[FYI] Microsoft, Allies Gear to Reshape Copyright Debate

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=582&u=/nm/20020907/ 
wr_nm/bizcomputers_security_dc&printer=1>  

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Microsoft, Allies Gear to Reshape Copyright Debate  

Sat Sep 7, 8:47 AM ET  

By Elinor Mills Abreu  

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An industry push to tighten security on 
personal computers could be either the salvation of electronic 
commerce or the bane of consumers, who view the Internet as their 
digital information playground.  

Microsoft Corp. , Intel Corp. and nearly 200 other companies from the 
computer hardware, software and security industries are working on 
technologies designed to protect data in computers from being 
tampered with by intruders.  

Maintaining that these systems are needed to impede hackers, 
proponents say they could help restore law and order in a world where 
digital piracy is rampant. Critics counter that the technologies are 
part of an industry power-play that would end the freewheeling 
culture of information-sharing that now exists over the Internet.  

Either way, specialized security microprocessors and related software 
being developed by members of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance 
(TCPA) would, if implemented, fundamentally shift the balance of 
power between individual and corporate ownership of data -- a debate 
that is already being played out in U.S. courts and Congress.  

"If we're going to get content on the 'Net, somehow we're going to 
have to reward the people who put it on there," said Dave Farber, an 
Internet engineering pioneer and computer science professor at the 
University of Pennsylvania who is an independent consultant to the 
TCPA.  

Others say the efforts are desperate attempts by PC and media 
companies to control the next big wave of computing.  

"It's a struggle between the wonks and executives," said Paul Saffo, 
a director at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California. 
"The real battle ahead is not over desktops, it's in the living 
rooms. There is a flat-out race to own the video game" and computer 
entertainment market.  

"Microsoft would love nothing more than to be the software forge for 
Hollywood," Saffo added.  

[...]

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