[RicocheT]

Who will own your computer, the MPAA (motion picture assoc. of America) and RIAA (recording industry assoc. of America)or YOU ??

[Aquinasfan]

The "Fritz Chip" sounds like a good idea to me. If people were ripping off my intellectual property I'd be pretty ticked.

[Publius6961]

Is that what computer owners want? Slower computers that can't copy MP3 files without paid authorization?

Wonderful.
Foreign Muslim Mass Murder terrorists have made travel a living hell for everybody, and now losers who feel they have a "right" to use copyrighted material are about to make computing a living hell for everybody else.

Talk about mixed feelings here.
I can't generate a whole lot of sympathy or outrage here...

[Timesink]

Eventually, Intel and AMD say they will incorporate TCPA into future processors. Lucky us.

Guess I'll be using Motorola G4 processors, then.

[StockAyatollah]

Can someone tell me why South Carolina rat Senator Fritz Hollings is so interested in this issue? I don't think that the MPAA and RIAA have a huge presence in his state.

[Sundog]

This goes beyond "Who will own your computer", this is an extraordinary effort to exterminate competition, i.e. linux.

Linux depends on a "General Public License", called a GPL.

As reported in the Register, (same source as cited above) this takes aim at linux by rendering it impracticle to continue with the GPL. Excerpts follow...

MS to eradicate GPL, hence Linux
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 25/06/2002 at 22:30 GMT

Yesterday, as we all know, Microsoft fed an 'exclusive' story about its new 'Palladium' DRM/PKI Trust Machine to Newsweek hack Steven Levy (a guy who writes without irony of "high-level encryption"), presumably because they trusted him not to grasp the technology well enough to question it seriously. His un-critical announcement immediately sparked a flurry of articles considering what this means to the Windows user base.

But here's the diabolical bit. Linux distributors are going to lose big time if they remain faithful to the GPL. Palladium will either break the GPL, or if not, break Linux.

It's the very fact that this appears insoluble to me that helps me realize that MS has put tremendous, careful thought into it. To make the [internet] Linux-hostile, MS is taking dramatic steps to make it GPL-hostile. Very clever and admirably diabolical.

(The GPL or The GNU General Public License, created by Richard Stallman, serves as the de facto constitution for the Free Software movement. It covers the majority of Free Software/Open Source software and has become the legal and philosophical cornerstone of the Free Software community. From the GNU open source website)

MS to eradicate GPL, hence Linux

Cheers...

[RJL]

I predict that the "Fritz" chip will prove to be as needed, loved and used as Clinton's "V" chip in TV's.

[steve-b]

However, most computer users are far from techno-savvy, so if they get bombarded with propaganda about TCPA making their computers secure from hackers, maybe the IT industry will be able to bamboozle large numbers of casual computer users. But the relatively smaller community of power users will certainly not go quietly into this good fight.

This creates a strong incentive for the power users to undercut the propaganda by releasing some nasty expolit that breaks this "security" (ideally, one to which only the new systems are vunlerable). Triggering the fritz-chip lockdown and popping up bogus warning messages which tell the user that all his files are "illegally pirated" would be just the thing to turn this crap radioactive -- and, since the creator's incentives are to err on the side of declaring any suspect file to be "pirated", it will probably be quite easy.

[rdb3]

What chafes me here is how this is similar to the gun debate. Gun grabbers want you to register because you might use a gun in a crime. It appears here that they want to penalize you for what you might copy, instead of just going after those who violate copyright protections.

It's not the inanimate object; it's the person using the inanimate object for nefarious reasons.

[doomtrooper99]

Simply do an ANALOG copy of your mp3's. Don't rip mp3's directly using MusicMatch. Connect portable CD player to your PC using audio dubbing cable and use MusicMatch to copy your music. It's not as fast and convinient, but the copy will be just as good.

[Psycho_Bunny]

I said this on another thread about Palladium and it bears repeating:

I've been writing a piece of music and recorded a draft of it about a week ago onto my Win2000 machine with SoundForge.  I then converted it to .mp3 with AudioCatalyst and uploaded it to my website.

Yesterday I downloaded it on my personal laptop at work, so I could hear it through different speakers.  When I opened it with Media Player 7, the digital media security kernel kicked in and brought up a dialog box stating that I was opening a piece of music "recorded from a CD" and asking me if I wanted "migrate my license" and warning me about copyright infringements.

ON MY OWN MUSIC AND ON MY OWN MACHINES.

If such a simple security concept is already that screwed up, how does MS think it's going to credibly expand in that area?  Palladium will just continue to prove that MS has expanded into markets it can't competently code in.

And what if there were a lock-out mechanism....imagine it....locked out by my own music because MS can't code straight.

[Jhoffa_]

You see napsterites?

See what you morons did? Just buy your music like everyone else.

For goodness sakes.

[pyx]

it's time for Tuxers to take the gloves off. ®

[Kevin Curry]

To answer the question posed by the thread's title, we may very well be doomed to become a nanny state, but one with police state overtones. If so, tantrum-throwing pro-dope/pro-porn/pro-gay/anti-God libertarians and their social allies, the liberals, will speed us to that end-state.

I will continue to resist that end-state, and will enjoy my freedom for as long as I can.

[Lazamataz]

If they produce these cripple-computers, some enterprising fellow will start a company that produces full-function computers.

That man will be rich.

[apillar]

The "Fritz" chip is a total waste of time and money on the part of all parties concerned.

I'll put on my Nostradamus hat and make a prediction here today:

If the "fritz" chip is required by law some hacker will have a program that disables or fools the chip before it ever hit's the market.

So the music pirates will have to download and install a 100kb file from hackers.net out of an ISP in Bermuda and then they will merrily continue to pirate away. Meanwhile the industry has spent millions of dollars in research and development on the "fritz" chip and everyone is paying more for their computer components.

[PsyOp]

Fritz Chip? Fine. As long as they also mandate the "Liberty Chip." It must be installed in all government computers. If anyone types an unconstitutional thought on their keyboard the computer crashes and burns (laws might become shorter and more understandable if they have to write them out by hand). The computer will lock down if any government official attempts any illegal or unethical transaction and immediately e-mail all his or her constituents of what they are trying to do. And so on. Whats good for the Goose... etc.