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.'"

Comments

Excuse me, but

[Raul654]

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?

Re:Excuse me, but

[retards]

Maybe by buying the patent or suing the owner of that patent until he/she is forced to sell it or capitulate. Sound familiar? It takes money to use a patent as leverage.

Re:Excuse me, but

[vudujava]

> would it not be in violation of such patents

When has the law meant anything to Microsoft? They do what they want and when they get caught they just tie it up in the courts for years until the technology is no longer useful to them, or they have found a way to purchase it.

Re:Excuse me, but

[sh!va]

So I was meeting a very successful entrepreneur and he gave me this insight:
Patents can be used to ward of small competitors to a business. You cannot use a patent to ward of microsoft or ibm or any other large company with a large amount of money in the bank. You can sue them for patent infringement, they would drag the case in court, fight for a year or so and pay you a million bucks at the end. But by that time, they've already done whatever damage they could, and your company is bankrupt.
Of course this doesn't work if the patent holder is a big company such as one of the above.
Moral of the story is: if big players want to infringe smaller players' patents, they could do so and have a good chance of getting away with it for not that much money.
Such are the wonders of capitalism.

Re:Excuse me, but

[Dan Nordquist]

I think this is my new favorite cliche here on /.: the view that the judges, juries and structures of the legal system in the United States are completely blind to anything but money.

It doesn't cost ANYTHING to defend yourself in court. Sure, a company with a ton of money and resources can research an argument or position limitlessly, but if that position doesn't have truth behind it, a court will certainly see through it.

So can we please toss this argument already? Anyone who is likely to sympathize with the crack of "more money = scales of justice" is already thinking it when you've hit the Submit button.

Re:Excuse me, but

[Kierthos]

Sorry, often times it does cost to defend yourself in court. There is the expenses incurred in having a lawyer (or more then one) for your side. There is also the loss of income because you are not working while you are in court defending youself. Sure, you can hope, if you win, that the judge will take your legal costs onto the judgement, and factor in some punitive damages, but it's not guarenteed.

Kierthos

Re:Excuse me, but

[SiliconEntity]

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?

That was cypherpunk "Lucky Green", who said he submitted a patent application on ways to use Palladium for software copy protection. This was after Microsoft publicly told him that not only did they have no plans to do that, they couldn't even think of a way to use the technology for that purpose. Lucky said that he could think of lots of ways, so he'd go ahead and patent them. You can read more about Lucky's plans here.

I haven't heard anything about this lately, and a recent patent office search for applications under Lucky's real name (widely known, his initials are MB) didn't turn up any hits. So I don't know if he actually went through with it or not.

Re:Excuse me, but

[Moofie]

Might not cost anything to defend yourself, but to defend yourself SUCCESSFULLY? That's a different kettle of fish.

Even if I were a legal genius, if I have a day job, and I spend my time in court rather than working, that costs me. Sure, you might argue that if that were so, I might be well advised to make a living practicing law, but there is an opportunity cost related to being in court rather than doing something else with your time.

So, yes, justice costs. As long as people (and judges) think that expensive suits mean credible arguments, justice costs.

Re:Excuse me, but

[senahj]

> It doesn't cost ANYTHING to defend yourself in court.

Clearly you've never defended yourself in court against a
deep-pockets plaintiff. Perhaps you should refrain from
commenting unless you know what you're talking about.

Someone with money to burn can bury you and the court under
a blizzard of motions, subpoenas, and depositions, to most of
which you will need to respond. Copying and filing fees
alone in such a case can amount to many thousands of dollars.

Then there's the small matter of your own time.
A plaintiff with money to burn can tie you up in court
appearances and depositions for months on end.
Will your employer understand if you only show up for
work one or two days a week for six months?

See if you can find the answers to these questions
by Googling about :

What has been the effect on the personal finances of
Keith Henson (L5 Society founder, among other things)
of exercising his free speech rights to criticize the
Church of Scientology ?
How did this effect come about ?

Who was Scamizdat (hint: it wasn't Grady Ward) ?
How many judisial motions did the Church of Scientology file
against Grady Ward in an effort to prove that he was Scamizdat ?
What impact did this have on Ward's finances ?

Who is Larry Wollersheim ?
How much was he awarded in his lawsuit(s) against the
Church of Scientology? (appealed all the way to the
Supreme Court; denied cert)
When did Scientology exhaust the appeals process ?
How much has Scientology actually paid to date ?
How many lawsuits, cross-complaints, and legal actions has
Wollersheim endured in his search for justice ?

Re:Excuse me, but

[Master of Transhuman]

No, such are the wonders of STATE capitalism.

In a free market, you wouldn't have IP laws - and probably you wouldn't have companies the size of Microsoft either - in fact, since corporations are state creations, you might not have that form of company at all - nor could they sue small companies for frivolous patent infringements...

OTOH, they could copy small companies technology and use their marketing clout to beat them - except that usually small companies are much more adept at that than big ones...

Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Software companies will still have to sell software to survive. If people don't like the restrictions - they will shop elsewhere. I see this as nothing but a replacement for the dongle.

bah

[MentLTheo]

This is just Microsoft's way of seperating the men from the boys. They just want to be able take guys like me who only use windows for gaming and push us away from the OS altogether so they know who their dedicated users are. Thats when they break out the 'kool-aid' and ascend to heaven in a spirtual journey.

=[ sad

[Vodak]

It saddens me that some US people are spending all this time and energy protesting a war that hasn't happened yet and could give a crap about things happening in their own country in regards to their freedom. And it's not just this story, it's all the freedoms that are being taken away thinks to the events of 2001.

Re:=[ sad

[Tim C]

Well, perhaps they are just more concerned about the potential loss of life, than some computing thing that they've never heard of?

Palladium may well be very news worthy in the industry press, but trust me, almost no-one outside of the IT industry is going to have heard of it. *Everyone* has heard about Iraq.

Re:=[ sad

[Vodak]

I won't get into the war argument here on slashdot, I mean I could argue either side. My comment was in regards to the fact that the United States is being destroyed from with in and few people are seeing it.

Re:=[ sad

[Tim C]

Ah, but few people are seeing it because it's not happening all at once.

Things like this, the general population won't know about until it's implemented and is being sold to them, and then, they'll only have the positive marketing spin (and perhaps a little bit of nay-saying in the general press, but nothing technical or deep).

Things like the laws passed in the wake of the WTC attack get through, becuase

a) it makes people feel safe, and as though people are doig soemthing about it
b) "I have nothing to hide"

I do agree with you, and take some solace from the fact that I'm in (and from) the UK. Of course, where the US leads, we (blindly) follow...

Re:=[ sad

[skillet-thief]

I agree that it would be better if people were more aware of what is happening to their rights. They need to get past the idea of the computer being just a tool, and into the idea that the details of computer interoperability and the laws on intellectual property are going to determine the social fabric of tomorrow.

But as far as your comment goes :

It saddens me that some US people are spending all this time and energy protesting a war that hasn't happened yet

WTF?

A. It is hardly saddening, that the people are concerned about their gov't jumping into war.

B. Isn't smarter to protest before a war happens, than after?

Re:=[ sad

[aftk2]

(Note: not posted anonymously - some things are more important than being "offtopic" in an /. discussion)...

These war protesters are mere sheep

At what point did a dissenting opinion indicate someone was a "sheep?" Even as anti-war sentiment grows, those willing to march are still far outnumbered by ho-hum lackwits. Who's the real sheep?

CNN shows some woman that claims that she is protesting because her son joined the marines to get a education and not to fight a war.

You're right. That is pretty stupid. But guess what? It's not representative of the anti-war movement. And you know what else? You can protest a war because you have loved ones in the armed services, and not be a hypocrite. There are such things as just and unjust wars.

freedom did not come for free in the US and it will not come for free for the Iraqi people

Blech. At what point did it become our duty to give Iraq freedom? If, as you surmise, this war is about some sort of higher purpose, let's reign it in for awhile, and focus on some places like, oh, let's see - North Korea and Saudi Arabia, maybe? Things ain't too free over there either.

Re:=[ sad

[Malcontent]

And yet your chances of being killed by iraq are nill. You have a better chance of winning the lottery then being killed by iraq. Your chances of being effected by palladium OTOH is almost 100%.

"they" are worrying about the wrong thing. "They" are also incapable of worrying about more then one thing at a time. "They" worry about whatever the media tells them to worry about.

Re:=[ sad

[UpnAtom]

Pretty convenient for Microsoft that everyone's distracted.

Still the bad press must be having some effect, else they wouldn't have changed the name from Palladium.

I think that Microsoft has realised that they can sidestep a lot of flack just by making the issue more complicated than most people are capable of understanding.

Both these issues, Iraq and Palladium will change the world. Best to make use of an internet that encourages free speech while we still have it.

Dave.

Re:=[ sad

[dbrutus]

Marriage isn't mandated when you sleep with someone. Alimony grows out of marriage and is part of a voluntary contract, and again, employment contracts are also voluntary in a way that copyright is not.

Without any actual agreement, I'm restricted from running certain programs on my computer (servers) to serve up certain data that I have (movies, songss, etc). This restriction is legal, Constitutional, but does infringe on my rights as much as the old English royal monopolies did. The Constitution does not grant rights but recognizes them, which is why we have things like the 9th and 10th amendments and why a significant fraction of the founding fathers were against a bill of rights on exactly the grounds that future generations of bozos would come to feel that only the rights written in the Constitution existed and all else was controlled by the government.

