On Thu, 27 Jun 2002, Lucky Green wrote: > David wrote: > > It's not clear that enabling anti-competitive behavior is > > good for society. After all, there's a reason we have > > anti-trust law. Ross Anderson's point -- and it seems to me > > it's one worth considering > > -- is that, if there are potentially harmful effects that > > come with the beneficial effects, maybe we should think about > > them in advance. > > I fully agree that the TCPA's efforts offer potentially beneficial > effects. Assuming the TPM has not been compromised, the TPM should > enable to detect if interested parties have replaced you NIC with the > rarer, but not unheard of, variant that ships out the contents of your > operating RAM via DMA and IP padding outside the abilities of your OS to > detect. > > However, enabling platform security, as much as might be stressed > otherwise by the stakeholders, has never been the motive behind the > TCPA. The motive has been DRM. Does this mean that one should ignore the > benefits that TCPA might bring? Of course not. But it does mean that one > should carefully weigh the benefits against the risks. > > --Lucky Green
I don't see DRM as anti-competitive, I see it as a road block. The French government just signed a contract to put Linux into many of their service machines to help people get data into and out of the government (and I bet there's a lot!). A Microsoft DRM file won't work there, so Microsoft is screwed. The majority of people and businesses want to do things as cheaply as possible. The whole reason Microsoft has gotten as big as they are is because they are cheap. That they happen to be crappy too didn't bother most people, compared to a Sun or Dec workstation, a PC running DOS or WinXX was a factor of 10 cheaper. Controlling secrets for use within a company is what most companies want. The TCPA helps solve that problem, and if Microsoft can sell them something that does it cheaply, they'll happily buy it. The line gets crossed when Hollywood wants to sell movies over the net, and they realize all those bits can be sent by anyone, anywhere, anytime once they have them. For Hollywood to mandate that all platforms and devices protect their IP is insane, and we need to make sure it doesn't happen. However, we can build very special devices that connect directly to Hollywood to play their stuff. If somebody steals it, then it's out and there's not much they can do. Most people won't want to do that - the special boxes can be cheap enough that it's not worth the effort. These special boxes are also TCP, but they are not general computing platforms - they are special movie playing or music playing platforms. So technology can be made so we all win - IP is normativly protected, PC's are generic, and consumers and business get solutions that are low cost. It's an economic win too because guys like me get more work building more boxes :-) Certainly there will be people who could tap into a special box and transfer the data to the general net and make it work on a general PC. They will be called theives and eventually be apprehended. If Hollywood has any brains, these guys will have a lot of work to do. People still counterfiet money too - but they usually lose money!! There are lots of solutions here. The law is not one of them. There is more than enough applicable law to use, and anyone who tries to force their solution down everyone's throat can be taken in for anti-trust violations. I see the risk as being too much law and fixed technology. DRM and TCP are useful tools, they should not be forged into weapons. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
