[WEB4LIB] Chilling article about "trusted computing". Could shut down electronic libraries.

[GRAY, PAUL]

Chilling is correct -- 

And actually the idea (read that concept) goes back a lot further than that - 
At least to AD 80-90 or so and a Jewish gentleman assumed to be named John -- 
Who spoke of an era in which you could neither buy nor sell (nor read, nor write nor play ??? )
anything that was not approved by the centralized government as controlled and certified by a mark applied by the government and accepted by every individual.

Or at the VERY least to 1948 and H.G. Wells' story of life in 1984
where all communication was monitored and censored -- and even altered -- by the central authority.

The onlty thing new about any of this is the technology to implement it.

Anyone who knows me or has even read my postings - knows 
1 - I am a STRONG proponent of the government's rights -- under appropriate checks and balances -- to gather information.
2 - I am just as strong an advocate of the right of copyright holders to enforce their rights and require people to pay appropriately for use of their product.

If anyone wondered if there was ever a place I would draw the line 
-- THIS is it --
I'm NOT a conspiracy nut - and I do NOT see a communist - or a facist - or whatever the demon of the week is behind every tree.
But the idea of everything everyone reads, writes, listens to ad infinitum being filtered through a central government or corporate system with the power to monitor modify or destroy --  that is NOT my idea of a pleasant world.

All that possible hyperbole aside -- am I the only one old enough to remember why we fell in love with the PERSONAL computer to start with ??

OK -- getting off my soapbox and looking for some silliness to escape into.

PHG
(ideas are my own not those of my employer etc etc etc)





>. . .
>. . .7. Where did the idea come from? 
>It first appeared in a paper by Bill Arbaugh, Dave Farber and Jonathan Smith, ``A Secure and
> Reliable Bootstrap Architecture'', in the proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and
> Privacy (1997) pp 65-71. It led to a US patent: ``Secure and Reliable Bootstrap Architecture'',
> U.S. Patent No. 6,185,678, February 6th, 2001. Bill's thinking developed from work he did while
> working for the NSA on code signing in 1994. The Microsoft folk have also applied for patent
> protection on the operating system aspects. (The patent texts are here andhere.) 
>. . .

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bosman, Don [mailto:dbosman at mail.lib.msu.edu]
> Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 8:58 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] Chilling article about "trusted computing". Could
> shut down electronic libraries.
> 
> 
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html
> 
> Don Bosman
> Information Technologist
> Michigan State University Libraries
> 517-353-8586
> dbosman at mail.lib.msu.edu
> 
> 
>