I think one of the main problems with trying to protect software is the whole way of thinking about a product and selling it.
If you try to make a product exclusive, ie it is only available to the select few who have done something for you in return (ie pay for it), and it is denied to other people, those other people will in many cases take it as an attack or offsense and will want to take revenge for what they perceive as being discriminated against.
IF you were treating everyone equally you would make the product available to *everyone*, ie the full product is just as accessible to someone who wants to pay for it as to someone who doesn't. Then the question of what you get back for it is really supposed to be your secondary concern. You actually only really receive something by giving it to others in the knowledge that you're really giving it to yourself, since they are you. IF they then consider it appropriate to send you money, this should be an *option* for them, and the amount should not be fixed. It must be their choice.
You might've heard about Radiohead selling their recent album along similar lines where customers could elect to pay whatever they wanted for it. They clearly still made millions of dollars and many many more people were able to enjoy the album than if they all had to pay, and there are thus no pirate copies.
Piracy does not begin with a consumer electing to gain access to something that you've denied them access to. It really begins with YOUR denial of access, whereby YOU are the pirate, stealing away freedom from a select group of individuals in the name of your personal gain. Making payment mandatory is the equivalent of not giving at all, or only giving conditionally, rather than unconditionally. If you only give under certain conditions you can only receive under certain conditions and the only thing you will receive is money, not spiritual satisfaction.
You really can't blame people for wanting to escape from an emprisonment that you've enforced on them. Deep down, people do not know of or understand limitations. They know that we are `all one` and that everything is shared equally. When we try to impose limits like `this is mine, you can't have it`, or `you can only have this if you give me something that I want`, is an imposition of restriction and enprisonment onto people. They WILL rebel against that because you're clamping down on their personal freedom.
Attempts to steal, or to hack, or to gain `illegal access`, or to pirate, or to copy, or to use something that you spent a long time working on for their own benefits, are all actually quite natural behaviors, and none of them would have to be thought of as wrong or sinful or illegal if in the first place we had a fully sharing and open mindset about it.
It is mainly industry, commercialism and traditional business which drives forward the notion that it is wrong to share and it is wrong for everyone to access your product regardless of return. Just because these commercial interests deem themselves likely to lose out if they don't get something from everyone, and just because they go to great lengths to get the law on their side to enforce such sharing as being something wrong, does not mean they are right to do so. Who is the pirate here?
This is why I continue to insist that, actually, threats against security are created by those who try to conceal, hide or protect something from any select group of people.
Those who are claiming to be `protecting your security` are actually creating a climate of and an invitation to attack that protection. So long as there are people trying to conceal, own, and protect, there will be people claiming their right to equal sharing in what will be perceived as an illegal attack. This supposed `trusted computing` is not based on trust AT ALL, it is based in mistrust to create a false illusion of trustworthiness, which at the same time actually creates its opposite.
Truly trustable computing means that everyone who is using the computers are trustworthy themselves. That's where the real responsibility for being trustable is. It's not up to software to protect us from ourselves. The only way we'll get trust in computing is for people to share equally and to be okay with it, with people respecting each other as equals and not as exclusive owners.
What's needed is a radical shift in thinking, not a radical kind of security system.
If you try to make a product exclusive, ie it is only available to the select few who have done something for you in return (ie pay for it), and it is denied to other people, those other people will in many cases take it as an attack or offsense and will want to take revenge for what they perceive as being discriminated against.
IF you were treating everyone equally you would make the product available to *everyone*, ie the full product is just as accessible to someone who wants to pay for it as to someone who doesn't. Then the question of what you get back for it is really supposed to be your secondary concern. You actually only really receive something by giving it to others in the knowledge that you're really giving it to yourself, since they are you. IF they then consider it appropriate to send you money, this should be an *option* for them, and the amount should not be fixed. It must be their choice.
You might've heard about Radiohead selling their recent album along similar lines where customers could elect to pay whatever they wanted for it. They clearly still made millions of dollars and many many more people were able to enjoy the album than if they all had to pay, and there are thus no pirate copies.
Piracy does not begin with a consumer electing to gain access to something that you've denied them access to. It really begins with YOUR denial of access, whereby YOU are the pirate, stealing away freedom from a select group of individuals in the name of your personal gain. Making payment mandatory is the equivalent of not giving at all, or only giving conditionally, rather than unconditionally. If you only give under certain conditions you can only receive under certain conditions and the only thing you will receive is money, not spiritual satisfaction.
You really can't blame people for wanting to escape from an emprisonment that you've enforced on them. Deep down, people do not know of or understand limitations. They know that we are `all one` and that everything is shared equally. When we try to impose limits like `this is mine, you can't have it`, or `you can only have this if you give me something that I want`, is an imposition of restriction and enprisonment onto people. They WILL rebel against that because you're clamping down on their personal freedom.
Attempts to steal, or to hack, or to gain `illegal access`, or to pirate, or to copy, or to use something that you spent a long time working on for their own benefits, are all actually quite natural behaviors, and none of them would have to be thought of as wrong or sinful or illegal if in the first place we had a fully sharing and open mindset about it.
It is mainly industry, commercialism and traditional business which drives forward the notion that it is wrong to share and it is wrong for everyone to access your product regardless of return. Just because these commercial interests deem themselves likely to lose out if they don't get something from everyone, and just because they go to great lengths to get the law on their side to enforce such sharing as being something wrong, does not mean they are right to do so. Who is the pirate here?
This is why I continue to insist that, actually, threats against security are created by those who try to conceal, hide or protect something from any select group of people.
Those who are claiming to be `protecting your security` are actually creating a climate of and an invitation to attack that protection. So long as there are people trying to conceal, own, and protect, there will be people claiming their right to equal sharing in what will be perceived as an illegal attack. This supposed `trusted computing` is not based on trust AT ALL, it is based in mistrust to create a false illusion of trustworthiness, which at the same time actually creates its opposite.
Truly trustable computing means that everyone who is using the computers are trustworthy themselves. That's where the real responsibility for being trustable is. It's not up to software to protect us from ourselves. The only way we'll get trust in computing is for people to share equally and to be okay with it, with people respecting each other as equals and not as exclusive owners.
What's needed is a radical shift in thinking, not a radical kind of security system.