@adam @silverpill

Hey Adam :)

I haven't paid much attention lately (no need, really), but some time ago, specifically with respect to China, a couple of things were already facts of life, even in extremely rural areas, due to government mandate

1. ) The Wechat app is used to buy candy and cigarettes at the store and access other banking functions (which can be confiscated or suspended) as well as turning in your elementary school homework assignments.
2. ) Surveillance cameras were so ubiquitous that 95% plus of the population could be identified via facial recognition and located within 10 minutes anywhere in the entire country.

"make it impossible to interact online without your every move being tied back to your IRL identity by law enforcement"

Socialist dystopias count this goal among their basic tenants.

Capitalist market societies highly desire this too, as such is the nature of any government run amok, but also because of commercial pressures.

"make it impossible to circumvent DRM or ads"

In the free market economies of the world, commercial interests (in the name of protecting digital rights of producers) apply extreme pressure for governmental regulation to guarantee their collection of monies and force delivery of programmatic consumerism.

Authoritarian governments will also seek to quantify any consumption of tangible products (enforcing the collection of government revenue and control the freedom of personal movement) and the ability to deliver any messaging/notifications at anytime unabated.

Desired results being arguably congruent, motivations are divergent in theory, although not necessarily in practice.

Some company proposes a solution

The government itself is the genesis for this in socialist authoritarian dystopias.

In capitalist economies of (to whatever debatable extent) free societies, this is exactly how it works; the classic example being VHS vs Beta, Soundblaster 16 CD & audio vs competing coalitions and extending to Blu-ray, DVD, etc., first the highly coveted "MPC" certification of hardware, with manufacturers eventually coalescing around one market solution that appears to be the most viable regarding adoption by the consumer market.

This usually, but not always, results in the superior candidates evolving into industry wide adoption - the evolution is slow, can be clumsy, and full of compromise (not unlike FOSS innovation and maturation).

Authoritarian despotism is much more efficient in choosing, and deploying such technological solutions (but usually not as effective in developing), and can generally be introduced into the target market rather immediately (although it can also be prone to sucking really badly). Failures can be replaced by edict almost immediately, following the development of replacement alternatives, upgrades, or improvements, the decisions for which are much less dependant upon target consumer preference.

and use this hardware to provide secure attestations of

For whatever, actually :p

I always called it the choke-chip, but IIRC the Clinton administration and manufacturer consortiums called it the V-Chip. Perhaps the first foray into what eventually spitballed into DRM, but for reasons stated as being different and a functionally differentiated market as well.

the tech giants invent a new protocol (I'll call it EvilTP), which is proprietary and a trade secret. It is managed by a consortium which only provides documentation on the protocol to companies that pay a massive licensing fee and sign NDAs.

Tangent: Okay till now I've interpreted your choke-chip (Evil TP) to be driven by mostly market based pressures. At least primarily so. One could also consider how authoritarian socialist economies might evolve toward your consideration of consumer control & surveillance - in both of these economic models, I would suggest that there are intensely incentivized tendencies to converge toward the same result, irrespective of any stated reasonings (all governments are at their cores, self-serving liars).

Although the reasonings may differ, the end goal product remains quite similar - with or without admission, or perhaps not even by initial desire of design. It just ends up nearly the same.

For example, on the following article I cover a bit of the specific chronologies of space exploration between these two distinctly different economic models, and humorously, my take on how effective this convergence ended up.

https://public.mitra.social/post/018edf1c-91ce-41dd-942a-8ce33d9e28d8

I'll see if I can't locate the post on the home server where it renders much more prettified as I intended, the images aren't inline in my current client as I would like them to be. I'll try and post that URL as a follow up to this thread. There's a bonus at the very end after I've finished ridiculing the Baran that I think you might appreciate (hint: she's one of my life's superhero inspirations).

I mean, just look at all that bird guano, those puppies are ready to be rolled out onto the launch pad and fueled up for launch lolz. 👋🤪 🚀

But I digress.

