No silver bullet against piracy

By PETER GRIFFIN

Microsoft's project to better secure the desktop and server with a hybrid of software and hardware has been given the stamp of approval by Intel. But the chip-maker warns the recording industry that technology alone will not stamp out rampant digital piracy.

Both Intel and AMD are understood to be developing new versions of their X86 chipsets to support Palladium - Microsoft's scheme to build security functions into the architecture of the PC.

Palladium would allow for new computer chips and software to encrypt the data on a PC's hard drive, making it less susceptible to hacking, viruses and copyright abuse.

A software component built by Microsoft works in conjunction with the computer's processor to encrypt information so that it is unreadable if moved to another computer without authorisation.

Intel's Craig Barrett said PC users wanted to get to the stage where the internet could be used for any trusted communication or application and Palladium would make progress towards that.

But Palladium was not a "cure-all" for digital piracy, which has proliferated with peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks and is costing the recording industry dearly in lost revenue.

"The [recording industry] is looking at our industry with the hope that we're going to give them the silver bullet to solve all those issues," said Barrett.

"But the solution is far beyond security technology, it's about creating viable business models [for online content services], cracking down on piracy and educating consumers."

The major studios in the music and film industries would have to adopt these models for Palladium to be effective in digital rights management, said Barrett.

While Palladium has no firm date for release, Microsoft believes it could be incorporated into PCs across the board, allowing everything from the decrypting of songs downloaded to your hard drive to the blocking of spam email and viruses.

Palladium's critics have responded with horror scenarios the technology could make possible. A popular one is the US Government being able to switch off other countries' computers remotely.

Some fear the hardware technology could prevent Microsoft's competitors from running their software on a Palladium-enabled machine - a scenario that Microsoft strongly rejects.