RIAA turns against Hollings bill

[Nomen Nescio]

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.

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