Slashdot Mirror
RMS Urges Opposition to "Trusted Computing"
Andy Tai writes "In this Newsforge article, Richard Stallman analyzes the "Trusted Computing" initiative and Microsoft's Palladium, points out that such initiatives are really means to ensure your computer can be trusted by Microsoft and Hollywood (you can't do things they don't want), and urges computer users to organize, to support the Public Knowledge and the Digital Speech projects and to use their consumer power to block "Trusted Computing" in its tracks."
...RMS made quite a fool of himself at MIT's recent Palladium discussion. Highlights include taking the podium uninvited, having Ron Rivest (the "R" in RSA) tell him to please stay on-topic, and delivering his stock rant under the guise that it was topical.
RMS is a dork. A principled dork, but a dork nonetheless.
former student, returned to his Alma Mater and gave a talk on some of the
technical aspects of Microsoft's Palladium project. Brian began the talk with
a quick overview of the goals of the project. He stated that Palladium's
goal was to 'Protect Software from Software'. He went on to enumerate some
of the nightmare scenarios that keep the Palladium team up at night, such as
a virus/trojan that launches something worse than a Denial Of Service (DOS)
attack.
These included:
After this brief introduction, Brian went on to describe a hardware based
software security system that would provide 'Fingertip to eyeball security.'
This system would consist of a hardware Security Support Component (SSC)
chip, a special security kernel called the 'Nexus' and user level security
applications called 'Agents'. Palladium would also require alterations to
the MMU for the curtailing of memory and USB for secure input/output.
Brian admitted that Palladium would offer no protection against DOS
attacks and that Palladium would necessarily include a universal serial
identifier (this
would be provided by the RSA key burned into the SSC chip). He also promised
that Palladium would run unmodified legacy applications and drivers.
Problems surfaced during the end of the talk when Brian began taking
questions. Richard Stallman correctly pointed out that Palladium was being
presented as a way of improving the security of personal computers. Indeed,
according to Brian, this was the focus of Microsoft's Palladium project, but
no where in his talk did he present any solution to the crucial nightmare
scenarios that are supposedly keeping the Palladium team up at night.
Indeed, as was pointed out by Stallman and others, if Palladium would run
unmodified legacy applications, then how could Palladium thwart the legacy
virus/trojans without upgrading Palladium enabled Outlook/IE/IIS?
The truth is Brian was being disingenuous when he described the nightmare
scenarios that motivate the Palladium team. In all honesty, there are only
two nightmare scenarios that are relevant to the Palladium project:
internet
has ushered in the end of there ever ballooning bottom line
holders
to effectively eliminate the fair use rights of the public
With Palladium, Microsoft plans to solve the former by introducing the latter.
To get to the heart of the matter, we have to ask _why_?
Brian says Microsoft is concerned that large copyright holders will refrain
from publishing works in formats compatible with the Windows PC. My theory?
Microsoft sees an opportunity to bolster there own
bottom line. Palladium is meant to do for DRM what
for web services.
By providing the infrastructure, Microsoft hopes the content companies will
write applications and release content only for Palladium enabled systems.
Joe Consumer who wants to listen to the next Brittany Spears album on his
computer will be forced to upgrade to the next release of Windows/DRM. Of
course, it doesn't hurt that Palladium could provide quite a few wrench's to
throw at Microsoft's open source competitors.
Nightmare scenarios indeed!
Okay, so you have a piece of hardware with a proprietary operating system. So far so good. But now with trusted computing, that system won't load any component that is not signed by a trusted party. It's not about you trusting what you run, but about Microsoft choosing who gets the privilege of writing software for the platform. If Microsoft doesn't like you, for whatever reason, they can just refuse the signature that is needed for your software to load. This is basically where it is headed; it's the one sure way to use your monopoly to crush the competition, in particular open source. Even if some open source developers get Microsoft to approve their program, that signature will be applied to a particular binary release. The users cannot roll their own binary from the sources, because that won't carry the signature of a ``trusted'' certificate. So basically the operating system vendor regains control as the gatekeeper who determines what will run on your machine. What's worse, if the hardware vendors follow suit, then a certificate will be required by an operating system to boot on the hardware. If you are lucky enough to get a signed version of your favorite free kernel, good luck rebuilding it. The developers may be forbidden from giving you the certificate, if they get to d the signing themselves. That key is copyrighted bits, right? Letting everyone have it would be against the DMCA.
Although RMS does arouse some passions within the slashdot community, in this, I believe, he is right.
There is, in English Common Law history, a subject area, called the Enclosures Acts, where vast quantities of land were removed from common use, and awarded to landowners in what was a thinly veiled land grab.
It had justification, of course. Private Ownership was deemed more efficient by those that grabbed the land. Far be it for the government to disagree. The whole idea of common weal ( as in commonwealth) was called The Tragedy of The Commons.It would appear that history is attempting to repeat itself. If computing can be controlled by a trusted source - Who will that trusted source be?
This age old problem, can be solved in a number of ways - a dictatorship, or, a democracy, or...
Not quite trusting my fellow man, I think I would rather do my own choosing. But then, I use GPL'd software. A lot. And your choice will be?
This is progress?
