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Trusted Computing Group Formed
An anonymous reader writes "How does it come that the formation of the Trusted Computing Group goes unnoticed at /.? On Wednesday, heise had the story. At last, we will get `easily-accessible specifications for trusted computing standards that will ultimately let people work, conduct transactions, and use computing devices with a new level of confidence' ..."
Probably not. But there -are- ways it could get better.
:>). They want you buying everything you want to watch, listen to or use. If they find out that by abusing their customers will result in no sales, you can bet the whole DRM train will be derailed before too long.
1) Don't buy the stuff. Old computer works? Keep it. Delay upgrading as long as possible. Visit the computer store occasionally for upgrades, but leave without buying anything if all they can offer you is hardware with DRM.
2) Don't listen to, or watch the stuff. Yeah, it's hard not to go to a movie now and again, I know. It's fun to do (albeit expensive). But most of the money you hand over for your ticket goes directly into the pocket of the people that are doing this to you. Rent a movie. Listen to an old CD you've bought, tape things from the radio, but don't go out and buy those new CD's. -Especially- not the DRM protected ones.
3) If you do go out to buy a CD, follow somewhat of a similar procedure to that of computer hardware. Bring your CD up to the counter. Tell them you have an old CD player, and all these protected CD's won't play in it. Tell them you've had to bring back about 10 CD's to various different stores because the protection on them was messing with your CD player, and if this one doesn't work you might as well just give up on buying them altogether. Whether it's true for you or not, it likely -is- true for the hundreds of people who really -can't- play these CD's, and at the same time, you'll be indirectly helping to protect your fair use rights.
There's a number of ways you can let these people know that it's not going to work, that you're not going to put up with it, but you have to -do- something about it. This whole DRM movement that's sure to cost the computing industry billions before the end is about money..they want more of it. They don't want you to download MP3's or movies, they don't want you stealing software (not that either of those is necessarily right in the first place, but that's another argument entirely
It feels like we've been fed buggy apps for two decades, and now we're told the solution for unreliable software is restriction of our abilites and freedoms. It almost sounds like they've intentionally created the problem, having had the solution in mind the whole time. What happened to the concept of solving buggy apps by getting rid of the bugs in the code?
I honestly don't think that trusted computing will be possible or extant until there are trusted humans.
C|N>K
We all understand that "Trusted Computing" simply means whether or not Microsoft trusts us to run a program.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
They keep saying this isn't DRM, but it's most of the building blocks you need for DRM. And most of the applications they mention are possible without hardware support via an encrypted filesystem. All you need for Palladium is an OS which refuses to boot without the right user, computer, and boot parameters.
The other thing to note is that they keep stressing RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) licenses. Non-discriminatory means every organization pays patent licenses on the same formula. If the formula doesn't contain provisions to allow for open source software, then open source software can't use the standard.