Lucky Green vs. Palladium

CodeTrap writes "Wired has an interesting story "Can a Hacker Outfox Microsoft" on a fellow named Lucky Green that is attempting to force the issue surrounding MS's Palladium Gambit using a very creative method involving patents. If his patents are granted, MS will be unable to use Palladium to enforce software licensing. If MS challenges his patent, then we all know thier true intentions. Very clever indeed."

Comments

Dystopia still possible

[leandrod]

Even if he successfully prevents MS from enforcing only licensed software on its OSs, it still does not addresses the issue raised by RMS in The Right to Read, namely that copyright enforcement thru technology can turn all the World in a global police state in copyright owners' benefit.

Re:i think

[harks]

These copies of Windows XP you see pirated are an edition released for large businesses so they would not have to do win xp verification for thousands of computers, not the result of hackers.

Interesting Links (MLP)

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are some interesting links. Remember kids, it's not whoring if you're doing it anonymously!

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@wasabisys tems.com/msg02554.html: Lucky Green discusses this issue

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcryp to/2002-June/019444.html: Palladium and TCPA.

Google should yield even more interesting documents

Re:Yeah Right

[Vireo]

But before anything, the patents must be granted, which is the tricky part. The article mentions a similar tactic used in biotech (where two guys patented some kind of animal-human hybrids in order to either forbid anyone of doing so or force the USPO to re-evaluate its policies concerning biotech patents). The biotech patent was not granted -- which is fine for them since the goal was to see if the patent would be granted or not -- but for Lucky Green's tactic to work, the patent must be granted first, and if MSFT gets the patent first, it will fail.

from the horse's mouth

[Quetza]

Lucky's description of why he did it

--
"Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!"

Re:Follow the money...

[dcavanaugh]

"Note that this plan doesn't care if Microsoft wins the contest or not, it simply intends to discredit Microsoft."

Microsoft is not discredited UNLESS they intend to use Palladium to enforce software licensing and chose to LIE about it.

IF M$ intentions are as-advertised, then the patent is meaningless, since it covers something they said was not part of their plan. On the other hand, if M$ challenges the patent they will be discredited because they deserve it.

Re:Am I wrong here?

[ivan256]

I don't really care if MS uses Palladium to stop people from pirating software, good on them. The REAL problem is them using Digital Rights Management to control what software you can run on your computer regardless of license.


Yep, you're wrong here. You can still use Palladium capable machines to run arbitrary code. Palladium enables software to require restrictions management to be enabled, and specify the restrictions; It doesn't enforce anything that the running software doesn't ask it to. If you don't put Palladium support in the software you run then Palladium has no effect on your code.

Re:There is another alternative

[Surak]

Might even find DCMA covers the encrypted data been phoned-home, so it could be illegal to attempt to prove such patent (if granted) was violated. Wow!

Nope. There are specific provisions in the DMCA that allow breaking of the ciphers if the data contains your own private information.

hp printers and microsoft

[dollargonzo]

an article appeared in Dr. Dobbs about HP printers and their automatic detection of past-expiration date cartridges, etc, and how the system really does not work. HP's whole idea was to make it impossible foir people to by ink refillers, so they would need to throw out $40 on brand new cartridges, and many such tosses while debugging it. eventually, they stopped doing this.

microsoft might try to do the same thing, but remember, if it is transparent, it WILL be hacked, and if it just blocks your system, people will get very annoyed/pissed/angered/dissatisfied, etc. you get the point. it is not naturally possible for m$ to create a technology that is not crackable and yet keeps most people happy.

Re:i think

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

They still cracked the official activation, to

Re:Money talks

[Qrlx]

I realize that your comment is a jab at Microsoft's Licensing 6.0, which got them a ton of profits, but it should be pointed out that your scheme is actually much worse than what Microsoft is doing.

Here's how the MS deal works: Let's say you buy Office -- you get a license which lets you run whatever versions of Office are available over the next two years.

When the two years are up, you can still run Office, you just don't get any new versions. You could still run the Office XP you have five years from now, three years after your subscription has expires. What Microsoft is counting on is that once you're on this treadmill, you never get off. You just renew your contract every two years, not buy new upgrades every time a new version of Office comes out, which is a less predictable cycle.

I'm really amazed so many people signed up for it, but most of them were probably on Office 97 or 2000. I bet they dont' sign up again in two years, because they'll then be at the bleeding edge with Office 2003 or Office Palladium or whatever and people like me on XP will wait for the release past that to uprgade. (OMG how will I live without XDocs??)

Re:Am I wrong here?

[sineltor]

In other words, bye bye Linux.

Yes and no. Read this - apparently HP is making a DRM-compliant version of linux - which should keep the public happy; the only problem is that developers won't be able to compile+run new versions of the kernel (OS needs to be supported by hardware)

For you lazy people:

HP is developing a TCPA-compliant version of Linux.
- GPL requires the result to be Open Source.
- Source code will compile and can be verified.
- But: the source alone is useless without a TPM-specific certificate.

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