The New York Times is reporting at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/technology/14CND-PIRACY.html that the Recording Industry Association of America, along with two computer and technology industry trade groups, has agreed not to seek new government regulations to mandate technological controls for copyright protection. This appears to refer primarily to the Hollings bill, the CBDTPA, which had already been struck a blow when Hollings lost his committee chairmanship due to the Democrats losing Senate leadership. Most observers see this latest step as being the last nail in the coffin for the CBDTPA. Some months ago there were those who were predicting that Trusted Computing technology, as embodied in the TCPA and Palladium proposals, would be mandated by the Hollings bill. They said that all this talk of "voluntary" implementations was just a smoke screen while the players worked behind the scenes to pass laws that would mandate TCPA and Palladium in their most restrictive forms. It was said that Linux would be banned, that computers would no longer be able to run software that we can use today. We would cease to be the real owners of our computers, others would be "root" on them. A whole host of calamaties were forecast. 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? Let technology companies decide whether to offer Palladium technology on their computers or not. Let content producers decide whether to use Palladium to protect their content or not. Let consumers decide whether to purchase and enable Palladium on their systems or not. Why is it so bad for people to freely make their own decisions about how best to live their lives? Cypherpunks of all people should be the last to advocate limiting the choices of others. Thankfully, it looks like freedom may win this round, despite the efforts of cypherpunks and "online freedom" advocates to eliminate this new technology option. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@wasabisystems.com
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?
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. John --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@wasabisystems.com
Nomen Nescio schrieb am Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 01:25:01AM +0100: [...]
a threat of a mandated Trusted Computing technology, how bad is it for the system to be offered in a free market?
Let technology companies decide whether to offer Palladium technology on their computers or not. Let content producers decide whether to use Palladium to protect their content or not. Let consumers decide whether to purchase and enable Palladium on their systems or not.
Why is it so bad for people to freely make their own decisions about how best to live their lives? Cypherpunks of all people should be the last to advocate limiting the choices of others. Thankfully, it looks like freedom may win this round, despite the efforts of cypherpunks and "online freedom" advocates to eliminate this new technology option.
Just to remind you of the arguments already known and voiced here even more often: to "freely make their own decisions" is possible IFF there is no one exerting force (absence of a law, and the fall of the CBDTPA may help in this respect) AND people have alternatives to choose from. The latter may not be the case in several years from now, CBDTPA or not. If you only can buy TCPA boards and your favourite OS will only run your favourite content when some TCPA microkernel is provably running, how's that compatible with free decisions? (No, I cannot build my own mainboard, sorry.) Do you really think the industry will ask the average user whether he wants a TCPA-enabled board or not? Do you really think the average user will even understand the question? Driving a car is not an option if the supermarket is 50 miles from your home and there's no bus station. Regards, Birger Toedtmann
I have a news analysis up at News.com that, perhaps, may shed some light on what's actually going on: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980671.html -Declan On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 01:25:01AM +0100, Nomen Nescio wrote:
The New York Times is reporting at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/technology/14CND-PIRACY.html that the Recording Industry Association of America, along with two computer and technology industry trade groups, has agreed not to seek new government regulations to mandate technological controls for copyright protection. This appears to refer primarily to the Hollings bill, the CBDTPA, which had already been struck a blow when Hollings lost his committee chairmanship due to the Democrats losing Senate leadership. Most observers see this latest step as being the last nail in the coffin for the CBDTPA.
Some months ago there were those who were predicting that Trusted Computing technology, as embodied in the TCPA and Palladium proposals, would be mandated by the Hollings bill. They said that all this talk of "voluntary" implementations was just a smoke screen while the players worked behind the scenes to pass laws that would mandate TCPA and Palladium in their most restrictive forms. It was said that Linux would be banned, that computers would no longer be able to run software that we can use today. We would cease to be the real owners of our computers, others would be "root" on them. A whole host of calamaties were forecast. [...]
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participants (4)
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Birger Toedtmann -
Declan McCullagh -
John Gilmore -
Nomen Nescio