Tcpa What?!?!

[swarprix0r]

Has anyone heard anything about this ??
Is this legit or what?
Josh

**EDIT** This is a good explanation of it.

[killernoodle]

Yeah, this is a pretty big deal. Microsoft is trying to own all our computers and every decision made regarding them....

I hate large companies and their terrorism on the little guy.

[guandi]

yeah, its real.

I first heard about this a long time ago (about 3 years) back when i was in the (white hat) hacking scene.

it wont get through, not at first at least.

Just do a little favour for me, and the computer users around the world... learn to use Unix/Linux/Opensource Operating systems. Learn to build your own computers. learn how to program and secure your PC's.

otherwise Microsoft, IBM, Sun, HP, Intel, and AMD will rule the world.

i kid you not.

[iroc409]

i've heard about this too, and it's _quite_ disturbing. i have my doubts that it will go through in full effect, at least right away, either. but, with enough oblivious consumers, it could wreak some havok.

if it does end up in the next os, or in the future, i will no longer use microsoft products, period. as much as i hate a mac, i'll switch to mac for my creative duties, and do everything else in unix.

maybe keep around a _heavily_ isolated/locked down win box for games, but that's about it.

let's hope it doesn't make it through...

[swarprix0r]

Ohhh trust me, Im looking into linux as we I type, and I just built my first computer
Also, is apple/mac included in this?
If they arent, talkin H3LLA business for them
Josh

[iroc409]

it's really a fairly interesting predicament. i think a lot of it is just going to come down to how much the companies of the tcg care about their consumers. coming from microsoft's perspective, i honestly doubt that's a whole lot.

i think it's going to be difficult to except from the more intelligent users out there. and in that market, microsoft may suffer greatly. however, from what i've heard, it's going to be marketed under the ruse of a "more secure, stable and safe machine". for the masses, this is what they're going to be looking at, and they're not going to be truly concerned with what that means (at least until something bad happens).

you also have to look at money. the tcg has a ton of money, by itself. but i'm sure that part of this had to be influenced by groups such as the riaa and mpaa. combine those two, and you have a very large chunk of change. i'm sure both groups would be more than happy to grease some palms through the tcg to get something like this on the market. and, of course the government will be interested (especially with things around like the patriot act, dmca, and that sort).

so, you have a ton of push behind it. and look at some consumers, that simply will have no choice whatsoever to switch. there are a lot of companies that simply will not be able to find an alternative to, or that it won't affect they're day-to-day operations enough to justify (at the time) a switch to something less obtrusive.

i do not believe apple to be a part of the tcg, but i could be mistaken. it could mean a lot of biz for apple, true. apple still has some catching up to do, but there are a lot of products out there that simply aren't available in a reasonable form for unix at this time, so the obvious switch will be to mac, if at all (in certain environments).

i dread that day, however. granted, mac's aren't quite up to speed with the pc world, but they're fairly close, and no doubt usable. but it's the mac community, the users (and steve jobs) that i can't stand (and i'm talking of the majority of mac users i've dealt with).

but that's for another thread.

i know someone who works for microsoft, i should be getting in contact with them, to see if i can confirm any of this. possibly, not sure on that though.

[bigben2k]

Should we discuss the whole SPAM issue too?

Recent anti-spam legislation is generally being perceived as a joke. The main issue is its jurisdiction: if a spammer can't spam from within the US, he can hire some company outside to do it for him.

That aside, spam is hard to trace, when the sender is masked, so this kind of effort (TCPA) is part of the solution.

While I also value my privacy, I also need to be able to use the internet, and I need to be able to do business on it, without having to pay to cover what malicious people are doing. I don't know the percentage of that occurence, but if this security scheme is cheaper to implement than the net loss in fraudulent transactions, I fully expect it to appear, and I will support it, as long as the usage is kept for the purposes stated above.

This is the kind of debate that's really personal for some people. On one hand, we have efforts to legitimize actions that can be used to commit a crime (i.e. file sharing-music swapping), which have been deemed perfectly legitimate because there exists a legal usage for the thing, and on the other hand, we have a proposal for something that could be use legitimately, but could also be used illegitimately.

The real question here is: who's going to police this idea, who's going to safeguard our privacy? The FBI is still upgrading their 486 workstations, so I'm not counting on them.