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."

Comments

Trust

[Buggered Choirboy]

If nobody trusts this system, it will not get into widespread use. Amazingly, Micro$oft does not succeed at everything.

Re:Trust

[Yankovic]

The problem is that you're not supporting your points with facts.

1) WinME sold millions of retail copies, not only ones that were attached to machines. These people were not forced to upgrade, unless you consider "forced to upgrade" to be the same as "being convinced through marketing". If that's the case, you were "forced" to buy the car you bought (assuming you own one) or the jeans you wear (assuming you wear jeans) or the soap you use.

2) CE has no monopoly power and continues to gain marketshare at the fastest rate of any embedded OS (IDC embedded market share numbers 2002) In fact, the monopoly power in this market is Wind River, who is being investigated by the FTC.

3) If MS gets out of the xbox market, then i might say you are right (assuming no other factors are at play). However, i wouldn't consider competitive price reductions to indicate anything other than costs of production went down and they wanted to put additional pressure on Sony and Gamecube. PS2 had slower sales when it first launched, and less games.

4) SQL server is the fastest growing database (IDC worldwide database tracking numbers 2002). Faster than Oracle, faster than IBM. Unless free databases change their share and growth numbers dramatically, the people who are going to suffer are DB2 and Oracle, not MS. Free databases are flat, not growing. In fact, Access share is growing faster than free databases (again, IDC WW DB market number 2002). "Expecting declines" is not really a debating point, other than stating your opinion. SAPDB? Interbase? These are below 1% in share numbers. At least use alternative low end databases to make your point that have some standing (Progress DB and Pervasive are two examples). Unfortunately, their market shares are shrinking as well.

5) IIS certainly is not #1, but is launching with a 2 year lag on Apache (not including first versions of NCSA 1.3 which became Apache... ultimately more than 5 years from the first launch of NCSA/Apache to the first launch of IIS). Also, certainly you would not consider MS to have a monopoly on servers all that time (even now). Flavors of Unix, until recently, were the primary OSes for servers, and though Windows is now #1 (IDC server operating system market share numbers 2002), it certainly does not have a monopoly.

Your point, about the investment style of MS, is invalid because many many companies develop this way (Merck, Amgen, J&J, Ferrari, HP, Xerox) where you develop many technologies, see what sticks, and then run with what does. They also have not been shown to exercise monopoly pricing (where marginal cost = marginal revenue). This is a fine but important point. Monopoly pricing is an exact term used by economists to indicate a condition where price of goods and restriction of output. This has not been shown to be the case on Windows, though Windows is a monopoly, and, though intuitively it seems to be the case, the have not been proven to have a monopoly on office at all, let alone to be engaged in monopoly pricing.

Also, unless you have insider information, you do not have MS's return on investment numbers for these projects. How could you measure them (and then determine success or failure)? Further, this is not the only way to measure success. There are lots of reasons to make investments, and direct revenue ties may only be one of those reasons (improved branding, adoption of the platform, competitive pressures, etc).

The Palladium Machine

[Hassan79]

I think that the system architecture of the PC we are familiar with is too "open" for implementing DRM seriously:

• 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:

• The user will be even further away from the hardware
• Microsoft will control even more layers between the user and the hardware and become even more powerful.

Re:new rule..

[thales]

"For every 3 bits of FUD you post about Microsoft, you must either

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".

Uhmm, sorry! Lot's of prior art here ;-)

[manyoso]

"The computerized method of claim 1, wherein protecting the rights-managed data comprises: refusing to load the untrusted program into memory."

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 ;-) 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'.

Cheers!

Re:The geek responsibility

[TheConfusedOne]

There is definitely something to be said about remaining informed and trying to inform everyone else.

There's one giant problem with it though:
The desktop OS market is being dominated by a monopoly. MS makes updates (XP and WPA are a good example) and the bulk of the consuming public doesn't know and/or care. They merely get the latest version when they buy their new PC. MS really doesn't need to market their OS's, they just slowly become dominant by default (installation).

DivX failed because DVD's were already on the market and the cost of the DVD player was dropping rapidly. People were able to evaluate this as a pure cost/benefit issue and everyone realized that the DivX duck wouldn't hunt.

There will be no such evaluation with MS's latest and greatest OS.

Questions that MS needs to answer: How will Palladium treat those home videos that everyone's starting to create. (I just bough a digital camcorder myself.) How will Palladium treat home recordings? (I have a friend who is slowly putting together his own album. What if he wanted to mail around MP3's of his songs?)

This is where we can maybe corner MS. They need to answer how the "untrusted" (really uncopyrighted or copyrighted by an individual) content is treated.

Re:how 'bout apple

[Melantha_Bacchae]

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"

Re:1 0wN my computer

[WetCat]

Exactly! You own your land near your house. But you cannot grow there anyhing except stupid lawn; if you do, the "good neighbours" will complain and municipal mowers will come with police to cut your lawn. You will be billed for that operation!

I will put on it whatever I want to put on it. Understand?

Yes. But first try to grow anything but lawn on your land...

Re:HAHAHA

[Ogerman]

"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.

Actually it would be a good thing in the long run.

[blueworm]

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.

Re:Is this going to be the new whipping boy?

[Lord Omlette]

What was the old whipping boy CDBTPA [sp]? You may recall that our paranoia kicked the ever living fuck outta that bill.

DRM and DAT

[buss_error]

People forget that DAT's started out as a DRM for audio. Anyone remember listening to Digital Audio on tape? Not many, huh? Most people didn't like the DRM and it wasn't adopted widely.

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.

Rebuttals of some of those points

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

First, this guy thinks a lot of himself:

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.

The less obvious implications include making it easier for application software vendors to lock in their users

Notice the bold FUD.

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.

Oh my, that sounds horrible. We could have a market finally for digital releases, one where I get my media, and the seller gets his money.

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.

First, that's not censorship, that's search (and possibly seizure) and it's pure FUD to presume the government will push a button and search you hard-drives and then drag you down to the police station, for your dirty little picture.

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.

And what's with saying it's like switching from Windows to Linux? First, what the fook is wrong with linux bitch?

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.