"Palladium" and TCPA

[Ross Anderson]

The fact that Palladium will ship with bugs doesn't help us much. It
may make things worse by helping M$ blunt public alarm. When I first
questioned an informed Microsoftie about TCPA, the response was `don't
worry, it won't be proof against hardware attacks, so you can get in
if you have to' - as if that made it OK to lock out the competition
forever from your file formats, on pain of DMCA jail time.

Watch out for the copyright regulations that the DTI is due to consult
on this year. We were promised a three-month consultation period; what's
the betting it will be shortened? What's the betting that the scope of
criminal penalties will be increased, and fair use clawed back? What's
this got to do with the 35K per annum consultancy that Chris Smith is 
getting from Disney? How many other influential people are starting to
get consultancy from TCPA consortium members, but won't declare it until
the next Register of Members' Interests?

I fully expect that copyright law will cover for any initial technical
defects in the implementation. I for one am not going to expect students
to put chips into ion beam machines if it's going to land them in jail.

Palladium / TCPA is a policy issue at least as much as a technical one.
Bad technology and bad law can sometimes sort of cancel out; in this 
case, however, a huge amount of money is being spent on making sure that
they interact in the most pernicious possible way. For example, I heard
yesterday from someonw who interviewed at M$ three months ago that they
had 170 people working on Palladium back then. Bill's not spending that
sort of money for love of Hollywood, or out of concern for Owen lewis's
privacy either :-)

Ross