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Palladium's Power To Deny
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Feb 17, 2003 12:46 PM
from the back-in-line-you dept.
from the back-in-line-you dept.
BrianWCarver writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has the most detailed article I've yet seen on Microsoft's Palladium architecture. The article discusses the potential Palladium has to give publishers power to eliminate fair use and the potential for software manufacturers to use Palladium to enforce shrink-wrap licenses. Comments from several great sources including, Ed Felten (Freedom to Tinker), Eben Moglen (pro-bono counsel for the Free Software Foundation and recent Slashdot interviewee), and Seth Schoen (Electronic Frontier Foundation) among many others. Key quotations from article: Palladium could create 'a closed system, in which each piece of knowledge in the world is identified with a particular owner, and that owner has a right to resist its copying, modification, and redistribution. In such a scenario the very concept of fair use has been lost.' 'Palladium will "turn the clock back" to the days before online information was widely available.' and 'Microsoft could decide to lock everything up.'"
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Excuse me, but (Score:5, Informative)
One-step process (Score:5, Funny)
1. Billions upon billions of dollars
Parent
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:5, Informative)
Kierthos
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Re:Excuse me, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if I were a legal genius, if I have a day job, and I spend my time in court rather than working, that costs me. Sure, you might argue that if that were so, I might be well advised to make a living practicing law, but there is an opportunity cost related to being in court rather than doing something else with your time.
So, yes, justice costs. As long as people (and judges) think that expensive suits mean credible arguments, justice costs.
Parent
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:5, Informative)
Clearly you've never defended yourself in court against a
deep-pockets plaintiff. Perhaps you should refrain from
commenting unless you know what you're talking about.
Someone with money to burn can bury you and the court under
a blizzard of motions, subpoenas, and depositions, to most of
which you will need to respond. Copying and filing fees
alone in such a case can amount to many thousands of dollars.
Then there's the small matter of your own time.
A plaintiff with money to burn can tie you up in court
appearances and depositions for months on end.
Will your employer understand if you only show up for
work one or two days a week for six months?
See if you can find the answers to these questions
by Googling about
What has been the effect on the personal finances of
Keith Henson (L5 Society founder, among other things)
of exercising his free speech rights to criticize the
Church of Scientology ?
How did this effect come about ?
Who was Scamizdat (hint: it wasn't Grady Ward) ?
How many judisial motions did the Church of Scientology file
against Grady Ward in an effort to prove that he was Scamizdat ?
What impact did this have on Ward's finances ?
Who is Larry Wollersheim ?
How much was he awarded in his lawsuit(s) against the
Church of Scientology? (appealed all the way to the
Supreme Court; denied cert)
When did Scientology exhaust the appeals process ?
How much has Scientology actually paid to date ?
How many lawsuits, cross-complaints, and legal actions has
Wollersheim endured in his search for justice ?
Parent
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:5, Interesting)
Patents can be used to ward of small competitors to a business. You cannot use a patent to ward of microsoft or ibm or any other large company with a large amount of money in the bank. You can sue them for patent infringement, they would drag the case in court, fight for a year or so and pay you a million bucks at the end. But by that time, they've already done whatever damage they could, and your company is bankrupt.
Of course this doesn't work if the patent holder is a big company such as one of the above.
Moral of the story is: if big players want to infringe smaller players' patents, they could do so and have a good chance of getting away with it for not that much money.
Such are the wonders of capitalism.
Parent
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:5, Informative)
That was cypherpunk "Lucky Green", who said he submitted a patent application on ways to use Palladium for software copy protection. This was after Microsoft publicly told him that not only did they have no plans to do that, they couldn't even think of a way to use the technology for that purpose. Lucky said that he could think of lots of ways, so he'd go ahead and patent them. You can read more about Lucky's plans here [mail-archive.com].
I haven't heard anything about this lately, and a recent patent office search for applications under Lucky's real name (widely known, his initials are MB) didn't turn up any hits. So I don't know if he actually went through with it or not.
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What's the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't where the fight should be. Instead, we should be avoiding the products of the companies that would use such technology for purposes of controlling what we can do with what we own.
