Re: Separate trusted computing designs

[Pierre THIERRY]

Scribit Marcus Brinkmann dies 31/08/2006 hora 16:07:
> You are definitely not the owner of your house, at least not in
> Germany. [...] You may have some (even extensive) property rights to
> your house, but you do not have the exclusive right to possess, use
> and destroy it.  [...]
> 
> Of course, with such a narrow definition of ownership, we do not own
> very much, as any of our property is subjectable to outside
> interference in the case of emergencies etc, even our own body.

Isn't it a bit of a problem that you use the word 'own' in a way that
maybe you're the only one (correct me if I'm wrong on this point)?

IANAL, but in France too you have plenty of regulations about
construction work, but you definitely own your house. Legally, you have
what we call the abusus, which means you do whatever you want with it
(it may be the same word everywhere in Western countries, as it is a
Latin word).

Governement does not *allow* you to make anything. You are allowed to do
anything. Any democratic law only *forbids*, and that makes a huge
difference.

So you own your house, and the place it's built on. But you're forbidden
to do some dangerous things, like building or destroying in an unsafe
way.

I think the TC is more like making a bailiff enter your house. If you
want to set up some lottery in your town, maybe the participants will
want to know if it's fair at all, maybe even some law forbids to set up
any game of this kind without official control. Then you hire a bailiff,
which hire a very huge guy, and you ask the bailiff to ask the huge guy
to kick you any time you cheat.

At any time, you can ask the bailiff the leave your house, and it's in
the contract that he has to seal any sensitive information you were
provided for the game, and now you cannot continue to play the lottery.

If think it's a desirable use of a bailiff, and it would be a desirable
use of TC.

It's another matter that would should not allow majors to make us sign a
contract to allow a bailiff to come in whenever we want to play music. I
think TC has some valid use case, in the same way a bailiff has.

The problem is: it's way cheaper than a bailiff, so many will be tempted
to abuse it. We have to fight against abuse, not TC itself.

Metaphorically,
Nowhere man
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