Today I noticed a CNet news.com article by Munir Kotadia and Steven Deare titled "Goldman Sachs signs DRM deal".
This article merged together uses of TPMs which protect the rights of technology users with those which attack their rights. Given people are getting these entirely different concepts confused, I am wondering if we can come up with language that clearly differentiates between them.
Protection of rights: "encrypt documents" to "to protect its confidential documents from unauthorized access". Those without the decryption keys would not be able to access the document. Digital signatures would be used to protect against otherwise undetected modifications. In all these cases the owners of the computers retain control over their computers -- in fact, the proper operation of these technologies demand this.
Circumvention of rights: "Document authors can define what users can and cannot do with the information". Documents cannot make decisions. Access to a document is a yes or no question: either you have the keys required to unlock the document, or you do not. In order to control what a person can do after they unlock a locked document this means that the owner of the computer cannot be in control of that computer. It is not the author of the document that decides what can happen (given they are only locking up the content, and are not present at the point it is unlocked), but the authors of the software running on the computer. In all these cases the owners of the computers are not in control of their computers -- in fact, the operation of these technologies demand this.
