2004 International Consumer Electronics Show Coverage

They've even announced a new $200M USD venture fund that's to focus on funding new companies to make home entertainment gear that use lots of Intel parts, although we'd guess that they'd be okay with new ideas that would drive the need to upgrade your PC as well. This is all good news for consumers who should be seeing all sorts of CPU-intensive gadgets showing up from all sides, and as long as Intel has a say in things they'll all be networked together using some old and new standards, including the new DTCP/IP (Digital Transmission Content Protection over Internet Protocol) which is sure to confuse a few people with its acronym as it is so similar to the standard TCP/IP that underlies the internet, but is really a new copy protection mechanism for copyrighted media.

So doesn't it seem like there's a lot of CYA going on?

One recurring theme we've seen this year at CES is that companies are laying it on pretty thick related to digital copyright protection. Basically there are a bunch of technologies designed to keep consumers from misusing the content that they've actually paid for. In an ideal world there wouldn't be any need for this, since none of us actually download illegal mp3s and we'd never illegally copy a DVD movie.

But the two dominant industry associations for music and video, the RIAA and MPAA, don't actually trust their customers (us) so they've got teams of lawyers standing by to sue any manufacturer that builds a product has "potential" for abuse, even if there's no evidence that abuse has ever happened. The RIAA has even lashed out at it's own customers (again us) and sued individuals that have used file swapping with the hope that they'll scare the rest of us into not sharing in the future.

So basically the way things look to me is this:1. The record and movie industries are nervous in general because the whole idea of digital distribution is not something they understand, and they don't want to change the way they earn their money.

2. Nervous executives call the nervous lawyers at the RIAA and MPAA and ask them to stop everyone that even says that they have a better way to listen to music or watch movies than CDs or DVDs.

3. Nervous business executives get letters from the nervous RIAA and MPAA guys telling them they better not even think of making anything product that would make them even more nervous.

4. Nervous business executives decide to add all sorts of copyright protection that makes their products less usable and not as good, but at least lets them make something that won't get them sued by the nervous lawyers.

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