RIAA turns against Hollings bill

[Trei, Peter]

> John Gilmore[SMTP:gnu at toad.com] writes:
	Nomen writes:

> > How does this latest development change the picture?  If there is no
> > Hollings bill, does this mean that Trusted Computing will be voluntary,
> > as its proponents have always claimed?  And if we no longer have such
> > a threat of a mandated Trusted Computing technology, how bad is it for
> > the system to be offered in a free market?
> 
> The detailed RIAA statement tries to leave exactly this impression,
> but it's the usual smokescreen.  Check the sentence in their "7 policy
> principles" joint statement, principle 6:
> 
>   "...  The role of government, if needed at all, should be limited to
>    enforcing compliance with voluntarily developed functional
>    specifications reflecting consensus among affected interests."
> 
> I.e. it's the same old game.  TCPA is such a voluntarily developed
> functional spec.  So is the "broadcast flag", and the HDCP copy
> protection of your video cable, and IBM's copy-protection for hard
> disk drives.  Everything is all voluntary, until some competitor
> reverse engineers one of these, and builds a product that lets the
> information get out of the little "consensus" boxes.  Consumers want
> that, but it can't be allowed to happen.  THEN the role of government
> is to eliminate that competitor by outlawing them and their product.
> 
> 	John
> 
"enforcing compliance with voluntarily developed functional specifications"

appears to be NewSpeak for:

"Let the RIAA, not Congress, write the laws, and then send in
Men With Guns to enforce them."

Peter Trei




---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at wasabisystems.com