with it.

Intel's chips have no way to tell what permission that
individual chip owner has under the copyright law, for many
reasons. (The laws change, copyrights expire, individuals or
companies get more rights than the general public does because
they signed licenses, there are things that everyone has the
legal right to do with data whether or not it is copyrighted,
etc etc etc.)

If Intel really thought that there was a "need to protect
content", it would have built features into its chips to
make sure that none of Intel's OWN chip designs, hardware
designs, software, documents, trade secrets, and other
intellectual property could ever be stolen or copied using
Intel equipment. That's Intel's first and foremost interest
in intellectual property protection -- but it has expended
zero effort toward "fixing" its chips to provide technical
barriers against such unlawful copying. Therefore I discount
the claim that Intel sees a "need to protect content".

What Intel is doing is a cynical scheme to buy off an oligopoly.

What really saddens me is that Intel has no need to buy off that
oligopoly. In fact it's quite the opposite. Intel's efforts
to suck up to that oligopoly have CREATED the perception
among policy makers that "something needs to be done",
since Intel and the oligopoly "agree on the problem". Intel
and other honest manufacturers should stand fast and say,
"We are not the world's policemen. We sell general purpose
equipment and we make it as flexible as possible to attract
the broadest range of customers. You can't hold the man who
makes pencils responsible because a bookie used a pencil to
write down a bet. And you can't demand that he design a pencil
that can't be used to write down a bet." If you answered the
oligopoly demands in those terms, there would be no political
"problem". And you would have good Supreme Court law behind
you -- the Betamax case.

Instead, you are working to undermine the Betamax case, the
competitiveness of your own industry, the interests of your
own customers, and the foundations of your own free society.

Intel has been running the wrong direction for years about
this. Les Vadasz claimed recently, both to Dave Farber and
to Congress, that Intel wants to protect consumer rights
and not kowtow to the oligopolies. But he was, as I said,
either lying or ineffective at actually getting Intel to
walk his talk. Because Intel is at the heart of mandating
copy-prevention standards that would be forced into all PC's,
all TV's, and all software.

And the whole thing is coming to a head this week, in a farcial
"consensus" among a self-selected set of people with zero
consumer representation. This "consensus" will be billed to
Congress and the FCC as a "consensus among all interested
parties" that everybody should be banned from competing to
offer consumers better products than what Intel is willing to
offer. Because Intel wants to make sure that nobody can offer
the consumer a better deal -- since Intel knows in its heart
that no consumer would buy the locked-down Intel product if
they had any choice in the matter.

John Gilmore 


[The addendum, about a week later:]

You may not realize the pervasiveness of the requirement
being demanded by Hollywood. A friend of mine is planning
to build digital speakers (he's an EE who builds his own
speakers). Just as carrying an analog signal to a video monitor
over a cable degrades it, analog speaker cables also degrade
the signal. Sending the audio to the speakers digitally would
carry the signal more faithfully, and it's cheap these days. It
has other advantages: you could plug all of your speakers into
your house Ethernet, with little selectors on them to pick which
packets each speaker would listen for. Then you wouldn't have
to run separate pairs of wires from your stereo to each room;
you'd just feed each room an Ethernet connection.

If the BPDG mandate goes through, digital speakers would have
to include copy-protection IN EACH SPEAKER. If they didn't,
they could not be used to play the sound from HDTV or DVDs (or
SDMI or whatever comes next). Each speaker would need two-way
communication, so that the copy-protection could negotiate keys.

If someone made digital headphones, you'd need a little cop,
I mean a little copy-prevention chip, in each HEADPHONE.

If someone made hearing aids that could receive wireless
digital sound (a godsend in concert halls or meeting rooms),
you'd need a little censor in each EAR.

To get these censorship chips, or the technical info needed
to build a speaker with them, my engineer friend would have
to sign nondisclosure, and sign a 50-page contract promising
never to build them into a system that could ever be used to
copy music. And the technology in the chips would probably have
a feature that would let record companies later "self-destruct"
the chip if anyone ever discovered how to get the digital music
out of it. That is, as a result of some teenager somewhere
in the world cracking the chip's scheme, a record or movie
company would release hidden codes in their products that when
played would cause my friend's custom home-made speakers to
stop working -- permanently.

After reading a letter-to-the-editor in the Washington Post,
sent by a doctor who opposes the Hollings bills, I realized that
many people think that passing the "you must honor the 1-bit
HDTV copy prevention" measure would somehow make the world
better than if the Hollings bill was passed. It won't. Here's
the letter:


> Hold On There a Minute, Jack!  In response to Jack
> Valenti's May 1 editorial-page commentary "Stop Digital
> Piracy the DVD Way": I don't give a hoot whether or
> not digital video can be downloaded over the Internet,
> either now or in the future. What I do care about is that
> the computers I use in my medical laboratory practice
> continue to be designed by engineers and programmers
> rather than by government bureaucrats working as
> surrogates for copyright holders.  The legislation
> introduced by Sen. Hollings that Mr. Valenti supports is
> arrogant and audacious, requiring the general public to
> both pay for and suffer performance degradation in order
> to reconfigure computing technology to serve the needs
> of the entertainment industry.  Furthermore, it vastly
> exceeds the constitutional authority given Congress
> with regard to copyright regulation.  Donn Fishbein,
> M.D., Ph.D.  Coldwater, Ohio




Even if the Hollings bills die ugly deaths, but the BPDG mandate
is created by FCC and/or Congress, you'll see the exact same
effect on medical laboratory computers. Computer monitors
will only come with copy prevention circuitry, because if
they didn't, you couldn't plug them in to computers that do
copy prevention on their video outputs. Computers will come
with copy prevention on their video outputs, because if they
didn't, you wouldn't be able to plug in a PCI-bus board to get
HDTV (or play DVDs or etc). Hard drives will come with copy
prevention, because if they didn't, software couldn't record
local TiVo-like copies of HDTV shows, for the consumer to view
later, or save because they want to see it again.

The whole system has to be seamless to implement even the
SMALLEST grain of protection ("honoring that copy prevention
bit in HDTV signals"). If the components allowed themselves to
interoperate with other components that have open interfaces
with no prevention, then the sacred bits could escape!

It's possible that mfrs would build two kinds of computers and
monitors and hard drives -- but only if people actively insisted
on buying NON COPY PREVENTED computers. You would effectively
have two separate product lines. The catch is that you could
plug copy prevented outboard subcomponents into an ordinary
computer, and it would work (e.g. a copy prevented monitor
WILL play unencrypted video). But you could never plug any
ordinary outboard component into a copy prevented computer
(e.g. an ordinary monitor WON'T display video from a copy
prevented video card -- the card will refuse to talk to it).

When mfrs have to decide which product line to drop to cut
costs, which one will they drop -- the ordinary ("incompatible")
one, or the copy prevented ("compatible") one?

 John Gilmore

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