[DMCA-Activists] What to Do - Was: Re: Ballmer: DRM is the Future

[Seth Johnson]

"Dr. John Raymond Baker" wrote:
> 
> What can we do...I am always good about doing the email and fax thing at
> EFF.org and at ACLU on all the various issues. What can we do to help.


Okay, I am back a bit.  Here's an action anybody can take part in right now:

> http://www.nyfairuse.org/action/palladium/

The text of the blurb on that page is below.

We do Press Outreach with that blurb right now.  The key thing with Press
Outreach is to train volunteers to take part in a transferable practice.  A
very cool thing is when you pitch a new contact to join that very same
tactic on the spot.  It happens; at least I saw it when I did organizing in
other arenas.  But the very best thing is when you can transfer the
technique to a volunteer once you've trained them, and they can then conduct
their own tactics in a predictable fashion, expanding the overall campaign
and leapfrogging from there.

The response rate might be lower than you might think you want, but remember
that:
1) you're not so much changing minds and doing consciousness raising, as you
are finding the people who are looking to do something and who are looking
for something in motion that works;
2) you are yourself showing leadership and emulative practice, which does
more than anything else to bring the specific people who want to make it
happen, into the fight; and
3) you are setting the right expectation -- the movement needs volunteers
who take up roles, more than donations or signatures or emails or whatever
the particular tactic produces.

Everybody can contribute what they can; it's just that information freedom
needs to build its strength, and this is how you build strength.

If you do it this way, you will find the real pearls along the way, the
dedicated volunteers who form the foundation of the movement.

Now, of course, you are asking people to write emails (in this case to
Transmeta and AMD against Palladium and TCPA) and that's most of the motion
that you get, but that's not how the strength of the organization is
measured.

Seth

----

> http://www.nyfairuse.org/action/palladium/


Stop Palladium and TCPA now! 

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

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/action/palladium/ 


What's Going On: 

Last week, 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/02/10/21/1449250.shtml?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%20FAQ_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/product.cfm?ProdID=127&CatID=6&SubID=14 

http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/09/166251&tid=99 

http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/17/1430214&mode=thread&tid=137
 

and the just announced Transmeta TM5800 cpu: 

http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/1569201 

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/14/1719220&mode=thread&tid=161 

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

For Palladium see: 

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Erja14/tcpa-faq.html 

http://wintermute.homelinux.org/miscelanea/TCPA%20Security.txt 

http://discuss.microsoft.com/SCRIPTS/WA-MSD.EXE?A2=ind0301b&L=wmtalk&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?name=News&file=article&sid=152 

For TCPA and the TPM see: 

http://www.trustedcomputing.org 

For the DMCA see: 

http://www.nyfairuse.org/analysis/dmca.must.be.repealed.xhtml 
http://anti-dmca.org 
http://www.nyfairuse.org/dmca.xhtml 


