TPM Hell

Shamus over at Twenty-Sided delves into the potential disaster of the Trusted Platform Module DRM concept, and makes some interesting observations along the way:

There is a hassle to the individual user in switching operating systems. It’s a big one. It’s so big that people still choose Windows, even though it costs over $100 and the alternative is free, more stable, and more secure. I know because I’m one of those people. I want to be able to run my games and use all my familiar programs and share files with other people. But that Windows advantage is only genuine (tee hee) as long as it can win in the “hassle-free access to software and data” department. If TPM gets in the way of this, then people riding the path of least resistance will quickly flow towards open source.

Requiring an internet connection every time the user runs a program is going to cause a lot of problems. Mobile users need their stuff to work even when they don’t have connectivity. Servers go down. Companies go out of business and without their servers, users would find themselves locked out of “their” software. The major forces keeping people from switching to a free operating system are hassle and compatibility. But TPM can, on a practical level, negate both. If Joe Average - who doesn’t give a flying crap about open source, DRM, TPM, or Richard M. Stallman - finds his programs don’t run when he needs them, he can’t play his music when he’s on the road, and he now has to provide credentials and pay a monthly fee to play Bejeweled, he is going to notice. If Joe discovers there is an operating system that is free and it lets him work the way he used to (once he gets familiar with the new interface) he will switch.

The personal computer and the internet both exploded because of the way they allowed users to easily create and share data. Trying to take control of this at some higher level is like squeezing a handful of water. People will switch to other systems not because irascible tinfoil-hat wearing grouches like me tell them they should, but because doing so gets them to their goal. Looking at price, features, and convenience, they will choose whatever gets them back to their Power Point, Bejeweled, and Limp Bizcut.

It would be irony of the highest order if the draconian efforts of Digital Rights Management advocates were to drive their customers straight into the arms of open source computing.

Go forth and read ye all of it.