If you pipe muzak into an elevator, in what sense have I asked you to provide me with this? The only sense is some larger advancement of the arts and sciences social contract. But the ability to tinker, to create new things out of our own equipment is a fundamental basis for advancing the arts and sciences and just as valid as any band or movie company creating art. DRM and Palladium require that this sort of tinkering be substantially curtailed (and likely eliminated) in order for them to work. If the playback system is open enough to tinker, it's open enough to override DRM.

So here we end up with the arts and sciences being retarded by taking a very flexible piece of equipment (the general purpose personal computer) and making it a closed rigid system in order that other types of creators may more securely exploit their legal monopolies. I find that absurd. I find it doubly absurd because the tradeoffs are not being debated on those terms by our legislators who are, after all, our designated representatives for all this mess.

Palladium is useless without an underlying hardware base that is 100% compliant with it. If you can play media on a non-DRM system, you'll just make a virtual machine that is non-DRM and run your media from inside the virtual machine. We don't need faster processors to do that already (albeit at lower quality than native) a chip generation or two further down the road and the difference won't even be humanly detectible.

If Palladium can be so easily circumvented the only reason to spend money developing, pushing, and deploying it is to prepare for the day when it *does* become mandatory. Is that too hard to figure out?

The 2nd amendment people fight mandatory gun registrations on the same grounds. After the 10th or 15th country that went from registration to confiscation and full bans you draw the line further out where it's still politically viable to resist. The same logic holds true for the banning of the open system general purpose computer.

Re:=[ sad

[knobmaker]

I'm not pro-war. But I'm 100% anti-peaceniks.

Then I guess it's not completely evil for me to hope that, by some strange science fiction manifestation of karma, you find yourself fleeing across the desert, dodging angry Iraqui bullets.

Here's my story. See if you can figure out why I find it annoying that people who have never sacrificed anything for their "beliefs" can judge the motivations of others in so shallow a manner.

When I was a young man, the "peaceniks" tried to talk me out of going to Vietnam. I went anyway. A year in that sunny clime convinced me that while some wars might be morally justified, that one sure as hell wasn't. With less than a year to go on my hitch, I was ordered back to SE Asia with my squadron. I refused to go. There was great puzzlement among my squadron officers, since I had been ordered to Bangkok, Thailand, which at that time was the land of milk and honeys, the favored destination for GIs leaving Vietnam for R&R. There didn't appear to be any explanation for my bizarre behavior, other than a genuine belief that dropping bombs on the Vietnamese was immoral. However, as was their duty, my officers busted me out with a bad discharge, I lost my various GI entitlements, and here I am, just a few years short of my retirement move to a cardboard box.

Now, strangely enough, I'm not bitter. I knew what I was doing and what I would lose, and I know I was lucky not to spend time in Leavenworth for my beliefs. But it does piss me off to hear shallow real-politik arguments bereft of any moral component used against people who are doing what they think is right. Hey, maybe if I hadn't refused to go hang bombs on F-111s in Bangkok, maybe we'd have "won" the war in Vietnam. You think? Naw, probably not. It was late 1972, the war was lost, and the F-111s were broke most of time they were over there. I think it's a shame that I and the other "peaceniks" didn't quit fighting a few years earlier. Might have saved a few hundred thousand lives, American and Vietnamese.

The point is that the "peaceniks" are making a moral choice. Even if you don't agree with their choice, they deserve more admiration and consideration than a gaggle of grasping pinhead politicians who are making the decision for purely utilitarian purposes.

Finally, a little quote from a speech last fall by Sen. Byrd: "Representative Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to William H. Herndon, stated: 'Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.'"

Don't answer me. Answer Abraham.

Re:=[ sad

[Planesdragon]

Without any actual agreement, I'm restricted from running certain programs on my computer (servers) to serve up certain data that I have (movies, songss, etc).

No, you're not. If your data is data that you can legally distribute, you can distribute it however you want.

However, if you "data" is someone else's meal ticket/unfinished art, you are restrained from "serving" it just as you're restrained from making a million copies and giving them away.

If Palladium can be so easily circumvented the only reason to spend money developing, pushing, and deploying it is to prepare for the day when it *does* become mandatory. Is that too hard to figure out?

Palladium is a classic "opt in" system.

If I were to make CDs that could only be played in, oh, Sony CD-players, and they were clearly labeled as such, no one could complain or bitch--even if those CD players didn't have any audio-out jacks.

Palladium is purported to work just like this. If you don't want your MP3s to work under Palladium, buy the CDs, rip them yourself, and play them on the same programs you're playing now.

The whole "trusted computing" idea will make it viable to sell content wholly over the 'net with little to no fear of immediate file-sharing. It won't be a risky gamble against probability that relies on the goodwill and generosity of the masses--it'll be enforced at a technical level beyond the capabilities of most computer professionals to subvert.

The 2nd amendment people fight mandatory gun registrations on the same grounds. After the 10th or 15th country that went from registration to confiscation and full bans you draw the line further out where it's still politically viable to resist. The same logic holds true for the banning of the open system general purpose computer.

I hate people who play politics like that.

Pick what's right, and fight for that. Don't pick what's best for your side and scream and hope that you get what's right. Fight what's right and never, ever, EVER change that.

Guns should be tax-deductable, registered, and a free ticket to militia training at the local guard base. There should be no loopholes in the system, no exceptions for dealers or diabilities, no excuses for "losing" a gun--and no one should lose their guns for anything short of gross misuse of firearms.

Re:=[ sad

[antirename]

Thank god it's not the other way around; think gun control. And no, this isn't offtopic. Whatever your opinion is on the matter, it is certainly a perfect example of a constitutional right being taken away a little at a time on the basis of emotional arguments and debatable statistics. Maybe fair use (not saying it's a constitutional right, but it certainly is well enshrined in U.S. law) is the next to go the way of the dodo bird. Sure looks that way to me... emotional arguments, few alternatives to "banning" presented by the RIAA and their ilk, statistics on "lost revenue" that may or may not show cause and effect, and a steady chipping away of our rights. However, there is a lot more money involved here, at least when you compare the tech industry/media industry to the amounts that the gun companies/anti-gun groups pull in. And yeah, I left out the citizens that are effected by these laws. Unless you have a group with a name, a letterhead, and some money to spend on campaign contributions your voice will only be noted, not heard. I say slashdotters need some airtime. Something like a slashdot PAC might generate enough interest (and be unusual enough) to at least get a soundbite on CNN or Fox News. Anyone up for it? Or are we all going to sit here and wait for the chiseling away at our rights turn into sound of large jackhammers?

Its a good thing ....

[bizitch]

for Microsoft that nobody has yet claimed the intellectual property rights on evil ... yet

Rerun...

[Infernon]

'Palladium will "turn the clock back" to the days before online information was widely available.'

Wouldn't that be history repeating itself?

What's the issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Palladium, like computers and any other bit of technology, is a technology that can be used for good or evil. The people pushing it are only pointing out the good. The people against it are only pointing out the evil. In the end, if it doesn't work people will shun it like it's the latest version of TurboTax.

This isn't where the fight should be. Instead, we should be avoiding the products of the companies that would use such technology for purposes of controlling what we can do with what we own.

Re:What's the issue?

[harmless_mammal]

You can't avoid offensive products when there is an effective monopoly.

Re:What's the issue?

[Nursie]

>> In the end, if it doesn't work people will shun it

Whilst it is true that if it doesn't work at all then it will be shunned, it is not so true if it doesn't work in the interest of the consumer.

If Microsoft start making 'agreements' with vendors like Dell and HP to sell only (or mainly) Palladium'd boxes then people will buy them. Especially if there's some sort of discount price incentive put in place.

It's a sad fact that we often have to face here, that the average person just wants 'a computer', and they don't care about how it works, who's really in control, and why that might be bad. As long as Mom and dad can do their tax, and the kids can play the latest incarnation of Tomb raider or Quake then all is just dandy.

Once again our fate rests with the teenagers. If they can complain just loudly enough to mom and dad that they heard that computers from .* supplier don't work properly (i.e. allow music/video/whatever to be exchanged freely) then maybe nobody will buy them and disaster could be averted.

Sad state of affairs really isn't it?

Re:What's the issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're absolutely right. I don't see how Microsoft will control your data. Palladium is 100% user controlled - if I as a user want to generate data that self destructs, that's my perogative. Microsoft won't have control of the system or the keys.

The Palladium spec also allows for it to be enabled/disabled. If you don't want it on your computer, don't enable it. Don't buy stuff that requires Palladium.

If you want MP3s, you can still go to the record store and rip all the music you want. When the record companies find that nobody is buying their DRMed music from the web, they'll be stuck.

Re:What's the issue?

[supabeast!]

I agree. Capitalism should have no problem eliminating overzealous, opressive DRM. There will be other companies producing hardware without Palladium. There will be software that does not use Palladium's DRM. There will be audio and video that is not tied down by Palladium.

All we have to do is accept that, and stop giving money to the rest. Unfortunately, the leaders in the movement against DRM are hypocrites like the Slashdot editors, men who attack companies like AOL/TW, Microsoft, Blizzard, Disney, etc, and then purchase and promote these companie's products with their next breath. These men have plenty of talk but no moxie. Until these idiots can stop buying a copy of Windows XP to play Warcraft III on while watching a "Fellowship of the Rings" DVD, they are just supporting the technologies they complain about, and doing NOTHING to stop the problem.

Correction

[manyoso]

You mean 'The Technology Formerly Known As Palladium' ;)

What is particularly maddening about Palladium is the repeated claims that this offers a security benefit for end users. Microsoft is trying very hard to trojan in this DRM technology as a part of the Trusted Computing initiative. If this is the form of 'trust' they are speaking of then I want nothing to do with it.

