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New Chips Keep Tight Rein on Consumers
banannaslug writes "NYTimes (subscription, etc.)
talks about Microsofts Palladium. The article addresses how applications of controlling technology affect competition as well as the consumer, can be used to extend monopolies to new markets and has
very serious implications for what happens to user driven innovation. We'd have the people's operating system, the people's web browser and the people's media player, and 'computers' would be as useful to innovation as a bicycle to a fish.
This is the kind of behavior you expect in a mature industry that tries to add
'law' to preserve failing market models dependent on a lack of competition. Next thing you know they'll want to force customers to upgrade periodically." Point it out to your boss.
The current unencumbered hardware isn't going to go away unless people stop buying it, or a law is made against it.
Under the DMCA, unencumbered hardware could be considered a circumvention device to avoid the Palladium-based DRM hooks. And if that's not good enough for the attack lawyers, just remember - the DMCA got passed.
You bet your ass unencumbered hardware could go away. Give it five years. Five years is forever in the computer industry - remember what hardware you were using five years ago?
Better to stop this now, before it can take root.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I'll stop worrying the day that my relatives who don't understand the difference between a CD and a hard-disk, understand at least this.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
IT has been itching to seize control over the desktop ever since those rouge PCs yanked control from the terminal/mainframe days. This OS will help that greatly. Say goodbye to Personal in PC.
The home user will most likely reject it. We think about gramps with a computer, who doesn't care, but in almost all family situations, there's a younger and computer literate geek who is called whenever there is a computer problem. Most of them love Microsoft now (look at the flame wars here for examples). Removing Personal from PC at home just ain't going to fly. People will reject it and if future hardware enforces it, the hardware market will take a huge negative hit for years while people hold on to legacy computers until they all die out. For advanced gaming, we'll just buy consoles. For our home box tinkering needs, we'll hold on to our trusty current boxes...
I don't like Microsoft. Let me get that out of the way right now. I consider the company to be a shining example of some of the worst aspects of capitalism.
But Microsoft isn't what worries me. Microsoft does not make me paranoid. Why? Because I know that no matter what happens with Microsoft, I can always choose not to use their products. I can buy or build myself a perfectly usable computer that runs Mac OS X, Linux, or what have you, and is certified 100% MS-free.
What worries me is the spectre of DRM laws mandating how my computer works and what types of programs I may and my not write.
I am concerned about any program, any piece of hardware, any treaty, any law that treats me as a consumer, not a citizen.
I worry that someday, when I sit down to code away on my digital photo managment software that I will have to incorporate government-mandated checks to ensure that no one could possibly use my product in any illegal activity.
As I sit here in England, people are celebrating Independence Day back home in the U.S. I will be later today, too. I'm proud to be an American; I'm proud of the freedoms that I enjoy under the U.S. Constitution. But I am paranoid that many of the basic freedoms that I have always counted on are being swept silently away - in the name of big corporations, in the name of security, in the name of profit.
Security is a great thing, but not at the expense of freedom of speech. Companies and artists need freedom from theft, but not at the expense of law-abiding people. We already have laws for punishing thieves and crackers. Use those laws.
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Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
I am concerned about any program, any piece of hardware, any treaty, any law that treats me as a consumer, not a citizen
Comment removed based on user account deletion
most common forms of trojans and backdoors will be effectively eliminated - assuming people don't set the PC to "trust all" sources
:p), people just don't know that they shouldn't run them. This won't stop one bit of trojans / backdoors / viruses / exploits, and if you think so wisen up.
I'm sorry, but you've been listening too much to M$ rethoric. Trojans and other backdoors don't run by themselves (unless you use Outlook
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
being FORCED to use it. Your argument reminds me of Stalman's contention that all software should be free/open. How can you be an advocate of freedom if you maintain that nobody should release closed-source software (are they not free to do so?) Similarly, while crypto and security are good, the idea that any particular implemenation of same will be hardwired into your hardware, only to work with software that uses the same implentation, is a little distasteful.
