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MS Palladium Patent
Concerned Citizen writes "cryptome has Microsoft's patent for Palladium. Including such gems as: 2. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein protecting the rights-managed data comprises:
refusing to load the untrusted program into memory. 14. The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising:
restricting a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating the rights-managed data.
And I'm sure we'll all be coerced to agree to Palliadium during a future security patch agreement."
If nobody trusts this system, it will not get into widespread use. Amazingly, Micro$oft does not succeed at everything.
I find it very unusual to see MS pushing this at all. What's their interest in it? RIAA and MPAA money? Stoping windows isos being traded on P2P?
Or maybe it won't require that. Microsoft does respond to angry buzz, and has changed direction when the wind blows hard enough. There's probably some formula on a whiteboard in BillG's office: Money / badPR + JusticeDept = Go and/or NoGo.
Then again, I am naive.
C'mon, baby, kiss The King.
Don't buy hardware that has DRM, silly! I just bought a laptop (PII-MMX) and it might be the last one I buy. :( I don't want a PIII because of the number...
void karma_burning_philosophical_schpeel()
//end karma_burning_philosophical_schpeel
{
I can't possibly know with 100% certainty what Microsoft's intentions are, but there stands a reasonable chance they are intended for their benefit and any consumer benefits are purely coincidental.
So what can we do about all of this? Pay attention and educate ourselves on this initiative and then pass on the news good or bad to the masses that aren't up to date on the geek speak. It is probably not a good idea to leave thsi job up to mass media.
It is possible for us to either make or break this technology. Look at the old Divx from Circuit City. Bad idea. It was DOA because many people (myself included) advised everyone not to buy it.
This is a controversial technology from a controversial company. This doesn't mean it is destined to be evil. It does mean it is the job of those in the know to keep those out of the loop informed.
}
Actually to a point, yes exactly. The less dehumanizing prejudice that goes on in the world the better.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I'd love nothing better than to see the geek revolution stop this shit from making it into the hardware, but lots of luck. EULAs are every bit as bad in the legal sense but if there was an overwhelming hue and cry from the masses that convinced the software companies to quit screwing us with them, I must have slept through it. This site will pump the hardware to our crowd as happily as it did Warcraft III; nevermind the fact that they just informed us about how the publisher wants to give the open source community a good legal rogering; and the Slashdot crowd will swallow every bit like a double frappichino. Oh, they'll be bitching about the evil corporate overlords all the way through the checkout line, but we all know what's gonna be in the shopping cart anyway.
If we don't see (or grudgingly tolerate) the problem, what chance does Joe Sixpack have?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
- Everybody can install new hardware.
- Everybody can install new software, and, even worse, create new software that has access to all hardware devices.
- Everybody can exchange arbitrary data over the net.
So, the Palladium hardware won't have many relations to the PC any more, but become something like a mobile phone or a gaming console: a closed system. Probably, customers will be attracted with the argument that this new device will be easier to use and less complex. Maybe, Microsoft's XBox is even the first foundation of this new system architecture!By the way, this won't be anything new. It's only the continuation of a longer trend: Taking the user further and further away from the hardware. On Windows 95, you weren't able any more to write programs that controlled the hardware directly. You had to use Microsoft's API.
Now, you will have to use Microsoft's API for everything that happens on the computer. So:
Don't drink and su! antidisestablishmentariazationally
A) Find something good to say about them and post it to the front page WITHOUT SARCASM
B) Post an anti-linux, anti-free software article."
Why?
Slashdot dosen't PRETEND to be an unbiased news source, they put their Bias right up front where everyone is aware of it and can take that into account when reading it.
If you want a news source that pretend to be unbiased while spewing out drivel that is little more than a rehash of Microsoft's latest PR release I suggest that you try ZDnet for your "news".
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
"The computerized method of claim 1, wherein protecting the rights-managed data comprises: refusing to load the untrusted program into memory."
;-) For instance, with Unices I can restrict the user to reading the data, writing the data, executing the data or some combination thereof... Thus Unix has been able to restrict 'a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating the rights-managed data'.
Hmmm. Seems to me that this 'art' has been around since the beginning of Unix. Hell, Microsoft has been providing a form of this 'art' with NT and 2000 for quite sometime. It's called permissions! And what would you call the recent advent of the NSA's Secure Linux? Administrators have been 'refusing to load the untrusted program into memory' for quite sometime to protect data... The only thing different about this scheme is Microsoft will be instituting a system where the company itself is root/administrator and the previous system admins are relegated to subordinate positions.
"The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising: restricting a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating the rights-managed data."
Ahh, this has also has seemingly been done since time began
Cheers!
IE itself doesn't handle the PNGs the Mac has a very cross product support. So any program can display PNGs quicktime, and it works seemlessly, unlike quicktime on windows. This is the same reason Office is supperior it can call on third party apps to do a lot of its work for it, and remain seemless.
I think a big diference here is that Java is a virtual machine, not your whole computer. You can still load other non compliant software in your machine, even while Java is locked down to it's sandbox.
Bill wants to turn your entire machine into HIS sandbox.
chris_martin wrote:
> Apple has no stated direction on DRM, except
> perhaps putting the DRM on the user with stickers
> like "Don't steal music" on the iPod.
Actually, Apple does have a stated position on DRM. It was stated by Steve Jobs when he accepted a Grammy for Apple (as reported on http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020227/1/2jun2.html):
-> "Apple strives to protect the rights of both
-> intellectual property owners and consumers
-> alike and believes there is a 'middle path' in
-> digital music distribution which actively
-> discourages the theft of music, while at the
-> same time preserving consumers rights to manage
-> and listen to their legally acquired music on
-> whatever devices they own," he said.
