Critics have slated a Microsoft document on its upcoming Palladium digital rights software as containing several outright “lies”. The 1,500-word frequently asked questions (FAQs) paper gives some details about how Palladium will work and how it relates to digital rights management and the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance. Read the rest at VNUnet. Update: Another article about Palladium, here.
Microsoft Slammed for Palladium ‘Lies’
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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“Any software that could open a Palladium document without using the Microsoft software would be illegal in the US under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”
wow. thats pretty harsh, so if this palladium thing goes mainstream into MS office by _default_… wouldn’t that make it illegal to open it up on openoffice on linux? assuming if openoffice can read it? thats going to be difficult to share documents don’t you think?
>>”But Dr Anderson said: ‘You can choose to use Palladium in the same way people choose to use Windows: if you want to run a business or exchange data with anyone else you’ll have to use it.'”
The whole “no one’s forcing you to use Windows” line always makes me laugh (sadly, of course, but a laugh nonetheless).
You’ll be able to choose not to use Palladium as long as:
You don’t ever plan to shop online.
You don’t ever plan to buy any protected digital content (how many games are going to ship on CDs that won’t run without Palladium?).
You don’t need to concretely verify your identity for ANY reason (I wonder, will Microsoft’s ubiquitous Passport let you choose not to use Palladium to use Passport services?) There are government agencies already using Passport authentication, if I’m not mistaken …
Palladium could be a really good thing. But then, when it was used to make pretty fireworks, gunpowder was a good thing.
I guess it all comes down to a simple question: Do you trust Microsoft to do the right thing? Even if you’re a steadfast Microsoft supporter, can you honestly look at the company’s history and say, “Microsoft will handle this appropriately.” I can’t think of any company I’d trust to have this kind of control. The government is so corrupt (Senators holding sign: Will Legislate For $$$) and technologically clueless (DMCA) as to be useless.
Sometimes I think technology is advancing much too quickly for society to keep up with.
Governments need to create new comittees to handle this type of technology and how it relates to the law.
There’s too many old fogies in government that don’t even know how to use their computers…so how can they make good policy decisions on things they can’t possibly comprehend?
i’m against big government, but this is one area where I think we all need some additional gov resources to handle.
… the United States has the best government money can buy, so to speak. Unfortunately, US special interests (like Hollywood) have a LOT more money than you and I.
I personally feel that elected officials should not, EVER, be allowed to take campaign contributions. They know what their job pays when they are elected BY THE PEOPLE to SERVE the people. The people pay the taxes that pay their salaries. Corporations then come along and offer more money and the needs/wants of the people come in second to the needs/wants of the campaign contributors with the deepest pockets.
I guess I’m just stupid or something. Just seems that in a perfect world laws would be passed based on their merits, not how they effect the bankrolls of the legislators passing the laws. Why is it okay for a legislator to vote yay or nay depending on how much he’s being paid, but a judge in the appeals court who overturns a conviction for monetary gain is going to jail? Makes no sense to me. How come it’s okay to make new law (or amend old: the new Disney-friendly copyright extensions) based on who pays whom, but a cop choosing not to enforce that law based on the same thing is wrong?
Ok, fud (from me that is) I agree to above posts about given microsofts track record I wouldnt even give it the time of day but as it is I feel I have to point out certain issues pertaining this Palladium illusion.
First, game consoles, your tv, stereo and DVD player (etc etc)
Will at a time in the not so distant future become integrated, proof a) the xbox (ironically from ms) b) ps2 , this is due to the consumer electronics market and the demands Regular Consumers have.
and I dont see why not. I mean myself I already have a repackaged and custom cased PC for streaming media all over my apartment, the same goal as above mentioned media hubs .
It makes it easier this way for “Joe User” and other who just want to surf the web, look at movies, listen to music and record media a little here and there.
But what I cannot in ANY way fathom is why the freaking fsck they need to lockdown a media hub in this way, meaning and I do believe someone has written this elsewhere, this palladium secure enviroment they are pushing seems to be more aimed at the RIAA and their respective counterparts in other countries.
Although I’d give it three months if they release it before either the netbsd or some other crazed Open Source guru get it running a custom nix kernel.
HOWEVER.
I could look at this from another view, cant we use the l4u linux kernel to empower the user with a similar conept and then present a secure enviroment for the user.
meaning basically for defending the users Information as opposed to keeping its ownership to said company (ms) .
I could see this happen as a counterreaction to palladium.
and yes that document about palladium on ms website is total snakeoil. its written by a salesman who has had someone explain the concept of computer security at a party or something since noone in their right mind could have written that document..
as an end note, the workstation and the developers desktop as we have today will probably morph into something more portable but will probably never be integrated into this sort of machine.
I’m out I got myself a bottle of wine.. ;D
Cheers!
Robert
… maybe if our representatives weren’t too stupid to set a wall-clock…. …what’s the use.?
Now what exactly happens if you don’t have a live net connection?? I keep my box at home disconnected from the world for this exact reason.
They ain’t touchin’ my box!!
and this seems to be that key escrow and riaa battle trying to start from point A again but with a good partner that ironically has a monopoly in the tadaaa PC operating system market and has certain interests in the media production market also *cough*msnbc*cough*
the fact that ms has a news agency scares me as much as italys
Bertolucci does.
but sadfully im not living in an idealistic world.
blasted..
Wait for the implementation first, instead of going after tons of crappy rumors and wannabe experts.
