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Fighting fire with fire
Aug. 12th, 2002 04:29 pmA beautiful story of a simple and brilliant move laying waste to the plans of a powerful and evil conspiracy.
Update: I had this a bit wrong. Fixing it now.
You may have heard about two very similar new initiatives, Palladium (Microsoft) and TCPA (HP and others). They claim it's to meet all sorts of needs, but it's pretty clear that one purpose is in the driving seat: stopping you from pirating music and movies.
Technical detail: the idea is that every new computer includes a small piece of tamper-resistant hardware on the motherboard, which stores some secret keys. When you boot, you can choose to let this bit of hardware know what you're booting, and it can attest to remote authorities that you really did boot that. It can also decrypt things only if it's satisfied that the appropriate software is requesting the decryption.
Microsoft want this because they don't want anyone to have a reason to have another computing device in their house: they want absolute control over it all, so making your computer be your DVD player is essential for them, and the MPAA et al won't get burned again this way until they feel they have rock-solid piracy resistance. But it's worth noting that Microsoft themselves don't make movies, or music, for the most part. They make software.
Will Palladium or TCPA include measures to protect against software piracy? Microsoft have stated very publically that the thought simply never crossed their minds. Palladium is for content, not for software.
And this is where the real stroke of genius comes in. ( Read more... )
Update: I had this a bit wrong. Fixing it now.
You may have heard about two very similar new initiatives, Palladium (Microsoft) and TCPA (HP and others). They claim it's to meet all sorts of needs, but it's pretty clear that one purpose is in the driving seat: stopping you from pirating music and movies.
Technical detail: the idea is that every new computer includes a small piece of tamper-resistant hardware on the motherboard, which stores some secret keys. When you boot, you can choose to let this bit of hardware know what you're booting, and it can attest to remote authorities that you really did boot that. It can also decrypt things only if it's satisfied that the appropriate software is requesting the decryption.
Microsoft want this because they don't want anyone to have a reason to have another computing device in their house: they want absolute control over it all, so making your computer be your DVD player is essential for them, and the MPAA et al won't get burned again this way until they feel they have rock-solid piracy resistance. But it's worth noting that Microsoft themselves don't make movies, or music, for the most part. They make software.
Will Palladium or TCPA include measures to protect against software piracy? Microsoft have stated very publically that the thought simply never crossed their minds. Palladium is for content, not for software.
And this is where the real stroke of genius comes in. ( Read more... )
