The Stealth Anti-Piracy Chip That Is Neither Stealth Nor Anti-Piracy

from the yeah,-nice-try dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting the story of Atari founder and wannabe restaurant mogul Nolan Bushnell claiming that computers are now shipping with a stealth "TPM" chip that will somehow stop software piracy cold. It's not clear why this is getting much buzz, because as others have pointed out it's not new or even noteworthy. It's the same silly scheme that Microsoft, Intel and AMD have been working on for more than half a decade, though it's gone through some name changes in an attempt to make it less controversial. It's been out there for years, and has hardly been used to put any kind of dent in software piracy. But, in the end, the focus on it has really been for security, rather than anti-piracy, and that's likely the way things will stay, as companies are learning (finally) that about the only thing anti-piracy measures do is piss off your legitimate customers. The non-legitimate ones will always find ways to get the software for free anyway, and so the only people it annoys are those who run into some sort of problem when the software accuses them of being pirates, despite having legitimately purchased the software.

Filed Under: antipiracy chip, nolan bushnell, tpm