sad treacherous computing day

simo simo.sorce at xsec.it
Mon May 7 13:39:22 UTC 2007


On Mon, 2007-05-07 at 15:30 +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    DRM and TC can be used in useful ways, again it is not the
>    technology, it is the use of the technology that can be good or
>    bad.
> 
> What are these useful ways one can use DRM and TC?  The whole point of
> TC and DRM is after all to prohibit a user from updating their
> software, or from listining to their favourite song on their music
> player of choice.  I cannot see anything useful about these things.

That's because you have limited imagination I guess.

TC and DRM are simply mechanisms, you could use a TC enabled machine to
sign your own binaries so that you are sure nobody can take over your
machine and run a different kernel.

Same for DRM, you can use it for your own stuff.

The problem is in WHO control access, not in the fact that you can
control access.

Do you leave your machine passwordless with all files set to 777 ?

> Encryption doesn't even come into the picture, since you can do TC/DRM
> without encryption; I think this is what Tivio did, they just signed
> their binaries, and the hardware only allows running binaries signed
> by that entity.

Encryption was just an example of something, some people, considered bad
in the past for the same reasons. Stallman itself was against the use of
_passwords_ back in the past. But even then it was not the password
itself the problem. the problem was _access_.

Simo.




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