Slashdot Mirror
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."
it's been proven time and time again that a hacker can outfox Microsoft. Look at all the copies of windows and office and other MS products out there that have product activation. There were hacks and cracks for that technology out before the software's release date.
Doesn't the fact that the guy's name is Lucky Green sort of tip you off that he's playing Patent Lottery?
Microsoft will make him An Offer He Can't Refuse, and they will buy his patent (if they even need to.)
Warning: excessively realistic and cynical comments follow
Sorry buddy, but you will not get justice in this country unless you have the money for a team of attack lawyers. Anything that may cost Microsoft money will be dealth with swiftly and efficiently, and unless you can match them benjamin for benjamin on legal fees, it's not going to work. Think I'm wrong? Look at the prosecution and conviction rates for poor people compared to rich people for the exact same crime and similar evidence.
In order of likelyhood.
1.) Microsoft has already filed patent applications for this process (pretty likely, I think), in which case Lucky Green will be too late.
2.) Green gets patent. Microsoft uses Palladium for license enforcement. Green gets rich!! Consumer is stuck with Palladium licensing.
3.) Green gets patent, enforces cease and desist on Microsoft, Microsoft finds another way.
Hmmm... I didn't realize there was one to be damaged.
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
Bill G. Hey 'Lucky', can I license your patented process?
Lucky Pound sand Gates, I 0wn j00!
Bill G. Here's 100 million dollars.
Lucky I'm your b1tch.
Trolling is a art,
It sounds like a very sound plan, and it does put M$ in a intesting position as far as the Palladium initiative is concerned.
However, my readings from /. have told me that the main issue with Palladium has always been to secure digital entertainment content (ie. movies, music, etc) However, there is nothing saying that M$ could not develop another "technology" separate from Palladium to work on software licences (therefore negating the "patent protection" this has bought us)
I can't really give too informed an opinion without reading the actual patent filed (and I find it interesting that Lucky Green's website hasn't been updated since the symposium), but I can see M$ being able to honor this and still work around it, should they choose to.
If all else failed, they could go back to the ??IA for the political power to pull it off. "We scratched your back with Palladium. Now, you scratch ours."
Of course, this may be all a bunch of paranoid M$ bashing. Maybe they will do the right thing about it all. It's just interesting to think of the possibilities...
Slashdot - Come for the creative thought, stay for the lesbians!
You missed the plan:
1. File patents on methods for using Palladium-like solutions to enforce software licensing.
2. If the patent is not challenged, then Palladium cannot be used to enforce software licensing.
3. If the patent is challenged, then Microsoft's true intentions become obvious.
Note that this plan doesn't care if Microsoft wins the contest or not, it simply intends to discredit Microsoft.
Oh, I almost forgot:
4. Profit!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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.
Without the right signature for DRM, you can't run a piece of software that isn't licensed to run on that hardware. IE, not "I don't have my 30 day license," but "I wrote some software, and didn't pay the company that made the OS so I could write it." In other words, bye bye Linux.
The article doesn't seem to cover if his patents cover this, since thats what I THOUGHT they were talking about until the last few lines where they talk about piracy.
IANAPE, but his claim in the states should count as prior art for some period for him in Europe, both in applying himself and stopping MS doing so. And MS does target the global market, so they cant do it in USA but not elsewhere....
He should exclusively license it to Larry Ellison...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Here are some interesting links. Remember kids, it's not whoring if you're doing it anonymously!
s tems.com/msg02554.html: Lucky Green discusses this issue
p to/2002-June/019444.html: Palladium and TCPA.
http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@wasabisy
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcry
Google should yield even more interesting documents
Enforcing software licensing can't work unless it's impossible to run software that isn't signed. Some of us would like to run software that does not come from Microsoft and their friends.
believe it or not, there are actually groups out there who still call themselves cypherpunks. like it or not, they're real people. your post is like reading the LA times saying "the bloods and the crips are sooo cliche...." and demanding that they be called something else in print.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
As seen on The Simpsons , all Bill Gates has to do is "buy him out".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I don't know how things are in the US, but here in Blegium if you patent something but don't "use" it (e.g. implement the stuff you describe in your patent and market it) for a number of yearts (I thought it was two, but I'm not sure), the patent office can force you to license it to third parties who are interested in actually bringing to market what you patented.
