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TCPA

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 11:09 am
by matthijs
Do you know what's up with TCPA?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1H7omJW4TI
also see
http://www.againsttcpa.com/
Is this something to worry about, old news, something else?

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 11:24 am
by feyd
it'll always be something to worry about, maybe not under this nomenclature, but someone (likely corporations) will always want to create a product where they can decide what is good and bad for you, when you should be deciding what's good and bad for yourself. That is a personal freedom we should not give up, ever.

Now of course this thread may easily go political, so I'll say it right now, keep the political discussion outside of this forum (perhaps here would be a better location to go down that path.)

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 11:29 am
by matthijs
Ok, thanks for the explanation. It's just that I'd never heard of it before, so wanted to ask if it is familiar to people here. As webdevelopers/designers/programmers, it's something that would influence us directly.

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 11:48 am
by RobertGonzalez
The AgainstTCPA web site wrote:The TCPA was founded 1999 by Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. But in the meantime around 200 companies joined them. You will find Adobe, AMD, Fujitsu-Siemens, Gateway, Motorola, Samsung, Toshiba and many other well known companies. IBM already sells first desktops and notebooks with integrated TPM.
Wow, they managed to stay under the radar for this long? Imagine that! Seems to me like this alliance is being developed to take away choice. That is a bad thing. I understand the core of what they want to achieve. But I think their approach is wrong. Is it something to worry about? Sure. As long as they can keep it quietly out of the media but still manage to get it in front of lawmakers, we have something to worry about.

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:07 pm
by Roja
Everah wrote:Wow, they managed to stay under the radar for this long? Imagine that!
The EFF was on it from day 1. They did a fantastic writeup (insanely detailed!) over two years ago here: http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trust ... 001_tc.php

In a nutshell, its not a totally terrible *idea*, but its a horribly bad implementation. (I'd argue that despite the good potential of the idea, its still terrible, but thats another discussion).

As a side note, if you feel out of the loop, stay in touch by watching the EFF. They keep an eye out for issues that affect our freedoms on a daily basis. Its nice to have em around.