TCPA and Palladium: Content Control for the Masses

[Seth Johnson]

The most fundamental, unavoidable problem with TCPA and
Palladium is not whether they can (or will be used to)
restrict the use of the universal logic device; it is rather
the political premises that they are implementing for the
sake of the "content industries."

TCPA is the technological realization of the concepts
embodied in the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty
(WPPT), which only came into effect this past May 20th (with
little public notice, of course).  The WPPT declares an
unprecedented "moral right" of authors to control public
uses of their works.

That's the game plan.

TCPA and Palladium are simply content control for the
masses.  They constitute an effort to "democratize" content
control under the concept of "moral rights," encouraging
people to confuse private interest issues such as privacy
and security with the clear public interest issues raised by
the specter of content control.  And encouraging the public
to jump on the bandwagon.

In America, we have never supported the concept of "moral
rights" embodied in the WPPT.  The US Constitution accords
Congress the power to grant (or deny, for that matter)
exclusive rights to works and inventions for the purpose of
promoting the progress of the useful arts and sciences, not
for the purpose of rewarding the originality of creators --
though that is obviously a consequence of exclusive rights
as they have been implemented in statute so far.  However,
in America, we have traditionally understood the difference
between expression, which copyright statute has used to
delineate its scope up to now, and the facts and ideas that
comprise an expressive work.  The reasons for that are
essential and unavoidable -- information is free; it's not
that it wants to be; it is and lways has been.  They are
unavoidable, that is, except in a world that subscribes to
"universal content control" for the sake of so-called "moral
rights."

TCPA and Palladium are initiatives that hope to encourage
producers of information products to identify content
control with "moral rights," blithely overlooking the real
implications of information technology in a free society.

Seth Johnson

"R. A. Hettinga" wrote:
> 
> --- begin forwarded text
> 
> Status:  U
> Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 15:35:32 -0700
> From: AARG! Anonymous <remailer at aarg.net>
> Comments: This message did not originate from the Sender
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> To: cypherpunks at lne.com, cryptography at wasabisystems.com,
>    daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu
> Subject: Challenge to David Wagner on TCPA
> Sender: owner-cypherpunks at lne.com
> 
> Declan McCullagh writes at
> http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-946890.html:
> 
>    "The world is moving toward closed digital rights
>    management systems where you may need approval to
>    run programs," says David Wagner, an assistant
>    professor of computer science at the University of
>    California at Berkeley.  "Both Palladium and TCPA
>    incorporate features that would restrict what
>    applications you could run."
> 
> But both Palladium and TCPA deny that they are designed
> to restrict what applications you run.  The TPM FAQ at
> http://www.trustedcomputing.org/docs/TPM_QA_071802.pdf
> reads, in answer #1:
> 
> : The TPM can store measurements of components of the
> : user's system, but the TPM is a passive device and
> : doesn't decide what software can or can't run on a
> : user's system.
> 
> An apparently legitimate but leaked Palladium White
> Paper at
> http://www.neowin.net/staff/users/Voodoo/Palladium_White_Paper_final.pdf
> says, on the page shown as number 2:
> 
> : A Palladium-enhanced computer must continue to run
> : any existing applications and device drivers.
> 
> and goes on,
> 
> : In addition, Palladium does not change what can be
> : programmed or run on the computing platform; it
> : simply changes what can be believed about programs,
> : and the durability of those beliefs.
> 
> Of course, white papers and FAQs are not technical
> documents and may not be completely accurate.  To
> really answer the question, we need to look at the
> spec.  Unfortunately there is no Palladium spec
> publicly available yet, but we do have one for TCPA,
> at
> http://www.trustedcomputing.org/docs/main%20v1_1b.pdf.
> 
> Can you find anything in this spec that would do what
> David Wagner says above, restrict what applications
> you could run?  Despite studying this spec for many
> hours, no such feature has been found.
> 
> So here is the challenge to David Wagner, a well
> known and justifiably respected computer security
> expert: find language in the TCPA spec to back up
> your claim above, that TCPA will restrict what
> applications you can run.  Either that, or withdraw
> the claim, and try to get Declan McCullagh to issue
> a correction.  (Good luck with that!)
> 
> And if you want, you can get Ross Anderson to help
> you.  His reports are full of claims about Palladium
> and TCPA which seem equally unsupported by the facts.
> When pressed, he claims secret knowledge.  Hopefully
> David Wagner will have too much self-respect to fall
> back on such a convenient excuse.
> 
> -----------------
> R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

-- 

[CC] Counter-copyright:
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I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or
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