Re:What's the issue? (WHAT?!) (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, you don't own anything anymore, you license it.
While I agree with you in principle, I know that it won't work. Old saying - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The average person, which BTW outnumbers the "in-the-know" crowd by about a million to 1, will not care. If the only thing that Dell sold was Palladium computers, the public would buy them. They won't go out of their way to avoid it, they will fork over their cash because as far as they are concerned, it isn't a big deal.
Our duties as the technically literate is to make sure that things like Palladium do not happen. The (potential) cost far outweighs the (potential) benefits.
Parent
The best way to do that (Score:5, Insightful)
Well people got together and educated the average joe on why Divx sucked and why they should not buy it. The acerage joe listened, Divx sold for shit, and Circut City took a bath to the tune of $100 million.
That's the real way to beat Pallidium: Convince the public it's bad and that they don't want it. Companies go where the money is, and if people won't buy Pallidium stuff, they'll stop selling it.
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Re:What's the issue? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whilst it is true that if it doesn't work at all then it will be shunned, it is not so true if it doesn't work in the interest of the consumer.
If Microsoft start making 'agreements' with vendors like Dell and HP to sell only (or mainly) Palladium'd boxes then people will buy them. Especially if there's some sort of discount price incentive put in place.
It's a sad fact that we often have to face here, that the average person just wants 'a computer', and they don't care about how it works, who's really in control, and why that might be bad. As long as Mom and dad can do their tax, and the kids can play the latest incarnation of Tomb raider or Quake then all is just dandy.
Once again our fate rests with the teenagers. If they can complain just loudly enough to mom and dad that they heard that computers from .* supplier don't work properly (i.e. allow music/video/whatever to be exchanged freely) then maybe nobody will buy them and disaster could be averted.
Sad state of affairs really isn't it?
Parent
Re:What's the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
All we have to do is accept that, and stop giving money to the rest. Unfortunately, the leaders in the movement against DRM are hypocrites like the Slashdot editors, men who attack companies like AOL/TW, Microsoft, Blizzard, Disney, etc, and then purchase and promote these companie's products with their next breath. These men have plenty of talk but no moxie. Until these idiots can stop buying a copy of Windows XP to play Warcraft III on while watching a "Fellowship of the Rings" DVD, they are just supporting the technologies they complain about, and doing NOTHING to stop the problem.
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Correction (Score:5, Interesting)
What is particularly maddening about Palladium is the repeated claims that this offers a security benefit for end users. Microsoft is trying very hard to trojan in this DRM technology as a part of the Trusted Computing initiative. If this is the form of 'trust' they are speaking of then I want nothing to do with it.
Buy your processors now before they are infected with all of this Palladium/TCPA nonsense.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
The oldest trick in the book is to identify that aspect of your product that is going to be most harmful to your customers and spin it as a plus.
Nobody advertises 40 room mansions on 1000 acres as "spacious." That epithet is reserved for studio apartments in a "bee hive."
KFG
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Who's locking what up? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't the reality that the content creators would be the ones locking everything up? Who says MS is going to for them?
Another stupid poke at MS I assume? Damn that's getting old.
Both (Score:5, Interesting)
So you sign in for your latest Windows Update (which you'll have to because if you don't, your encryption will soon be out of synch and nobody will be able to read squat that you make), Windows Update detects that "Hey! This copy of Palladium has been registered in a different computer", not knowing that you've just moved the hard drive over to a newer chassis with more expansion room, and sends the code to lock it all up, so that all you get on bootup is a message to "Call Microsoft at
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Re:Who's locking what up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Content creators? HA!
You mean publishers right?
If this DRM stuff goes through the way everyone wants it, your "content creators" will have two choices: DRM-enabled-digital, or cassette tapes.
Like hell the RIAA will let mp3s (or ogg) exist anymore, and if they do, I'll bet the default setting for any mp3 you record will be "don't copy this". How much do you think the RIAA will want to be paid for the right to change that bit? Changing it yourself is a violation of the DMCA, even though you're the copyright holder because the DMCA protects that bit not your copyright.
