I would like to again thank the Palladium team, in particular Peter Biddle, for participating in yesterday's panel at the USENIX Security conference on Palladium and TCPA. Unfortunately I do not have the time at the moment to write up the many valuable and informative points made during the panel discussion. I will, however, highlight one such issue: As Peter pointed out, while the Palladium effort was started to meet the content protection requirements of digital video content providers, he also pointed out that Microsoft and its Palladium group have so far been unable to determine a method in which Palladium could be utilized to assist in the efforts against application software piracy. As Peter mentioned, the Palladium team on several occasions had to tell the Microsoft's anti-piracy group that Palladium is unsuitable to assist in software (as distinct from content) licensing and anti-piracy efforts. Since Microsoft is not aware of a method to utilize the Palladium environment in the enforcement of software licenses, Peter argued, Microsoft does not intend to and will not utilize Palladium to assist in the enforcement of software licensing. I, on the other hand, am able to think of several methods in which Palladium or operating systems built on top of TCPA can be used to assist in the enforcement of software licenses and the fight against software piracy. I therefore, over the course of the night, wrote - and my patent agent filed with the USPTO earlier today - an application for an US Patent covering numerous methods by which software applications can be protected against software piracy on a platform offering the features that are slated to be provided by Palladium. --Lucky Green