Intel to include DRM in new Pentium 4 series processors

[Bill Thompson]

Surely there is nothing to stop someone - us - developing a Linux
Virtual
Machine along the lines of the Java Virtual Machine. This could be GPLd
but one version of it would be authenticated using whatever mechanism
the
TCPA chips require - it could even be certified as Palladium compliant
and
run on top of windows. It would work by creating a sandbox within which
Linux kernels and GNU applications and tools - home grown and home
compiled - 
would run as now. However it would only be able to open sockets to other
LVM-based
applications running on the trusted network or to non-TCPA systems
running
on other hardware: it would have limited access to the rest of the
trusted network
where TCPA-compliant processors ran only certified code and content.

Then, for example, when a national government says 'the restrictions on
copying enforced by the DRM hardware for ebooks are too extreme and
limit
fair use rights' software to crack those formats and read them can be 
developed and run on the LVM-hosted network despite protestatations
from the US.

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
[mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk] On Behalf Of Alan
Braggins
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 10:13 AM
To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Subject: Re: Intel to include DRM in new Pentium 4 series processors



> I believe TCPA is more of an end run around GPL that a legal attack on

> it, so this isn't particularly important in this instance.
> 
> Quoting from the bottom of the relevant question on Ross Anderson's
>   http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
[...]
> | the GPL won't work as intended.
> 
> I understand this as "sure you can copy that GPL'd work. You can 
> compile it too if you like. You'll have to find somewhere else to run 
> it though."
> 
> | The benefit for Microsoft is not that this will destroy free 
> | software directly. The point is this: once people realise that even 
> | GPL'led software can be hijacked for commercial purposes, idealistic

> | young programmers will be much less motivated to write free 
> | software.
> 
> One can only hope that if it _does_ come to this, the Stuckist Net (a 
> phrase coined by The Register I believe) will have enough idealistic 
> or rebellious programmers, and hardware, to survive.

BSD software can already be hijacked for commercial purposes (or used
freely including for commercial purposes, depending on your point of
view), and there seem to be quite a lot of idealistic programmers
writing it.

Microsoft stand to benefit if non-copyleft free software continues to
thrive but nobody bothers with copyleft.

-- 
Alan Braggins  mailto:armb@ncipher.com  http://www.ncipher.com/ nCipher
Corporation Ltd.  +44 1223 723600  Fax: +44 1223 723601