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Computers are general purpose machines whose purpose is to create, manipulate, duplicate and transfer long strings of ones and zeroes with perfect accuracy and at a low cost. If you're worried about your "intellectual property" then don't store it in the form of a long string of ones and zeroes on a machine-readable medium. This isn't a moral argument, it's simply a statement of fact: users now understand how easily and inexpensively they can acquire music and other digital content. Making the acquisition and use of this content more difficult and expensive by introducing yet another layer of bloated, broken software and hardware isn't going to be an easy sale, hence Microsoft's "we're here to protect you" spin.

Microsoft wants to give the blood-sucking lawyers "hooks" into your computer. They want to sell bits of control over your system to the highest bidders. Is that what you want? What's the difference between a nameless, faceless lawyer controlling your system through DRM hardware and certificates, and some cracker controlling your system with Back Orifice? Do you think the lawyer has any more respect for you or your property than the cracker? Do you really think the lawyer is less likely to cause trouble for you than the cracker? The lawyer makes you sign away your rights (don't think you won't have to "accept" a contract signing away all your rights and freeing Intel, Microsoft, et al from all liability if their scheme destroys your data in order to use one of these systems) and has people with guns and jails to back up the agreement.

Too late, Microsoft, we're onto you.

here's first, I'm going to agree with Aquinasfan. You're arguement is beyond rediculous. You're basically saying "if you don't want your property stolen don't own anything worth steeling".

In this modern age it's physically impossible to NOT store intellectual property (no quotes it's a real thing no matter how little you respect it) in 1's and 0's. And what few storage mediums there are that aren't 1's and 0's are still machine readable (video capture, input jacks on sound cards, scanners and OCR software).

The RIAA has done some bizaare stuff, no arguement there. But the simple fact is that making and dsitributing copies of copyrighted material is theft. Back in the days of cassette players the individual bootlegger wasn't a problem, they had very limited level and rate of distribution. Now with MP3s and the internet the distribution rate is limitless.

Remember making and distributing music (and movies and books and software) isn't cheap. Every CD you see in a store represents hundreds of man hours of labor on thousands of dollars worth of equipment. If MP3 junkies do manage to accomplish their dream of breaking the RIAA's back you're not going to wind up in a world with free music, you're going to wind up in a world without music (at least printed, you'll still have plenty of bar bands). Without the RIAA or some group like it being a musician doesn't pay the bills. If you can't sell the product, if you can't advertise it, if you can't use these channels to advertise the tour (which is where the real money has always been) there's no way to make music self sustaining. You need companies willing to front the costs, and they need copyright protection.

If you're worried about your "intellectual property" then don't store it in the form of a long string of ones and zeroes on a machine-readable medium.

And if you don't want your money to be stolen don't convert it into the form of a long string of ones and zeroes on a machine-readable medium.

They want to sell bits of control over your system to the highest bidders.

They already have. If you run XP, every time you do an internet search, the machine connects to a server at Microsoft and stores your computer information and search terms there in a database.

I bet that gives everyone here a warm fuzzy. Imagine what President Hillary! could do with that data? We'd be FReeping together in the camps.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F