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Microsoft only announced Palladium -- its initiative to build anti-copying technology into the hardware and operating system of a PC -- a few months ago. It's already causing a great deal of consternation within the cypherpunk and hacker communities. But a comment by Peter Biddle, Microsoft's Product Manager for Palladium at the 11th USENIX Security Symposium this past August revealed that software companies might not be able to use Palladium to fight piracy or enforce the terms of software licenses. Eager to allay fears about the scope of Palladium, Biddle insisted that the impetus behind Palladium was solely to secure...

Editor's Note: In his address before a packed house at the Open Source Convention, Lawrence Lessig challenges the audience to get more involved in the political process. Lawrence, a tireless advocate for open source, is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and the founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. He is also the author of the best-selling book Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Here is the complete transcript of Lawrence's keynote presentation made on July 24, 2002. (You can also download an MP3 version of this presentation (20.2MB).) Advertisement Lawrence Lessig: I have been...

1. What are TCPA and Palladium? TCPA stands for the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, an initiative led by Intel. Their stated goal is `a new computing platform for the next century that will provide for improved trust in the PC platform.' Palladium is software that Microsoft says it plans to incorporate in future versions of Windows; it will build on the TCPA hardware, and will add some extra features. 2. What does TCPA / Palladium do, in ordinary English? It provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the applications, and where these applications can communicate securely with...

TCPA / Palladium Frequently Asked Questions Version 1.0 Ross Anderson (See also the Economics and Security Resource Page which gives a lot of background to the issues raised here.) 1. What are TCPA and Palladium? TCPA stands for the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, an initiative led by Intel. Their stated goal is `a new computing platform for the next century that will provide for improved trust in the PC platform.' Palladium is software that Microsoft says it plans to incorporate in future versions of Windows; it will build on the TCPA hardware, and will add some extra features. 2....

A final draft of Microsoft's Palladium consultation white paper appears to have escaped, and is currently being hosted by Neowin.net. Microsoft intends to open Palladium up for discussion, but it's not as yet clear to us whether this means it will be distributing the white paper to all and sundry, or whether it envisages a more restricted distribution list. In any event we haven't been able to nail down anywhere on the Microsoft site you can get it,* or any mention of the Microsoft Content Security Business Unit, which authored it. There's much in the paper that's interesting, and...

TCPA / Palladium Frequently Asked Questions Version 0.1 26 June 2002 Please revisit this page shortly - I'm working on version 1.0 which should be ready during the week of the 8th July. There is also a Spanish version. 1. What are TCPA and Palladium? TCPA stands for the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), an initiative led by Intel. Their website is here. Their stated goal is `a new computing platform for the next century that will provide for improved trust in the PC platform.' Palladium appears to be a Microsoft version which will be rolled out in future versions...

Palladium tech up for discussion, says MS security chiefBy John Lettice Posted: 07/04/2002 at 06:33 EST Unaccountably, Microsoft seems to have forgotten to invite The Register to Tech Ed in Barcelona this week, but we're pleased to see some useful information making it into the public prints. Yesterday, IDG News correspondent Gillian Law obtained some useful information about Palladium from Microsoft UK chief security officer Stuart Okin. First of all, we do not get the impression that Okin is entirely pleased by the release of information about Palladium last week. Details, he claims somewhat bizarrely, were "leaked or squirrelled out...

I Told You So Alas, a Couple of Bob's Dire Predictions Have Come True Just over three years ago I wrote a column titled "Cooking the Books: How Clever Accounting Techniques are Used to Make Internet Millionaires." It explained how telecom companies were using accounting tricks to create revenue where there really was none. Take another look at the column (it's among the links on the "I Like It" page), and think of Worldcom with its recently revealed $3.7 billion in hidden expenses. Then last August, I wrote a column titled "The Death of TCP/IP: Why the Age of...

Palladium and the "Fritz Chip" You all should know about Senator Fritz Hollings, and his tireless attempts to make PCs incapable of copying music files or running "unauthorized content". The Trusted Computing Platform Alliance" or TCPA, is a hardware and software based system for preventing computers from doing many of the things they are now capable of. Microsoft, AMD, Intel and many other companies say they are now working very hard to integrate TCPA features into hardware and software, including future versions of Windows. At the heart of TCPA is a new chip added to motherboards, which have been affectionately...

Yesterday, as we all know, Microsoft fed an 'exclusive' story about its new 'Palladium' DRM/PKI Trust Machine to Newsweek hack Steven Levy (a guy who writes without irony of "high-level encryption"), presumably because they trusted him not to grasp the technology well enough to question it seriously. His un-critical announcement immediately sparked a flurry of articles considering what this means to the Windows user base. And that's as it should be. But my question is, what does it mean to the Linux user base? Well, of course no one knows yet; the Levy article is long on generalized promises but...

Sunday June 23, 10:51 am Eastern TimePress ReleaseSOURCE: NewsweekNewsweek: New Microsoft Program 'Palladium' Next Step in Computer Security Ambitious Plan to Let Users Control and Protect Information Will Require Remaking the Architecture of Personal Computers NEW YORK, June 23 /PRNewswire/ --?Microsoft is developing a new system to improve computer security that will address concerns about privacy, security and intellectual property, Newsweek reports in the current issue. Among the several benefits of the ambitious long-range plan, called "Palladium": it will seal information from attackers, it will block many viruses and worms from your computer and it will allow users to participate...