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Re:Who's locking what up? (Score:5, Informative)
Funny how every drastic social backlash seems to be preceded with a golden-age of middle-men. Just ask yourself when the last time you actually hearn an honest to god content creator speak his or her mind
Read up on some copyright history and you'll see we played this game about 100 years ago when piano roll technology hit the market and the UK saw rampant 'piracy' in the US. Find out why publishers are consistantly mistaken for content creators over and over in the latter stages of each cycle in the history of copyright law.
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Re:Who's locking what up? (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't the reality that the content creators would be the ones locking everything up? Who says MS is going to for them?
Another stupid poke at MS I assume? Damn that's getting old.
Thanks for clearing that up. I guess I was mistaken to think that Microsoft would act evil based upon their past behavior. (BTW, we should stop judging Saddam by his past behavior also. He would never hide WMD, use WMD, etc. Not to suggest that the scale of these "evils" are comparable.)
Isn't the reality that Microsoft, making the software, and security system, will have absolute control. I think this will work as described in a Letter from 2020 [osopinion.com]. Silly me, if we end up with a world as described by this vision, I shouldn't blame Microsoft, they have no culpability in this.
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Re:Who's locking what up? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm possibly. I'm not completely convinced of that, but I'm not ignoring it either.
Here's what gets me though, why is MS the bad guy here? Obviously there's some demand for MS to fill here. The chances are Hollywood is telling MS "we'll start making movies ready for PC when we have the protection we need". MS knows that content will provide a new interest in PCs. They're probably bending over backwards to get Hollywood's support.
I don't think MS is interested in locking up your data (their install CD's have trivial copy protection, btw...), I think they're interested in getting content creators on board. If you want to point a finger, point it at the MPAA. They (plus the RIAA) are the ones that think this type of thing is important. (SSSCA) MS wouldn't introduce these restrictions and piss off their customers (like an office setting wants to deal with more pain from their computers) unless they thought there was a huge benefit to it.
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Re:Who's locking what up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. Actually I've been told (by an MS exec) that the demand is mostly coming from normal business. They like the idea of keeping control of internal documents, keeping it secure, all the benefits of DRM etc. I've seen a roundtable discussion at a conference that was discussing the benefits a new age of DRM will bring, these guys were really enthusiastic but they weren't from the MPAA or RIAA. They were just business people (except the blonde in the short skirt, I think she was just there to distract the attendees).
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Same ol' story (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Same ol' story (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, but one of the points of the article is that if content providers buy in to palladium, then their content will not work on your N-1 system. Obviously if you're not using anything from these providers then it's not a big deal, but if you love playing Blah online and they suddenly require the system you're on to be running Palladium, then you either pony up or you decide to no longer play. That's the biggest concern. This applies to people saying "I'll just switch/use Linux/Mac/Whatever".
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Not Necessarily (Score:5, Funny)
It will only be harmful if some large monopolistic company decides to abuse it for their own purpose and to restrict the access to "passports" to viable code, and block off homegrown software ("openly developed software" - if you will) from gaining pre-eminence over their own solutions
I sure hope there are no big companies out there like that.
Don't Worry! (Score:5, Funny)
Palladium could create 'a closed system, in which each piece of knowledge in the world is identified with a particular owner, and that owner has a right to resist its copying, modification, and redistribution.
I know, I know. You were worried. Don't be.
Be assured that information about you, such as your medical history, and any transaction history you have in the databases of direct marketers will be copyrighted by someone other than you, relieving you of this onerous burden.
two thoughts.. (Score:5, Insightful)
First: "If you hack it, they will crack it." Go right ahead and give us DRM, because one way or another someone will find a way to circumvent it.
Second: These kinds of moves are exactly what undermine the power of the content holders. The more tightly the MPAA and RIAA squeeze content up their asses, the more energy, resources and popular attention that will go to the small-time independents who are actually doing something creative, and the more fragmented the audience will become. Fair use is what makes the world go round..
