Hello folks, think you all probably will find this of considerable interest. AMI and Transmeta are planning to make chip that put content control on your computer at the hardware level, in a way that lets others turn things on and off on your computer, in a protected space entirely outside your control. Many details below: Seth Johnson Stop Palladium and TCPA now! Tell American Megatrends and Transmeta not to make chips that let others control your computer! Please use the following form to tell American Megatrends and Transmeta not to produce their AMIBIOS8 and TM5800 chips, and that you will boycott any technology that enables TCPA and Palladium technology on your computer: http://www.nyfairuse.org/action/palladium/ What's Going On: Last week, Intel, Microsoft, the RIAA and the MPAA announced their intention to force Palladium and TCPA into every personal computer on the planet. Palladium and TCPA are a different kind of DRM, worse than even the most invasive of previously proposed "content control" systems. Palladium and TCPA would hardwire your home computer so that these four entities and their partners would be able to run processes on your computer, entirely outside your control, indeed, without your knowledge. Below we answer some questions about DRM, Palladium, TCPA, and the boycott. New Yorkers for Fair Use What is DRM? DRM is the political, legal, contractual, economic, hardware, and software infrastructure designed and intended by a loose alliance of cartels and monopolies to take away your right to own and privately use a computer. No full DRM exists in the world today, though pieces of DRM have been successfully enacted into law and tiny bits of DRM hardware and software have been placed in some home movie playing and recording devices. Every single piece of DRM is meant to help attain the objective of the anti-ownership alliance: to get control of every personal computer in the world. Intel and Microsoft and RIAA and MPAA, by their own admission, have, to date, spent billions of dollars to force universal DRM on the entire world. Last week these four reiterated their intention to force DRM into every personal computer on the planet: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/15/business/15PIRA.html http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980671.html For more on DRM see: http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/10/21/1449250.shtml?tid=19 http://www.panix.com/~jays/what.is.drm.3 What is Palladium? "Palladium" is Microsoft's name for its proposed DRM system. No implementation of Palladium exists today, indeed no complete specification of Palladium exists today, but certain hardware which a Palladiated operating system requires is about to be placed in all personal computers, unless we stop Microsoft and its hardware and vendor partners, such as Intel, American Megatrends, Transmeta, Dell, and CompUSA. What will Palladium do? Palladium will enable a few large corporations and governments to run source secret, indeed, well-encrypted, code on home users' machines in such a way that the home user cannot see, modify, or control the running code. A Palladiated system is under the complete control of Microsoft at all times. Microsoft might allow some of its partners to run code on your machine, but no code will run on a Palladiated system without Microsoft's consent. The mechanics are as follows: only code that has been signed with a special Microsoft provided key will run. Microsoft will retain at all times the power to revoke any other entity's keys. In particular, no operating system will be able to boot without a key from Microsoft. So if Palladium is forced into every home computer, there will be no more free software. Microsoft will be able to spy on each and every keystroke, and mouse movement, and send encrypted messages from your machine to Microsoft headquarters. Microsoft will also be able to examine every file on your system. Your encryption programs will not work against Microsoft, or any other entities which have full power keys from Microsoft. But surely wily crackers and freedom-loving hackers around the world will be able to defeat Palladium by breaking it? No. Whether or not a few hackers are able to get around some versions of Palladium, most people will not be able to. There are two reasons most people will not be able to escape the All Seeing Eye and Invisible Hand of Palladium. First, Palladium is not like the absurdly weak systems called "DRM" today. Palladium is both hardware and software, and the software is locked to the hardware in a manner completely different from today's weak DRM systems. The design of Palladium allows for defense in depth, and even one layer of Palladium is harder to crack than any DRM ever seen before. Second, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the United States of America, it is illegal to try to see what Palladium is doing. It is also illegal to modify the hardware of a Palladiated system. And it is a felony to sell advice on how to disable Palladium or its supporting hardware. It is hard enough today to get vendors to sell computers with a free operating system already installed. Once Microsoft and Intel have forced Palladiated hardware into every personal computer, it will be impossible to run a free OS. The very act of booting a free OS will be outlawed by application of the DMCA to a Palladiated computer. But there are no Palladium systems available today. So how can you boycott Palladium? We are boycotting the hardware that Palladium needs. Before Palladium is rolled out, Palladium-enabling hardware must be placed in most of the world's personal computers. Right now such hardware is being placed in computers meant for home and business use without the buyer being told. Our boycott is aimed at stopping Palladium-enabling hardware from being secretly forced into every personal computer in world. We intend to stop Palladium before we cease to own the computers in our own houses and offices. The main Palladium-enabling hardware is called a "TPM" for Trusted Platform Module. The TPM hardware will support, in addition to Palladium, many different systems which take control of the computer away from the user and give control to large corporations and government entities. The TCPA, the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, is the standards organization for the TPM. The founding Alliance members are Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. Since 1999, the year TCPA was founded, about one hundred more companies have joined the TCPA. The Alliance has published a formal specification of the TPM. The TCPA's FAQ http://www.trustedcomputing.org/docs/Website_TCPA%20FAQ_0703021.pdf seeks to allay the natural suspicions of computer buyers about what the TPM does. Unfortunately the FAQ is inaccurate on the most important issues. For example, the claim is made that a computer with a working TPM will remain under the final, ultimate, and complete control of the user. But, as explained above, this is simply untrue. So what exactly are you doing? We refuse to buy any computer with a TPM inside and we ask you to refuse to buy any computer with a TPM inside. We use the term "TPM" to include TPM-like devices, whether in a separate chip, in the BIOS chip, or even in the cpu. This means that we ask buyers of personal computers to find out whether the computer has a TPM or a TPM-like device inside. We will shortly provide buyers of home computers with methods for telling whether or not a computer has a TPM inside. Is it possible to be more specific today? Yes. We call for a boycott of the just announced American Megatrends AMIBIOS8: http://www.ami.com/ami/showpress.cfm?PrID=118 http://www.ami.com/products/product.cfm?ProdID=127&CatID=6&SubID=14 http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/09/166251&tid=99 http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/17/1430214&mode=thread&tid=137 and the just announced Transmeta TM5800 cpu: http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/1569201 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/14/1719220&mode=thread&tid=161 Where can I find out more about Palladium, TCPA, and DMCA? For Palladium see: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Erja14/tcpa-faq.html http://wintermute.homelinux.org/miscelanea/TCPA%20Security.txt http://discuss.microsoft.com/SCRIPTS/WA-MSD.EXE?A2=ind0301b&L=wmtalk&T=0&O=A&P=12347 http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25378.html http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0208.html#1 http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=152 For TCPA and the TPM see: http://www.trustedcomputing.org For the DMCA see: http://www.nyfairuse.org/analysis/dmca.must.be.repealed.xhtml http://anti-dmca.org http://www.nyfairuse.org/dmca.xhtml
