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So, apparently Sony has confirmed that the beta version of Home service for the PlayStation 3 will launch in November. (It's in a closed beta trial at the moment.) At the recent Wedbush Morgan Securities conference, Nolan Bushnell announced that a a new motherboard chip will eliminate the piracy of PC games, according to GamesIndustry.biz. The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) which is installed on many new motherboards, stores certain security data in an encrypted form. One of the most popular uses is with Vista's built-in BitLocker Drive Encryption. Bushnell said this chip may not hinder the illegal downloading and copying movies and music. But because PC games are integrated with the code, he explained developers can take advantage of this technology by encoding an uncrackable "private key" for a given game into the TPM chip which would "absolutely stop piracy of gameplay." It's not clear what would happen if your motherboard simply didn't have this chip at all. Maybe you wouldn't be able to play new games at all or maybe everything would work fine. Frankly, some of the more technical aspects of TPM make my eyes glaze over. But you have to take what Bushnell says with a grain of salt. First of all, Bushnell, along with Ted Dabney, founded Atari. The A-what-ri, you say? Well you see Bushnell got rich by marketing a game consisting mainly of two vertical lines and a dot. Atari released a couple console systems and then came out with a game adaptation of E.T. and poor rendition of Pac Man that caused a major crash in the video game market. So Bushnell may not exactly have his finger on the pulse of technological development. (Of course, he also created Chuck E. Cheese, which was kind of fun as a kid even though the robotic animals looked like creepy rip-offs of Disney's animatronics.) Bushnell's comments that such a key would be "uncrackable" are simply ridiculous. Nothing is uncrackable. It's simply a matter of understanding the patterns of the encryption. And although perhaps not successful yet, attempts to crack the TPM chip are undoubtedly underway. And I've always been a firm believer that for every expert computer programmer a major multinational corporation employs, there's a 15-year-old kid in his basement who can out-hack him. For an example, look at two different instances when Sony tried releasing protected music CDs that wouldn't play properly on a computer so you couldn't rip them. The first time the disc was defeated with a sharpie, the second time by using scotch tape. Granted, I don't know if these solutions came from the mind of a teenager but it sounds like something a kid would come with. And it's likely something higher tech than an office supply will be needed to thwart the TPM chip. At the very least it's more of a hassle to get a motherboard than the bottom of the CD. But who knows? Maybe we'll just need to pop the chips off with a flathead screwdriver and game away to our hearts' content.

 

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G4 Canada (formerly TechTV Canada) launched in September 2001. G4 is the one and only television station that is plugged into every dimension of games, gear, gadgets and gigabytes. Owned Rogers Media Inc., the channel airs more than 24 original series. G4 is available on digital cable and satellite. For more information, see www.g4tv.ca.