Trusted Computing

Computing industry successfully control the use and access to a large part of the market software. But what if they extend their grip to the hardware? This is what Trusted Computing is about.

"Trusted Computing (TC) is a technology developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group.^[1] The term is taken from the field of trusted systems and has a specialized meaning. With Trusted Computing, the computer will consistently behave in specific ways, and those behaviors will be enforced by hardware and software.^[1] Enforcing this Trusted behavior is achieved by loading the hardware with a unique ID and unique master key and denying even the owner of a computer knowledge and control of their own master key. Trusted Computing is extremely controversial as the hardware is not only secured for the owner, but also secured against the owner as well." (Wikipedia)

Again, the industry's use of specific a term with a strong positive connotation to enforce their control over computer is quite clever. According to Stephan and Vogel, trust is:

"Trust
Trust is the personal believe of correctness of something.

It is the deep conviction of truth and rightness, and cannot be enforced.

If you gain someone's trust, you have established am interpersonal relationship, based on communication, shared values and experiences." (Stephan & Vorgel, 2006)

If you can trust a computer, then it is more secure. This is the idea that the industry try to promote. But more secure usually means less freedom. The industry want to "secure" the computer and technological gadget so they can monitor their activity and ensure that they are used in a manner that reflect their vision. As Stallman said "they do not mean what we normally mean by that word: protecting your machine from things you do not want. They mean protecting your copies of data on your machine from access by you in ways others do not want." (2002). This technology is likely to be use to enforce Digital Right Management and block interoperability with non "trusted" computer.

Again, the industry is investing people's private life, dictating what they can and cannot do with the available information. The more they "secure" the technologie, the more "freedom" we lose.

I invite you to check this quick video on trust computing:



1. “Trusted Computing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing#cite_note-anderson2-1.

2. Stephan, Benjamin and Lutz Vogel, Trusted Computing, 2006, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXU7z2_6Jg.

3. Richard Stallman, “Can You Trust Your Computer?,” GNU Project - Free Software Foundation, 2002, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html.

Pirate Bay guilty

I don't know if you were aware of the trial surrounding the larger torrent tracker, the Pirate Bay. You might like to know that they just got fined and jailed. This news will bring an important shift in the way copyright and intellectual property will apply to the digital world. The court just enforce old law to new phenomenon, forcing their categories to brand new concept. Quite the radical opposite of Trent Reznor view of the problem.

Old institutions can't really evolve, can they?

Court jails Pirate Bay founders

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.

Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as "bizarre.

"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird," Sunde said.

"It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

"We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."

“ It is almost certain that The Pirate Bay will keep on sailing, long after today's court judgement ”

The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.

However, the total awarded fell short of the $17.5m in damages and interest the firms were seeking.

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.

"The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.

"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that," he said.

The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.

A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.

"That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."

Political issue

Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party - which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age - told the BBC that the verdict was "a gross injustice".

"This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.

"There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it.

"Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament."

The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

Published: 2009/04/17 12:32:07 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Trent Reznor on music industry

I found this recent interview with Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nail talking about his decision to publish his latest album under Creative Commons licenses.

This interview is from the Digg Dialogg show, where the digg community is asked to submit and vote question to be ask.

Reznor's answer to the first question is quite insightful on the way internet may change copyright and intellectual property in the future:

"Trent - you've embraced Creative Commons and file sharing, but your business model (aside from touring) still primarily involves selling music either digitally or physically. Why haven't you embraced advertising as a business model, e.g. placing ads on your torrent tracker? Why let Pirate Bay take all the ad revenue you deserve? Furthermore, why aren't you building a brand new record label based on a modern business model?"

Check out the video for his answer.





You can check the whole list of questions here.

EDIT: video doesn't fit well on the blog, visit digg dialogg web page to see it all.

About Apple's DRM

I stumble upon this, which might clarified the question raised yesterday on the new DRM-free itune's song:

Does the lack of DRM mean that it’s okay to give copies of the songs I buy to my friends?

No, copyright law is still in effect—passing songs around is music piracy. However, the lack of DRM allows you as the consumer to be the judge of what’s right and what’s wrong, giving you a flexibility that DRM couldn’t. For example, imagine parents and kids co-mingling their music libraries. That seems absolutely fair to us, although in many cases quite unlikely. And if you opt to share your iTunes library on your local network, others can stream the songs you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store (currently people can see them, but if they double-click on a song to play it, they’re prompted to authorize their computers to be able to listen). But putting a song up on a file-sharing service and letting 20 of your friends download it? That’s now possible, but not exactly ethical. (And it’s fair to note that iTunes does embed your iTunes ID in every iTunes plus file you download, so it’s easy to see who bought the file originally.)

It is effectively easier to share song, but your name is tagged to the file so you cannot upload the song with impunity. You can check out the whole FAQ on 

http://www.macworld.com/article/138000/drm_faq.html

On another note, I guess Apple remove the DRM because it was hard/impossible for legitimates customers to use their file the way they want while users of pirated version could use their material without restriction. In my opinion, DRM was encouraging piracy rather than hinder it. Buying music felt like a real rip off (it may still does though...)