Nomen said:

How does this latest development change the picture? If there is no Hollings bill, does this mean that Trusted Computing will be voluntary, as its proponents have always claimed? And if we no longer have such a threat of a mandated Trusted Computing technology, how bad is it for the system to be offered in a free market?

John Gilmore replied:

The detailed RIAA statement tries to leave exactly this impression, but it's the usual smokescreen. Check the sentence in their "7 policy principles" joint statement, principle 6:

"... The role of government, if needed at all, should be limited to enforcing compliance with voluntarily developed functional specifications reflecting consensus among affected interests."

I.e. it's the same old game. TCPA is such a voluntarily developed functional spec. So is the "broadcast flag", and the HDCP copy protection of your video cable, and IBM's copy-protection for hard disk drives. Everything is all voluntary, until some competitor reverse engineers one of these, and builds a product that lets the information get out of the little "consensus" boxes. Consumers want that, but it can't be allowed to happen. THEN the role of government is to eliminate that competitor by outlawing them and their product.

This is exactly correct. Wonks on both sides in DC been drawing this distinction quite clearly for some time. Yesterday's RIAA "concession" is in fact, reiteration of their established position. The only thing different today is MPAA now seems even further outside the mainstream of American legal tradition. Will Rodger Director Public Policy CCIA www.ccianet.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@wasabisystems.com