Comment by xinayder
3 days ago
DRM is a technology and is inherently evil. Web attestation is DRM for the web, and is inherently evil. Age ID is a technology and is inherently evil.
We have over 30 years of the world wide web and for these more than 3 decades this was never a problem. Suddenly, we "need" to create new technology that seem to be security features, but are essentially just being used for evil, thus being inherently bad.
It's not like these technologies were created for the greater good and misappropriated by bad actors. They were proposed by bad actors in the first place, they cannot not be inherently good.
DRM is arguably a specific use of various generic technology ranging from whitebox cryptography to trusted computing.
I don't think remote attestation (or even more so its umbrella technology, trusted computing) is nearly as specifically targeted as DRM.
> We have over 30 years of the world wide web and for these more than 3 decades this was never a problem. Suddenly, we "need" to create new technology that seem to be security features, but are essentially just being used for evil, thus being inherently bad.
I agree that requiring remote attestation for generic web use is evil. It's way too heavy-handed an approach better reserved
I still don't think this somehow outright disqualifies the technology itself.
>I still don't think this somehow outright disqualifies the technology itself.
A technology squarely and 100% percent intended to give people other than the end user the ability to sleep soundly at night knowing those dastardly end users can't muck with their software (the non-end user) on their (the end user's) devices is only a tool for the authoritarian minded. Sorry mate, but if you're sitting here thinking it's useful and neutral, you are part of the problem, because you're eyes-wide-shutting the fact the only people gaining from the technology are those that already have a terrible trustworthy-ness record in terms of not abusing the sovereignty of another person's machine.
Show me an industry that ships source code, and manuals with all software that runs on the device, along with hardware manuals and the manuals to write your own drivers and doesn't use hardware primitives to enforce their business models over you, then we can talk about an industry where "trusted computing" might be neutral to the end user. History has not seen this relationship bore out, however.
The "Trust" in "Trusted Computing" has only ever been realistically unidirectional in terms of favoring entrenched industry players. As a rule of thumb, if the primary benefactors of a feature are over 90% legal fictions; your feature ain't neutral. It's hostile to humanity. Period.
> Show me an industry that ships source code, and manuals with all software that runs on the device, along with hardware manuals and the manuals to write your own drivers and doesn't use hardware primitives to enforce their business models over you, then we can talk
Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5
(And indeed, their Pureboot with Heads and a hardware key allow to restrict which OS can be booted on laptops, while not restricting the user.)
>We have over 30 years of the world wide web and for these more than 3 decades this was never a problem.
captcha/spambots has been a problem since USENET
>We have over 30 years of the world wide web and for these more than 3 decades this was never a problem.
Are you seriously trying to suggest copyright infringement has not been an issue over the last 30 years? Both of them are solutions to problems that we've had over the last 30 years and were created for the greater good to solve problems that developers were facing.
Movies, games and music are multi billion dollar industries, in what way have they struggled in a world of endless piracy being possible?
Grocery stores are a trillion dollar industry yet you will see stores that close due to theft being possible. The simplest way games and music struggle is losing a sale because people can play them without paying.
Tell me when DMCA law has worked in favor of small companies/developers?
DMCA is abused every. single. time.
Individual self employed photographers successfully use the DMCA to get significant payouts from large publishers and news organisations every single day.
Like literally hundreds of thousands, every day.