Gates and Lasser on Palladium

A rather funny juxtaposition this morning - Bill Gates or someone with his signature stamp sent a spam-gram to pretty much everyone who receives any sort of Microsoft email: Bill only mentions Digital Rights Management in one throw-away sentence. And like most other spam, he promises it's a one-time mailing. On the other hand, Jon Lasser of Think Unix fame takes a harsher look at Microsoft's vision of a world where your computer is trusted against you.

Comments

The Right to Read

[Kafka_Canada]

A nice, and a propos story by RMS, called The Right to Read, can be found here. Definitely worth the read.

Another take on DRM

[astrashe]

I think the community's response to DRM is wrong. I don't think that the analysis of it is wrong -- it's a very negative technology. But I think the response is a little off.

If MS wants to put the interests of the large media companies ahead of the interests of its own customers, the people who actually buy the computers and the software, why not let them take it to the market? Let's let the market decide what it thinks of that. Let's give them enough rope to hang themselves.

The thing that we have to worry about is some sort of legal framework that requires all computers to respect some DRM system.

MS is way ahead on the desktop, and their systems have gotten a lot better than they used to be. The only way they're going to get dislodged from that position is by making a really catastrophic mistake.

This could be that mistake!

I think there's a lesson in the current stock market scandals. The big companies can buy legislators. They've shown that they can derail effective regulation of accounting rules. They can set things up so that a crooked CFO who bilks people out of billions and sends the markets into a spiral that wipes out the savings of millions of people gets a lighter punishment than a punk who robs a liquor store.

But in the end, there's nothing they can do against the force of the market itself. They got cocky -- they thought they could get away with anything. It turns out that they can't.

Neither can the DRM boys.

Re:Palladium is E-V-I-L

[dusanv]

Did you read the articles at all? It is plainly said that Palladium will not eliminate application layer virii. That means Joe Sixpack *will* be getting more Outlook & Word virii. What he won't be able to do is to watch unlicensed content. It is plain that this has nothing to do with Joe Sixpack's security but only with content protection Hollywood and total control by Microsoft.

The problem with everyone's understanding of TCPA/Palladium is that there won't be a single authority (flying Black Helicopters over your PC at night). Big companies like IBM (and especially the government) may use it for document control, but that's about it. What Palladium will do for the world is:

* End the untrusted binary problem. Viruses will be blacklisted by a remote server - no more email viruses, ever...

You are contradicting yourself in mere two sentences. No black helicopters? They don't need them. THe server you mention later is *way* better. Whoever controls that server - controls your PC.

Cheers,
D.

Umm, no

[dant]

Now MS tries to address subjects YOU WANT THEM TO ADDRESS, and the linux community is in an uproar

Who here do you think wanted MicroSoft to address DRM in the operating system? I'd guess almost nobody.

Who here do you think wanted MicroSoft to address the 'problem' of users having complete control over their own machines? Again, nobody.

I see no change in attitude here at all. The Slashdot crowd has always disliked DRM and giving Bill the keys to your computer--and that's exactly why there is so much anger at Palladium.

And while I agree with you that we'd be better off boosting Linux than trashing MicroSoft all the time, you still have to point out significant dangers when you see them.

Microsoft IP

[gwernol]

One of the ...ahem... interesting things Bill says is: "We're also working with others throughout the industry to improve Internet protocols to stop email that could propagate misleading information or malicious code that falsely appears to be from trusted senders." (emphasis added)

Bob Cringley has written a couple of good articles on eactly this, the second related directly to Palladium. Check them out.

Cringley also has an article on the consequences of Palladium not working.

Mistake only from our perspective...

[jjn1056]

I just attended a private focus group on this subject. All the attendees were Director level IT folk who are constantly hassled by security problems. Some of them came from a management background and some from a technical background. Almost all of them thought this would be a good idea. In fact they thought it was such a good idea that they would be willing to pay $25 to $400 more per server or desktop just for the chance to have this technology.

I think this shows just how far along this idea has gone. None of these people in the room cared a wit about privacy, open source, the ability to compile your own apps, etc. because the vast majority of people don't do even know what they could be missing. All they care about is a golden pill to solve all there security problems.

So we shouldn't all be thinking that somehow this idea will be MS shooting themselves in the foot. That won't happen unless we get the word out.