The things I like most about Jon Udell's article are...
the title, Control your identity, or Microsoft and Intel will...
the exhortation...
Control your identity, or Microsoft and Intel will. We can choose accountability, or we can let the unholy alliance of Hollywood, Microsoft, Intel, and the government choose for us. The alliance, cleverly, pretends to solve problems that really annoy us, like spam and email worms. But these violations of trust won't yield simply to trusted motherboards and operating systems.
and the observation...
We have had most of these capabilities in software for years, but haven't bothered to exercise them. The exception is the last item, Palladium's DRM (digital rights management) "feature," which can only work in a world of proprietary devices -- and probably not even then. As Ed Felten, the Princeton University security guru, said in a Salon article:
Society must either give up on copy protection or the general-purpose PC and the Net, says Felten. And no matter how hard Hollywood tries, Felten argues, society will eventually choose the latter because "the sheer value of the Net and computers is so much greater than any value that copy protection can provide."
I'd also note that "copy protection," "copy prevention", and "Digital Rights Management" are all quite different.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the management of digital rights as well as the use of digital technology to manage rights. To my mind, the Gnu GPL (General Public License, aka "copyleft"), and the (c) mark when applied to digital content are forms of DRM.
Copy Prevention is the (mythical and unachievable) holy grail of the (misguided and shortsighted): supposedly a non-hackable way of making digital content uncopyable. (ain't gonna happen, and shouldn't be allowed to happen)
"Copy Protection" is usually used as a synonym for "Copy Prevention", and is probably polluted beyond redemption.
Protecting copies (hackably, but effectlively) is possible and practical. One example is the GPL. Another is the flavor of superdistribution technologies I patented in 1996, which makes it more rewarding for most people to copy and then purchase digital content than for them to copy, hack and steal the digital content.
In my opinion, DRM can be a good thing. Palladium (especially in the admirable, capable, dangerous hands of microsoft) is a very Bad Idea from a social as well as technical point of view.
Choosing appropriate DRM solutions for society, and for business requires non-magical, non-paranoid, pragmatic thinking. Unfortunately this is very difficult in a world composed of invisible agents, unseen networks, unimplemented technologies, unscrupulous lobbyists, and unfettered businesses. Fortunately, difficult is not impossible. The Founding Fathers accomplished a similarly difficult task, and comparably important, task. It's in our hands now.
12:08:38 PM
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