The real problem is interoperability (Score:5, Insightful)
If I want to add a plugin to a program. The program, might just say: no! you need to be a plugin approved by my company, not some random plugin. You thief!
In other words, my beef with Paladium is that the security control is set at the level of the creator and not of the user. That in itself is not a problem until you realise that the control given to the creator is a lot more then simply "the right to copy and distribute" it affects the righ to interoperate between programs (in the name of being virus free).
The software industry does not have a history of being open minded, I'd suspsect that by default interoperability would be set to off.
Sad.
Publish freely then (Score:5, Insightful)
As an aspiring author (as a hobby, not for a living) of a fantasy novel, I have been looking at publishing recently and have decided to self publish my work and allow people to freely distribute it. Why? Well, I have a day job, and while extra money is nice, I don't really need to make money off of my novel and I don't really expect to make a living off of it either. Instead it is a hobby for me, my art if you will and I am more interested in getting it wide exposure than on some best seller list somewhere.
If my work is good, word of mouth will push it around and people will load it off my website to read. If not, it flops but I'm not really out a cent, just whatever time I put into it, which is no big loss because that time would like as not been spent playing computer games anyway.
But the advantages are, I can get widespread coverage to a large and diverse audience. I retain full rights so that if the story is considered movie material, I get to keep all of what the studio doesn't take. I can publish it anywhere at any time, for money or for free. So in a way, I don't need to worry about Palladium. If someone releases a work, no matter how good, which is locked up and expensive and pay by the bloody minute spent watching, I won't waste my time or money on it and I'm willing to bet a lot of you won't either.
As an aside to this, I wonder if a "free publishing" community will start up where people donate time and experience to writing material which goes straight into the public domain instead of locked up in copyright for life + forever. Schools, libraries and teachers would likely be happy to have such work available royalty free and aspiring writers can practice on free stuff the way coders do on open source software. After all, look what Open Source is doing to Microsoft. If the publishers get nasty, then we should be able to take them on in a similar way and have similar success. It would be great to have a library of the people, of free and public domain works which can be freely read, copied and sited without having to hunt someone down to ask permission. This isn't the same as current libraries, most works in current libraries are illegal to copy (though most people do it anyway) and sometimes you can't even site without permission. So we could use a nice library of *only* free and public domain works which can be used for whatever you wish. Better yet, it could be online and fully unlocked so Palladium be damned you could still read, copy and use such works in your own endeavors. In the end, I think everyone might benefit from such a movement.
Lawrence Lessig's Take (Score:5, Informative)
He says the picture of a world where one needs a license to read is discomforting.
Current laws represents a choice made by our democratic processes, and with copyright as code it's not clear how the same balance can be struck. The problem with regulation (And Law) through code is that there is no place for such a collective choice. If one kind of "trusted systems" software protects rights of fair use, a competing version will promise more control to the owner. This makes fair use a bug, not a feature.
Palladium != TCPA (Score:5, Informative)
Palladium would likely make use of this hardware to take care of the crypto aspects of DRM, but it is a part of Windows. If you don't buy Windows, you have nothing to worry about. Microsoft would have to manage to replace every DVD player, computer and MP3 capable device in the world to make DRM mandatory. Palladium may not be great for consumer's rights, but it is also not forced upon anyone. We still have a choice. Run some form of *nix on your current hardware, or buy a Mac. This shall pass.
My 0.10 shekels
Hypotetical situation. (Score:4, Interesting)
Then all documents produced inside MIT will become Microsoft DRM enabled. All the papers, tests, research and publications. Right?
Year 2050. MIT want out. Whatever reason they have; they need to get out: The cost of the system is to high or the system don't work according to the promised specification.
Actually the reason they have, don't matter. Maybe Penguin OS v69 has become The OS.It's irrellevant. They want out; and they want it now!
Now what?
Well, for starters just about everything people have done the last 45 years is _potentially_ lost forever unless they manage to get a deal with Microsoft.
All the fileformats are MS Propretary DRM Palladium Edition and can't be read on their new and shiny OS and they would have to deal with the relatives of former employes who "own" information produced on MIT.
