I don't know how much all of you know about TCPA, if anything. But to me it looks pretty scary, especially as it will give even greater control to the likes of Microsoft and other such giants in the world of computer hardware/software, and has the potential to detroy filesharing as we know it.
So what is TCPA? I'm not particularly technical, so I will quote from the Against TCPA website where you can find out all you need to know:
''TCPA stands for Trusted Computing Platform Alliance. For the technology we will speak from TCP (The trusted computing platform). This plans that every computer will have a TPM (Trusted Platform Module), also known as Fritz-Chip, built-in. At later development stages, these functions will be directly included into CPUs, graphiccards, harddisks, soundcards, bios and so on. This will secure that the computer is in a TCPA-conform state and that he checks that it's always in this state. This means: On the first level comes the hardware, on the second comes TCPA and then comes the user. The complete communication works with a 2048 bit strong encryption, so it's also secure enough to make it impossible to decrypt this in realtime for a longer time. This secures that the TCPA can prevent any unwanted software and hardware. The long term result will be that it will be impossible to use hardware and software that's not approved by the TCPA. Presumably there will be high costs to get this certification and that these would be too much for little and mid-range companies. Therefore open-source and freeware would be condemned to die, because without such a certification the software will simply not work. In the long term only the big companies would survive and could control the market as they would like.
Some could think that it should be possible to get around this security. But probably they would be proved they're wrong. Until now there're no such hardware-implemented security systems and actual security systems have to work offline. This would be changed with TCP. The rights and licenses would be central managed by the TCPA (USA?). And as soon a violation is noticed, they will get notified. Read the chapter "The bills" to get an overview about the possible resulting consequences.''
The Fritz chip is named after Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC). For more info check out Stop Policeware.org
If you feel strongly enough about this, please sign the petition - you will find a link in my signature.
Other useful links:
Boycott RIAA.com
RIAA Radar
Paul and the other moderators, I would ask you to pin this topic as it has far reaching consequences for all of us in the filesharing community.
Crackedup.
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Sorry that I can't say more.
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