Try to print a screenshot of a digital movie without digitized permission, and your printout would show an error message in the window where the image should be. Forward an e-mail meant for your eyes only, and recipients would be unable to decrypt it. Forget to pay your music subscription, and your Palladium-enhanced player will refuse to decrypt the tunes on your hard drive.

Spam blocking? Well, "eventually" is how Microsoft describes it.

But while neither Microsoft nor AMD would offer a date when Palladium would move from engineers' whiteboards to store shelves (Microsoft reps gave Newsweek a 2004 ship date), privacy advocates and security experts have already launched an all-out attack on the plan.

Leading the charge is University of Cambridge researcher Ross Anderson, who claims to have done closely related security consulting for Intel and others. Anderson's Palladium FAQ describes an escalating set of abuse scenarios for the technology, culminating with the president of the United States disabling another country's PCs.

Anderson has gone so far as to dub Palladium's security coprocessor the "Fritz chip," after Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-South Carolina), sponsor of a bill in Congress that would require copyright control mechanisms on all consumer electronics made or sold in the United States.

Hollings' office denied any direct involvement with Palladium's development, as did spokespeople for the Recording Industry Association of America.

At this rate, Palladium's proponents may spend more time dealing with rumors than developing the technology. Strongin and Biddle are already downplaying the digital rights management angle to their work. "Palladium is not DRM; DRM is not Palladium," Biddle said. "DRM happens on top of Palladium."

Biddle also denied widespread speculation that Palladium will involve changes to the existing TCP/IP protocol of the Internet, and would be used to disable or lock out other vendors' software, saying, "What IT manager in his right mind -- what Microsoft in its right mind –- would roll that out?"

Palladium's challenge may be to provide sufficiently attractive security enhancements without raising fears of remote-controlled PCs. "If you've got the power to revoke a file because the user hasn't paid for it," said Anderson, "you've got the power to do so even if they have."