Palladium in Chipsets

I just received this email, i thought that it might interest you folks:


Stop Palladium and TCPA now!

Tell American Megatrends and Transmeta not to make
chips that let others control your computer!

Please forward this notice to any other concerned
parties you might know.

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/cgi-bin/nyfu/palladium

What's Going On:

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/ [...] tml?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 FAQ_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/produc [...] 6&SubID=14

http://interviews.slashdot.org/art [...] 251&tid=99

http://interviews.slashdot.org/art [...] e=thread&t
id=137

and the just announced Transmeta TM5800 cpu:

http://siliconvalley.internet.com/ [...] hp/1569201

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid [...] ad&tid=161

Where can I find out more about Palladium, TCPA, and
DMCA?

For Palladium see:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

http://wintermute.homelinux.org/miscelanea/TCPA Security.txt

http://discuss.microsoft.com/SCRIP [...] lk&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?nam [...] le&sid=152

For TCPA and the TPM see:

http://www.trustedcomputing.org

For the DMCA see:

http://www.nyfairuse.org/analysis/ [...] aled.xhtml
http://anti-dmca.org
http://www.nyfairuse.org/dmca.xhtml

How do I tell these folks I don't want DRM?

Just click on the URL below:

http://www.nyfairuse.org/cgi-bin/nyfu/palladium