encryption posts

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell was confident of video game piracy's demise when speaking at a conference hosted Wedbush Morgan Securities this past week. He believes that the Trusted Platform Module (or TPM) -- a secure cryptoprocessor attached to some PC motherboards -- will prove an insurmountable obstacle for would-be software pirates. "The TPM will, in fact, absolutely stop piracy of gameplay," he said. A version of the technology is already shipping in some systems.

The TPM performs a hardware check of installed software, and verifies the software using practically uncrackable encryption keys. Given that console gaming pirates are able to (and must) solder a special chip to their console-of-choice's motherboard to play pirated games, we wonder if it might be possible to perform similar hardware operations on a PC to remove, modify, or replace the TPM chip. Even in the event that it is, the TPM's existence still might raise the bar of technical prowess required to pirate software much higher than most users can reach.

Given that Bushnell was speaking to sell the industry to potential investors, we're understandably skeptical, but his was an intriguing proposition. Bushnell noted, however, that the TPM technology will not solve the characteristically different problems of video and music piracy.