{"id":4774,"date":"2012-08-26T20:44:24","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T02:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4774"},"modified":"2012-08-26T20:44:24","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T02:44:24","slug":"the-coming-civil-war-over-general-purpose-computing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4774","title":{"rendered":"The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2012\/08\/23\/civilwar.html\">Cory Doctorow<\/a>:  <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><I>The closest approximation we have for such a device is a computer with spyware on it\u2014 a computer that, if you do the wrong thing, can intercede and say, &#8220;I can&#8217;t let you do that, Dave.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Such a a computer runs programs designed to be hidden from the owner of the device, and which the owner can&#8217;t override or kill. In other words: DRM. Digital Rights Managment.<\/p>\n<p>These computers are a bad idea for two significant reasons. First, they won&#8217;t solve problems. Breaking DRM isn&#8217;t hard for bad guys. The copyright wars&#8217; lesson is that DRM is always broken with near-immediacy.<\/p>\n<p>DRM only works if the &#8220;I can&#8217;t let you do that, Dave&#8221; program stays a secret. Once the most sophisticated attackers in the world liberate that secret, it will be available to everyone else, too.<\/p>\n<p>Second, DRM has inherently weak security, which thereby makes overall security weaker.<\/p>\n<p>Certainty about what software is on your computer is fundamental to good computer security, and you can&#8217;t know if your computer&#8217;s software is secure unless you know what software it is running.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cory Doctorow: The closest approximation we have for such a device is a computer with spyware on it\u2014 a computer that, if you do the wrong thing, can intercede and say, &#8220;I can&#8217;t let you do that, Dave.&#8221; Such a a computer runs programs designed to be hidden from the owner of the device, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4774"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}