TCPA / Palladium FAQ

[Ian Miller]

>How does the owner of this machine plan to persuade their TCPA-compliant CD
>burner to touch the file?
It has to have been possible to get the file onto the machine in the first
place, or it wouldn't be there to be remotely deleted.  So presumably at
some time in the past it wasn't embargoed, and at that time it would be
possible to burn it onto a CD, unless of course TCPA forbids all making of
back-ups.

Even if a file is embargoed it will be possible to pass around encrypted
copies of it, just not do anything with the plaintext on a TCPA machine (,
unless of course TCPA forbids all encryption it cannot decrypt).  Indeed
trying to destroy such encrypted copies is precisely the sort of thing that
the remote deletion might be used for.

I think at least part of the rationale for remote deletion is the hope that
most variants of rogue-content can be eliminated entirely so they don't
have to have permanent entries in the Index of Forbidden Files, which will
otherwise grow indefinitely.  Writable-CDs (indeed any write-protectable
backup media) means this won't happen.  It just needs a few sophisticated
pirates who give every copy they sell a different watermark to have the
IoFF growing very fast indeed.

I think TCPA would provide a whole range of new opportunities for serious
IPR-pirates as it will more or less eliminate the competition from amateurs
and small scale pirates.  I don't give TCPA the proverbial snowflake's
chance of being effective against them.  I would add organised crime as one
of the likely beneficiaries of TCPA.

Ian


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