Wow, this conversation has been fun. Thanks, Anonymous Aarg, for taking up the unpopular side of the debate. I'll spare any question about motives.
I think most of us would agree that having a trusted computing environment makes some interesting things possible. Smartcards, afterall, are more or less the same idea as Palladium, just on a smaller scale. You're right to point out they could make things like a trusted Gnutella client possible, or do SETI@Home style distributed computing in a secure manner, or... But the context of Palladium is larger than what a few smart P2P folks could do. Palladium is a technology proposed by a convicted predatory monopolist. It is a technology that gives that monopolist even more control over the uses of its technology. And it just so happens to be exactly in line with the needs of the entertainment industry which has spent the past few years doing their best to squelch creative uses of the Internet so they can jealously protect their copyright hegemony. We'd be crazy not to be a little concerned. Let's turn the debate to a slightly more interesting place. Is there a way to create a trusted computing environment such as Palladium that does not also enable the restrictionof liberties? The "optional" aspect of Palladium isn't enough - the folks who own the media will ensure that it can only be played if your computer is in trusted mode. [EMAIL PROTECTED] . . . . . . . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]