Challenge to David Wagner on TCPA

[James A. Donald]

    --
On 2 Aug 2002 at 14:36, Trei, Peter wrote:
> OK, It's 2004, I'm an IT Admin,
> and I've converted my corporation over to TCPA/Palladium machines. My
> Head of Marketing has his TCPA/Palladium desktop's hard drive
> jam-packed with corporate confidential documents he's been actively
> working on - sales projections,  product plans, pricing schemes.
> They're all sealed files.
>
> His machine crashes - the MB burns out.
> He wants to recover the data.
>
> HoM: 	I want to recover my data.
> Me: 	OK: We'll pull the HD, and get the data off it.
> HoM:	Good - mount it as a secondary HD in my new system.
> Me:	That isn't going to work now we have TCPA and Palladium.
> HoM:	Well, what do you have to do?
> Me:	Oh, it's simple. We encrypt the data under Intel's TPME key,
>  and send it off to Intel. Since Intel has all the keys, they can
>  unseal all your data to plaintext, copy it, and then re-seal it for
>  your new system. It only costs $1/Mb.
> HoM:	Let me get this straight - the only way to recover this data is
> to let
>  Intel have a copy, AND pay them for it?
> Me:	Um... Yes. I think MS might be involved as well, if your were
> using
>  Word.
> HoM:	You are *so* dead.

Obviously it is insane to use keys that you do not yourself control 
to keep secrets.  That, however, is not the purpose of TCPA/Palladium 
as envisaged by Microsoft.

The intent is that Peter can sell Paul software or content that will 
only run on ONE computer for ONE time period..

When the motherboard emits blue smoke, or the time runs out, 
whichever happens first, Paul has to buy new software.  If prices are 
lowered accordingly, this might be acceptable.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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