TPM Chip to End PC Game Piracy?

[robwright]

Article by Kevin Parrish

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell made headlines recently by declaring that the Trusted Platform Module chip would make game piracy a thing of the past. So what is this TPM chip? And is Bushnell right?

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/06/03/tpmchip_endpiracy/

 

[jalek]

Games would only be an ancillary thing. End to end crypto capabilities are more interesting, and I would think especially for Homeland Security.

As if activation phone calls aren't enough... it changes if the boot sequence changes? So any change in hardware will be noted.

I'm keeping my old sub-1ghz PC's around, I don't have any secrets concerning when I add/remove RAM or change HDD configurations, but I don't see why it's EVERYONE's business when I do.

Can you imagine how much fun the government would have if they could get this into cars?
"Your air filter has been changed and now has higher flowrate than stock. Speed is restricted to 35mph until the vehicle is taken to an emissions testing station to verify current emissions."

 

[Oh Snap]

Won't ever buy one or support the technology. If that means no more games, oh well, I'm not going to support that ****.

 

[infornography42]

Will an embedded piece of hardware prevent game piracy? Or will gamers simply find another countermeasure against TPM? Tim will tell.

Who is Tim? And why hasn't he said yet?

Honestly, this kind of thing has been tried before and has yet to have had any effect at all. This is just another technology that gets talked up a lot and then just kinda gets forgotten after it is discovered that pirates can still crack it with ease.

IF this works without breaking my computer or limiting my usage or phoning home to report my activities, then great, I support it 100%. Unfortunately I am not that optimistic.

 

[JDocs]

This generates some serious privacy concerns...

 

[Heyyou27]

I'll avoid PC gaming all together if it comes to this kind of ****.

 

[robwright]

Will an embedded piece of hardware prevent game piracy? Or will gamers simply find another countermeasure against TPM? Tim will tell.

Who is Tim? And why hasn't he said yet?

Honestly, this kind of thing has been tried before and has yet to have had any effect at all. This is just another technology that gets talked up a lot and then just kinda gets forgotten after it is discovered that pirates can still crack it with ease.

IF this works without breaking my computer or limiting my usage or phoning home to report my activities, then great, I support it 100%. Unfortunately I am not that optimistic.

Fixed.

I tend to agree. Let's say all major motherboard manufacturers adopt TPM. And let's say that they find a way to stick the chip on there real good and prevent most methods of removing it/altering it. That just tells me that a lot of hardcore PC gamers and enthusiasts will simply stop buying those products and look for others. And I do believe there will be others.

 

[Harry-Plopper]

Fixed.

I tend to agree. Let's say all major motherboard manufacturers adopt TPM. And let's say that they find a way to stick the chip on there real good and prevent most methods of removing it/altering it. That just tells me that a lot of hardcore PC gamers and enthusiasts will simply stop buying those products and look for others. And I do believe there will be others.

Ok so if we get motherboards with this new anti piracy stuff on it and it does break when its removed and its uncrackable, what about the other 1 billion pcs who havent got this chip installed

How they gonna play these protected games

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Who begins saying hello Apple? It'll probably support the old stuff for a while until the older stuff is phased out as people buy new hardware. Someone will probably come up with a mod chip or something....

 

[razor512]

wont work. too many things can go wrong with it. it was like when people bought the Nuendo Steinberg sound editor

it required a a usb key to be inserted before the program would work, and it double checked the key constantly

this caused a constant higher CPU usage and and made 1ms ASIO impossible to use on single core systems

then keys also had a high failure rate where they would just fail for no reason, (my college has a major problem with them, they eventually stopped dealing with that company all together due to the hardware DRM

and that security key didnt solve anything, when ever a new version of the program comes out, theres a cracked copy out the next day that doesn't have the performance problem due to the constant security checking. (usb puts a pretty heavy load on the CPU and memory when used, it is very inefficient compared to other methods, if you want to test, connect an external hard drive to your pc, do a system benchmark with the hard drive on and off, you will see a reduction in memory bandwidth with it on.