Buy your processors now before they are infected with all of this Palladium/TCPA nonsense.

Re:Correction

[kfg]

Lies are truth and the truth are lies.

The oldest trick in the book is to identify that aspect of your product that is going to be most harmful to your customers and spin it as a plus.

Nobody advertises 40 room mansions on 1000 acres as "spacious." That epithet is reserved for studio apartments in a "bee hive."

KFG

Re:Correction

[haeger]

Yeah, they changed the name from Palladium to Trusted Computing Platform didn't they? And since we all agree that its main purpose is to keep peoples right to their interllectual property perhaps we should call it:

Trusted Computing Platform / Interlectual Property, or just TCP/IP for short.

I see an embrace and extend coming our way...

.haeger

Who's locking what up?

[Anonvmous Coward]

'Microsoft could decide to lock everything up'

Isn't the reality that the content creators would be the ones locking everything up? Who says MS is going to for them?

Another stupid poke at MS I assume? Damn that's getting old.

Re:Who's locking what up?

[TheGratefulNet]

its the associative property (or is that transitive)?

- most providers use M$.

- M$ software will be blocking-friendly

- therefore most providers will also be blocking-friendly

that's the cause/effect he was referring to, I believe. not that M$ directly will block; but its the popularization and embracement of their crap that will seep its way into the rest of the net and fsck us all up in the process.

Re:Who's locking what up?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"that's the cause/effect he was referring to, I believe. not that M$ directly will block; but its the popularization and embracement of their crap that will seep its way into the rest of the net and fsck us all up in the process."

Hmmm possibly. I'm not completely convinced of that, but I'm not ignoring it either.

Here's what gets me though, why is MS the bad guy here? Obviously there's some demand for MS to fill here. The chances are Hollywood is telling MS "we'll start making movies ready for PC when we have the protection we need". MS knows that content will provide a new interest in PCs. They're probably bending over backwards to get Hollywood's support.

I don't think MS is interested in locking up your data (their install CD's have trivial copy protection, btw...), I think they're interested in getting content creators on board. If you want to point a finger, point it at the MPAA. They (plus the RIAA) are the ones that think this type of thing is important. (SSSCA) MS wouldn't introduce these restrictions and piss off their customers (like an office setting wants to deal with more pain from their computers) unless they thought there was a huge benefit to it.

Re:Who's locking what up?

[Qzukk]

Isn't the reality that the content creators would be the ones locking everything up? Who says MS is going to for them?

Content creators? HA!

You mean publishers right?

If this DRM stuff goes through the way everyone wants it, your "content creators" will have two choices: DRM-enabled-digital, or cassette tapes.

Like hell the RIAA will let mp3s (or ogg) exist anymore, and if they do, I'll bet the default setting for any mp3 you record will be "don't copy this". How much do you think the RIAA will want to be paid for the right to change that bit? Changing it yourself is a violation of the DMCA, even though you're the copyright holder because the DMCA protects that bit not your copyright.

Re:Who's locking what up?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Changing it yourself is a violation of the DMCA, even though you're the copyright holder because the DMCA protects that bit not your copyright.

Bullshit. It is illegal to circumvent a technological method for protecting access to a copyrighted work. Since you own the work in question, and the bit is not copyrighted, you may abuse the encryption any way you like.

Re:Who's locking what up?

[SirSlud]

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.

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 .. 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.

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.

Re:Who's locking what up?

[DickBreath]

>>'Microsoft could decide to lock everything up'

Isn't the reality that the content creators would be the ones locking everything up? Who says MS is going to for them?
Another stupid poke at MS I assume? Damn that's getting old.

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess I was mistaken to think that Microsoft would act evil based upon their past behavior. (BTW, we should stop judging Saddam by his past behavior also. He would never hide WMD, use WMD, etc. Not to suggest that the scale of these "evils" are comparable.)

Isn't the reality that Microsoft, making the software, and security system, will have absolute control. I think this will work as described in a Letter from 2020.

Anything I write on my computer or any music I create gets stored by Word.NET and Music.NET in encrypted formats to protect my privacy. No one but me, Microsoft.NET and the National Corporation can read or hear my stuff.....

Silly me, if we end up with a world as described by this vision, I shouldn't blame Microsoft, they have no culpability in this.

Re:Who's locking what up?

[TheAwfulTruth]

What you and nearly everyone else here seem to be missing is that "DRM Technology" also contains the ability to define NO restrictions! Just like on DVDs where there is a "Regeon Free" bit that can (and is) set by the publishers of the material.

So Indie musicians (Like myself) have NOTHING to fear about this. In fact, maybe for the first time if an Indie musician decides that they WANT to control their music (About 1 in 20 do) they now have the power to do so, while the others will have the power to grant unlimited lisence so you know you are copying legally.

Re:Who's locking what up?

[IamTheRealMike]

Here's what gets me though, why is MS the bad guy here? Obviously there's some demand for MS to fill here.

Yeah. Actually I've been told (by an MS exec) that the demand is mostly coming from normal business. They like the idea of keeping control of internal documents, keeping it secure, all the benefits of DRM etc. I've seen a roundtable discussion at a conference that was discussing the benefits a new age of DRM will bring, these guys were really enthusiastic but they weren't from the MPAA or RIAA. They were just business people (except the blonde in the short skirt, I think she was just there to distract the attendees).

One-step process

[rgoer]

Here is the one-step process MicroSoft will surely follow in the interest of sidestepping those patents you mention:

1. Billions upon billions of dollars

Re:One-step process

[Moofie]

You're splitting hairs.

It acts like UNIX. It has UNIX-y software in the box. You can get arbitrarily large amounts of UNIX-y stuff and install it.

For anybody who doesn't care about "trademark dilution" of the UNIX brand, it's UNIX.

So are the BSDs. So are the various Linux distros. Get over it.

And, insofar as NT is supposed to be POSIX compliant, there is an argument to be made that you could in fact run a UNIX workalike under NT. Bottom line is, who cares?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Why the problem?

[banana fiend]

do not upgrade?

A lot of people use windows out there, A LOT. Open-source software et al. need to get their software to these users.

Go to the register and read many stories about just how hard it is to stay out of the upgrade-cycle-of-death that is windows software licensing

MS market in China

[linuxislandsucks]

A question

Is then MS pushing this as a way to seal up markets like China? whre this desire to lock up information is prevalent?

Re:Circumvention

[Petronius]

My guess is that all you'll need to crack it is the install CD of an older version of Windows.

So to answer your question: not very long.

Yet another reason to join the movement at....

[jbwiv]

http://www.stoppalladium.org

Yeah, MS is going to lock it up...

[theGreater]

So, with as buggy as MS security usually is, how long after the first Palladium crap-o-la is released until we can either a) emulate it's functionality or b) completely bypass it? That is not to say that I'm unworried about it, but seriously people, they can't stop me, you, or especially ALL of us forever. It just doesn't work.

-theGreater View.

The other shoe

[rgoer]

I suspect all this time we spend worrying about the dark future that is Palladium/Next-Generation Secure Computing Base/DRM-in-general will turn out to be quite small potatoes indeed, once the other shoe drops. It can't be too long before MS announces that it is opening its own movie studio and/or record label (if not just buying up some of the smaller-yet-successful of the established ventures)... at that point, when MS is both giving us the content and telling us what we are and are not permitted to do with that content, that's when everything will truly suck.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

[Jack William Bell]

Yeesh. The way people respond to this stuff is so predictable. "OMG, Microsoft is trying to control every bit on earth!"

Let's step back a minute and actually think about Palladium as it currently stands, shall we? Can we?

To start with; I know lots of people on /. don't want to believe this, but Microsoft is a market-driven company -- at least to some exent. If the market doesn't embrace something they drop it (Microsoft Bob). If they aren't sure how the market will respond they will float trial balloons for months or even years before shipping it; and then drop it before it even launches if appropriate (Hailstorm).

Right now Palladium is just a flag flying. They know that the entertainment industry and the politicians in the entertainment industry's pocket will salute. But they aren't sure about everyone else. I will admit that breathless scare mongering is one reaction they will pay attention to, but a more rational approach is to simply point out clearly (and without running in circles decrying the evil-that-is-Microsoft) that there are alternatives (Linux).

Personally I think the latter is a tactic Microsoft will pay more attention to. That, and supporting the EFF as they fight against technology like Palladium being required.

Re:The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

[SuperKendall]

know lots of people on /. don't want to believe this, but Microsoft is a market-driven company -- at least to some exent. If the market doesn't embrace something they drop it (Microsoft Bob).

Like the XBox? Sales are not going so well, but they press ahead...

The truth is that Microsoft will press some things even against market acceptance, if it is seen (by Microsoft) to put them in an advantageous position at some point in the future. If the "Big Pal" thing succeeds, they essentially gain the high ground in the battle to decide what will run where... possibly a strategic position against software they dislike.

You make a good point that all we can really do is support the EFF. I've already donated to them, everyone else should as well...

Re:The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

[DickBreath]

Microsoft is a market-driven company -- at least to some exent. If the market doesn't embrace something they drop it

The sheeple will happily buy their latest Dell/Gateway/whatever PC hardware with TCPA and an MS Palladium OS. They will never know what they are doing.

Saying that the market will do something about it is like saying the market will reject...

• Macrovision
• Encrypted DVD's
• A tax on blank media
• DMCA
• UCITA
• COPA
• CALEA

The problem is that the market must have a choice. A word not in Microsoft's vocabulary. Oh, wait... Choice...

