Microsoft's Palladium
Uploaded by gockets on Mar 20, 2004
Palladium
In June of 2002, Microsoft made public its plans to develop a new system of digital rights management called Palladium. The idea behind the monopoly’s newest initiative is a fairly old one: combine hardware and software to create a so-called “trusted” user interface. This idea, in its pure form, benefits users immensely. It would allow for an exceedingly pure and safe form of computing, compared to today’s standards. If properly implemented, the system would only allow certain applications and scripts to access certain pieces of data. Users could specify which applications or vendors to wholly trust their computer to, and which applications to block out completely. The Palladium plan would also virtually eliminate the threat of viruses, as they would not be able to access any of the user’s data without their consent.
However, many critics have voiced their doubts about whether or not Microsoft can really be trusted to create such a platform. A growing number of end-users learning about Palladium have expressed nervousness towards the idea of having Microsoft be, essentially, the gatekeeper of all information entering, being stored on, and leaving their computer. The rise of Palladium could also spell out the end of online MP3 and movie trading, as future CDs my come encrypted so that they can only be played on a computer with certain applications, which don’t allow CD “ripping” (ripping is the act of copying audio data off of a CD to a user’s hard disk.) DVDs would function the same way, refusing to be played or accessed unless it was by a certain “trusted” application, which wouldn’t allow for copying.
As well as the aforementioned features of Microsoft Palladium, the system would also implement code that allows certain data to be tied to certain pieces of hardware, in a way such that if the hardware is not present, the data cannot be accessed. Slashdot, a respected technology site in the “techie” world, has a forum open to this topic. In the thread, the user “Jerf” expressed the concern, “What kind of data recovery plans will exist if I buy $1000 dollars worth of digital music that is tied to my processor, only to have my processor get fried in a power surge (http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/15/2245243&mode=thread&tid=109, 10-28-02)?” Microsoft has not yet addressed this issue in any of its announcements or whitepapers to date. If...