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Lucky Green vs. Palladium

Posted by michael on from the deathmatch dept.

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."

5 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Dystopia still possible by leandrod · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
    DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
    GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
  2. Interesting Links (MLP) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  3. from the horse's mouth by Quetza · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lucky's description of why he did it

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

  4. Re:Follow the money... by dcavanaugh · · Score: 4, Informative

    "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.

  5. Re:Am I wrong here? by ivan256 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.