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Seth Johnson" <address@hidden>
> To: <address@hidden>;
> <address@hidden>;
> <address@hidden>; <address@hidden>;
> <address@hidden>
> Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 12:02 AM
> Subject: [DMCA_Discuss] Ballmer: DRM is the Future
> 
> >
> > Okay, this is the pro-Palladium spin being unleashed.  Ballmer does
> mention
> > "data protection" and "antipiracy locks" as two separate concepts, but
> he's
> > way out there, siding with the entertainment industry instead of the basic
> > rights of free citizens.  This is not what exclusive rights are about.
> >
> > Let's go, folks.  Gotta stop this.
> >
> > Note that Ballmer is playing directly to the WIPO Performances and
> > Phonograms Treaty, as I said was the game:
> >
> > "The idea is to protect corporate and personal data from finding its way
> > outside the circle of people who are intended to see or use it, the
> company
> > says. Just as songs could be pre-loaded with rules that prevent them from
> > being copied or distributed online, e-mails or Word documents could be
> > wrapped with protections that prevent them from being sent to unauthorized
> > individuals or outside a corporate firewall."
> >
> > Seth
> >
> >
> > > http://news.com.com/2100-1025-1000411.html?tag=sas_email
> >
> >
> > Ballmer touts DRM to customers
> >
> > By John Borland
> > May 7, 2003, 6:30 PM PT
> >
> > Corporate data protection and antipiracy locks are at the core of
> > Microsoft's future and are the future of business, Microsoft Chief
> Executive
> > Officer Steve Ballmer wrote in an e-mail to customers Wednesday evening.
> >
> > In the latest of a periodic series of policy statements for the company's
> > customer base, Ballmer outlined Microsoft's ambitious plans for digital
> > rights management services, which straddle the line between the
> > entertainment industry and ordinary corporate business.
> >
> > Microsoft uses the series of e-mails, which are sent roughly once a month,
> > to highlight what issues its top executives see as most important in
> driving
> > development and use of their products.
> >
> > "Some of technology's potential.has not been fully realized, because of
> > concerns about illegal use of digital information, about confidentiality
> and
> > about privacy," Ballmer wrote. "E-commerce in music and movies has been
> > slowed, because artists and publishers have been concerned about
> protecting
> > their copyrighted works from illegal use. More broadly, businesses don't
> > exchange digital information with customers and partners as freely as they
> > might, because they fear it could fall into the wrong hands."
> >
> > The e-mail contained few if any new tidbits of information about details
> of
> > Microsoft's technology or strategy. But as a policy statement, it
> > highlighted for customers one of the key features that the software
> company
> > sees as an impetus for growth across its product line in the next few
> years.
> >
> > Most digital rights management news in the past few years has focused on
> > media businesses such as music and movies. A generation of companies rose
> > hoping to sell antipiracy technology to record labels and movie studios,
> and
> > fell again after gaining little traction with the entertainment giants.
> >
> > Microsoft, which is now seeing its technology protect songs distributed
> > through subscription music services and even packaged on CDs themselves,
> has
> > been one of the few companies starting to see significant support.
> >
> > As outlined by Ballmer in Wednesday's e-mail and elsewhere, the company
> > takes a much broader view of rights management technology, however.
> >
> > The company has built a different set of tools it dubs Windows Rights
> > Management Services, which will form a key component of the upcoming
> Windows
> > Sever 2003 product and will ultimately work with other products such as
> > Office and Outlook.
> >
> > The idea is to protect corporate and personal data from finding its way
> > outside the circle of people who are intended to see or use it, the
> company
> > says. Just as songs could be pre-loaded with rules that prevent them from
> > being copied or distributed online, e-mails or Word documents could be
> > wrapped with protections that prevent them from being sent to unauthorized
> > individuals or outside a corporate firewall.
> >
> > "As these technologies become widespread, their protection will help
> > encourage wider sharing of information within and between organizations,
> > improving communication and productivity by assuring information workers
> of
> > the confidentiality of their documents and data," Ballmer wrote.
> >
> > The strategy is still in its early stages and--in its broadest terms--has
> > drawn criticism from proponents of non-Microsoft operating systems and
> > tools. Open-source advocates in particular are worried that Microsoft's
> > broader "Trustworthy Computing" campaign, which would involve
> authenticating
> > software programs as well as documents and media files, is in part aimed
> at
> > pushing software such as the Linux operating system out of the market.
> >
> > Microsoft has not set pricing for its corporate Rights Management Services
> > product, or indicated whether it would involve a recurring subscription
> fee
> > or a more typical license.
> >
> > --
> >
> > DRM is Theft!  We are the Stakeholders!
> >
> > New Yorkers for Fair Use
> > http://www.nyfairuse.org
> >
> > [CC] Counter-copyright: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html
> >
> > I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
> > this incidentally recorded communication.  Original authorship should be
> > attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold
> for
> > usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
> > exclusive rights.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> >
> > ------------------------
> > http://www.anti-dmca.org
> > ------------------------
> >
> > DMCA_Discuss mailing list
> > address@hidden
> > http://lists.microshaft.org/mailman/listinfo/dmca_discuss
> >

-- 

DRM is Theft!  We are the Stakeholders!

New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org

[CC] Counter-copyright: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html

I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
this incidentally recorded communication.  Original authorship should be
attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
exclusive rights.