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08/21/2003 Archived Entry: "What Bill Gates and his minions have in store for you..."
What Bill Gates and his minions have in store for you...
It ain't pretty. Ladies and Gentlemen, The TCPA/Palladium FAQ. Read it and weep.
2. What does TCPA / Palladium do, in ordinary English? It provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the applications, and where these applications can communicate securely with the vendor. The obvious application is digital rights management (DRM): Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a Palladium platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing possibilities will open up.
TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted remotely. It will also make it easier for people to rent software rather than buying it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the software stop working but so may the files it created. For years, Bill Gates has dreamed of finding a way to make the Chinese pay for software: Palladium could be the answer to his prayer.
There are many other possibilities. Governments will be able to arrange things so that all Word documents created on civil servants' PCs are `born classified' and can't be leaked electronically to journalists. Auction sites might insist that you use trusted proxy software for bidding, so that you can't bid tactically at the auction. Cheating at computer games could be made more difficult.
There is a downside too. There will be remote censorship: the mechanisms designed to delete pirated music under remote control may be used to delete documents that a court (or a software company) has decided are offensive - this could be anything from pornography to writings that criticise political leaders. Software companies can also make it harder for you to switch to their competitors' products; for example, Word could encrypt all your documents using keys that only Microsoft products have access to; this would mean that you could only read them using Microsoft products, not with any competing word processor.
Much, much more at the link.
Replies: 9 people speak up
as with all bad ideas, the simplest solution is not to buy it. if no one buys a new system, it will collapse. people need to get the word out about how bad this is, and start a boycott. worse comes to worse, we can all just run our computers on old pirated copys of windows 98 like i do. i know that i dont know much about what im talking about, but i do know that no product will survive people not buying it
Posted by JUSTIN @ 08/21/2003 04:19 PM NY
So the future of computing is right here in my Home Office, a Mac running OS X and talking to a Netware 6 sever? That rocks!
The China thing though....here's an interesting story from
ZDNET on China and software
Discuss among yourselves...while you still can before they stop discussions altogther.
Posted by Jo Fish @ 08/21/2003 04:26 PM NY
This DRM issue has been an out-of- control, 100-car freight train for the last couple of years. The MPAA and the RIAA have pretty much gotten the major S/W vendors (read MSFT) on their side. Opposed to them are the H/W vendors and consumers.
This controversy has not yet played itself out. My bet is that the final resolution will be very close to what the MPAA and RIAA want.
The only way to defeat the hardcore DRM advocates is for consumers to boycott CD-ROM music and DVD movies. Probability of that occurring, ZERO. Like happy, little lemmings we'll just lap up whatever they give us.
Christ, if they restrict downloaded porn, there goes my social life!
Posted by Metropolitan99 @ 08/21/2003 04:26 PM NY
Metro -
That's a regular alphabet soup you just posted.
Mmmmmmmmm..... soup............
Posted by editor @ 08/21/2003 04:46 PM NY
yeah, we are all doomed anyway, all this time i thought bush was the anti christ, now bill gates has the mark of the beast too. the clamp down is coming, things will get much worse before they get any better. it especially sucks for me, because i dont have a single piece of liscenced software. why should i pay for that garbage anyway. if software wasnt so expensive they wouldnt have this problem. people made mixed tapes all throughout the 80's and they didnt bitch about that. in the post modern age intelectuall property is mostly nonexistant. people can take a photograph of a famouse photograph and hang it as original artwork, appropriation is the cornerstone of postmodernism. unfortunately as with everything else, the conservative corporate forces are just late to catch on. lets see how well their copyrights hold up when the starving billions rise up and burn it all down
Posted by justin @ 08/21/2003 05:04 PM NY
the real question is what are we going to do about it? what can we do to really hurt them? thats what we need to figure out, and then thats what we need to do. consumers drive the economy we can also drive it off a clif
Posted by justin @ 08/21/2003 05:07 PM NY
I love how you get to the last paragraph before it says, "There is a downside, too." Hah! Now that's funny.
And Justin, since I so seldom post here and don't entirely have a feel for the field, I will not launch into my usual anti-piracy diatribe. But as someone who spends a lot of his time making intellectual property, let me assure you that rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated. (That one's in the public domain so I can use it. :) )
Being a thief is not something you should be proud of. If you had stolen, say, a truckload of TVs, would you be so brazen? How about a book from Borders?
I'm not trying to start a flame war--as I said, I'm not a regular and therefore being relatively cautious (for me, on this matter, at least). But I am truly disheartened by those who disregard the laws designed to protect me and what I do.
Posted by folkbum @ 08/22/2003 12:13 AM NY
believe me, im an artist, i understand that copyright laws do still have bearing, i was speaking conceptually when i said that intellectual property was a dead concept, not legally. its a simple fact that appropriation has become the primary form of expression in both music and art in the postmodern age. however, i have no respect for the intelectual property rights of corporations, especially microsoft. if i had money, i would pay for software, however, if i can burn a $700 program for the cost of a cd im certainly going to do it. intelectual property should only belong to those with an intelect, rather than a conglomerate with no "self"
to defend. as it is, i am more than happy to see those bastards suffer, especially corporate "rock" bands.
Posted by justin @ 08/22/2003 10:44 AM NY
anyone stupid enough to use a Windows computer deserves everything Gates can dish them, including the viruses
Posted by Ha ha ha you dopes @ 08/27/2003 12:34 AM NY