• Windows Palladium Home Edition
• Windows Palladium Pro Edition
• Windows Palladium Server Edition
• Windows Palladium Datacenter
• Windows Palladium Embedded

Re:The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

[1010011010]

My point is that Palladium is not a shipping technology.

You're wrong. The XBOX is a Palladium system. It is the "trial balloon."

The XBOX is a PC. But can you develop software for it? Not without paying for the priviledge, and agreeing to restrictive terms.

Don't Worry!

[4of12]

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.

I know, I know. You were worried. Don't be.

Be assured that information about you, such as your medical history, and any transaction history you have in the databases of direct marketers will be copyrighted by someone other than you, relieving you of this onerous burden.

Re:This is both good, and neccessary.

[EricWright]

Those mp3s on your hard drive aren't fair use. Those divx copies of lord of the rings aren't fair use either.

Bullshit. I bought those albums, so it is most certainly fair use. If I started sharing them with someone else, then it would not be. Just because I carry 10GBs of mp3/ogg on my laptop does NOT mean I have violated any law, civil or criminal.

Similarly, how is having a divx copy of LotR illegal if I bought the dvd and ripped it myself?

I can only assume you're referring to people who illegally download mp3s or make divx copies of illegally recorded theatrical showings of movies, but you need to be specific! The lack of specificity insinuates that we're all rampant filesharers, or that the only use of MPEG compression technology is piracy. Keep it up and the next thing you know, the MPEG consortium will have to disband or be incarcerated...

Katie Couric Is My Cousin

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Yes, you're right - there are always a way to strip any type of copy protection off of a file which you have. I believe the point in this instance is that the security will make it much more difficult for Joe Sixpack to make something his own.

Let's suppose a new audio codec came out that prevented users from sending the file onward. Sure, people could just take the audio feed and pipe it back into their machine - catching it and encoding into mp3 or perhaps just run a script on the file that would de-donkeyfy it but how many people will have the patience and/or know how to do that? This type of security is going to really reduce how many people have control over the content on their machines. For instance, how many people on Kazaa can encode an mp3? I'd bet that it's less than 30%.

So, in answer to your question - plenty of people already know that but plenty of people will never know it. We have to watch out for their rights.

Re:Katie Couric Is My Cousin

[ichimunki]

Ah, but it only takes one of us to go through the effort of making a high quality, DRM-free copy that could then be shared with millions of people who are unable or unwilling to do the same (or I share it with two people who share it with two people, etc). The biggest problem with d-a-d techniques is that they must be done in realtime and a lot of meta-information is lost and must be manually re-attached after processing. This is the same reason I have bins full of LPs I haven't digitized, but I've managed to rip over 300 CDs in my collection. Ripping digital media is easy because the tracks are delimited and annotated.

Also, how many people on Kazaa can encode an mp3? I'd guess it's closer to 95%. The tools to rip and encode an mp3 are freely available and easier to use than the average email client (or Kazaa itself, for that matter). You open the application, put in a CD, wait for the CD info to download from an online database, select all the tracks and click the "rip" button. Along this same line of thinking, any loopback technique that can be implemented in software or via simple (legal) technology (i.e. a simple line-out-to-line-in wire) is going to be just as popular as stuff like Kazaa is now.

The problem isn't Palladium per se. The problem is the widespread view that people who are familiar with techniques for circumventing such use-restriction technologies are thieves. Further, the problem is that there are actual laws (the DMCA for instance) that make this more than an ethical judgement, but a legal fact. If it weren't for the potential civil liabilities and the criminal sanctions for circumventing use-restrictive technologies this would just be a game of technical one-upmanship.

Both

[Kwil]

Obviously you can see how, being the folks developing the software, Microsoft can (hell, probably *will* as a software protection feature) program in the ability to encrypt the data into a form that only Microsoft can read, and put a remote based command as the trigger.

So you sign in for your latest Windows Update (which you'll have to because if you don't, your encryption will soon be out of synch and nobody will be able to read squat that you make), Windows Update detects that "Hey! This copy of Palladium has been registered in a different computer", not knowing that you've just moved the hard drive over to a newer chassis with more expansion room, and sends the code to lock it all up, so that all you get on bootup is a message to "Call Microsoft at ... for payment and product activation info"

Re:This is both good, and neccessary.

[BgJonson79]

>>Those mp3s on your hard drive aren't fair use. Those divx copies of lord of the rings aren't fair use either.

I thought if we owned the CDs or DVDs, it would in fact be fair use?

Fair use?

[Richard_at_work]

I remember reading somewhere once that fairuse is actually only available to you if you are able to carry it out, the manufacturers/publishers dont have to provide you with the ability to copy something freely or run/play that copy freely. This generally means that although cd protection schemes, DRM etc destroys what many on here think is fair use, it actually doesnt do anything of the sort. Now cd protection schemes that dont actually work, ie play in a audio player but not a pc are a totally differnet matter. As usual, i expect someone on here to clarify my position, wether its right or wrong etc.

Yeah.. that works..

[Kwil]

..at least til the major Internet Routers start using Palladium to control virus and worm attacks. Not a Palladium verified system? Get your own internet.

two thoughts..

[robbo]

Two thought come to mind on this one:

First: "If you hack it, they will crack it." Go right ahead and give us DRM, because one way or another someone will find a way to circumvent it.

Second: These kinds of moves are exactly what undermine the power of the content holders. The more tightly the MPAA and RIAA squeeze content up their asses, the more energy, resources and popular attention that will go to the small-time independents who are actually doing something creative, and the more fragmented the audience will become. Fair use is what makes the world go round..

Re:two thoughts..

[stixman]

But if they lock it down legally like DeCSS?

Doesn't matter. Look at how (in)effective the lock-down of DeCSS has been. Pirated movies are becoming quite mainstream for anyone with a broadband connection. I have quite a bit of faith that some 14-year-old (let's hope he stays anonymous this time) will crack this system, and millions of copies will be circulated before the MPAA can cry wolf.

Mike

The real problem is interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the article mentions, if the content provider, i.e. Word. Decides that only Word can read the article you just wrote. It means that OpenOffice can't open it (or any other competitor).

If I want to add a plugin to a program. The program, might just say: no! you need to be a plugin approved by my company, not some random plugin. You thief!

In other words, my beef with Paladium is that the security control is set at the level of the creator and not of the user. That in itself is not a problem until you realise that the control given to the creator is a lot more then simply "the right to copy and distribute" it affects the righ to interoperate between programs (in the name of being virus free).

The software industry does not have a history of being open minded, I'd suspsect that by default interoperability would be set to off.

Sad.

Re:Why the problem?

[mcrbids]

"I have been wondering what the issue is. If this is such a bad product, don't buy it. "

What's the problem, you say?

Microsoft==Monopoly.

Don't like the price you pay for electic power? If this is such a bad product, don't buy it.

Are you dis-satisfied with your telephone service? If this is such a bad product, don't buy it.

Are you unhappy with the performance of the latest Ford auto? If this is such a bad product, don't buy it.

Notice that this last one is much more feasible than the previous two!

Microsoft is in that position. Because of the proven anti-competitive practices of a convicted monopolist, I don't really have that choice. As a software developer, I have to account for Windows as a platform or stop making money.

And, if Microsoft decides that they EOL any non-Palladium O/S, millions will be forced to buy it, simply because they have no effective choice.

Linux (Hooray!) is becoming an option, and I'll do everything I can to get it in use, but it's not there yet. I can't yet readily make a living producing software unless I at least allow accessability to Windows users.

And Microsoft still has the power to potentially stonewall Linux adoption for a long time, and it's my feeling that Palladium is how they'll try do it.

Only time will tell...

Windows Users

[AlgUSF]

This only affects windows users, if the mainstream computer users (geeks excluded) want to give all of their freedoms up to MSFT, so be it. I run linux, and can do what ever I want with my data, be it music , video, source, etc. If you are stupid enough to give microsoft money to control your life, you might be to stupid to own a computer.

Re:This is both good, and neccessary.

[imadork]

It's far too easy to completely share thousands of multimedia files with millions of people who have no right to do so, and the content owners are persecuted for attempting to enforce their rights via copyright. It's also become clear that there's a large population of people who believe it is acceptable to steal if they can do it without leaving their homes.

If all that content owners were doing is "attempting to enforce their rights", then we wouldn't be having this discussion.

It's really about content owners claiming more rights than they currently have. If I buy a dead-tree book, I can't make copies and sell or distribute them. But I can still make a copy of a page for my own use, or lend or give away the original to a friend. I still control the one physical copy that I have bought. DRM takes these rights away from the consumer. It takes control away from the consumer.

I agree with you that all the people who are mooching need to stop! But I contend that DRM advocates are using the cause of preventing piracy as a smokescreen. Their real goal is to control our behavior to a much higher extent, so that they can separate us from our money quicker. Even if there were no piracy, the push for DRM will not go away, as you suggest. Because Piracy is not the reason for it, it's just the excuse.

The problem with any DRM is

[wayward_son]

The copy protection will be cracked within a week. Something this big and this unpopular doesn't stand a chance. Remember the "copy protected CD's"? The protection was circumvented with a black marker.

Then Microsoft will have to use the DMCA to shut people up.

Re:This is both good, and neccessary.

[mosch]

Just a note: lots of people are saying 'those mp3s are mine and legal'. And some of might even be telling the truth. Here's the thing, Palladium is unlikely to stop you from copying music from your own physical media and onto your computer. Nobody WANTS to stop you from doing that.

