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

[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

[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

[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.

Its a good thing ....

[bizitch]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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

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...

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"

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..

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...

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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: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: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.

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...

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