Challenge to TCPA/Palladium detractors

[cubic-dog]

On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, AARG! Anonymous wrote:

> I'd like the Palladium/TCPA critics to offer an alternative proposal
> for achieving the following technical goal:
> 
>   Allow computers separated on the internet to cooperate and share data
>   and computations such that no one can get access to the data outside
>   the limitations and rules imposed by the applications.

Let me restate for clarity, "no one can get access to the data
outside the limitations, et al."

Simply put, (aside from the usual caveat of "with infinite time and 
resources") it can't be done in the sense of you and I sharing a 
document or some such model.

Way too many variables/paths/unknowns.
 
> In other words, allow a distributed network application to create a
> "closed world" where it has control over the data and no one can get
> the application to "cheat".  IMO this is clearly the real goal of TCPA
> and Palladium, in technical terms, when stripped of all the emotional
> rhetoric.

"it" I suppose means the "distributed network application". Using the
term "no one" makes this whole idea pretty much impossible. "No one"
exludes the sufficiently motivated who are willing to go to any lengths.

Brute force in its actual sense pretty much always works. 

Also, when you state that your given scenario is "clearly the real
goal" you have already discarded a whopping number of variables, all
of which may bear on the challenge.

*I* don't know that "this is clearly the real goal of TCPA and Palladium" 
at all. I accept your opinion as your opinion. I believe you are sincere
in interest of discussion. However, it certainly is not my opinion at all.

I am not at all clear on what exactly the problem is that TCPA and 
Palladium are supposed to solve. I presume, until I can be shown otherwise 
that "it" is a tool to further expand the power of patent and copywrite 
holders (or more to the point, their barristers) to impose their will on 
my freedom of speech. 

Since I don't want to play the part of the fellow who won't be convinced, 
all I ask is to be shown in clear terms EXACTLY what the problem is, and
how EXACTLY this problem is solved by this technology. When I mean 
exactly, I mean in simple go/no-go logic. I don't need nor particularly
want to see the technical specs. There are those out there, and here as 
well, who are much more qualified to review all that.