Analyzing Palladium

apeir0 writes "The Register has a story which proposes an ulterior motive to Microsoft's new Palladium: a GPL-killer. 'It's the very fact that this appears insoluble to me that helps me realize that MS has put tremendous, careful thought into it. To make the commons Linux-hostile, MS is taking dramatic steps to make it GPL-hostile. Very clever and admirably diabolical.' Is this a valid point or just paranoia?" Ross Anderson has been writing about this recently; we covered his paper a few days ago, and he's now got a Palladium FAQ up. Another submitter sent in this interview with the Microsoft manager in charge of Palladium. The Washington Post has a column. Update: 06/27 22:43 GMT by T : Bob Cringely also has a column on Palladium up, in which he says that several of his fears have been realized by it.

Comments

Where trust comes from

[PMuse]

Call me crazy, but I think M$ just said that opening (some of) its source was the way to achieve trust.

Juarez: ... As a side note, we will publish the source code on that Trusted Operating Root. We will make sure that people have the opportunity to really go deep on that and kick the tires and know that what we're doing in there is what we say we are doing.

No big shocker here.

[NetRanger]

I can see this kind of technology being abused to the 1,000th degree. Imagine software that would automatically use your previous usage data to force you to buy individual features that you use the most, the next time your annual subscription fee comes around? Or deleting all your home movies because they didn't carry a copyright tag, and thus could be illegal? Or finding the cops at your door because little Timmy downloaded his favorite song on MP3 or Ogg?

It seems that we, the mass public, are expected to give up the idea than when we buy something, it's ours. Now that even seems to include our hardware, not just our software.

Devices hostile to 3rd party peripherals

[AgTiger]

From the article:

> For example, some mobile phone vendors use challenge-response
> authentication to check that the phone battery is a genuine part
> rather than a clone - in which case, the phone will refuse to recharge
> it, and may even drain it as quickly as possible. Some
> printers authenticate their toner cartridges electronically;
> if you use a cheap substitute, the printer silently downgrades
> from 1200 dpi to 300 dpi.

I wonder if there's a list of printers and/or phones that perform in such a manner. I'm not sure if the law would deem such behavior as "anti-competitive", but I as a customer certainly find it so, as well as offensive.

No, it still won't work.

[Noryungi]

I can add at least one more reason this darn Palladium thingie won't work (for the previous reasons I mentioned, see the previous discussion on Palladium):

• Economics & the rule of profit.

Think about it for a second: a lot of people, though not the [MP|RI]AA, are going to be royally pissed off about this.

Therefore, they will be tempted to do something about it. So, we'll see one of these solutions:

• Clever hacks, designed to completely fool the Palladium/DRM solution into thinking some software/hardware combination is legit and acceptable. This is highly possible, given the fact that no secuity is foolproof, and the abysmal track record of Microsoftin security and stability.
• The appearance of "GNU Hardware": open designs, based on a strict "No Palladium" clause, along with an explosion of small, customized hardware shop based on these designs. For instance: small computers, based on accepted -- and fairly open -- industry standards such as IDE, PCI, USB and ARM processors.
• The fact that somebody, somewhere is bound to remark that this whole Palladium thingie hurt sales, profits and image. When enough PC builders realize their mistakes, they'll backtrack faster than you can say "GNU/Linux kernel" back to non-DRM, non-Palladium (non-MS?) machines.
• All of the above!!

Finally, I think the US .gov could go along with this hare-brained scheme, but do you think the EU will? And what about most third-world countries who, even as we speak, are flocking to open-source solutions in droves?

Again: I believe M$ is just testing the waters here. It's probably either a marketing test balloon or vaporware, designed to please the US government in these post-9/11 times.

Remember: Palladium can only work if every company joins the conspiracy. Some, maybe even a lot, won't.

YMMV, IANAL, Standard::Disclaimer and so on and so forth.

Re:No, it still won't work.

[Noryungi]

Sorry, I have to disagree here: RISC chips could be the perfect answer to that problem.

One of the most successful chipmaker of all time is ARM. The first version of the ARM chip (a 16-bit RISC chip) was created by just two people, with no money, no help and no support from the main company (Acorn, at the time). If I remember well, these two people did not even have a lot of experience in chip design.

The great-grandchildren of this chip can now be found in millions of devices all over the world. iPaq, Nokia, HP, you name it: they all use it (even Palm, in its latest models).

Even when ARM1 came out, it was touted as more powerful than anything Intel had to offer at the time. It was also easier and cheaper to produce and consumed less power than all other CPU models.

And there are ARM clones out there, including one on Open Cores.org. Not that I think that desiging an ARM clone is necessarily good, just that that designing a cheap RISC CPU can be done.