What they want to stop is sharing that collection with the world via Kazaa, Gnutella, WinMX, or what not. Palladium will make it far more feasible for content manufacturers to allow you to have a copy of the music on your computer, and to burn a cd for yourself without allowing you to give it away to millions of people.

After all, nobody cares about people giving music to friends, even the record company executives realize that's a sales booster. However, Giving music to millions of people needs to become socially and technologically unacceptable.

Publish freely then

[Arcturax]

I guess all this will do is make it so the most widespread works out there are the ones people publish free to copy and distribute. I mean, who is going to pay the kinds of prices that they are going to want to charge you once they know you can't get it elsewhere.

As an aspiring author (as a hobby, not for a living) of a fantasy novel, I have been looking at publishing recently and have decided to self publish my work and allow people to freely distribute it. Why? Well, I have a day job, and while extra money is nice, I don't really need to make money off of my novel and I don't really expect to make a living off of it either. Instead it is a hobby for me, my art if you will and I am more interested in getting it wide exposure than on some best seller list somewhere.

If my work is good, word of mouth will push it around and people will load it off my website to read. If not, it flops but I'm not really out a cent, just whatever time I put into it, which is no big loss because that time would like as not been spent playing computer games anyway.

But the advantages are, I can get widespread coverage to a large and diverse audience. I retain full rights so that if the story is considered movie material, I get to keep all of what the studio doesn't take. I can publish it anywhere at any time, for money or for free. So in a way, I don't need to worry about Palladium. If someone releases a work, no matter how good, which is locked up and expensive and pay by the bloody minute spent watching, I won't waste my time or money on it and I'm willing to bet a lot of you won't either.

As an aside to this, I wonder if a "free publishing" community will start up where people donate time and experience to writing material which goes straight into the public domain instead of locked up in copyright for life + forever. Schools, libraries and teachers would likely be happy to have such work available royalty free and aspiring writers can practice on free stuff the way coders do on open source software. After all, look what Open Source is doing to Microsoft. If the publishers get nasty, then we should be able to take them on in a similar way and have similar success. It would be great to have a library of the people, of free and public domain works which can be freely read, copied and sited without having to hunt someone down to ask permission. This isn't the same as current libraries, most works in current libraries are illegal to copy (though most people do it anyway) and sometimes you can't even site without permission. So we could use a nice library of *only* free and public domain works which can be used for whatever you wish. Better yet, it could be online and fully unlocked so Palladium be damned you could still read, copy and use such works in your own endeavors. In the end, I think everyone might benefit from such a movement.

Lawrence Lessig's Take

[LISNews]

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.

Palladium != TCPA

[mtnharo]

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

Re:Palladium != TCPA

[Alsee]

The TCPA spec calls for

I've read a good chunk of the TCPA spec. I understand what it is and how it works. The central TCPA design specification is that the owner of the machine MUST be denied access to his own encryption keys. The ONLY purpose of this requirement is to take control away from the owner of the machine. It is designed to enforce DRM and enforce Microsoft's monopoly.

There isn't a single claimed benefit of TCPA or Palladium that you couldn't get with an identical system that lets the owner read his encryption keys based on a physical switch to control access to the keys. Unless of course you think losing ownership of your computer is a "benefit".

a special chip to handle encryption duties

Yeah, a side effect is that you can use the chip as a crypography coprocessor. If that's what it was for you could have a BETTER, CHEAPER, FASTER, and HARMLESS crypography coprocessor instead.

Code signing and crypto coprocessors have NOTHING to do with denying an owner of the machine access to his own keys. TCPA and Palladium are a Bad Thing. Period. Drop the requirement to deny the owner access to his own keys and it would be a Good Thing, but then it wouldn't be TCPA/Palladium anymore.

-

Re:Circumvention

[sockit2me9000]

Here's the real problem: There is no doubt in my mind experienced computer users will find a way to work around Palladium schemes. But we are only a small segment of computer users. The reality is that this technology will restrict those who aren't computer savvy. The result still will be that the computer becomes far less egalitarian. And this is the real problem. This is a very basic argument about who controls information, who creates it and who uses it. While there will be exceptions, with Palladium shifts this troika decidedly towards big business and away from consumers. That is scary, and to my mind, downright Orwellian.

FUD , dud, or vaporsystem?

[Badgerman]

Interesting thought on Palladium - bear with me.

Palladium as a whole, to me, sounds impossible to implement, maintain, and get buy-in on. The potential for backfire, for cracking, for failure, seems large.

So, how much does Microsoft really plan to implement?

Maybe this is a significant percent of publicity-playing. See what people think, get out the word you're "doing something" to deter the competition, then put in something far less in function (and effort, and cost) than you started and say its what people "want." Meanwhile you can hopefully discourage others innovating.

Just a thought.

Re:This is both good, and neccessary.

[Slack3r78]

Here's the thing, Palladium is unlikely to stop you from copying music from your own physical media and onto your computer. Nobody WANTS to stop you from doing that.

Frankly, I find that hard to believe. If you've been following the DRM, you'd have to take into account that every DRM scheme to date has been aimed at preventing users from making any copies whatsoever, which I would say, is a pretty clear violation of fair use. CSS was created to stop you from making any copy of a DVD. CD copy protection schemes (music) are even more horrendous, often times preventing the *original* from working properly in some people's players. Now, given MS's own attempts at DRM along with the history of DRM in general, don't you think MS would just love to have a way to make the previous generation of Windows simply cease working at an arbitrary date, forcing users to buy a new lisence every n months?

Hypotetical situation.

[EinarH]

OK, let's say that a big university like MIT implemnts Microsoft Windows Shiny and Secure Palladium Edition 2005. Not only on a workstation, but on _all_ computers; libray computers, dorms, workstations, servers etc.
Then all documents produced inside MIT will become Microsoft DRM enabled. All the papers, tests, research and publications. Right?

Year 2050. MIT want out. Whatever reason they have; they need to get out: The cost of the system is to high or the system don't work according to the promised specification.
Actually the reason they have, don't matter. Maybe Penguin OS v69 has become The OS.It's irrellevant. They want out; and they want it now!

Now what?
Well, for starters just about everything people have done the last 45 years is _potentially_ lost forever unless they manage to get a deal with Microsoft.
All the fileformats are MS Propretary DRM Palladium Edition and can't be read on their new and shiny OS and they would have to deal with the relatives of former employes who "own" information produced on MIT.

What a mess. Such a waste.

Re:not pirating movies never killed anyone

[Migrant Programmer]

Personally, I blame it on Flouridation. Nothing like mass administering a depressive without consent.

It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.

(yay Dr. Strangelove)

Re:Circumvention

[Andrewkov]

My guess is that all you'll need to crack it is the install CD of an older version of Windows.

I thought if you had the Palladium hardware the computer wouldn't work without a Palladium aware OS?

Pleease do not confuse technical and legal issues!

[kahei]

Palladium is a technology. It's designed to restrict what can be done with information, in useful ways. Maybe it's really clever, maybe it's clunky and unworkable, I don't know, but either way, it's a bit of technology that someone developed and therefore I'm inclined to like it.

Now, if people *had* to use it, that'd be a bad thing. If people were *punished* for certain actions, using Palladium as a tool, and those actions weren't really evil, that'd be a bad thing. Those are legal issues, and I'd be inclined to resist them.

IMHO it is never a good thing to try and suppress, a technology just because you are afraid of what someone might decide to use it for. This is exactly the kind of thinking behind the DMCA, which tries to suppress a vast class of technologies because they could theoretically be used to break other laws.

You can hate the control freak attitude of many IP holders, you can hate the ubiquity of MS, you can hate the increasingly wacky commercial laws of our nations. Heck, I know I do. But I don't start trying to suppress particular innovations just because they can be used for purposes I don't agree with. I'm generally against nuclear war but I'm sure glad they developed the internet.

This has been kind of a long, structureless post, but I'm going to post it anyway cause I really believe I have a message buried in there :)

Paladium hardware

[Traa]

This is what I understood of Paladium, and why it IS scary:
In a Paladium box, the DRM starts with the hardware. Thus, uninstalling MS-WinPaladium and trying to install Linux/Win2K/other is not possible because the hardware will not allow you to run the 'unsigned' installer. Once Paladium, always Paladium.

Even if someone finds a hack/crack around this, installing an alternative OS on a Paladium box will probably not become widely excepted because this is illegal according to the DMCA.

So, let's fight the battle now. Why is or isn't Paladium good for 'the people'.

Recipe for Palladium-killer

[mattr]

Palladium will not: (and I quote into the cauldron..)

- Replace the Windows operating system.
- Search the Internet to detect and delete pirated software, music, and movies.
- Eliminate spam and software viruses.
- Prevent a digital thief from gaining access to a computer in person and disabling its hardware security features.

"The goal, Microsoft officials say, is to make servers and desktop PC's that people can trust." (ha-ha)

Maybe a system that did ALL of these things would be competitive?

--

I think it's only fair these [hopefully nonexistent] publishers are forced to purchase Palladium PCs and use only Palladium-liscensed reference material for which they will pay per byte forever.

"Colleges .. would face enormous pressures to do so"

Why not instead force publishers to provide text-searchable CDs for free to legitimate book owners because of fair use laws? Safari seems pretty useful.

If every student is networked these days, I think there may be an opportunity for universities to promote a solution to a real (as opposed to hypothetical) problem which happens to appear antithetical to Gates' wet dreams.

- Students spend an awful lot of money on textbooks, and sometimes have difficulty finding them in bookstores and libraries. A significant number might jump at the chance to purchase a digital copy instead of the paper textbook.

