Using LinuxBios to protect against DRM in PC hardware?

[Carl Youngblood]

Pardon me if I am off-base here (I don't know much about LinuxBios), but
I've heard rumors/threats of new BIOSes that incorporate DRM into the BIOS
and won't allow non-approved OSes to run on them.  Could LinuxBios be a
way of protecting against this?

Thanks,
Carl Youngblood

[Hendricks David W.]

Sounds about right. Though I'm not aware of anything that could prevent 
a DRM implementation by someone else in LinuxBIOS except for the fact that 
it's GPL'd.

DRM would have to be done in the way that it might be used in the 
Linux kernel.

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Carl Youngblood wrote:
> Pardon me if I am off-base here (I don't know much about LinuxBios), but
> I've heard rumors/threats of new BIOSes that incorporate DRM into the BIOS
> and won't allow non-approved OSes to run on them.  Could LinuxBios be a
> way of protecting against this?
>
> Thanks,
> Carl Youngblood
> _______________________________________________
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Antony Stone]

On Thursday 25 March 2004 4:06 pm, Carl Youngblood wrote:
> Pardon me if I am off-base here (I don't know much about LinuxBios), but
> I've heard rumors/threats of new BIOSes that incorporate DRM into the BIOS
> and won't allow non-approved OSes to run on them.  Could LinuxBios be a
> way of protecting against this?

I'm not aware of DRM BIOSes which stop you running non-approved OSes; however 
if you do so, then you won't be able to run DRM-aware applications, because 
the chain of assurance from hardware (TPM) to BIOS to OS to Application is 
broken (and that's what DRM-aware applications look for before they'll let 
you play with copyright materials).

As far as I'm aware, all current DRM / TCPA / TCG implementations allow you to 
boot whatever you like, but if it's not a certified OS then DRM applications 
simply won't play ball.

Obviously if you start LinuxBIOS instead of the motherboard vendor-supplied 
BIOS, you simply ignore the existence of the TPM chip/s.

Regards,

Antony.