Originally Posted by mynameisjim

I wouldn't be surprised if one day the media companies team up with the PC makers and come up with a hardware based solution.

Think about video game consoles, the content is protected by the hardware. Sure you can modify the hardware to pirate games, but it's a huge pain in the ass so it's kept to a minimum. If the media companies all formed up and paid into a large fund, then paid Intel a royalty to add a feature to all new chips that only allowed licensed content to be played, that would work way better than most laws.

It may seem silly, but if all the TV studios, movie studios, and record labels all paid in, it would end up being billions in royalty fees for Intel, Apple, or whoever they chose to pay to add the hardware based feature.