no company will want to add these on their motherboards if there not required to as it will just increase production cost at no benefit to the company.

and if they try to cut cost by using extremely cheap components for the hardware DRM then you wind up with an unreliable motherboard

kinda like when RCA was required to add safety features to their TV's that turns the tv off when they get unstable power or high temperatures, they cheaped out on it and you wound up with a lot of people having 32 inch CRT tv's constantly turning off and on when that safety crap failed

adding this will just be another thing that increases the chance of failure

also


Access to data and secrets in a platform could be denied if the boot sequence is not as expected.

what do they mean by that.

someone could add a sata card into a PCI slot because they need to add more hard drives and the chip could freak out and stop their games from working, or worst if a OS uses it, stop the os from working and these will not be fixable because it is hardware and you cant really patch hardware

it is like those registry cleaners. they work by comparing your registry with what it expects the registry to be and freaks out by anything that doesnt match it's expectations
thats why many people who use them may have problems like their sound drivers no longer working or windows not booting into normal or safe mode or many other problems.

 

[nurgletheunclean]

This isn't going to work. Look at bluray and hddvd, with all thier drm it was quickly defeated. And that was a technology that didn't need to be backward compatable. So the problem becomes if older pc's or newer pcs that don't have this chip can't run the code, then the cracking groups would simply crack the code on an older pc (certainly no shortage of those). Then the cracked code gets released and it will work on either platform. That's what piracy is! It's not someone using clonedvd to copy someone's letgit copy. It's people downloading a title with the copy protection removed.

So lets throw out backward compatability and go on to encrypting the code at the southbridge. Well, memory is connected to the northbridge the last time I checked. I would imagine this soughbridge chip would unencrypt the data so the cpu could operate on it. Someone with dev tools could probably extract all the keys from that chip and write a simple bootloader qualifying all code (see anydvd).

Once that happens this chip just becomes another vestigial i/o. Since no developer would use it after that.

 

[razor512]

if the chip is in use on some motherboards, then they need to make a example program that makes use of it then run benchmarks to find out how much performance is lost due to the querying of the DRM chip

as with bluray players that encrypt everything, it causes the player to need a faster processor in order to decrypt the disk in real time while rendering 1080P content, this also causes the unit to cost more

from how it seems so far, it will be punishing the legit users even more be not only requiring them to just through many other DRM loops, but they will also loose performance due to hardware level DRM which has to offload it's crap to the CPU, reducing performance

 

[asdasd123123]

Encryption is a funny thing.. in Order to watch encrypted 1080P video, you need a dual core ~2ghz cpu, at least.

In order to watch pirated 1080P content, a 1ghz P3 will do just fine.

Talk about wasting resources on rubbish that was cracked anyway.

 

[FaceLifter]

I've figured it out!! The only reason article like these are written is to get people like us to hop on forums and start discussing them. There must be a conspiracy with THG and other sites to keep us talking on their forums. I'm on to you guys!

I'm shocked that this is even being attempted, what do Mobo manufacturers have to gain from this. It seems to me that hardware manufacturers only stand to lose from something like this. Like everyone is saying, people will just avoid buying hardware that uses this chip.

Lets say that it worked as well as this guy says it will, it will only cause a slowdown in hardware sales across the board. People only have so much money to spend and if they are spending more on software then they will spend less on hardware...or they will just stop playing as many PC games, there by having the same result.

As a side note, he should have set his eyes on putting this chip on video cards. That way there would only be two companies to convince that this could work. Plus they might be the only hardware manufacturers that could stand to gain something from this venture.

That's my initial take on things...Now, back to Mass Effect!

 

[razor512]

Encryption is a funny thing.. in Order to watch encrypted 1080P video, you need a dual core ~2ghz cpu, at least.

In order to watch pirated 1080P content, a 1ghz P3 will do just fine.

Talk about wasting resources on rubbish that was cracked anyway.

the wonders of DRM

mass effect was fully cracked 1 day after it came out