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Palladium's Power To Deny
BrianWCarver writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has the most detailed article I've yet seen on Microsoft's Palladium architecture. The article discusses the potential Palladium has to give publishers power to eliminate fair use and the potential for software manufacturers to use Palladium to enforce shrink-wrap licenses. Comments from several great sources including, Ed Felten (Freedom to Tinker), Eben Moglen (pro-bono counsel for the Free Software Foundation and recent Slashdot interviewee), and Seth Schoen (Electronic Frontier Foundation) among many others. Key quotations from article: Palladium could create 'a closed system, in which each piece of knowledge in the world is identified with a particular owner, and that owner has a right to resist its copying, modification, and redistribution. In such a scenario the very concept of fair use has been lost.' 'Palladium will "turn the clock back" to the days before online information was widely available.' and 'Microsoft could decide to lock everything up.'"
Wasn't there an article on slashdot a while back talking about how someone had defensively patented Palladium-DRM schemes in order to prevent M$ from doing exactly this? If so, then how can M$ do this now -- would it not be in violation of such patents?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
If you've read Code you probably already know why this kind of regulation by code is bad, but Lessig also wrote on this over At The Atlantic Monthly.
He says the picture of a world where one needs a license to read is discomforting.
Current laws represents a choice made by our democratic processes, and with copyright as code it's not clear how the same balance can be struck. The problem with regulation (And Law) through code is that there is no place for such a collective choice. If one kind of "trusted systems" software protects rights of fair use, a competing version will promise more control to the owner. This makes fair use a bug, not a feature.
I'm positive that this has been talked about in previous stories about both Palladium and TCPA, but I feel that it is important to highlight the distinction once more. TCPA is a hardware product. Palladium is the next level of system-wide DRM that Microsoft is planning on including in Windows Longhorn or Greenhorn or whatever they feel like calling it tomorrow. The TCPA spec calls for code signing for the system BIOS, and for a special chip to handle encryption duties, taking that load off the processor. This is a good thing, as it could make PGP encryption and signing for email transparent, as well as allow for code-signing and verification in the background. It can be turned off if you don't want it, but it can only be a Good Thing. It doesn't mean you can't run anything other than Windows on your hardware. It means that proper security is implemented at the hardware level, making it more difficult to install a trojaned program (ie, the download is automatically checked for the proper checksum etc) With the load taken off the CPU, better crypto for online transactions and things like remote desktop access would no longer cause performance problems.
Palladium would likely make use of this hardware to take care of the crypto aspects of DRM, but it is a part of Windows. If you don't buy Windows, you have nothing to worry about. Microsoft would have to manage to replace every DVD player, computer and MP3 capable device in the world to make DRM mandatory. Palladium may not be great for consumer's rights, but it is also not forced upon anyone. We still have a choice. Run some form of *nix on your current hardware, or buy a Mac. This shall pass.
My 0.10 shekels
The US resembles the late UK 19th century 'free market out of control' situation so badly (replete with your modern day Gilbert and Sullivans attempting to enforce unreasonable copyright laws on multinational soil) that people really have forgotten that 'content creators' dont have a say. Content buyers, content distributors, content publishers, have ALL the power.
.. and no, any "content creator" that owns a record label (the P. Diddys or Missy Elliot) don't count since their interests are planeted firmly in the middle-man mindset. I garauntee you most artists and musicians would wanna slap ya upside the head for calling the Hollywood juggernaut content creators. They are publishers.
Funny how every drastic social backlash seems to be preceded with a golden-age of middle-men. Just ask yourself when the last time you actually hearn an honest to god content creator speak his or her mind
Read up on some copyright history and you'll see we played this game about 100 years ago when piano roll technology hit the market and the UK saw rampant 'piracy' in the US. Find out why publishers are consistantly mistaken for content creators over and over in the latter stages of each cycle in the history of copyright law.
"Old man yells at systemd"
[[["Mac OS X is not unix"]]]
The Open Group -- the official holders of the Unix trademark -- classifies UNIX as such:
"UNIX - the worldwide Single UNIX Specification integrating X/Open Company's XPG4 and additional standards. The majority of commercial vendors have registered UNIX products, with most at the UNIX 95 level and newer products registering for UNIX 98."
Obtaining an official UNIX title is merely achieved when key functionality is added, thus allowing the OS to meet the requirements of the UNIX brand. In this context, Windows NT could obtain UNIX status. Believe it or not.
Either way, your argument is moot. The open group has already clasified Apple as an official suporter Supporter of the "Single UNIX Specification".
See for yourself