>>”Wait for the implementation first, instead of going after tons of crappy rumors and wannabe experts.”
Good thing no one thought of that when Hitler was spreading his “beneficial” influence over Europe. “Let’s just wait and see what he does after he takes over the world.”
tso fyi . first of im not a wannabe expert I will disregard that.
and the documents released by microsoft themselvs are Very conclusive as to what and how they will implement mentioned technologies and the thing that ticks most people off is the disempowerment of you yourself as a user, go ahead read through microsoft publicised palladium refernce material, guidelines and outlines for their product , then head over to microsoft research and look at what r&d they have been doing mostly good but you also have some interesting security related material there not concerning user security but ms security, how to not let the user discover bugs etc etc.
I promise you we actually have a Great Laugh about this every day at work.
the other thing is the fact that palladium is in no way the direction where we should go with personal computing.
and for the crappy rumours part, this is a discussion forum, we voice our opinions and concerns here!
Man, this ruined my day. Ignorance IS sometimes bliss.
Will Gates one day go completely nuts (not that he hasn’t), and shut down all Linux Palladium machines? SHOULD linux or any other platform for that matter, support this heaving mass of fecal matter?? I say fight it! Law or not, code is part of freedom of speech and no agency will be able to enforce this.
Eventually, I can see regular applications getting encrypted. That’s what online registration has always tried to do, but AGAIN what if there’s no net connection…
Does MS send a rep to your house?…
hmm…I’m getting a gun.
“Good thing no one thought of that when Hitler was spreading his “beneficial” influence over Europe. “Let’s just wait and see what he does after he takes over the world.”
Actually, that’s exactly what happened throughout much of the 30’s. Until the appalling slaughter of the Jews and other “undesirables” began, Hitler was widely tolerated throughout Europe.
But then I guess anyone who is inclined to equate MS with vileness like Hitler or Nazism is probably not a history major in the first place.
only runs on Windows 2000 sp3 or XP
the implementation is slowly being hammered out
You have to take campaign contributions, or only the rich could run for office. The average senate campaign costs over five million dollars now. That means if you can’t take contributions only someone with 2+ times that amount of money could run. Which would lead to the poor and middle class having even less of a voice, not more of one.
btw the flaw isn’t the eula, its the dmca. Technically under the dmca any document created with word can only be opened by word, same with openoffice.org, star, wordperfect, etc. At least thats my understanding.
How it works is like this. Palladium is an encryption system that is also used as a “copyright protection device”. In order for say AbiWord to open a Palladium document it needs to undo the encryption of Palladium with the right keys. But this is circumventing the Palladium implementation because AbiWord doesn’t use Palladium. The document is no longer protected by Palladium which makes it an actual circumvention of the Palladium copyright mechanism. A DMCA breach.
AbiWord could get over this by implementing Palladium but who holds the rights to Palladium? Microsoft. If you don’t have a Microsoft compliant Palladium system, trying to open Palladium documents, even if you have a Palladium like system, is still circumvention of Microsofts Palladium. A DMCA breach.
Because the documents are protected under the Palladium copyright mechanism opening them in anything but TRUE Palladium is a breach of the DMCA.
.. that in a few years it will be illegal to sell non-DMCA computers. Anyone trying will get 5 years and 500k$ at least in the US of A. But hey, maybe the old world wont go along with that i hope. ( But my hopes have been destroyed so many times. )
… land of the free!
Hmmmm, maybe not!
“But then I guess anyone who is inclined to equate MS with vileness like Hitler or Nazism is probably not a history major in the first place.”
I agree. Hitler’s EULA was much more restrictive, and his word processor was terribly slow. Definitely not elite.
Andy
Years ago, sometime in the early 80″s, I worked briefly for a sattelite dish company. This was during the time of the “BUDs” as they were called. (big ugly dish) At the time there were numerous entreprenuers involved in what was a wide open “innovative” industry. People in rural areas had no access to cable and the cable companies were not interested in helping them because the distance versus cost was too great for them to make a profit by providing cable access to these rural areas. Dishs were booming! They became so popular with the common folk that the cable companys and hollywood used their lobby muscle to pressure Congress and the FCC to establish the ability to scramble content and so on until the current tightly controlled mess came into being and all those “BUDs” began to fill landfills. There still remains a small dedicated gruop of BUD users out there but for the most part that sector of the industry has been eliminated.
The parallels to the current Internet and Open Source situation are obvious. We have a method of communication created by tax payer dollars that is open and free. It is the beginnings of a potentially huge untapped market that is completely out of the control of Hollywood and Microsoft. Palladium is the modern attempt by corporate interests to bring this potential market under their control in the same basic manner that the Dish industry was destroyed in the 80’s, only on a much grander scale. Wake up folks, if you are not paying close attention and being very careful with whom and how you spend your hard earned dollars, you may end up HAVING to use the internet through a corporate owned and controlled interface. Write your congressman and make sure you let them know you prefer the internet and your software to remain in your control, not Microsoft and Hollywood.
This is what scares me. One company with so much power.
How does one stop this? Can it be stopped? What are the other companies saying about this, like Apple, Sun, HP, IBM, Dell?
Actually most of the companies aside from Sun and apple have teamed up behind the tcpa alliance.
BUT remember dont mistake tcpa for palladium and vice versa tcpa could become something good.
But censorship is in my book a very bad thing ™