The eminently readable (though now seven-of-nine-less 
) Joshua Allen on Cringely’s doomsday article on Palladium:
We don’t know what Microsoft is planning, and we don’t know whether they can pull it off, and we don’t know for sure if it is a conspiracy. But at least we know that it is called Palladium, and it is probably bad for the fish.
Incidentally, seeing that he thinks that El Reg’s coverage "has substance", I wonder what he’d think of this article from them — the first phrase that springs to mind on reading this is "foaming-at-the-mouth".
Josh is bang-on when he says that there are too many separate issues here, and some of them get hopelessly muddled when mixed up. What’s more interesting about his little write-up is the points he didn’t raise:
Fair Use. Most early DRM systems were basically dressed-up copy protection systems, and sucky copy-protection systems too: DeCSS, Cactus. Most of these infringe badly on fair use (right to backup, use on various devices, right to quote excerpts, etc) To be fair, MS’s DRM (in WMP and MSReader) is far better, and I’ll hold judgment on Palladium until I actually see a working Palladium device.
User Expectation. This is the kicker. The software industry discovered in the 80s that users prefer unshackled products. (Sidebar: These days, Microsoft has gone back to Activation for two of its products that have achieved 85%+ penetration so the company no longer has to care a hoot about what users think. And if you think that sounds cynical, you should ask yourself why Activation isn’t included with every copy of VS.Net, or better still, SQL Server Enterprise Edition)
The recording industry will gradually, grudgingly discover that today’s teenagers are, if anything, less tolerant of shackleware than the previous generation was of nagware 20 years ago. If DRM is to work at all, it will have to be far more sophisticated than today’s systems — and someone will then break it anyway.
Update: Mitch Wagner counters by saying litigation is in fact better than innovation when it comes to DRM. Microsoft should know — the BSA operates a multibillion dollar industry this way.
A year or two ago I came to agree with Bruce Schneier’s conclusion that Digital Rights Management is simply unenforceable. It’s like the perpetual motion machine or travelling faster than the speed of light, it simply cannot be done. Whatever technology the developers come up with to guard content, some bright hacker will be able to break, and once broken, the hack can be distributed in software instantaneously over the Web. If all else fails, you can simply put a microphone next to your speakers and make an analog recording of the DRM-protected music, digitize that recording, and pirate THAT.
The way to guard digital rights is not to build Rube Goldberg software and hardware contraptions that punish legal consumers while failing to stop copyright infringers; the way to do it is go after copyright infringers in court. "Better Living Through Software" is precisely wrong here; Litigation is better than innovation when it comes to copyright.
Josh further says: Lack of good, ubiquitous DRM is the only thing holding us back from some really cool advances and cites a really poor example — ebooks. I say poor because, speaking as someone with a largish book collection, ebooks leave me cold.
I really wonder what the good examples would be. Can’t think of any. Maybe a pay-per-use Word that would charge .5c a spell-check? Oh wait, that’d only be cool for MS’ bottom line 
