I suspect the Xbox is your clue... MS has had plenty of practice on
encrypting
the bios and locking out foreign app sw, and the xboxlinux group has
been the
test foil (although in the short run they are on top right now).
Boards don't sell if people won't buy them.
I am afraid they will buy it when they have no or very few choice. When the majority of the boards on the market are DRM enabled or most of the digital information requires DRM to be accessed, pepole will buy these products. I don't know how it is in the U.S., but here in Taiwan, MS is using the recent SoBig/Blaster virus as a "sales point" for its "Trusted Computing" hype.
Ollie