TCPA/Palladium -- likely future implications

[James A. Donald]

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On 9 Aug 2002 at 17:15, AARG! Anonymous wrote:
> to understand it you need a true picture of TCPA rather than the 
> false one which so many cypherpunks have been promoting.

As TCPA is currently vaporware, projections of what it will be, 
and how it will be used are judgments, and are not capable of 
being true or false, though they can be plausible or implausible.

Even with the best will in the world, and I do not think the 
people behind this have the best will in the world, there is an 
inherent conflict between tamper resistance and general purpose 
programmability.  To prevent me from getting at the bits as they 
are sent to my sound card or my video card, the entire computer, 
not just the dongle, has to be somewhat tamper resistant, which is 
going to make the entire computer somewhat less general purpose 
and programmable, thus less useful.

The people behind TCPA might want to do something more evil than 
you say they want to do, if they want to do what you say they want 
to do they might be prevented by law enforcement which wants 
something considerably more far reaching and evil, and if they
want to do it, and law enforcement refrains from reaching out and 
taking hold of their work, they still may be unable to do it for 
technical reasons. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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