Now, of course, you will say that we aren't being FORCED to use palladium. Well, that's the problem with Microsoft. Their crap becomes the defacto standard that everybody else follows, for better or worse. Alternatives tend to shrink or disappear over time. Most people here on the dot probably like PGP/GPG. But if Microsoft incororated those into Office and said you could only share documents with people who also had it installed, and had the proper keys (given to you by Microsoft, after you 'signed' a EULA,) then you'd hear the same complaints. And those complaints would be legitimate.
Evil is the money of root.
What's obvious is you haven't been paying any attention. The whole PC hardware industry is geared towards making the pieces of junk that will host Microsoft's operating systems, instead of truly inspired hardware designs. The reason? To avoid being shut out for NOT being able to run what everyone else is running. Microsoft says jump and AMD/Intel/VIA/Asus/etc. say, "how high?"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Palladium is a good idea, but not for desktop use. End-users are treated like criminals or people operating under secrecy.
.isos before I burn them. I use HTTPS (where the certificates get handed down via Verisign or some other root server).
Palladium is more about (1) hardware enforced signing and (2) code verification.
I'm all for signing and code verification. I check my package signatures with GPG before I install them and I MD5 all my
The problem lies with the fact that interoperability between Palladium and other systems is only guaranteed if you get a signature from a Microsoft-sponsored system. Guess which source is going to be trusted, no matter what? You're kidding yourself if Microsoft will allow you to "distrust" binaries or media coming from www.microsoft.com.
This is the exact argument for DeCSS. You may be perfectly happy to own DVDs that can only be played on the "Enhanced Windows" system that Microsoft offers, but cannot be decrypted, EVER, on any other OS. Including Macs. (Depending on how much money they pay Microsoft for the right to play your media.
They are going to release the source, which is odd in itself. It leads me to believe in general that MS may being a rather okay-ish thing.
Releasing the source is not a sign of goodwill here. Since Microsoft already has the patent (look at point #7) on the core idea of Palladium it would mean diddly squat to the GPL community.
My conclusion: Look at smart cards. They offer the same feature set. The only difference is that I'm gladly willing to give up the right to run software on the processor on the card in order to make things like bank transactions possible. The question is, are you willing to give up the right to run any software on your computer not expressly signed by MS, just so you can watch your favourite DVD on your PC?
> Government needs to require all entertainment content to be made available to any distributor who wants to sell it subject to RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) license payments if they want to establish a free market.
.. distributing. Currently, its ironic that labels and such, the distributors are doing the very opposite of that - opposing all new forms of distribution and attempting to squeeze success out of creating scarcity of content.
Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Even if it's unlikely without a significant, long, probably dirty revolt from consumers.)
Copyright was brought in to force work intop the public domain. I contend that they missed a very important point - the author is not legally allowed to give exclusive access to that content to one distributor. That should be against the law. In the same way that consumers should be free to participate in the market with a reasonable lack of outside influence, so should distributors all have fair and equal access to content, such that their success is built on how well they can deliver and price it, not how much culture, art and content can they withhold from the market and at what price will the market bear _access_ to that content.
Distributors should be in the business of
"Old man yells at systemd"
Microsoft Tackles Cyber-Security.
Notice the highlighed quote: Ooh, a bold new step for Microsoft, a bold new step for mankind! Now read his actual statement, included in the same article: Now can anyone claim that the press isn't trying to spin this?
To you "discount of commodity hardware" is the only complaint?! Gee, the vast majority of the complaints I've been seeing (even here on
invasion of privacy
erosion of Fair Use Rights
the rights of content creators (my complaint), as opposed to the alleged rights of corporative entities like the RI/MPAA
total Microsoft domination of the OS market through a hardware wedge
the possible virtual elimination/obsolescense of the GPL, and/or (GNU/)Linux
And here's a new one: jurisdictional misuse to enforce the DMCA (a US law which doesn't bind those of us outside the US) through hardware. Do you really think all those big US-based hardware manufacturers will make one version for the US and one for the rest of the world? Heh. In my country, we don't have a DMCA...(yet)
Funny, I don't see any (purely) "money" issues in there at all. Then again, as I've said before, there are some things that just don't come down to money, especially since it's damn hard to put a definitive price tag on rights (whether "inalienable" or not) and freedoms, except maybe (as Tom Jefferson said) "eternal vigilance."
