TCPA and Palladium

[Original Link] Ross Anderson has written a very good FAQ about the Intel/Microsoft plans for control/protection of digital content. I’m worried about this stuff, but I was worried about .NET and Passport/Hailstorm. Still, that was just Microsoft, and however big they were, you could choose to ignore them; enough people did, fortunately.

If the motherboard manufacturers adopt TCPA/Palladium, on the other hand, it may be rather harder. It has potentially worrying implications for Linux, Mac and other platforms. If somebody sends you a Word document in future, you might not only need a Microsoft software package to read it, you might also need an Intel motherboard. It’s a good thing there’s all this anti-monopoly legislation around, isn’t it?

(About a year ago, Microsoft even wanted me to change my name!)

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