Inside Mac Games quoted a story on Gamesindustry.biz about an encryption chip that could make it nigh impossible to pirate a video game. One of the most interesting part of the article is the fact that Nelson Bushnell, founder of Atari, is quoted as saying “There is a stealth encryption chip called a TPM that is going on the motherboards of most of the computers that are coming out now…” which is a rather startling revelation to me.

I’m all for copyright holders protecting their rights, as long as the rights of the user are not infringed (à la music & video use), but this smacks of subversion. Maybe I’m just being a bit paranoid though. It is worth noting that the article goes on to say:

Bushnell thinks that piracy of movies and music, however, is probably unstoppable because “if you can watch it and you can hear it, you can copy it.”

“Games are a different thing, because games are so integrated with the code. The TPM will, in fact, absolutely stop piracy of gameplay.

If you’d like to read up on the TPM chip, here’s a link to the Wikipedia article. Interesting that it’s been in many computers since 2006 (primarily laptops, the articles notes.)

(Via Inside Mac Games)