- Searching for words in textbooks should be promoted at universities as one of the few clear merits of owning a computer in school. It would be interesting to see legally if universities, or individual students, can promote this to the point of forcing publishers to provide a free fair-use cd of searchable text with every textbook. The bookstore could hand them out when books or purchased.

- Students who have purchased second-hand books also should be able to enjoy the benefits of digital searching.

- Annotation is a second obvious merit of using a computer in school, and it's why the web was born. Students used to surfing the web will readily jump into information organized in am easy to use, interactive format. Researchers should also be able to freely access stores of annotations and digital texts.

- Also annotation as well as the ability to index and navigate by scene or timecode is very useful with film and video. This could be useful in university film, music, television, language, and science courses among others, and universities ought to be able to negotiate with publishers to create free-use zones for scholarship purposes without all this annoying crypto. If enough did it, there would be a smaller potential Palladium market.

- Schools with less funding should be able to invest in personnel and students, and (if there is a suitable alternative) ought to be able to use information technology to reduce the financial barriers. MIT has embarked on an open curriculum and more should be promoted. We need to enable people to apt-get an education and get used to it so they won't let it get taken away.

- It would be interesting to see if projects funded by national governments would be exempt from Palladium

- While MP3 sharing may very well be within the law, it is not as obvious a poster child for fair use as any of the above uses of everything from ascii text to hdtv. I think it would be very interesting to see if the open source and educational communities can relatively quickly develop something demonstrably more useful and open that Palladium, and possibly preempt it.

Re:Recipe for Palladium-killer

[aaarrrgggh]

Some really great points above on college texts. One thing that is missing is what happens when people keep their books as reference materials for life? As much as the publishers would love to destroy the used-book market, how can they just give away the content of the book in some form that can be easily mutilated, and used by someone else?

It's also an interesting issue for code books (building, electrical, etc.). It would be great to have a single CD (or network appliance) that lets the user track the changes in a section over the past 50 years.

Basically, we need a way for authors and publishers to be compensated for their efforts in a manner that does not reduce the usefullness of the product. With college texts, there is a set number of copies that can be sold each semester. Anything that eats into that number forces the cost to rise.

I still have most of my engineering books. As much as they weigh, and despite the effort involved in moving them several times, I am happy to have them. Would a CD retain that same useful life?

Should organize the thoughts better, but... what the hell, this is /.

Timely article for me

[pubjames]

If Microsoft have these powers, they will abuse them. Microsoft will use it to further force you to do what they want you to do, not what you want to do. Even with the very recent legal difficulties, they are still acting exactly as before. And this has just cost me a couple of hours of my time. Let me explain - bear with me, the gall of MS will amaze you...

I use Windows XP with Mozilla. The software my bank uses is only compatible with the Microsoft JVM (stupid bankers...). I have previously installed the Sun JVM, so in an effort to get the Microsoft JVM working I used the new "Set program access and defaults" option which Microsoft added to Windows XP as part of the settlement. It is supposed to make it easier for you to set the default email, JVM and browser clients. I intended to change my defaults to IE and the MS virtual machine, use my bank's site, and then change them back again to Mozilla(1). To cut a long story short, once I had changed my default browser from Mozilla to IE, it was impossible to change it back again. The new configurator that Microsoft had added as part of the legal settlement had renamed all of the mozilla files so they wouldn't work anymore, replacing their old extention with "new", i.e. so mozilla.exe became mozilla.new. Not only that, it also removed the mozilla icon from the desktop, the "power bar" and the menu. So the only way I could get it working again was to completely reinstall it. And they did this as part of the legal settlement!

F*uck them. I'm going to move to Linux for my desktop. It might have installation hassels too, but at least I'll know that they haven't been designed to be difficult on purpose.

(1) This may seem an odd thing to do, but you can't download the Microsoft JVM from the MS site any more, so I thought this might be a way to reactive it.

Re:What's the issue? (WHAT?!)

[gosand]

This isn't where the fight should be. Instead, we should be avoiding the products of the companies that would use such technology for purposes of controlling what we can do with what we own.

Sorry, you don't own anything anymore, you license it.

While I agree with you in principle, I know that it won't work. Old saying - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The average person, which BTW outnumbers the "in-the-know" crowd by about a million to 1, will not care. If the only thing that Dell sold was Palladium computers, the public would buy them. They won't go out of their way to avoid it, they will fork over their cash because as far as they are concerned, it isn't a big deal.

Our duties as the technically literate is to make sure that things like Palladium do not happen. The (potential) cost far outweighs the (potential) benefits.

Good for alternative platforms

[cgenman]

I hate to be the one to site pornography and other questionable material as the driving factor in most of humanity's entertainment expression mediums (with the exception of Videogames, oddly), but with a real lockdown of media and information on the Windows platform, won't that encourage more people to transition to alternatives such as Linux and Macintosh? Considering the BSA's estimates that 2/3rds of all software is pirated, and if this turns out to be a truly effective way to stop the piracy of not just programs but also video and audio data, it seems like TCO arguments by otherwise law abiding citizens will sway towards mediums that are easier to pirate on. The Playstation, for example, was notoriously easy to pirate, and that helped drive sales as a platform. Pirating Playstations doesn't help Sony persay (although late in the life of the platform hardware sales were profitable for Sony), but a preponderance of available software does help Microsoft retain their leveraging points (and I don't mean the quality of their software).

Now, perhaps some sort of middle ground will finally be reached, between overbroad click-through agreements and overly cheap end consumers. Or perhaps many people will make a move to a system where, for example, Kazaa will still work. Or perhaps Microsoft will take the intelligent (from their business standpoint) road and setup a system which allows piracy to flourish but can protect studio-released content from seeping into that region.

Either way, this looks great for that other OS, OpenBEOS. I mean, Linux.

Bullshit everwhere...

[Mitreya]

Seems like a smart and good article but...

Computing experts in academe often blame Microsoft for producing software that is vulnerable to viruses and hackers.
But, of late, the experts have been criticizing the company's sweeping plan to correct those very deficiencies.

How is Palladium a plan to thwart viruses and hackers? Right in the bottom of the very same article they say that Palladium will not eliminate software viruses. And I suspect that it will eliminate few hackers too, since the weakest link is the people, not computers.

Can someone explain to me any real, additional potential benefits of Palladium? We have encryption and security for protecting sensitive data already... I bet most of student records leak from the paper copy accessed by some unscrupulous employee rather than through smart hackers.

The best way to do that

[Sycraft-fu]

Is to educate the massess. Sorry but you aren't going to legsliate something like this out of existance. Even if you could, it would kind of be a strongarm tactic on par with what the RIAA does in reverse. However the public can be convinced it's a bad thing and told not to buy it. Happened with Divx. Hollywood had decided they liked the Divx pay-to-play model and it, not DVD (it was a DVD extension) would be the next big thing. Most studios were doing Divx-first releases and some were doing no DVD releases at all.

Well people got together and educated the average joe on why Divx sucked and why they should not buy it. The acerage joe listened, Divx sold for shit, and Circut City took a bath to the tune of $100 million.

That's the real way to beat Pallidium: Convince the public it's bad and that they don't want it. Companies go where the money is, and if people won't buy Pallidium stuff, they'll stop selling it.

Re:Why the problem?

[skillet-thief]

Also, even if you use an "alternative" OS, you will probably still have to buy Palladium-ready hardware, which may or may not play nicely with your non-subscribed OS. And guess who might just be deciding whether it plays nicely or not...

Re:Certify Shmertify.

[mrkurt]

MSN was recently noted as serving up different (read broken) content to non-IE browsers. Now you won't be able to decrypt or access MSN ... without Internet Exploder.

Surely, you don't consider this to be a loss?

Re:Why the problem?

[travail_jgd]

"There will still be the vast majority who DO NOT UPGRADE and use THE OLD STANDARD. "

This is true -- according to Google's Zeitgeist, the number of people using "obsolete" versions of Windows (95, 98, NT) is almost the same as those using the latest versions (2000 and XP).

"I really can't see how this will effect people who don't use it (now tell me how it will take over the world when people do start to use it and how it will effect the data on the internet and bla bla bal....)"

Easy. If broadband ISPs only allow Palladium-equipped devices (PCs, routers, etc) online, then the Internet will be denied to everyone else. Should Microsoft make their own version of IPv6 that's "secure", it's going to be supported by all the major players. (If the MS-IPv6 protocol can't be altered through software, then any company that doesn't support the corrupted protocol is going to be locked out from all new PCs once IPv6 goes live.)

Even easier: sites that currently "require" Internet Explorer -- but work fine with other browsers -- will require IE plus Palladium. Or your ISP says that only PCs with Palladium are supported.

If Microsoft plays their hand correctly, they'll be in complete control of the x86 platform, and nothing other than a successful anti-trust case will break that hold. If Microsoft fails, they'll alienate enough people that Linux and other OS's will make significant gains.

Palladium is control

[Convergence]

Palladium lets me control how my software will run on your computer. I should consider that a good thing.

However, what isn't stated is that Palladium lets you control how I use my computer. That I do not like.

Thus, Palladium is equal and symmetric, except for one thing. Given the power relationship between me and (say) a typical software company, Palladium will only be used to maintain and strengthen their power over me through abuse and control.

Thus, although it nominally gives me the ability to control others, that control will be useless to me in practice. This is much like how copyright supposedly gives band's the control over the music industry. *laugh*

Re:Palladium is control

[SiliconEntity]

Palladium lets me control how my software will run on your computer. I should consider that a good thing.

