RIAA turns against Hollings bill

[Birger Toedtmann]

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