TC technology

Windows Longhorn, the new OS in development by Mcft, is going to include TC technology, and it’s not a good thing. Simple processes that allowed you to modify your computer will be stripped away, and all control is going to be taken from the user and given to the government (or whatever other company can get their greasy hands on it).

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1. What is TC - this `trusted computing' business?

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is an alliance of Mcft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD which promotes a standard for a `more secure' PC. Their definition of `security' is controversial; machines built according to their specification will be more trustworthy from the point of view of software vendors and the content industry, but will be less trustworthy from the point of view of their owners. In effect, the TCG specification will transfer the ultimate control of your PC from you to whoever wrote the software it happens to be running. (Yes, even more so than at present.)

The TCG project is known by a number of names. `Trusted computing' was the original one, and is still used by IBM, while Mcft calls it `trustworthy computing' and the Free Software Foundation calls it `treacherous computing'. Hereafter I'll just call it TC, which you can pronounce according to taste. Other names you may see include TCPA (TCG's name before it incorporated), Palladium (the old Mcft name for the version due to ship in 2004) and NGSCB (the new Mcft name). Intel has just started calling it `safer computing'. Many observers believe that this confusion is deliberate - the promoters want to deflect attention from what TC actually does.


2. What does TC do, in ordinary English?

TC provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the application software, and where these applications can communicate securely with their authors and with each other. The original motivation was digital rights management (DRM): Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a TC platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing possibilities will open up.

TC will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. In the first version of TC, pirate software could be detected and deleted remotely. Since then, Mcft has sometimes denied that it intended TC to do this, but at WEIS 2003 a senior Mcft manager refused to deny that fighting piracy was a goal: `Helping people to run stolen software just isn't our aim in life', he said. The mechanisms now proposed are more subtle, though. TC will protect application software registration mechanisms, so that unlicensed software will be locked out of the new ecology. Furthermore, TC apps will work better with other TC apps, so people will get less value from old non-TC apps (including pirate apps). Also, some TC apps may reject data from old apps whose ****** numbers have been blacklisted. If Mcft believes that your copy of Office is a pirate copy, and your local government moves to TC, then the documents you file with them may be unreadable. TC will also make it easier for people to rent software rather than buy it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the software stop working but so may the files it created. So if you stop paying for upgrades to Media Player, you may lose access to all the songs you bought using it.

For years, Bill Gates has dreamed of finding a way to make the Chinese pay for software: TC looks like being the answer to his prayer.


Any comments interesting MD

 

I think Microshaft has run the internet long enough. M$ should be finally declared a monopoly, and broken up into several smaller companies, who all would have their own separate Operating Systems. It's about time the monster M$'s rein was ended. No one company should have that kind of power and control. If At&t was broken up, why not M$? Thanks for posting Maddawgz.