However, what isn't stated is that Palladium lets you control how I use my computer. That I do not like.

It doesn't do either one of these things. What it does is to let you prove to me what software you are running, and vice versa. Therefore we can mutually agree on some data exchange only if we know what software is running on the other end to handle the data. Maybe I'll only download my music to you if I know you're running a music client that does DRM. Maybe you'll only let me join your online game if you know I'm running a non-cheating game client.

This is not control. This is informed, mutual agreement of a kind which is impossible in the online world (but routine in the physical world) today.

Re:Palladium is control

[Convergence]

Actually it doesn't even prove what software I am running. It allows anyone who knows the master keys, (or keys signed by the master keys) to claim that I am running something. The implication, but not the requirement, is that the this only occurs if I am running software of your choosing. (For example, he who controls or knows the master keys can fake being an interoperable computer and suck down medical records 'protected' by this technology. One wonders if people will be tricked into believing that this is 'perfect security' and not have any backup security perimiter for this situation.)

In any case, assuming that hypothesis correct, then this is control. You can coerce interoperable software to behave however you fashion, and control interoperability. While it is true that I could coerce you just as much as you coerce me, (I won't let you send me music unless you run a particular music server that serves OGG files.) most business-to-consumer relationships are not equitable power relationships. Thus, the control, while theoretically both ways, will in practice be one-way. (You run XYZ, or else we won't send you a copy of this electronic-only textbook you need for a class you need to graduate.)

Palladium is a mechanism that is perfectly suitable in situations where it really is a voluntary consentual relationship. I would have no problems with Palladium if this was its scope. However and again, many person-to-business relationships are not exactly consentual. (Look at people trying to get refunds for the windows tax on laptops. Or, look at the copy-control cartel.) In the real world of not-entirely-consentual relationships, Palladium will be used for coercion and extortion of citizens.

As-is, and barring the fact that it cannot actually prove to a different machine what software I am running, Palladium is not per-se a completely bad idea. I like it in ways. The problem is that it is one of those things that is guarenteed to be abused, and it will be abused in really nasty ways.

In this real world, Palladium allows digital extortion. Just because I used your software to write my book does not mean that you have any right to control how, when, and where I use my book. That is why I'm against it.

The problem...

[TopShelf]

They can always start releasing new content using only DRM-enabled technologies. I have an older Jornada Pocket PC, for which I can't find hardly any eBooks, because it came out prior to the advent of DRM on those devices - I can't even upgrade to a more modern OS because it's a hardware issue. Add in the fact that most consumers don't have a clue about this issue, and they could definitely (not neceassarily easily) make this a standard technology, and a gateway to moving forward with digital content.

Re:Why the problem?

[mebon]

As the article points out, what happens if Word requires Palladium to run and encrypt any documents it creates? Then people who don't have Palladium and Word can't read those documents. At least now people can reverse-engineer Word documents and read them via Abiword, OpenOffice, etc. If Palladium is used, you would have to break the Palladium encryption before you could even reverse-engineer the document. And you would probably be charged under the DMCA for breaking the encryption.

Imagine what would happen to Wine if all the new Windows games and applications required Palladium to run. If Wine can't break Palladium encryption, then Wine can't run any new Windows software. This could prevent any sort of Windows emulation or reverse-engineering that is allowable by fair-use. They could effectively prevent people from using any OS other than Windows to run their applications or view documents. As new applications come out and old ones become outdated, Palladium could become the new standard just because all the new software requires it.

Re:Why the problem?

[mugnyte]

Linux (Hooray!) is becoming an option, and I'll do everything I can to get it in use, but it's not there yet. I can't yet readily make a living producing software unless I at least allow accessability to Windows users.

Guy, you are so way behind the times it's embarrassing. For all the worrying you have here, why don't you see what you can sell with the Linux distros. I'm sure you'll be delightfully surprised. Perhaps you've just signed in, but people are making a living with non-MS solutions. Become a part of it.

Re:about brute-forcing

[Graspee_Leemoor]

" Let's not forget that the key length can only be 40-bits, due to export restrictions. "

Not true any more. Remember when Windows 2000 came out the law was changed on this but the CDs were already mastered, so when I got a shiny copy of Win2k at the UK launch I also got a floppy with the upgrade to 128 bit encryption on it.

"The fed's are probably watching my IP address right now, waiting for me to download Celine Dion's latest album so they can arrest me and have me put in front of a firing squad. ;)"

Insert obligatory joke about anyone wanting Celine Dion's latest album deserving to be shot anyway.

graspee

Re:But here's the thing

[silverhalide]

Microsoft has been trying to push the Software as a Service model for a while now. The big idea a few years ago was that you would "rent" the software as you needed it. I'm not sure if they're still pursuing this, but Palladium would provide a nice convienent way of securing the back end of it and making application over a network more possible. Once this happens, all of a sudden, software is a service!

Re:cracking

[Anonymous Coward]

int main(){
return "yes";
}


Heh :D

Remember ActiveX, DVD, and Java

[weave]

ActiveX: Designed to be secure, can only run trusted/signed controls. Due to a few holes, bad implementation, and a microsoft-cert accidently released, it's been possible to get around this in the past. ActiveX didn't really work as designed

Java: Protected by a sandbox. At numberous points in past, some implentation flaw has allowed java apps to get around the sandbox.

DVD: Trotted out to content providers as secure since content could be encrypted and secured on the disk. Then one vendor makes a mistake and includes an unencrypted key in their DVD player, some kid in Europe finds it, and the entire house of cards falls down. If that one vendor didn't screw up, DVD's probably would still be unrippable.

In all technologies, the apologists have pointed to the fact that they are secure by design, but flaws in implementation or procedures caused the faults.

So even if I wanted TCPA/Palladium to be a smashing success, I wouldn't bet my fortune on it. Someone will screw it up...

Re:Remember ActiveX, DVD, and Java

[karlm]

If that one vendor didn't screw up, DVD's probably would still be unrippable.

This is misleading.

• The CSS cipher key is 40-bits.
• Whoever designed the CSS cipher wanted it to be cheap in hardware and didn't put much effort at all into its design. There is a simple guess-and-check algorithm that breaks it with a work factor of 2 ** 16.

Based on some simulations I ran with RC6, my PII 266 would break RC6 with a 40-bit key in just under a year on average (unoptimized C). The CSS cipher is much faster and is based on LFSRs, which can be bitsliced very efficiently using MMX instructions (I can try 128 keys simultaneously). Even without the weak cipher design, my lowly dinosaur of a machine could probably recover all of the player keys in under 2 months. (Very pessemistic estimate.)

A work factor of 2 ** 16 means that even my slow machine can figure out the disk key in under a minute.

26! is more than 2 ** 88, but that doesn't make your secret decoder ring strong crypto. More or less they used the equivelent of a secret decoder ring to encrypt the data. Ross Andersen's attack on the A4 cellphone cipher should have been known to the designers of CSS, yet they went ahead with a cipher that is more easily vulnerable to the same sort of guess-and-check attack. (None of the advanced Russian sparse matrix inversion techniques are required to make it practical.)

Re:not pirating movies never killed anyone

[zaphod110676]

And fluoride is documented as being more toxic than lead. =)
The Toxic Effects of Fluoride

OSX on x86

[Nexum]

I'd be interested to know what the people here think will be the fate of OSX on x86 - a lot of peopl ehave said that Apple is gearing up to release the OS, in some form (probably not to run on any and every x86 box) for x86 as a hit back at Microsoft when they release Palladium.

If this is true then Apple obviously thinks there are going to be a lot of users that are going to be so p****ed off at MS that they'll switch platforms at this time. And they have a lot more marketing dollars than any of us here to predict these things, so what do you guys think?

-Nex

Re:What's the issue? (WHAT?!)

[teslatug]

They won't go out of their way to avoid it, they will fork over their cash because as far as they are concerned, it isn't a big deal.

Ah, but you're wrong. Who do you think those millions of !"in-the-know" ask for computer advice and support? How susceptible are they to the advice of those who are more technologically-minded? I bet you if a good deal of people got the word out that Palladium (or whatever the hell it's called now) is bad deal, then DELL might find itself selling fewer system running Palladium.

I know I wouldn't advise anyone to buy such a system, much less buy one myself. Would you?

I'm not very concerned - yet

[Tolvor]

The strategies of Microsoft and Intel into controling how I use my computer doesn't worry me overly much yet. I have yet to hear anything on MS and Intel *requiring* me to buy such technology and install it into my computer. Im sure that there are some users out there who could care less about their hardware/software specifics, but people who depend on their computers tend to be very picky. Picky users generally don't buy shoddy hardware, limited hardware, or software that will make their life miserable. Therefore, unless MS is VERY clever there isn't much chance of Palladium getting installed in the computers that matter most, the experts, power-users, developers, and hackers computers.

In addition I don't see how MS can force the issue. I suppose they will bundle it with Internet Explorer. I can switch to Netscape or stay at IE6. It will be in the next Windows OS, but I use Win2k, and have no plans to upgrade. If MS does figure out a way to get it installed on my computer, I maintain good backups and am willing to spend an afternoon reformating and reinstalling.

Sorry MS, resistance is *not* futile.

Re:Excuse me, but who ownz?

[bninja_penguin]

And, when (not if) Microsoft's super-de-dooper Hardware security gets exploited, who 0wnz? Could you imagine that? A compromised system could lock out the rightful owners and Microsofts OS, but let anyone else in. Gee, and then what do you do to patch hardware? Buy new systems all over again, every few days/weeks when there is a security patch?
Fsck Microsoft and all it is/stands for.

