Bulldust. SunnComm allows copies to be made, but those copies are not secure, just as the original is not secure. Just disable autorun and MediaMax becomes some useless code taking up space on the CD.

Of course you are going to point to SunnComm’s press releases saying they have a fix for the shift key problem. We’ve yet to see a CD that includes that fix. And it wouldn’t be the first PR from SunnComm that is a pack of lies – just like their $20M deal with Will-Shown Technology, a company that doesn’t even exist

1) “First4Internet that allows consumers to make limited copies of protected discs, but blocks users from making copies of the copies.”

Sunncomm’s product does this as well in addition to allowing for other content (wmv video clips, interviews, etc) to be placed on a release.

2) “BMG has already placed its trust in the Sunncomm’s MediaMax only to see its releases appear on the p2p networks as fast as they were issued.”

As was stated in the above article, as long as it can be heard or seen, it can be copied. There is no way around that. The idea behind DRM is to slow the spread of illegal copies, not to stop them. The spin that you put on the appearance of BMG material on p2p servers is laughable, because. ANY CD (copy from the mastering studio, a promo copy, etc) that doesn’t have Sunncomm’s technology could have been the source of audio files on the p2p servers. How do you think albums get leaked to the street weeks ahead of street dates?

In addition BMG has felt comfortable enough to release Velvet Revolver (which sat at #1 for a few weeks), Dave Matthews Band (which sat at number #1 for a few weeks and may still be there), Sarah Mclachlan and a slew of other big artists with Sunncomm’s technology on it (not to mention the upcoming Foo Fighters album). How many big artists have been released with First4Internet?

So could you stop with the spin? It’s making me dizzy and I’m about to puke!

The current chips are already being universally rejected by any knowledgable consumer and business buyers alike because of the almost guaranteed security holes this “active management technology” would give to hackers.

No business wants to take the risk that their computers, especially servers, could be remotely formatted independent of any OS, firewalls, or security software.

Only the most illiterate will buy this, but most prefab systems won’t incorporate these chips for many years (dell has actually DOWNGRADED it’s main line from pentium 4 to celaron). By then they’ll have lost a tremendous market share to AMD.

Also, and very important: APPLE is NOT part of the trusted computing group. They have no hardware embedded crap like this, and no plans on incorporating it. So long as theyre around, you can expect this to fail widely.

Microsoft and the entertainment industry’s holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset.

Officially launched worldwide on the May 26, the new offerings come DRM-enabled and will, at least in theory, allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard rather than through the operating system as is currently the case.

While Intel steered clear of mentioning the new DRM technology at its Australian launch of the new products, Intel’s Australian technical manager Graham Tucker publicly confirmed Microsoft-flavored DRM technology will be a feature of Pentium D and 945.

“[The] 945g [chipset] supports DRM, it helps implement Microsoft’s DRM … but it supports DRM looking forward,” Tucker said, adding the DRM technology would not be able to be applied retrospectively to media or files that did not interoperate with the new technology.

However, Tucker ducked questions regarding technical details of how embedded DRM would work saying it was not in the interests of his company to spell out how the technology in the interests of security.

The situation presents an interesting dilemma for IT security managers as they may now be beholden to hardware-embedded security over which they have little say, information or control.

Conversely, Intel is heavily promoting what it calls “active management technology” (AMT) in the new chips as a major plus for system administrators and enterprise IT. Understood to be a sub-operating system residing in the chip’s firmware, AMT will allow administrators to both monitor or control individual machines independent of an operating system.

Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls “IDE redirection” which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.

“We all know our [operating system] friends don’t crash that often, but it does happen,” Tucker said.

Intel’s reticence to speak publicly about what lies under the hood of its latest firmware technology has also prompted calls to come clean from IT security experts, including Queensland University of Technology’s assistant dean for strategy and innovation, IT faculty, Bill Caelli.

“It’s a dual use technology. It’s got uses and misuses. Intel has to answer what guarantees it is prepared to give that home users are safe from hackers. Not maybes, guarantees”.

Caelli said it was “critical Intel comes clean” about how the current DRM technology is embedded into the new CPU and chipset offering.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment at press time.

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How this to blow your mind ?

If this article is true then it would be impossible to copy anything because the copy protection would be in the cpu or motherboard rather through the operating system and a software program .

The dvd or cd would have a coding embedded in it or a watermark or some other detection scheme.

I wonder how much how much it would cost the record and movie industries to encode these things on cds and dvds and how much would cost to put hardware drm on computer motherboards.

The US congress tried to mandate hardware drm in 2002 and it FAILED in congress.

I wonder if they will try this again?

Knowing how deep the RIAA and the MPAA’S pockets are and how our congressmen in the united states shamelessly take kickbacks and bribes from said same that would be a easy assumption ………….

So why do they bother?

The music industry is clutching at any straw that looks like it might save them from the dreaded drain of the pirates. Like games companies before them they cook the numbers to make it look even scarier than it is, then fall for their own creative accounting and freak. They’ll spend billions of dollars in the hope that they’ll stop the pirates from syphoning that much or more out of their economy.

Unfortunately it is now far too late for the music industry to fix the problem. They can pour as much money into the DRM pit as they like, and it’s not going to save them. They could even fix the core problem and make music cheap enough that people wouldn’t feel compelled to pirate… but it’s too late even for that. File sharing is so much a part of modern society that there’s no longer any real way to stop it.

I won’t comment on right or wrong, since that’s irrelevant at this point.

ebay now refuses to let people sell things on recordable media thanks to the cartels. Now people just keep the copy and sell the original.

The same thing happens. People burn copy after copy for themselves and the ORIGINAL becomes the seed rather than the copy.

=) i think it’s time for us to sue BMG for piracy of it’s own goods by distributing seeds to eeeeevil pirates.