Slashdot Mirror
Trusted Computing
derrickoswald writes "John Walker, one of the founders of Autodesk, has posted The Digital Imprimatur, a monograph on technologies such as the Trusted Computing initiative.
Some of the prognostications and conclusions reached may not be palatable to Slashdot readers."
This is Google's cache of http://www.fourmilab.to/documents/digital-imprimat ur/
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
The article's (which is already slashdotted) main idea is that it will be possible for a cooperation of government and corporate interests to change the internet from the freewheeling, content-neutral common carrier we know and love into a strict disciplinarian.
That was the thesis of Lawrence Lessig's 5 year old book, "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace". The internet is artificial. It's not a force of nature. Human effort built it, and human laws can change it. With sufficient financial motivation, laws will change it.
Tired quotations like "The internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it" are at best observations of recent behavior, not guarantees that truely effective internet censorship won't happen in the future.
Those who care about freedom cannot just sit back and assume that because the net is fairly free now, it always will be. Eternal vigiliance is the price.
This is just one person's opinion on trusted computing. Nobody really knows where it's going, but there's a lot of people trying to push their various interests into it.
My feeling is the idea of trusted computing isn't in itself bad. As a matter of fact, there's probably a lot of very good uses for it to go along with a larger system of security. Some of the ideas in Palladium, if used correctly, really could enhance and improve security. It, in itself, may not provide security, but as part of a larger system with other security geatures, it may well be useful.
The problem is not trusted computing, but some of these rogue interests. The government, Microsoft, the recording industry, the motion picture industry, and just about everyone else wants a say in where it's going. Hopefully, between the various interests will cancel each other out and we'll end up with the good that comes from trusted computing, but without most of the bad.
Groups fighting against trusted computing shouldn't fight the technology, in my opinion, but some of the uses of it. This means they should fight some of the DRM aspects of it, not the technology in general. Remember, an extra layer of security isn't a bad thing to have.
Help me. I've been modbombed by a few people with entirely too much time on their hands.
Wow, that's quite a scary picture. And while it's admittedly possible that things could turn that way, I'll go out on a limb and say that it's fairly unlikely.
... and a reasonable police officer won't pull you over for doing 68 in a 65. It's just not that big of a deal. Likewise, if someone (God forbid!) decides to install the same copy of Word on two different computers in their house, it's not likely that the FBI will come knocking on their door for a license violation.
Take Digital Rights Management, for instance. People put up with it for a little while, until they try to listen to their songs on something other than their own computer -- then they suddenly realize that DRM in fact sucks donkey ass.
Buying a Palladium-enabled computer will be like buying a car with a top speed of 65 miles per hour. The fact is, everyone bends the law a little bit from time to time
When Joe User runs into stupid problems like "Error! This computer sucks and therefore refuses to play this music file" or "Error! This computer sucks and refuses to allow you to install this program", he'll start getting pissy. He'll tell his friends not to buy any of these "trusted" computers, and pretty soon, everyone's buying computers and software that don't have this sort of crap built in.
This of course won't stop big companies and big government from trying to restrict things, but the chance that they'll succeed is actually fairly small. I don't see DRM ever completely dissappearing from the radar, but I'm gussing that it'll remain what it is right now -- an annoyance.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not worried about Trusted Computing, "The Theory"
I buy most/all of my software (okay...maybe not M$ Office, but I buy all my games), I don't write viruses, and it should make spam a trivial non-issue.
Blah, blah, blah
However, I am in TOTAL agreement with everyone here that TC is a bad idea in "The Implementation", especially in the (over?) paranoid forecasts in its use.
My computer won't run unsigned software - no more viruses
My computer won't run unsigned software - any publisher can create subscriptions (overpriced ones, at that) and revoke the license 10 times a year
My computer won't open unsigned documents - the macros in the spreadsheet won't crash my computer
My computer won't open unsigned documents - this person has written op-ed columns against BigBadCorporation Inc, and they've revoked that person's software certificate so they can't send anything else
We could all go on and on - however, he says in the top of the article that he's not for it! What he says is basically a "Watch out for these kinds of words and messages from your legistators! These are the words with which they will woo you into consent!"
There is no problem that has a magic bullet. Every decision has good and bad, and I'm firmly convinced that the bad with DRM and TC has little to do with the proposed concept, but with a very foreseeable result and that it grossly outweighs the good.
Information used to be passed word-of-mouth, and evolved to cave paintings, the written text, the printing press, etc. etc. etc. and now the Internet as we know it. There is money to be made in keeping the spread of information in a one-to-many structure - scads and scads of cash - and with that as the primary (if not single!) motivation for those implementing DRM, as well as the politicians they influence, we the consumers will fall into the backdrop as a minor inconvenience.