What a mess. Such a waste.
Recipe for Palladium-killer (Score:5, Interesting)
- Replace the Windows operating system.
- Search the Internet to detect and delete pirated software, music, and movies.
- Eliminate spam and software viruses.
- Prevent a digital thief from gaining access to a computer in person and disabling its hardware security features.
"The goal, Microsoft officials say, is to make servers and desktop PC's that people can trust." (ha-ha)
Maybe a system that did ALL of these things would be competitive?
--
I think it's only fair these [hopefully nonexistent] publishers are forced to purchase Palladium PCs and use only Palladium-liscensed reference material for which they will pay per byte forever.
"Colleges
Why not instead force publishers to provide text-searchable CDs for free to legitimate book owners because of fair use laws? Safari seems pretty useful.
If every student is networked these days, I think there may be an opportunity for universities to promote a solution to a real (as opposed to hypothetical) problem which happens to appear antithetical to Gates' wet dreams.
- Students spend an awful lot of money on textbooks, and sometimes have difficulty finding them in bookstores and libraries. A significant number might jump at the chance to purchase a digital copy instead of the paper textbook.
- Searching for words in textbooks should be promoted at universities as one of the few clear merits of owning a computer in school. It would be interesting to see legally if universities, or individual students, can promote this to the point of forcing publishers to provide a free fair-use cd of searchable text with every textbook. The bookstore could hand them out when books or purchased.
- Students who have purchased second-hand books also should be able to enjoy the benefits of digital searching.
- Annotation is a second obvious merit of using a computer in school, and it's why the web was born. Students used to surfing the web will readily jump into information organized in am easy to use, interactive format. Researchers should also be able to freely access stores of annotations and digital texts.
- Also annotation as well as the ability to index and navigate by scene or timecode is very useful with film and video. This could be useful in university film, music, television, language, and science courses among others, and universities ought to be able to negotiate with publishers to create free-use zones for scholarship purposes without all this annoying crypto. If enough did it, there would be a smaller potential Palladium market.
- Schools with less funding should be able to invest in personnel and students, and (if there is a suitable alternative) ought to be able to use information technology to reduce the financial barriers. MIT has embarked on an open curriculum and more should be promoted. We need to enable people to apt-get an education and get used to it so they won't let it get taken away.
- It would be interesting to see if projects funded by national governments would be exempt from Palladium
- While MP3 sharing may very well be within the law, it is not as obvious a poster child for fair use as any of the above uses of everything from ascii text to hdtv. I think it would be very interesting to see if the open source and educational communities can relatively quickly develop something demonstrably more useful and open that Palladium, and possibly preempt it.
Timely article for me (Score:5, Interesting)
I use Windows XP with Mozilla. The software my bank uses is only compatible with the Microsoft JVM (stupid bankers...). I have previously installed the Sun JVM, so in an effort to get the Microsoft JVM working I used the new "Set program access and defaults" option which Microsoft added to Windows XP as part of the settlement. It is supposed to make it easier for you to set the default email, JVM and browser clients. I intended to change my defaults to IE and the MS virtual machine, use my bank's site, and then change them back again to Mozilla(1). To cut a long story short, once I had changed my default browser from Mozilla to IE, it was impossible to change it back again. The new configurator that Microsoft had added as part of the legal settlement had renamed all of the mozilla files so they wouldn't work anymore, replacing their old extention with "new", i.e. so mozilla.exe became mozilla.new. Not only that, it also removed the mozilla icon from the desktop, the "power bar" and the menu. So the only way I could get it working again was to completely reinstall it. And they did this as part of the legal settlement!
F*uck them. I'm going to move to Linux for my desktop. It might have installation hassels too, but at least I'll know that they haven't been designed to be difficult on purpose.
(1) This may seem an odd thing to do, but you can't download the Microsoft JVM from the MS site any more, so I thought this might be a way to reactive it.
Good for alternative platforms (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, perhaps some sort of middle ground will finally be reached, between overbroad click-through agreements and overly cheap end consumers. Or perhaps many people will make a move to a system where, for example, Kazaa will still work. Or perhaps Microsoft will take the intelligent (from their business standpoint) road and setup a system which allows piracy to flourish but can protect studio-released content from seeping into that region.
