Palladium

Here’s an article which fleshes out the details on this a little more.

Things like Palladium are attempted answers to a problem, namely, endemic theft of digital content. This is a problem. If it can be solved, it will eventually be solved. Period. If it can’t, the Internet will never become a highway for distributing digital content. Period.

Is any solution coming from Microsoft likely to be optimal to the consumer? Probably not.

But if you want to oppose MS’s (or anybody else’s) solution to the problem, you’d better have one of your own that solves that particular problem. If you don’t, you will simply not be taken seriously by the serious.

When I see articles talking about everything except the reason that is 95%+ responsible for the existence of Palladium, it reminds me of a recent news story I came across.

A young man was tried and convicted of maiming, murdering and molesting a number of llamas. Apparently, part of his defense was, “Anybody who really knows me knows I’m a very nice person.”

I guess the llama who knew him at least Biblically thought otherwise, so he was convicted and sentenced to three years hard time. His response to that was something like, “Imprisonment is not for me.”

In both cases, there seems to be this inability and/or refusal to connect action to consequence.

When people get robbed a lot, they try to stop it. This reaction is not bizarre, strange or evil. It is normal and sane. If you think otherwise, you are not normal or sane, at least not by this society’s norms.

If my house got robbed every day, most rational people would agree that I should do something about that. That does not mean they would approve if I set up computerized banks of machine guns activated by motion sensors that will blow away anyone or anything that strays a millimeter into my property.

But only thieves or the mentally challenged would suggest the only other alternative is to do absolutely nothing, and while my neighbors don’t like what I’m doing, they’ll hardly take the other option seriously.

The record companies or movie companies or Microsoft or Intel want the machine guns. Those opposing them want nothing. If that’s the only choice, we’ll end up with machine guns. No society is ever going to essentially say “Stealing is OK” to a significant part of the economy.

Some may say it’s really the companies that are thieves. There’s something to be said for that.

If people were smart, they’d say, “OK, you want copy protection, fine, but to get that, you have to charge reasonable prices, or to be now held at least somewhat accountable for the buggy software you sell.” Make this part of a big package: you get this, you give up that. That would be the smart way to handle this whole situation. That would knock the movie and music and software companies and their lobbyists back on their heels.

But no, little chance of that happening.

Ed