Enabling DRM in the kernel?

“Pointing to a “Trusted Computing” FAQ from 2003, Ts’o noted
that five years ago, FAQ author Ross Anderson “was able to predict
the emergence of the LaGrande Technology (see question 15 in the
above FAQ).” But, Joseph Cihula, author of the TXT patch noted that
some of the FAQ (and other Trusted Computing complaints) had been
rebutted [PDF] in an IBM whitepaper by David Safford. But, as Ts’o
pointed out, much of Safford’s response was specific to the Trusted
Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) technology, which is essentially
broken as a DRM lockdown solution:

“However, it seems to me that TXT/LaGrande’s main purpose for
existence was to repair the defects in TCPA that made it
essentially [unusable] for DRM purposes. With TCPA, any time you
changed *anything* in the boot path — installed a new BIOS,
upgraded to a new kernel to fix a security vulnerability, updated
to a new Nvidia proprietary video driver slightly less likely to
crash your [system] — it would change the trusted boot
measurements, and would require an exchange to “[Circuit] City DIVX
hotline” (as a generic stand-in for whoever is Hollywood’s current
monkey paw towards trying to implement DRM) to approve a transfer
of the TCPA trusted keys, which would be essentially be a consumer
support nightmare, and there would be no way for “Circuit City” to
know whether the kernel you are claiming was the latest update from
Fedora or Novell or Canonical was really an authorized upgrade, or
whether it was a custom kernel with patches to tap into video and
audio paths to steal Hollywood’s precious bodily fluids.”

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