You effectively suggest that to avoid antitrust quagmires, this consortium would themselves through strong NDAs, and commiserating with each other as well as throwing juicy bones to the governments of capitalist, market based economies - but no it doesn't have to be that way as I mentioned above with the Wechat App in China. The Industrial surveillance complex isn't tethered to capitalistic or Marxist/Maoist systems with any sort of exclusivity. It's a beast all its own that in one case, brings down the government to bear in fake acquiescence, and in the other, is harnessed from the outset as a weapon against individuals by the government itself, respectively.

And I don't think that in the first case that you necessarily need to protect proprietary software and manufacturing by agreement (Microsoft shows no one their core code, ever). I think that Faceplant and InstaSpam are great examples of how one might compell the subjugated chattel to capitulate their privacy all too voluntarily. With zeal even! Ah those mighty endorphins that perpetuate and exploit that addictive personality!

So I'm not discounting what you're cogitating over at all, but I do have a couple of questions.

This secure attestation can't be sent over ordinary HTTP, or it could be reverse engineered and faked.

- a.) What about browser based blockchain operations and transactions over non-custodial wallets? You raise some serious alarms over financial integrity in that one aspect alone, and online banking too.
- b.) Are you suggesting that engaging via browser with one's Peergos account, which is hardened with post quantum encryption and audited, is as insecure as the suggestion of reverse engineering that you posed?

In the larger scheme of things however, I want to share my apprehensions and concerns for the end point of the conversation itself. I'm happy in a kornshell via an SSH session on my old 3270 PC-AT box with a burnt amberchrome monitor and an 8 bit NE-1000 ISA NIC - as long as I've got my trusty old authentic IBM tactile click keyboard keeping the neighbors awake, but on any contemporary Intel based workstation, and thanks to the MIT cuck license, we're ALWAYS running Minix too. You can't touch it. You can't feel it. But it's there in the chipset happily doing whatever it's doing, operating under that NDA you brought up (you and I have discussed licensing philosophy before).

In furtherance of your concerns over blocking free Internet commerce, here's how one socialist dystopian solution was implemented in Merry Olde England...

I'm hoping this markdown quoting code works here (copypasta from a previous chat discussion where I consulted Grok for clarifications):

That's an example of instilling fear into companies to a degree of uncertainty where they express fealty to their Lord and Master. Whether the threat is real or perceived, the net effect is the disenfranchisement of presumably an entire nation of people.

Hang on, I'mma fro up in my mouf a little bit here 🤮

Okay better now. I don't need to go into the myriad ways in which a government, or rather, peering points at the behest and direction of government, can choke off any targeted packet flow, but I will mention that patent law is extremely powerful - the type of fear you would want to instill could merely be akin to that of cross-pollination of GMO based corn 🌽 planted in your neighbors field the previous year, the genetics 🧬 of which show up in samples of your harvest this year - oopsies!

You could literally go to jail in that scenario, although Monsanto would prefer you just breakout your checkbook.

So I'll sum up a bit coz this wasn't supposed to become a diatribe (apologies)...

With #FOSS, there is freedom, and I'm not going to suggest that those who exercise their inalienable rights and freedoms won't end up in prison like the Falun Gong in live organ transplant harvesting farms; or Jimmy Lai, who to my knowledge, is still in solitary confinement; or a little old gray haired Londoner lady who some Bobby observed on a sidewalk and invoked England's thought police laws because the cop claims she was praying to her God.

There will always be those of us who insist upon the personal preference of using almost exclusively FOSS based software, and those of us (the subjugated chattel) that will gladly acquiesce to selling their souls for that tickle of dopamine. The entire problem to be solved, if it can be, is to educate enough people to become the critical mass that categorically rejects being subsumed by the diabolical progenitors of #EvilTP...

If your corn polin flies into my cornfield it's my fucking polin, bitches!

Okay hey I went ahead and dug up that article at the source HERE it is

Enjoy :)

#tallship #stuffs #DRM #technological_convergence

⛵

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