Back with some doom and gloom

It’s been a while, so here’s lots of depressing stuff for you to read. Although some of it seems quite technical, do try to get through it, as there’s some very serious stuff in here…

Harvard Law School have been holding five days of lectures and seminars on Internet law. Journalist Dan Gillmor has been attending, and his notes from the events make for interesting/scary reading:

Do the currently disorganized, decentralized forces of bottom-up creativity have a prayer of countering the highly organized, moneyed forces who want to maintain their top-down grip on creativity and information?… The idea that cyberspace would or could remain a zone of utter freedom may have been impossible, or at least naive. Now, however, we are risking the opposite — an assertion of harsh and innovation-stifling rules by a few who fear the future.

• Internet Law, Day 1: How governments and business will try to control the Internet through its architecture; ICANN, domain names and trademark law; and governance on the Internet.
• Internet Law, Day 2: Law, Music and the Internet; Recent Litigation and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; what the future holds.
• Internet Law, Day 3: Open source software development; how the (US) government regulates free speech.
• Internet Law, Day 4, Part 1: Internet Technology.
• Internet Law, Day 4, Part 2: Intellectual Property Issues; Developed and Developing Countries.
• Internet Law, Day 5, Part 1: Privacy: Diagnosis and Solution; Jurisdiction and Zoning.

Also worth reading for more: Drew Clark blog and Donna Wentworth’s Copyfight: Intellectual Property Law, Politics and Technology on the Net.

Following on nicely from the Harvard debates, more details are starting to surface about Palladium, and its utterly, utterly frightening implications for computers, the Internet, information and entertainment.

Palladium, Microsoft’s Secure PC project — which could be implimented in the next major version of Windows — is being sold to the public as a way to increase our security and privacy through ‘Trustworthy Computing’. However, in reality it is designed to be a digital rights management (DRM) operating system, which knows who you are, knows who you’re dealing with, and can verify the origin of data, so it can decide what is allowed to run on your computer. A recent pro-Palladium article in Newsweek stated that:

(Palladium) could allow users to exercise ‘fair use’ (like making personal copies of a CD) and publishers could at least start releasing works that cut a compromise between free and locked-down.

However, as John Lettice at The Register points out:

We’re not entirely sure we know these record companies, but they’re clearly not related to the ones who’re trying to stop you playing your music CDs on your PC, copying your CDs at all, and salivating at the prospect of time-limited/per play rental arrangements.

Of course, you could just not upgrade to that particular version of Windows, or use a different operating system. Well, no, that’s not looking so easy. For starters, Microsoft are talking to Intel and AMD, the two major chip manufacturers, probably with a view to having them only make chips or motherboards which will uniquely identify the computer and the user, and recognise other computers and their users. According to Thomas C Greene:

only ‘authorized’ applications may run with privileges. MS wants us to think that the ‘authorizer’ will be the user, but we know better: there will undoubtedly be a DRM element in it, and its authorizations will override yours. There will also be a networking component, involving an elaborate PKI and vast data warehouses run by MS and its trusted partners.

Thomas C Greene’s article goes on to explain how Palladium could mean the end of open-source (GPL) software, including Apache web server and Linux operating system.

As Richard Forno says in an an article about Microsoft and Palladium:

The computer will essentially become a tool of surveillance, judgment and control over users, rather than a tool of innovation, communication, and enlightenment… Given the pervasiveness of computers in modern society, the worldwide social ramifications of Palladium are enormous. Consider the ability of one entity — in this case, Microsoft — to dictate acceptable behavior and content… in service of its own commercial aspirations. If your behavior or actions are deemed ‘unacceptable’ by such a third party, you could find yourself impotent on the global stage.

Further reading on Palladium, TCPA and DRM:

• Ross Anderson of Cambridge University has published an excellent introduction/FAQ on Palladium, the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), their relationship and their implications;
• the Register has a summary of the TCPA/Palladium FAQ;
• ExtremeTech’s article Microsoft’s Palladium: A New Security Initiative provides a very good overview (don’t overlook the ‘Next’ link at the bottom right — there are several pages to the article);
• Declan McCullagh’s Microsoft’s Palladium news roundup, criticism, and more is pretty good too;
• Is Microsoft’s Palladium a Trojan Horse? at InternetNews.com;
• Entertainment control freaks have an ally in Microsoft by Dan Gillmor;
• And here’s a pro-Palladium article by a Microsoft employee to inject a little balance into my cynical outpouring.

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