This regulation is there to make sure companies don't invent something that's better than anything that's out there, but wait with actually using their invention because e.g. they already have most of the market and as such aren't inclined to improve their product, but at the same time they don't want this technology to be used by their competition. So it's some kind of consumer protection (within X years, the consumer will have access to the invented stuff if it's usefull and marketable).
So if this rule also exists in the US, this guy could actually be forced to license his patents to Microsoft (or anyone else) if they want it. They even don't have to challenge it. It'll still show the licensee's "true intentions" of course, but still...
Donate free food here
Something you can think of off the top of your head just after a conference really ought not to be patentable. It's a weakness of the system if it is.
Abusing the patent system by obtaining ridiculous patents is one way of demonstrating how broken the system really is. My all-time favorite is Method of Swinging on a Swing I laughed so hard when I read it that I cried!
From the article:
"Biddle insisted that the impetus behind Palladium was solely to secure digital entertainment content and that he knew of no way that it could be used for the enforcement of software licensing."
Now, according to El Reg, Microsoft recently published a job ad for a position within the Palladium group which contained the following sentence:
"Our technology allows content providers, enterprises and consumers to control what others can do with their digital information, such as documents, music, video, ebooks, and software. Become a key leader, providing vision and industry leadership in developing DRM, Palladium and Software Licensing products and Trust Infrastructure Services."
Contradiction city, I say.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
Lucky's description of why he did it
--
"Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!"
Microsoft can simply implement the patent secretly, ie phone-home software licensing data, without announcing it. Deny they do this if necessary - after all, the data is not for public consumption, just for 'partners'.
Doesn't matter if the patent is granted - the patentee will get nowhere suing MS, and this way round the burden of proof is on the patentee proving MS used the patented technique.
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!
And what makes you think this guy won't get help fighting MS from, oh say, everybody that would have to pay the MS licensing fees?!
It's a pretty common, and very sad, misconception about the US judicial system that the one with the most money always wins. The guys with the money only fight the battles they can win. If they don't think they can win, they very quietly settle out of court for enough money to keep it quiet, and you never hear about it.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
"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.
Whether or Lucky Green intends to "sell out" to Microsoft or hold his patents to frustrate them, this is an object lesson in how broken patent law is. At least they're apparently catching on down at the patent office. Declan McCullagh reports that "The head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office acknowledged on Tuesday that many business method patents had been wrongfully awarded in the past, but predicted a more careful approach in the future." Time will tell, I suppose. In the meantime, no need for an actual product, or even a plan for a product, or even a clearly defined idea for a product. Patent first, ask questions later.
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.
What about Microsoft sues him just because they can and they are pissed at him for trying to show off as a geekero? Would that mean Microft's intentions are to use Paladium to enforce their licenses? It just does not make sense.
As much as I don't like Microsoft, I still believe that they can and are going to enforce their copyright however they can. It is their right to do so.
On a second thought I don't believe Lucky Green really has enough technical details about Palladium to be able to create a foundation for his patent. You have to describe how you do it not only that you do it. For example you can't patent a levetating car if you don't know exactly how you are going to do it.
But "lucky green" sounds like a cleaning agent and "palladium" sounds like some moldly crap growing on my sink... so "lucky green" vs "palladium" sounds like some commerical where a frustrated house wife is tired of scrubbing, so she sprays on the cleaner and voila, its brand spanking new...
then again, maybe its just me...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
This interesting startegy has prallells among corporations competing with each other. I heard rumors that Motorola has pursued this strategy against certain telecom competitors:
If a competitor has a strong patent, and they want to pursue the same technology, then there is an alternative to violation.
