Coursey on Palladium

lrose writes "Check out this story over at ZDNet -- Microsoft is developing a secure operating system to be combined with hardware doing public key cryptography. The DRM aspect reminds me of something I read about an imaginary day in the not-too-distant future, where you can no longer install Linux on your own box because you don't have the necessary rights." Coursey's column is quite interesting, bringing a lot more of the backstory behind Palladium into public view. While geeks have been following and worrying about the TCPA, Microsoft has been working to spin the story with assorted columnists and journalists, so that when it broke it would be in the context that Steven Levy bought into hook, line and sinker: a scheme to protect you rather than one to prevent you from using your computer in unapproved ways.

Comments

No! Godwin's Law is not that at all!

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Godwin's Law states that as any discussion gets longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Essentially, any time you get a bunch of people together, talking about any subject, chances are that the conversation will wander to the point that someone compares something to Nazis. This happens for two reasons:

1) The Nazis made such a massive impact on the 20th century that you'll end up seeing some comparison eventually.

2) If you get pissed off, you generally go fishing for the worst insult that you can get, and calling someone a Nazi generally does it.

I'd expand this law to include "fascist" as well. People generally mean Nazi when they say fascist, and including that would probably make the law more closely match most discussions.

Godwin's law is VERY CONVENIENT for neo-NAZIs, too

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Interesting idea, but according to Goodwin's Law, the first party in a discussion to mention "Hitler" or "Nazi" has lost the discussion.

...it was a tounge in cheek joke about USENET flames of its day. It was never considered by its creator to be an actual, accurate commentary on internet speech, much less some deeply wise insight into the human psyche, and certainly not as a new "rule" of debate.

Indeed.

And the literal interpretation of Godwin's law has been used heavily by anti-freedom posters (including neo-fascists) to shut down debate. They do this when someone:

points out how their proposal is similar to one of the programs of the NAZI party, or

tries to show how the NAZIs already took that nice-sounding idea and ran it into the ground.

So I now formulate:

Rod's Law of Internet Debate: "Anyone citing Godwin's Law against an opponent in a serious political debate has admitted he is an authoritarian and has lost the argument."