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Using Palladium to Secure P2P Networks
user555 writes "The RIAA and MPAA have seen Palladium as a way to prevent piracy. But this article argues that ironically Palladium may actually make P2P piracy more widespread (PDF). They argue that the security features of Palladium could be used to create P2P networks that are more resistant to attacks from content owners."
24/06/2002 - The Register... Starting with a Newsweek exclusive which wonderfully quotes His Billness as saying: "It's a funny thing, we came at this thinking about music, but then we realized that e-mail and documents were far more interesting domains." Which is cute, because it suggests that Microsoft's original plans to produce a secure PC that will protect the music companies' stuff from us have been spiked in favour of something much more positive and progressive.
You only have control over your own computer*. You can't prevent someone else from running unsigned binaries on their computers. In other words, signing your own binaries will make no difference in a p2p network. It is not your machine that you need to worry about. It is everyone else's.
*With Palladium, Microsoft will have control of your computer (and everyone else's). That changes everything since Microsoft can prevent everyone else from joining the network with untrusted software.
These three students must be some of those new "grassroots" Microsoft has been trying to buy on campuses. Harvard, that's almost as costly as Tulane, so these three must have been expensive to confuse or corrupt.
Anyone who uses the term "piracy" for unauthorized file violation is clueless to begin with. Other midless gems from these three include:
The author's research is lacking. They reference 17 works, mostly popular press articles with one or two intersting texts. One reference they omitted is Microsoft's EULAs which require forced upgrading and Microsoft's right to search your files and delete those they considercopyright infringing.
Anyone who considers the control Microsoft now demands of it's user's computers could not think that Microsoft would ever extend "protection" to user content or clients programs. They promise to do it now, despite a lack of tools. Chances are that Microsoft will delete all peer to peer client programs they find.
Shame on Harvard. I've got to give this student paper an A for effort and the fluent ability to state the obvious but an F in research and critical reasoning. The music and film industry blinders these students wear prevent them from exploring the use of P2P for anything but "piracy". The whole idea of "trusted computing" aiding "piracy" is a juvenile conivance of wishful thinking. It lacks all the things Universities are supposed to be full of, honesty and critical thinking.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
It's alittle too late to get modded up but maybe one or two people will see this
:D
a few days ago I found a new p2p it uses SSL, proxys and tunnels though port 80. lots of other ways to trick the RIAA/ISP's from finding out what we'...ahem YOU are sharing.
Unfortuanatly right now it only works on windows so i was hoping for some slashdot press so we could bug them to death with e-mails
here is the site: http://www.earthstation5.com/homeweb.html
if anyone has more information on this id like to hear it, all I know is what the developers want me to think since word of mouth hasn't spread yet.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
"who fear the loss of rights that generally never existed"
... chocolate (for real)
Rights like playing my *bought* CD's in my car-player, or my DVD-player. Which is also blocked by their copy-protection.
The cynicism found here is disgusting, and unjustified"
It is this kind of cynicism that questioned the motivation of Bush to invade Iraq (their illusive biochemical weapons). Yet, now that the control the country, they still fail to show even a single microb of those weapons. They did find Sadams private stock of
Thing like this might be an unpopular stance, certainly when the media keeps reporting one-sided views, but that doesn't make that stance wrong.
*Your* life might not have been visibly changed in the last time, but that doesn't mean there is no change. I live in Europe, and I saw a couple of things change recently. For one, a large percentage of the new CD's I buy are crippled, and I'm unable to play the original in a normal way. Secondly, the blank CDR's I buy to make my system backups (real backups, as a Free Software user I have no need for pirated copies) got 20-25% more expensive to pay royalties (for my OWN data???).
The only way I can buy a PC without Windows (I run Linux and FreeBSD exclusively) is to buy all the parts and put it together myself!
"Stand up, look around, take control of yourself, and you will be free."
Quite right, that's why some of us plan to resist Pallidium and other schemes. That's one of the main reasons I run Linux.