[Aquinasfan]

The "Fritz Chip" sounds like a good idea to me. If people were ripping off my intellectual property I'd be pretty ticked.

[B Knotts]

Guilty until proven innocent.

[Salgak]

So you LIKE being considered guilty up front ? What MPAA and RIAA have done to the Intellectual Property laws is a crime in and of itself: it USED to be that you had protection for your IP for a limited period of time, after which it moved to the public domain. If the RIAA and MPAA get their way, there will BE no public domain.

Your Fritz-chip computer crashes, but somehow you lost the data key. Sorry, now all your DVDs, CDs, software, etc, are useless, because Fritz tied them to the key. . .

[Dimensio]

Concern for your intellectual property does not grant you the right to lock down my computer for fear that I might infringe on your copyright.

[Sender]

A good idea? Think again. Bill Gates already has one finger in my wallet by requiring that I re-subscribe to Office XP whenever he feels like I should pay him again for the software I already bought. He can deactivate my Windows XP if I change too much of my own hardware that I already bought. He can refuse to give me updates and service packs if I don't have the original CD which I already bought.

Would you want a PC that refused to boot because it detects some JPG picture you snagged from a copyrighted website? Or your kids rip a CD or download a song and then you're busted, locked out of your own PC? When it gets that bad, I'll go to a homebuilt PC and Linux, screw all of them that want to control my PC that I paid over a thousand dollars for! You can bet that all those hungry Taiwanese motherboard builders will be happy to offer chip-free versions, and non-restriced processor knockoffs as well.

[dwollmann]

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.

[steve-b]

Who knew that Sarah Brady lurks on FR?

[eno_]

If you like it, you buy it. I'd rather not.

[chilepepper]

Yah, it takes alot of money to maintain that Hollywood lifestyle. Coke is EXPENSIVE now a days, and have you ever checked out what a new tricked out Mercedes costs?

[SamAdams76]

You probably think police roadblocks are pretty swell too.

[dheretic]

The "Fritz Chip" sounds like a good idea to me. If people were ripping off my intellectual property I'd be pretty ticked.

As a CS geek I can give people like you but one good piece of advice re the Fritz Chip: keep it the hell away from my PCs and Macs. If you attempt to force it on me you'll get a crash course in "applied 2nd amendment 101."

[Tench_Coxe]

Better yet: ban computers, since they _might_ be used for nefarious purposes.

[Yeti]

The "Fritz Chip" sounds like a good idea to me.

Well, since speeding is against the law, we should build cars that turn off and won't crank back up if it has been driven faster than 70mph. Or if the wheels have turned more than 20 degrees without a preceding turn signal.

[patriotichippie?]

The "Fritz Chip" sounds like a good idea to me. If people were ripping off my intellectual property I'd be pretty ticked.


it may have a basis for a 'good' idea, but they take it too far. i mean, when i first heard of it, i thought hey, that sounds cool. but when my boyfriend insisted that i do more research on it, i began to realize how much it would effect. and it's beginning to sound like one of the worst ideas created to prevent piracy so far.

[DS2K3]

The issue is not about copyright, the issue is the the big manufacturers dont want smaller companies to be able to compete with them. DO YOU WANT YOUR COMPUTER TO BE CONTROLLED BY BEUROCRATS? TCPA is immoral, when i buy a computer, i do not expect everything i do to be monitored. This is nothing but Spyware on a grand-scale.

Whats more, if you ahve an internet connection all your hardware and software will be checked, if its not approved byt he TCPa it will be blocked out. This will be the end of FreeWare, GNU and smaller companies. Say goodbye to Perl, PHP. ASP will be the only one left.

Micorsoft are just re-monopolising the IT industry, except this time they have a found an excuse to make it legal.