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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.
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.
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:
Finally, I think the US
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.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
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.
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.
... and in every case, it has been a very successful move.
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
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.