Thanks, Lucky, for helping to kill gnutella

[Nelson Minar]

Wow, this conversation has been fun. Thanks, Anonymous Aarg, for
taking up the unpopular side of the debate. I'll spare any question
about motives.

I think most of us would agree that having a trusted computing
environment makes some interesting things possible. Smartcards,
afterall, are more or less the same idea as Palladium, just on a
smaller scale. You're right to point out they could make things like a
trusted Gnutella client possible, or do SETI at Home style distributed
computing in a secure manner, or...

But the context of Palladium is larger than what a few smart P2P folks
could do. Palladium is a technology proposed by a convicted predatory
monopolist. It is a technology that gives that monopolist even more
control over the uses of its technology. And it just so happens to be
exactly in line with the needs of the entertainment industry which has
spent the past few years doing their best to squelch creative uses of
the Internet so they can jealously protect their copyright hegemony.

We'd be crazy not to be a little concerned.

Let's turn the debate to a slightly more interesting place. Is there a
way to create a trusted computing environment such as Palladium that
does not also enable the restrictionof liberties? The "optional"
aspect of Palladium isn't enough - the folks who own the media will
ensure that it can only be played if your computer is in trusted mode.

                                                     nelson at monkey.org
.       .      .     .    .   .  . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/

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