The Chronicle of Higher Education offers a disappointing article on Microsoft’s Palladium. Like many Palladium articles, this one seems to look for conflict and disagreement rather than an explanation of what is really at stake.
We hear about fair use, which in my view is not the main problem posed by Palladium. And we hear that Palladium will “[deter] 98 to 99 percent of all hackers,” which can’t be right – even Microsoft marketing people don’t make such extravagant claims.
For what it’s worth, I get the lead quote: “If Palladium is adopted, and if other technology vendors exploit it fully to restrict access to copyrighted works, education and research will suffer.” When I said this, I was trying to make the point that the main harms that might arise from Palladium would come not from Microsoft but from what other vendors might do with Palladium’s features. But the article spins it as an anti-Microsoft comment.
This is good motivation to spend more time working on that “Understanding Palladium” article….
