I hope that you are right. I do think that the majority of Americans would oppose this kind of legislation, IF they had any idea what it meant or the unintended consequences. However, don't underestimate the power of money. A variety of interests would be VERY supportive of these type of measures inlcuding many computing companies, the movie and music industries, computer gaming, and many defense related industries. Pass it under the guise of national security! Again I hope you are wrong, but I am not as sure as you are that our leaders understand or care about these issuses.
With $50 billion in the bank comes political clout that no open source project can hope to counter. MS, along with their industry lackys, will push for, and we will have enacted legislation making it illegal to use software that doesn't have "content protection" built in at the hardware level. Of course only "approved" software will have any real access to the hardware, and any thought of truely open source operating systems will be lost. Major hardware vendors will produce motherboards, processors, and mass storage devices for sale in the USA that can only be accessed by approved software with proper digital ids and signatures. Of course this will be able to be hacked, but it will relagate open source back into a hobby! No amount of GPL'd code can overcome the fact that it will be a crime(as in DMCA) to break the "trusted computing" layer in hardware to allow code not certified "acceptable" to have free access to the CD/DVD/network/RAM/processor/video card etc....
Just a nightmare that Orwell would be proud of!
NO, NO, NO. Frodo doesn't throw the ring in. Gollum tries to take the ring back, biting Frodo's finger off and falling into Mt. Doom in the process. This is an important point, as the only creature EVER to give up the ring voluntarily is Bilbo.
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I hope that you are right. I do think that the majority of Americans would oppose this kind of legislation, IF they had any idea what it meant or the unintended consequences. However, don't underestimate the power of money. A variety of interests would be VERY supportive of these type of measures inlcuding many computing companies, the movie and music industries, computer gaming, and many defense related industries. Pass it under the guise of national security! Again I hope you are wrong, but I am not as sure as you are that our leaders understand or care about these issuses.
With $50 billion in the bank comes political clout that no open source project can hope to counter. MS, along with their industry lackys, will push for, and we will have enacted legislation making it illegal to use software that doesn't have "content protection" built in at the hardware level. Of course only "approved" software will have any real access to the hardware, and any thought of truely open source operating systems will be lost. Major hardware vendors will produce motherboards, processors, and mass storage devices for sale in the USA that can only be accessed by approved software with proper digital ids and signatures. Of course this will be able to be hacked, but it will relagate open source back into a hobby! No amount of GPL'd code can overcome the fact that it will be a crime(as in DMCA) to break the "trusted computing" layer in hardware to allow code not certified "acceptable" to have free access to the CD/DVD/network/RAM/processor/video card etc.... Just a nightmare that Orwell would be proud of!
NO, NO, NO. Frodo doesn't throw the ring in. Gollum tries to take the ring back, biting Frodo's finger off and falling into Mt. Doom in the process. This is an important point, as the only creature EVER to give up the ring voluntarily is Bilbo.
Read the article, he acknoldges that.