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Have you heard of DivX? (the hardware, not the file format) No? Why not? ;^)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Frankly, I can't see any difference between this and the previous Clinton administration Clipper Chip proposal from eight to ten years back. Except that now instead of the government having control over signing digital certificates we have a single private corporation. That's freedom for you! One further point: you state the system will only be used to control copying of content. Since the most fundamental operation of a computer is to copy, as in moving a byte from memory to a register for example, isn't by definition this also a mechanism to control how one may USE said content? Even if the content is something you created on your own?
I find it utterly amazing to read such large numbers of libertarian conservatives -- folks who presumably support individual liberty and non-authoritarian government -- so easily willing to cave into the demands of huge private corporations at their own detriment. Institutions so large they generate a revenue stream larger than most third world governments, and who clearly use the same monopolistic and exclusionary tactics so hated by the conservative right when the issue turns to government monopolies. And before anyone brings up the fact that government has guns while Microsoft (Disney et all) doesn't, might I point out just who they're buying off in order to obtain the legislation which will force us all to use their cripple-ware?
--Maynard
One problem is that it's impossible to ship such an OS with a level of trust that preserves competition. If only MSFT is trusted by default, and a scary message must be acknowledged before trusting other parties, most users will use only MSFT software. If only MSFT and people it trusts are trusted by default, and a scary message must be acknowledge before trusting other parties, MSFT gains a lot of power over what people do use (and trust can be centrally revoked, enabling MSFT to partake of a number of slimy business models). If VeriSign or similar is at the root of default trust at the OS level, and a scary message must be acknowledged before trusting other roots, shareware/freeware authors have to pay a tax to VeriSign to create their applications, thus stifling innovation. If no scary message is printed at all, then the point of the whole system is moot.
Have you tried as an individual to get an Authenticode certificate from VeriSign lately? They won't do it because of half-assed reasoning that includes the two meaningless trump words "national security". If, as you claim, this project is about "hardware enforced trust" then how does a user attempting to insert their own hierarchy of trust distinguish themselves from a virus (or, heaven forbid, a competitor) attempting to insert its own hierarchy of trust?This is about software trusting hardware and software trusting software. The hardware doesn't need to trust anything, and hardware trusting software is a well-researched and well-practiced problem which requires nothing short of potting whole systems in epoxy to foil attackers. Read Microsoft's patents, not Microsoft's propaganda.
This has nothing to do with the problems smart cards solve. Smart cards attest to the identity of the user, and as people are movable it makes perfect sense for these to be movable as well. Palladium's version of trust has nothing to do with a user proving their identity and only with proving a computer's identity. People don't care about a computer's identity. State-sanctioned spies, content vendors, corporations, software and software vendors do. What does a secure real-time clock do for the average user? Nothing. This is not about solving problems for the end-user. Incorrect. If there is a patent on loading and identifying a digital rights management operating system its use is governed by Microsoft's licensure of that patent. If systems will (as feared) fail to allow use of the cryptographic processor or potentially even the entire system unless every stage of the boot trusts the next one by signature, that seriously degrades the user serviceability of open-source OSes. If users can set the secure real-time clock then it's clearly not secure. To top it all off, Microsoft is not known for handing out code under terms that allow modification or redistribution, and I fully expect the Palladium source to be released under the same viral "shared-source" look-but-don't-compete license as the CIFS specification and MSDN. History has shown they open things just enough to get maximum traction in any particular campaign. I suspect that, as they have done historically, they will disclose just enough info to allow them some slimy claims about openness and then aggressively leverage those claims to gently or brutally exclude competition on many levels.This initiative has nothing to do with consumers except to ensure they consume and pay for the privilege.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.