MS white paper says Palladium open, clean, not DRM

[R. A. Hettinga]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26231.html

MS white paper says Palladium open, clean, not DRM
By John Lettice
Posted: 17/07/2002 at 09:25 GMT

A final draft of Microsoft's Palladium consultation white paper appears to
have escaped, and is currently being hosted by Neowin.net. Microsoft
intends to open Palladium up for discussion, but it's not as yet clear to
us whether this means it will be distributing the white paper to all and
sundry, or whether it envisages a more restricted distribution list. In any
event we haven't been able to nail down anywhere on the Microsoft site you
can get it,* or any mention of the Microsoft Content Security Business
Unit, which authored it.

There's much in the paper that's interesting, and it's even interesting
that it's in PDF format, rather than Word - the authors are clearly having
a bash at being ecumenical. Palladium, it stresses, is not an operating
system, but a collection of trusted subsystems and components that are
opt-in. You will not get the advantages of Palladium if you don't opt in,
of course, but you don't have to. It's als some years off, but one of the
objectives is to make "a Windows-based device a trustworthy environment for
any data." Which is a tall order.

Software will have to be rewritten or specially developed to take advantage
of Palladium, and software of this class is referred to as a Trusted Agent.
Users will be able to separate their data into "realms," which are
analogous to vaults and can have varying access and security criteria. The
system does not need to know who you are, indeed doesn't really want to
know who you are, because it's about verifying the identity of machines. So
a company could identify an employee's home machine for secure operation
remotely on the corporate network.

Then it gets really interesting. "Palladium will not require Digital Rights
Management (DRM) technology, and DRM will not require Palladium... They are
separate technologies." Now, we know they don't need to be separate
technologies, we know that Palladium could enhance DRM considerably, and we
suspect that at least some people at Microsoft would take this route if
they thought they could get away with it. But the authors here seem to have
concluded that Palladium will not fly if it has a whiff of DRM about it,
and are determined to distance themselves. This is good, people, if we all
keep shouting 'DRM bad!' they stand a chance of not having their minds
changed for them.

Deeper into the Department of Bizarre Revolutions we have: "A Palladium
system will be open at all levels." The hardware will "run any TOR"
(Trusted Operating Root), the TOR will run "trusted agents from any
publisher," will "work with any trusted service provider," (the authors
envisage this as a new service category) and it'll all be independently
verified.

TOR source code will be published, Palladium will be regularly examined "by
a credible security auditor" and anyone "can certify Palladium hardware or
software, and we expect that many companies and organizations will offer
this service."

Of course, right now these are only words, the terms and conditions for
publication, verification and auditing haven't been revealed, and Microsoft
has a long and inglorious record in Untrustworthy Industry Leadership to
overcome before we entirely buy the Trustworthy Computing pitch. However,
as far as it goes, this little lot sounds plausible. If it were any other
company, you might even be inclined to take it at face value. Keep talking,
people, and prove you mean it. ®
-- 
-----------------
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'

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