They pursue patents on improvements on the original patent. A couple of years down the line, the originator will be compelled to use some of the (perhaps obvious) patented improvements. Then they are in an excellent bargaining position, either for royalites or for rights to the original patent.
Tor
That makes me wonder. Why hasn't MS gotten around to buying themselves a small country yet? (Or, possibly, just buying an island and delcaring sovereignity, which might make them one of the first to do that and become actually recognized, as far as I know...) You'd think it'd be easier for them. They could just make up their own laws. (Open Source is illegal! Everyone must upgrade every product they own as soon as the next one comes out! )
1. The federal cicuit has been more keen lately on invalidating internet or business method patents due to obviousness problems.
It could be argued that it would be obvious to extend palladium's capabilities to include software registration enforcment.
2. Microsoft is not above patent law on legitimate patents:
Since 1998, Microsoft has been named a defendant in at least 35 patent-infringement cases, compared with seven suits in the prior 22 years. Twenty-one are currently active. - wsj 10/3/02
Nope. Wouldn't work. Microsoft can demonstrate prior art.
TyZone
In the RMS biography "Free as in Freedom" by Sam Williams, the point is made that Stallman views the legal system as just another system to be hacked upon. There is a complex set of rules to follow, and with a clever, well-made program (e.g. the GPL) you can achieve things people hadn't even thought were possible.
Using the patent system against itself and against Microsoft seems to me to be at least a similar idea, if not the same thing.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Consider this:
1) Microsoft wants everyone to use their software.
2) Microsoft wants everyone to pay to use their software.
3) Microsoft wants to ensure through techinal means that everyone pay to use their software because users cannot be trusted and we are all villians.
4) Microsoft will use Palladium/ to ensure that everyone pay to use their software.
Joe Blow Public doesn't care about any of this because Joe Blow Public invests in Microsoft shares and are happy when they get a good rate of return. As long as Microsoft makes them money and they can run their birthday card creator program, they don't care. How many non-slashdot readers are going to say "Wow, Microsoft does some things I don't like - maybe I shouldn't use their software"? Yeah right!
I applaud this guy for at least doing something, but this won't prove anything we don't already know.
This assumes that MS cares about what is legal and what isn't. Most likely they'll just ignore this guy and do whatever the hell they want to do anyway.
--Michael Luton
Lucky has a nice idea, but I don't think the timing is really going to work. Here's the problem.
He wants to know if Microsoft is going to use Palladium for copy protection. We'd all like to know that. Well, of course, we're going to find out sooner or later, at least by the time they release Palladium, maybe around 2005. And chances are we'll find out sooner than that, because Microsoft will release specs and APIs to the developer community in order to have applications ready when the technology is released. So maybe we'll find out about 2004.
Lucky wants to speed up this process, so he files a patent hoping that Microsoft will either challenge it, or it will turn out that they have a patent of their own. But it's likely to take a couple of years for his patent to go through. So he's not going to find out until around 2004 anyway.
The timing doesn't really work. Waiting to see if Microsoft contests the patent won't give information for a couple of years. And by that time, chances are Microsoft will have revealed enough information about Palladium that we'll know the answer anyway.
The one thing that isn't going to happen, I guarantee, is that Microsoft will say "Oh no! Our secret plan to use Palladium for copy protection is ruined due to Lucky Green! Curses, foiled again!" If Microsoft does plan to use Palladium like this, they'll have the patent protection in place well in advance.
Where do we put a statue for this guy? ;-)
But seriously... If MS fights these patents they show their true intentions you say? Why is that? Maybe they would rather have had those patents themselves? For what purpose ? True... probably the wrong one (wrong in OUR eyes), but maybe to make sure no one misuses THEIR technologie (palladium) ?
Why is no one doubting the intentions of this guy? And maybe if his intentions are good NOW, what if he is granted these patents and realises, maybe not now, but somewhere along the way, what power and possible wealth he could gain with these patents? Maybe at a point that he desperately needs money or whatever, or just because of plain greed.
We always question MS here, but we still need to take a carefull look at the other parties as well ok?