Either way, this looks great for that other OS, OpenBEOS. I mean, Linux.
Palladium is control (Score:5, Insightful)
However, what isn't stated is that Palladium lets you control how I use my computer. That I do not like.
Thus, Palladium is equal and symmetric, except for one thing. Given the power relationship between me and (say) a typical software company, Palladium will only be used to maintain and strengthen their power over me through abuse and control.
Thus, although it nominally gives me the ability to control others, that control will be useless to me in practice. This is much like how copyright supposedly gives band's the control over the music industry. *laugh*
Remember ActiveX, DVD, and Java (Score:5, Interesting)
Java: Protected by a sandbox. At numberous points in past, some implentation flaw has allowed java apps to get around the sandbox.
DVD: Trotted out to content providers as secure since content could be encrypted and secured on the disk. Then one vendor makes a mistake and includes an unencrypted key in their DVD player, some kid in Europe finds it, and the entire house of cards falls down. If that one vendor didn't screw up, DVD's probably would still be unrippable.
In all technologies, the apologists have pointed to the fact that they are secure by design, but flaws in implementation or procedures caused the faults.
So even if I wanted TCPA/Palladium to be a smashing success, I wouldn't bet my fortune on it. Someone will screw it up...
Re:=[ sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Palladium may well be very news worthy in the industry press, but trust me, almost no-one outside of the IT industry is going to have heard of it. *Everyone* has heard about Iraq.
Parent
Re:=[ sad (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:=[ sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Things like this, the general population won't know about until it's implemented and is being sold to them, and then, they'll only have the positive marketing spin (and perhaps a little bit of nay-saying in the general press, but nothing technical or deep).
Things like the laws passed in the wake of the WTC attack get through, becuase
a) it makes people feel safe, and as though people are doig soemthing about it
b) "I have nothing to hide"
I do agree with you, and take some solace from the fact that I'm in (and from) the UK. Of course, where the US leads, we (blindly) follow...
Parent
Re:=[ sad (Score:4, Insightful)
But as far as your comment goes :
WTF?A. It is hardly saddening, that the people are concerned about their gov't jumping into war.
B. Isn't smarter to protest before a war happens, than after?
Parent
Re:Why the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of people use windows out there, A LOT. Open-source software et al. need to get their software to these users.
Go to the register and read many stories about just how hard it is to stay out of the upgrade-cycle-of-death that is windows software licensing
Parent
Re:Why the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the problem, you say?
Microsoft==Monopoly.
Don't like the price you pay for electic power? If this is such a bad product, don't buy it.
Are you dis-satisfied with your telephone service? If this is such a bad product, don't buy it.
Are you unhappy with the performance of the latest Ford auto? If this is such a bad product, don't buy it.
Notice that this last one is much more feasible than the previous two!
Microsoft is in that position. Because of the proven anti-competitive practices of a convicted monopolist, I don't really have that choice. As a software developer, I have to account for Windows as a platform or stop making money.
And, if Microsoft decides that they EOL any non-Palladium O/S, millions will be forced to buy it, simply because they have no effective choice.
Linux (Hooray!) is becoming an option, and I'll do everything I can to get it in use, but it's not there yet. I can't yet readily make a living producing software unless I at least allow accessability to Windows users.
And Microsoft still has the power to potentially stonewall Linux adoption for a long time, and it's my feeling that Palladium is how they'll try do it.
Only time will tell...
Parent
Re:Why the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is true -- according to Google's Zeitgeist [google.com], the number of people using "obsolete" versions of Windows (95, 98, NT) is almost the same as those using the latest versions (2000 and XP).
"I really can't see how this will effect people who don't use it (now tell me how it will take over the world when people do start to use it and how it will effect the data on the internet and bla bla bal....)"
