Enjoy your free music downloads while you can…

In the very near future, free music downloads will be a thing of the past if Intel and Microsoft have their way.

First off, you need to know about DRM. This stands for Digital Rights Management. As in MANAGING the rights to play digital music or movies on your computer or other hardware. In May of 2005 I wrote and article titled DRM - built-in to your motherboard that helps explain the idea.

Now you might point out that “No one can manage my free music downloads but ME!” and you’d be dead wrong. And it wouldn’t matter if those free downloads were legal or not.

What do you play those free downloads with?

In the first place, most people use Windows to run their computer. And with Windows XP, they also gave away all rights to administer their computer to Microsoft - meaning, if you are using Windows XP, Microsoft has the right to delete ANY file on your computer without asking you. Then, because it came with the machine, they use Windows Media Player to play their music downloads, not realizing that they have given these rights to Microsoft.

About halfway into my article titled “Longhorn access security update” you can read how to view your Windows XP End User License Agreement. It’s a LOT of legal mumbo-jumbo, but in that mess you’ll find out that you do NOT administer your own computer.

Now, combine these two items with the latest offering from Intel coming out in the first quarter of 2006, a device that goes onto your computers motherboard and does a very good job of decoding media at a very fast rate - nothing wrong with that, except that the ONLY type of media that it can play so far is (have you guessed yet?) Microsofts.

An article from The Register explains how media content will be controlled. Be warned, the first part of this article is highly technical in nature, but here are the REQUIREMENTS:

You also need a S-ATA HD with NCQ, and Intel HD Audio, but you can supplement that with anything else you need as long as it is on the board. You also need MS Media Center Edition 2006 (MCE 2006).

Can you say “Bend over and take it.”? I thought you could. I might be a little slow due to the heat, but this sounds a bit like a monopoly, and last I heard, monopolies were against the law…

My suggestion is this:

Unless you really like being stuck with only ONE format of digital music and movies, DON’T BUY INTEL POWERED MOTHERBOARDS AFTER THE FIRST QUARTER 2006.

On the upside, 2006 may be a banner year for AMD, at least until Intel gets its head out of its arse…