[Sussex] BBC Video Downloads

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On 2/10/07, linux at oneandoneis2.org <linux at oneandoneis2.org> wrote:
>
> Quoting Steve Dobson <steve at dobson.org>:
> > Palladium, Treacherous Computing (TC), call it what you will, I agree
> > that it is an abusive technology.
>
> Actually, from what I understand about TC, I'm not even convinced by
> that much.
>
> Many of the arguments people give for why it's a bad thing are
> actually untrue. Things like "You won't be able to install Linux on a
> Trusted Computing machine" are popular claims that are simply wrong.


This week. But take a careful look at where it's headed: Brian LaMacchia,
who is one of the core authors of the technology, at his MIT presentation on
it when it was called Palladium, indicated that there's a real security
desire to control the BIOS and boot devices. It's even extensible with the
existing standards to control media devices such as DVD drives or USB memory
sticks: this would force those devices to be accessible only with authorized
software, namely software that has been issued the appropriate keys. There's
a real risk that under the aegis of security concerns a motherboard
manufacturer can make hardware bootable only with their authorized kernels.

That gets into serious tying of hardware to specific software packages and
should be taken very seriously. There are similar issues with software and
file formats: Windows Media DRM seems aimed at the models of MS DRM^H^H^H
Trusted Computing.
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