Easy. If broadband ISPs only allow Palladium-equipped devices (PCs, routers, etc) online, then the Internet will be denied to everyone else. Should Microsoft make their own version of IPv6 that's "secure", it's going to be supported by all the major players. (If the MS-IPv6 protocol can't be altered through software, then any company that doesn't support the corrupted protocol is going to be locked out from all new PCs once IPv6 goes live.)
Even easier: sites that currently "require" Internet Explorer -- but work fine with other browsers -- will require IE plus Palladium. Or your ISP says that only PCs with Palladium are supported.
If Microsoft plays their hand correctly, they'll be in complete control of the x86 platform, and nothing other than a successful anti-trust case will break that hold. If Microsoft fails, they'll alienate enough people that Linux and other OS's will make significant gains.
Parent
Re:Why the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine what would happen to Wine if all the new Windows games and applications required Palladium to run. If Wine can't break Palladium encryption, then Wine can't run any new Windows software. This could prevent any sort of Windows emulation or reverse-engineering that is allowable by fair-use. They could effectively prevent people from using any OS other than Windows to run their applications or view documents. As new applications come out and old ones become outdated, Palladium could become the new standard just because all the new software requires it.
Parent
Re:This is both good, and neccessary. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. I bought those albums, so it is most certainly fair use. If I started sharing them with someone else, then it would not be. Just because I carry 10GBs of mp3/ogg on my laptop does NOT mean I have violated any law, civil or criminal.
Similarly, how is having a divx copy of LotR illegal if I bought the dvd and ripped it myself?
I can only assume you're referring to people who illegally download mp3s or make divx copies of illegally recorded theatrical showings of movies, but you need to be specific! The lack of specificity insinuates that we're all rampant filesharers, or that the only use of MPEG compression technology is piracy. Keep it up and the next thing you know, the MPEG consortium will have to disband or be incarcerated...
Parent
Re:This is both good, and neccessary. (Score:5, Insightful)
If all that content owners were doing is "attempting to enforce their rights", then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
It's really about content owners claiming more rights than they currently have. If I buy a dead-tree book, I can't make copies and sell or distribute them. But I can still make a copy of a page for my own use, or lend or give away the original to a friend. I still control the one physical copy that I have bought. DRM takes these rights away from the consumer. It takes control away from the consumer.
I agree with you that all the people who are mooching need to stop! But I contend that DRM advocates are using the cause of preventing piracy as a smokescreen. Their real goal is to control our behavior to a much higher extent, so that they can separate us from our money quicker. Even if there were no piracy, the push for DRM will not go away, as you suggest. Because Piracy is not the reason for it, it's just the excuse.
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Re:Circumvention (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:The sky is falling! The sky is falling! (Score:5, Insightful)
The sheeple will happily buy their latest Dell/Gateway/whatever PC hardware with TCPA and an MS Palladium OS. They will never know what they are doing.
Saying that the market will do something about it is like saying the market will reject...
- Macrovision
- Encrypted DVD's
- A tax on blank media
- DMCA
- UCITA
- COPA
- CALEA
The problem is that the market must have a choice. A word not in Microsoft's vocabulary. Oh, wait... Choice...Parent
Re:The server seems slow... full text here (Score:5, Insightful)
How reassuring.
Look, here are the complete mechanical drawings for my handcuffs and leg shackles. Anyone is free to study them and see that they will really do what we say when they put them on your hands and feet.
In order to actually be secure, they have to be able to trust the software running. This means that nobody can compromise, for instance, Windows Media Player. But then this means that anyone could make an EXE that cannot be compromised.
Just imagine....
- E-mail clients and Browsers that won't let you copy the content.
- E-mail clients that will automatically delete the message after a certian time, or will ensure that you read the message.
- Programs that can send your private information somewhere, encrypted. You can't do a darned thing about it. The program can just refuse to run. You can't compromise the integrity of the program.
- In a nutshell... In the most general sense... A program can do any manner of evil thing, and you can't compromise it.
Sure I buy the "secure" aspect of it. A virus can't compromise an executable either before or during its execution. Great. But this means that the user can't compromise it either. This means that a program can do any manner of evil thing and we are powerless.Surely programs would never do evil things such as...
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