Microsoft's vision of DRM (and their own Millenium) is a dire threat to Apple. If the Hollings bill goe through, and Microsoft's Palladium is chosen, Apple would either be indentured to Microsoft or be destroyed. Apple's only hope is to find a way that will satisfy both content creators and content consumers (who are both Apple's customers), and that will let Apple get on with the business of building great computers for both camps.
"Mothra's attack is working."
-- Shouta, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
"Palladium Enhanced" computers will be able to do everything non-Palladium computers can do, plus they will be able to view DRM movies, DRM music, and whatever else. The content industries will jump on board.
This is essentially what the Circuit City / DIVX people tried. They wanted to create a deviant standard for DVD movies that required special hardware and pay-per-view accounting of titles. For awhile, there was talk that some movie studios would only be releasing on DIVX, supposedly because it was more secure and profitable. But it failed miserably. Why? Because #1. Millions of people already had "standard" DVD players. and #2. There was a rather large popular campaign to stop / boycott the DIVX standard. Several people along the way asked me what was the difference and why they shouldn't just buy a DIVX-capable DVD player in case the standard caught on. I then explained why DIVX was harmful for the consumer and reminded them that if they didn't want this garbage, they should not vote with it with their dollars. And none of them did. We can do the same thing with Palladium: start a popular campaign to boycott it before it's even on the shelves. It's just a matter of spreading the word. Tell people that M$ wants to take away control of their computers and make it illegal to run anything but Windows on all new computer hardware. Tell them how much DRM is a bad idea. Tell them that the answer to viruses and computer security is secure software to begin with, not this pathetic attempt to plug up the holes in their flaky software.
The more you expose the consumer to strict DRM rules the more they will come to reject it. I honestly don't believe people will keep investing in computer hardware when it doesn't let them play their favorite burned CDs or permit them to hear their own MP3 collection. The quicker it is implemented on a large scale, the quicker it will be destroyed.
"The computerized method of claim 1, wherein protecting the rights-managed data comprises: refusing to load the untrusted program into memory."
The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising: restricting a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating the rights-managed data
The key terms here are "rights-managed data". AFAIK no OS out there has built in protection for rights managed dataWhat was the old whipping boy CDBTPA [sp]? You may recall that our paranoia kicked the ever living fuck outta that bill.
[o]_O
The problem here is the same as it's alway been. Fair use is largely the intent of the person making the copy. Until technology can read minds (fate forfend!) there won't be a DRM that won't abridge fair use in some way. As long as DRM abriges fair use, popular adoption of DRM technology won't happen willingly. This is an attempt to ram it down on an unwilling consumer population.
That said, the backlash that might build will depend largely on how intrusive Joe Six-Pack is going to find this new DRM technology. The second J.S.P. gets pissed off about it is the second elected officials are going to feel the heat. When they feel the heat, no amount of payola from ??AA is going to save it. MS is walking a fine line between control of content and pissing off J.S.P.
Until Joe Six Pack starts screaming not much is going to change. Unfortunatly, this might be after the Fritz chip is in most consumer electronics, and it will be too late to do much about it.
Don't forget that J.S.P. doesn't give a fart in the wind for the best technology. If he did, we'd have Betamax insted of V.H.S. We'd still have a Tucker auto, and not (fill in your most hated car). Zip and Jazz drives would be moldering in the dump, and we'd be using optical disks.
Is this new technology from MS a Open Source Killer? That's going to depend on someone making MoBo's available without the Fritz chip. Sure, those systems won't be able to run XP, but there are an awful lot of people out there running systems that don't run MS products. I can't quite see (at this point, maybe in the future?) a MoBo that flat won't allow a non-DRM OS to run, just that it won't run in the "Fritz here, you can control this system" mode.
That being the case, then I don't see Plaidium being quite the Open Source killer it is being painted. Not to say that it won't hurt Open Source, but it may not kill it. That's for the next evoloution of DRM. Which might be why MS is sending a sacrifice to Linux Expo. Calm down the Open Source zelots enough to get Fritz installed, don't use all of it's control capibillities until you reach market saturation, THEN whack those commie programmers when it's too late for them to save themselves. GAMEOVER.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
He's entitled to. He's an established expert with credentials in the industry, and it's quite possible that his understanding and information on this subject is ahead of most people's, including the MS guy posting on this thread.
It's nothing of the sort; it's a very real issue. If you provide a means to lock people out of data -- which is essentially all DRM is -- and then appoint MS as the effective custodian of that data, what is to stop them abusing the technology to stop you loading a document you created in MS Word with, say, a translator for OpenOffice? As those crying "FUD" are shouting so loudly here, there is precious little solid information available and even fewer guarantees, and MS has a demonstrated history of abusing any power it gets through its dominant position in the market. A little caution is more than justified here. It's only paranoia if they're not all out to get you.
It's also a market where critics could potentially be stopped from using controlled material in a legitimate way. Worse, that potential is controlled by whoever owns the DRM controls -- MS in our current scenario -- and not by a suitable legal system. This is not in the interests of the common consumer of these products.
This is a bad caveat, because I doubt anyone here would have any sympathy if a child pornographer got screwed to hell; the ability to do this in such cases is a definite plus point of the proposed approach. The problem is that the same technology could be used to prevent the distribution of, for example, information certifying that Microsoft's accounting practices are highly dubious (such as is currently freely available on the web), and once again, the control is in the hands of the DRM guys, not the duly appointed government.
There are far fewer applications currently available for Linux, and hence you are limited in what you can do with it. If you can't see the parallels to the DRM scenario, and the problems potentially created, I'm afraid you really aren't looking very hard.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.