Freedom to Tinker

Seth Schoen argues that “trusted systems” like Palladium can have a sort of manual override that allows the owner to get all of the data on a machine, even if it is protected by DRM.

As Seth points out, the main implication of this is that it is possible to build a system like Palladium in a way that provides benefits to the user but doesn’t give outsiders the ability to lock the user out of some sections of his own machine. If Seth is right about this, then you don’t have to give up control over your machine in order to have Palladium protect your own interests as a user.

This is a pretty interesting argument, but I suspect that there’s more discussion to be had here. For one thing, Seth suggests requiring physical presence (i.e., pushing a button or the like) to use the give-me-all-the-data feature; but physical presence is not enough, as people other than the machine’s owner often get physical access to it. Nonetheless, this is great stuff, and worth reading for those interested in the implications of DRM and “trusted systems”.

Remember when Hollywood wanted to ban digital outputs on media devices? The rationale was that digital outputs were uniquely copyable. Here’s Jack Valenti addressing a congressional hearing back in April:

But it is digital piracy that gives movie producers multiple Maalox moments. It is digital thievery, which can disfigure and shred the future of American films. What we must understand is that digital is to analog as lightning is to the lightning bug. In analog, the pirate must be provisioned with equipment, dozens, even hundreds of slave-video recorders, because after repeated copying in analog on one machine, the finished product becomes increasingly un-watchable. Not so in digital format.

Well, now Hollywood is saying they want to ban analog outputs. For example, John Patrick reports a panel of movie industry executives saying:

The hole in the protection scheme is that most of the content is still analog. A DVD starts out as digital but the output of a DVD player is analog and therefore can be easily copied.

Others report privately that they are hearing the same thing, that Hollywood now thinks that analog outputs should be stamped out.

Hmm. Digital is too dangerous to allow. Analog is too dangerous to allow. That puts us in a bit of a tough spot.

Following up on Arnold Kling’s observation about non-general-purpose languages, Seth Schoen reminds us that Orwell’s 1984 featured a language called “Newspeak,” in which it was supposedly impossible to express subversive thoughts. Seth offers this quote from 1984:

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been
devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English
Socialism. […]

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of
expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the
devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought
impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been
adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical
thought – that is, a thought diverging from the principles
of Ingsoc – should be literally unthinkable, at least as far
as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so
constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression
to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to
express, while excluding all other meanings and also the
possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. […]

Though I’m happy to grant Orwell some literary license here, I doubt that Newspeak could really exist. At least, I don’t see how it could exist as a language for everyday use. Yes, language can guide and channel thought in dangerous ways. But it’s hard to imagine a workable language that makes it impossible to speak frankly about politics.