[KLUG Members] DRM in every Samsung machine

[Joe Budzynski]

Quoting Jamie McCarthy <jamie@mccarthy.vg>:

> At my KLUG talk "Your Rights Online" a couple years ago, I
> mentioned that the BIOS was one way for Digital Rights Management
> to work its way into the computer.  DRM is aka Trusted Computing,
> aka Treacherous Computing, aka whatever Microsoft wants to call
> "taking over the world" this week.
> 
> Today's news is that all Samsung computers will now ship with the
> Phoenix "Core Managed Environment" BIOS, which implements this at
> a level Linux can't touch:
> 
>     http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/16/1443252
> 
> If this becomes widespread, it's a very short hop for Microsoft to
> push BIOS manufacturers to ship, and computer makers to adopt, a
> BIOS that refuses to boot any hard drive whose boot sector has not
> been digitally signed by a trusted software company like Microsoft.
> I.e., computers that refuse to boot free software.  The rationale
> for this will be:  what good is it to have a laptop that will only
> boot Windows from the hard drive, if the thief can just put in a
> Knoppix CD and mount your Windows drive on Linux?
> 
> "Mark my words" :(
> -- 
>   Jamie McCarthy
>  http://mccarthy.vg/
>   jamie@mccarthy.vg

It seems as though keeping those older P3 and early P4 systems around has become
more important in case this actually does happen.  :-)

The point that the BIOS can be told to not boot an "unsigned" boot sector is 
scary to me, aside from the normal free software argument.  What happens when
the signature goes bad or you have a dispute with an OS vendor?

--
Joe Budzynski
http://deuceweb.net
joe@deuceweb.net