"Wait a minute? I do... and so far it seems to work... BLOODY HELL! How am I supposed to make a point of how Microsoft's intentions are evil (which they clearly are), when I can't find a good example where trusted 'fill in the blank' doesn't work... Anyone??? ?"
I'm puzzled how this is more 'flamebait' than 'interesting'. I think he makes a good point. There's nothing wrong with stopping and asking "Why should I follow the anti-MS stampede?". If you guys knee-jerk against every single thing that MS says or does, then how's anybody going to take you seriously when they do something that's really really bad.
As for my response: The main reason I'm against this is that the wrong problem is getting solved, and the consumers get burned for it. The problem is not that computers need to be restricted so that Hollywood can feel safe with digital content, the problem is that Hollywood needs to learn how to make it in this market.
Hollywood doesn't understand that people are happy to pay for service, but they can't pay until the service is provided. Right now, I could go download a bunch of movies from kazaa. What would that experience be like? Well, I get varying quality, unreliable connections, and it takes hours (sometimes days) to get a movie to come down. Now if I could pay $5 to download a guaranteed high quality movie at a speed of 100KB/s, why would I even care about Kazaa?
If the internet got to the point that p2p could work that fast, then the pressure is on Hollywood to provide a better service. "The first 100 people to buy this movie will also recieve a still from the movie..." or something like that.
PC's and the Internet are marketing opportunities, they are not exploits designed to put Hollywood out of business. If they're not willing to get with the times, then they don't have any reason to get computers regulated with technology like Palladium.
"Derp de derp."
-
Boot-Level Programmer-San Jose
I figured TCPA was just some buzzword I could pick up out of a book if I got the job. I do that all the time. But no: The blurb about "changing the way people see, hear and play" just didn't register.I hope they do call me though. I'll give them a piece of my mind, followed by the URL of my DeCSS mirror.
Now I ask you this: if they're verifying the "system integrity" of a linux box with the TCPA, are they complying with the GPL?
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Man, I can see DRM and Palladium getting closer every day.
Stallman's examples this time are rather simplistic. His concerns about "DRM", aside from the "I want to be able to shock myself" degree of control he wants for PCs, aren't all they're chalked up to be. Calling it "trecharous computing" makes him sound like a kook, not a serious voice.
To wit:
"Your boss's e-mails will be written in disappearing ink!"
"You won't be able to send incrimiating documents to the press!"
Any corporate system that causes the main focus of communication to automatically expire with no way to retrieve it is a poor business model, not an aspect of trusted computing. Investigative and Corporate preferences aside (after Enron, do you REALLY think that it'd be hard for Congress to slap a "records requirement" on corporations?), someone should be able to mark their e-mails as "archived." And you can always just print out the document...
And, if some company is too paranoid to keep any e-mails and advanced enough to be truly paperless, there's still a digital camera and the on-screen display. Or the simple expediency of calling the cops...
As for the rest--if MS wants Word to be Word-only, more power to them. It'd keep some large usability problems from arising, and quickly tone down word e-mail.
Postscript 2 really irks me. I'm no programmer, but even I can imagine a system where "untrusted" code & docs are run in a "sandbox," where they can't do any real harm and the user can still use them. Given six months of speed increase, the user probably won't even notice the difference between "game on new system's emulated layer" and "game on old system raw."
*sigh*
I don't think this is a question at all - we have to stand against this latest MS evil plan. Not everyone agrees with everything RMS says (though I do think that GPL style free software is a blessing, I'm not against software that's more restrictive - but there needs to be a choice) but on this issue I don't think there can be too many who think he's wrong.
Afterall wasn't it Microsoft who lied in court? Or just last week about the "switcher"? They can't be trusted, it's that simple - they've shown that time and time again.
As for Hollywood, well again why should my computer put the needs and wishes above my own? So I buy a DVD, why can't I play that everywhere? Why can't I create my own player? Who says I shouldn't be able to buy a DVD while on holiday and be able to watch it when I get home? If I save a little money by buying it overseas isn't that my good fortune? Why should a commodity like a DVD have such wide differences between price and terms in different places?
No there are legitimate reasons why I might want to do things that MS/Hollywood want to stop - I don't see why my computer should help them take away MY FREEDOM?
Personally I think it's time we started something like FSF for hardware (FHF if you will) so that we can escape the clutches of "the evil Empire".
What happens next? The PC refuses to run any OS without a Microsoft signature, and we're blocked from reverse engineering it? This seems to be happening already with the Xbox, is this just a test case for the whole PC?!
Perhaps Red Hat should make a PCs, and allow anyone to copy the design. For no other reason than to protect THEIR business model.
1) The traditional one. This puts the access control of computer resources in the hands of computer owner.
2) The DRM, CP Protection etc: These system wants to take away access control from the owner.
I don't know why the second part is even called "security".
The problem with DRM etc is that once they become more wide spread, someone will provide a method to defeat them. And once defeated, there is no easy way to enable them since the owner doesn't want to enable them! E.g. region code and macrovision disabling in most dvd players. So the only way to implement DRM etc would either be by making it a law and have a very stringent enforcement or don't allow people to buy computers (just allow them to rent only, which will contain license clause that the sytem must be audited, insured at renters expense). Either of the proposition is very expensive.