So, designing a complete "GNU Hardware" system is possible, and it could even be a way of ditching the mess which is the PC architecture.

Think about it:

• No Palladium, no DRM, no Micro$oft. Ever.
• A new, open architecture, open CPU core, based on open standards and free for everyone to take, copy and reproduce.
• Your choice of operating system: Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, you name it. Plus, a huge amount of quality software that will stay free for ever, thanks to the GPL.
• Can't produce it in the US? Ask European firms! No luck? Try Taiwan, or China, or Korea or whatever.

Let's face it: some people (including me) would pay good money for a "no-Palladium" system. Especialy if I have no choice!

Operating Systems such as Linux are a commodity -- but a commodity that break M$ monopoly. I think it's time for the hardware itself to become a "free speech" comodity as well. And Palladium could push the Open Source community to do just that...

Re:Ignore them.

[warpSpeed]

Congradulations!

However I can't ignore this. It does worry me since most of my clients only know MS. It is very difficult to get your avarage joe user to break the MS habit, and some clients believe the FUD being spewed/parroted by media.

We can't ignore it, MS have a monopoly and they are going to leverage to its fullest extent until it is (if ever) taken away.

I cheer on your use of linux, but we are a minority, a well informed minority, but a minority non the less.

The Cartel Problem

[xtal]

Remember: Palladium can only work if every company joins the conspiracy. Some, maybe even a lot, won't.

This, IMHO, is why it won't succeed for the same reason cartels designed to artificially restrict supply sooner or later all fall appart. Initially, people might go for it. When an economic disadvantage is passed on to consumers - designing this, after all, isn't free, and developers who can't or won't pay the fees required to have their code "Certified" will be unable to develop for that market - and consumers of Palladium PC's will be unable to use their wares.

This will result in a incentive for a manufacturer of CPUs or motherboards to produce a non-Palladium product. People will move to those platforms for a variety of reasons, producing an incentive to produce non-palladium products, springing up a non-MS taxed industry. It probably would motivate a lot of busy people like me to start working on GPL products to fight against the mark of the beast. Sooner or later though, a hardware manufacturer will spring up to produce hardware to meet the demand. That's inevitable.

This, frankly, sickens me to think about. I'll become physically ill if Apple announces they're going to soil their OS X and Powerbooks with this platform.

Re:Ignore them.

[FreeUser]

However I can't ignore this. It does worry me since most of my clients only know MS. It is very difficult to get your avarage joe user to break the MS habit, and some clients believe the FUD being spewed/parroted by media.

The parent post to which you replied should never have been marked Troll, and I will enjoy ripping the moderator responsible a new one on meta.

That having been said, I disagree with his suggestion that ignoring this problem is the answer, but not for the reasons you say (or at least, not entirely for those reasons). This must be fought tooth and nail, as we are being attacked from two sides:

1) Microsoft, trying to leverage their monopoly to impose further, very detrimental, restrictions on the freedom of customers to deploy the correct technologies for their solutions under the guise of DRM.

2) The entertainment industry, that is trying to legislate the very same restrictive technologies and require them in all digital hardware.

We would be absolute fools to ignore this.

Having said that, fewer and fewer people care about Microsoft's proprietary protocols. Even offices that deploy Microsoft on the desktop are, in my experience, deploying open protocols in place of Microsoft's wherever possible to avoid the sort of nonsensical moving target and deliberate breakage MS service packs often result in.

The result, interstingly enough, has been a quiet movement on the part of several businesses away from Microsoft not just on the server side, but also on the desktop ... and in every case, it has been a very successful move.

This is why Microsoft is scared, this is why Microsoft is trying to impliment coercive technologies that will remove the last vestiges of customer choice, and this is why their unholy alliance with Hollywood will likely succeed in creating a Revelations-esque dystopia if we sit on our hind ends and do nothing to prevent it.

Unfortunately we as Americans are so thoroughly conditioned to not become actavists about any cause, no matter how much we care about it, that it is very possible we will do nothing about it in time.

BTW - As another person who works at a company that has completely depircated Microsoft products and deployed GNU/Linux widely throughout our enterprise I can echo the original poster's comments (that were so unjustly marked as a Troll): Life as a non-Microsoft shop is damn good.

Re:Ignore them.

[JWW]

The funny part about this is that if Hollywood and Microsoft get what they want, they will be the ones whining in a couple of years that they aren't making enough money.

This is a disabling technology and DRM management laws would be disabling laws. Take a look at prohibition to see what would happen. Most people will begin using computers illegally, black market devices and software will be developed, economic calamaty will eventually ensue due to the brakes being put on free commerce in many arenas, including Hollywood and Microsoft.

It will be one hell of an ecnonmic downturn. I alos predict that all the financial pundits will not key on DRM laws being the cause, but they will be.