Re:Potential?

[Twilight1]

Apples and Oranges...

You are correct, but the arguments are not entirely the same. While Elcomsoft's software is simply a tool, it is available for end users. Some users will use it for fair use, and others will inevitably use it in an illegal fashion.

However, Palladium is a tool that will likely remain in the hands of Microsoft. Sure, the "content owners" will be given limited toolkits that allow them to make Palladium-friendly software, but it will be Microsoft who says what is trusted or not.

That said, if Elcomsoft was (a) a US-based company and (b) required the users of its tools to seek approval from Elcomsoft for each and every use, then Elcomsoft SHOULD be held accountable for misuse of its tools, because they would know of specific violations.

Now the question here is this: "Will Microsoft use Palladium for illegal purposes?" Judging by Microsoft's past record... well... you be the judge.

- Twilight1

point/counterpoint

[zogger]

--so OK, the "peaceniks" are wrong and will "cost lives". That's an opinion, it has to my mind a certain amount of validity, but I'd like to expand on it more. I have an additional opinion, but I'll phrase it in the form of some questions at first.

How many people will die because others refuse to accept the evidence that high level "leaders" in various western nations created, sponsored, armed, equipped and encouraged saddam hussein, al queda, and etc, and are currently conveniently "forgetting" those facts? What are we to do with people who refuse to learn from history, and can't see the hegelian dialectic at work, when crises are manufatured on purpose in order to garrer power and profits for high level "connected ones"? When does it become politically correct to notice exact parallels with events such as the reichstagg fire,where a retarded man was setup to commit a crime of such size as to influence public opinion so that "drastic security measures' were "needed", and 9-11, where obvious brainwashed goat herders were used in a similar fashion, and where the linkages up stream go directly not only to far off afghanistan, but to western intelligence services, large corporations, and various stock brokerages, and this information was "overlooked" or dismissed as "intelligence failures", when it obviously wasn't? Why is it that international financiers who always seem to be quite willing to finance all the sides in various conflicts are given a "get out of jail free pass" on their actions? When will all the connections between "serious bad stuff happening" and extremely rich and powerful western white guys in suits be "fashionably correct" to note?

You see, it works on several levels. I have noticed that for a lot of people, stopping the data input at the 'comfort level' based on a prior "belief" system seems to be the norm. If any data is presented that doesn't fit someone's pre conceived belief of what political reality is, then such data gets rejected out of hand, based not on cold clinical analysis and a sense of honesty and fair play, which should be an intelligent response and is an accepted scientifc model, but rejected and denied based on just a partisan sense of belonging to some group who "can do no wrong, it's those other guys fault, all of it". That is an absurd "belief" system that can be classed as almost cultish, and as such should be avoided, one would think.

Now, to switch to just general commentary on iraq, if it was my call, this is what I would like to see. I would like to see the high level US leaders (other nations in the west need a similar action to take place) who decided to fund and bankroll that goon saddam exposed, and busted. Busted, exposed, prosecuted. I think the United States should FIRST show the world we are willing to clean up our own messes, that we did in fact break international law and common sense by supplying him with poison gasses and active alive biowarfare germs that were produced and stockpiled in direct avoidance of treaties we have signed, that the materials shipped over there were not "samples" but actual production runs of size, and that we as a nation screwed up. I would also contend that this goes across the two major political parties leadership levels, and into various places inside our own military establishment and inside various private corporations, and has been an ongoing criminal enterprise of monumental and sinister proportions. And that we did this partly to counter iran, but that the iraninan problem itself was AGAIN partly our fault as we had our intelligence services help to overthrow the previous elected government of iran, put into power this royal "shah" monster, who went about so abusing his people that radical islamicists were able to easily recruit converts, leading to the mullah khomeni taking over with his gang of despots. You see, there's connections. You can't stop at one point and say "here is where it started and it's all these other guy's fault!" And that all of this was done on purpose for the reasons of power accumulation and "making money" into the obscene levels. ONCE we do that,clean up our own mess, and regain the moral high ground we have lost on the international levels you can plainly see, THEN proceed to deal with creatures of our creation like saddam the dictator, and if we have to, to do it legally according to our constitution which insists on congress and not some tin pot dictator to decide about such a heavy event as 'war'.

There are literally dozens more examples I can cite to reinforce this position, completely outside of just iraq. In other words, our hands are not clean either and it's well past time we as a nation have the courage to admit it and deal with it.

And this is not a "leftist"or "rightist" viewpoint, millions share it, it goes across the political spectrum. I doubt were you to poll any of the protesters across the world from this weekend you would find many "saddam" supporters. What some folks are uncomfortable with is the notion that the protesters were also protesting the "why did this happen" position which points pretty clearly towards "us" as having some serious involvement, and unfortunately, a lot of the high level people involved in creating this saddam problem are now offering their latest "solutions"..

Personally, I think none of these gents we have who are connected to saddam and to bin laden and al queda, etc, should be in ANY position of power, and in fact need to be pulling some hard time at club fed, and that their public personas are a sham,a shame, and a lie, a very, very big lie. It is embarrasing, so a lot of folks go into denial over it.

I can put this even simpler. If I as an individual do business with the crackhouse and gang up the street, if I sell them arms, supply them with support,make sure their car runs, loan them various burglary and mugging tools, etc, then later on they go on a crime rampage around the neighborhood, would I be guilty or innocent of being "wrong"? Would I have any claim to moral superiority, would I have any rational basis to claim I had no hand in the crimes committed? Or would the local prosecutor say I was in fact a part of this gang?

When it's on that level it's easy to see, when a nation and it's so called "elected" leaders and it's "pillars of society" business people do it, then this situation is supposed to change, morally and legally? Uhh, why is this?

A lot of the people around the world don't see much difference, and frankly, I share that view. The scale is different with the examples of the crackhouse gang and it's crimes, but the crimes committed certainly aren't, and ALL the criminals involved need to be dealt with in a legal fashion, no matter their skin tone, what they wear for clothing, what country they currently reside in, or what temporary 'title' they enjoy, or what current economic level they happen to be at..

This picking and choosing just "some" of the gang members to "prosecute", while completely ignoring the other gang members is just intellectually and ethically and morally bankrupt, IMO. And that's what's going on with the current "protest" activity, millions of other people can see that.

Re:What's the issue? (WHAT?!)

[gosand]

The DMCA truly is a bad law, and should be repealed. It doesn't enforce EULA's but it does enforce honerous copy protection measures, and creates an eternal sort of patent like protection, without any meaningful checks or balances. Anything nasty Microsoft manages to do with Palladium will just underscore how bad the DMCA is.

Absolutely. The DMCA is something that never ever should have been passed, and is an example of what can happen if tech people don't keep their eyes and ears open. I think it was a wake-up call to that effect, and makes us realize that Palladium needs to be fought against, and fought hard. Don't let the market decide, help the market decide. I think people have the right idea that we need to educate ourselves, and educate others. Like I said:

Our duties as the technically literate is to make sure that things like Palladium do not happen. The (potential) cost far outweighs the (potential) benefits.

We need to do whatever it takes to prevent things like this from getting off the ground. "The market" needs to have a bigger voice up front, especially when it comes to someone like Microsoft who has the power to essentially disregard what the market thinks. It needs to be prevented from happening, rather than let it get created and then rally against it.

Unfortunately, most people aren't aware of the DMCA, and won't care about it until it affects them personally, and in a significant way. By then, it may be too late.

Haves and Have-nots...

[Lodragandraoidh]

The most critical issue that I see from this is publishers locking out those who can not pay for the service. The ability for the publishers to create their own definitions of what is "fair use" could create a further imbalance between those universities that are rich and those that are poor.

The key element that makes the internet such a critical part of academia is the freedom to exchange ideas from anywhere on earth. Removing that fundamental element puts those people who can not pay for the same ability out of the loop, and serves to stratify society even more than it is already.

Who benefits? Two factions benefit from this:
1. Monopolies - corporations who tend to gain from exclusive control over a particular market. This reinforces their exclusivity at the expense of freedom.
2. Elitists - those who feel that only a select few with resources should have access to higher education and the halls of power.

Both of these factions work hand in hand to further their agendas. Every ivy league college will have a fully functioning Palladium system, state colleges and universities will cut critical continuing education and other 'bootstrap' programs to pay for it, and small colleges without the resources will be left in the dark. Once the defacto standard is set (by publishers removing free electronic access, and embracing Palladium), it will all be over - the internet will be come a 'dark' place for those left out.

Of course, that might have a positive effect: those who GPL their manuscripts will have wide acceptance as 'the source', since most teachers will not be able to pay for the cannonical knowledge base to 'clip' for fair use.

Re:Why the problem?

[Duds]

I can still buy the newest althon CPU and MB along with RAM, put linux, win2k, bsd, whatever on it, without worring about palladum.

Nope, buy a palladiam motherboard it won't let you load a non-Palladiam OS.

OS X IS UNIX� Unix and *Nix

[Anonymous Coward]

[[["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

problem because...

[sacrilicious]

If this is such a bad product, don't buy it. This product is not forcing me to upgrade my stuff. I can still buy the newest althon CPU... There will still be the vast majority who DO NOT UPGRADE and use THE OLD STANDARD

Sooner or later everyone will have to upgrade, because parts malfunction. Whether one will be able to purchase an Athlon without DRM at that point is an open question. I don't feel confident that the majority won't upgrade, because "the majority" is comprised of non-technical people who respond well to marketing buzzwords. If there is a good time for those aware of the issue to try to educate that majority by loud, vocal, repeated means, now is certainly it.