u/isocliffin r/compsci • Recommends
Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation
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#corydoctorow#drm#general-purposecomputing
28c3: The coming war on general computation
28c3
5.5K subscribers • 4 videos on Hallway
- Recommended by 8 people: 6 on Hacker News and 2 in engineering communities.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2011 to 2026.
- Presented by Cory Doctorow, author and activist
- Linked in the descriptionjwise/28c3-doctorow
- An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.
Beginner. No background in the topic needed.
267K views14 years ago8 recommendations
SecurityHistory and cultureCryptographyPrivacy and surveillanceThe tech industry
Cory Doctorow argues that copyright battles are a prelude to a wider conflict against the general-purpose computer, threatening user freedom and privacy.
Download hiqh quality version: bit.ly/sTTFyt Description: events.ccc.de/congress/2011/Fahrplan/events/4848.en.html Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation The copyright war was just the beginning The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race. The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to "secure" anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society. And general purpose computers can cause harm -- whether it's printing out AR15 components, causing mid-air collisions, or snarling traffic. So the number of parties with legitimate grievances against computers are going to continue to multiply, as will the cries to regulate PCs. The primary regulatory impulse is to use combinations of code-signing and other "trust" mechanisms to create computers that run programs that users can't inspect or terminate, that run without users' consent or knowledge, and that run even when users don't want them to. The upshot: a world of ubiquitous malware, where everything we do to make things better only makes it worse, where the tools of liberation become tools of oppression. Our duty and challenge is to devise systems for mitigating the harm of general purpose computing without recourse to spyware, first to keep ourselves safe, and second to keep computers safe from the regulatory impulse. Transcript: github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcript.md (CC-BY by Joshua Wise) SRT file with detailed timings (created automatically by YouTube) gist.github.com/3193854Why it's here
8 people recommend thisWhat people say. Widely cited as a seminal and prophetic talk on the dangers of DRM, locked-down devices, and the threat to general-purpose computing.
ughon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Doctorow: The coming war on general-purpose computation”
It’s worth watching the talk (linked in the article, but special pointing out seems appropriate): link to this video I like to call it the secret keynote of 28C3.
pdkl95on Hacker News • Recommends
On “Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC”
> the idea that users shouldn't be developers has lead to a situation in which access to development tools and information are seemingly treated as a privilege instead of a right Unfortunately, a lot of people have been starting the War On General Purpose Computing1 for a while now. While many people saw Doctorow's first talk1 on the War On General Purpose computing, his sequel talk2 about the upcoming Civil -War On General Purpose Computing is one of the most important talks I've ever seen. The talk is about exactly this point: Turing completeness scares various traditional powers (and some new/upcoming powers), and their instinct is to lash out and try to mandate that someone make a…
u/ricemilkin r/netsec • Recommends
This seems like such an important and far reaching talk, but I dont think it's getting much traction: Cory Doctorow & the coming war on general computing (props to Orbat for the original post)
akerstenon Hacker News • Recommends
On “How SGX Fails in Practice”
I'm comfortable with it on SmartCards or EMV chips, since those are tailored devices for a specific purpose and the trust model is understood by the participants. I'm not particularly upset that I can't root my credit card. Mobile phones, it's disappointing, but total consumer control was kind of a lost cause from day 1. What truly bothers me is the introduction of trusted computing into general-purpose consumer CPUs, where previously we had complete freedom. There's an old but still very good CCC talk that encapsulates my feelings about this 0. 0: link to this video
woojoo666on Hacker News • Recommends
On “Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California”
You might have already seen this but in case you havent, there's a famous talk about this called "the coming war on general computation" ( link to this video ), and much of this has already come true
freefaleron Hacker News • Recommends
On “Will Browsers Be Required by Law to Stop You from Visiting Infringing Sites?”
…rms (OS, phone OS, browser) would face challenges by governments and corporations. This looks like another way to control content distribution and put more control in Google's hands. They've made a great strategic choice in building Chrome browser and effectively superseded Microsoft and Apple on desktops as a platform. The talk can be found here: link to this video When people have means to consume or produce content without control any governmental bureaucrat will try to control this activity. History supports this argument. No printing press > no cheap books > illiterate population > easy to control what spreads as information and what do not. Printing press arrived > cheap books > growing literacy…
supern0vaon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Android Developer Verification”
Is it a serious problem that you can run whatever software you want on your computer? Should we make it so that no one can do that without permission to protect them? I recommend Cory Doctorow's talk on why this is a serious problem for society: link link to this video
ChristianMarkson Hacker News • Mentions
On “Elsevier's recent update to its letter to the mathematical community”
It is possible that in one hundred years or so that many of the "most useful" results published in copyrighted journals of the 20th century and available nowhere else will have found their way into the public domain. But it need not turn out that way. Cory Doctorow spoke about the coming war on general computation at 28c3: link to this video So we cannot be complacent.
shmerlon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Dear Congress: It's time for a real fix on unlocking and the DMCA”
You asked a straight question - how to reduce piracy. I answered - treat customers with respect (no DRM), and many of the current pirates will become paying users. If they want to "eliminate piracy" - they can forget about it, it will never happen. They can however increase their profits by acting decently. Today they are mostly focusing on chasing pirates wasting resources on that completely in vain. They should focus on catering to legitimate users instead. And it will pay off. As proven by those who act decently and principally don't use DRM. > Because if I'm selling files for $5 with no copy protection and Joe Pirate is giving them away for $0 (but he doesn't want me to disrespect him by…
kijinon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Welcome to Echelon 2.0”
…of excuses: I have popcorn ready for the day when graphics cards finally implement security systems to prevent them from being used for bitcoin mining or password brute-forcing. The FSF should change their name to FCF, Free Computing Foundation. We need them badly, more than ever before. 1 Cory Doctorow, "The Coming War on General Computation", link to this video…
stefanixon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Ubuntu Touch OS wins its first smartphone partner”
Dev here. Moved from OSX to Ubuntu a year ago. Love not having to agree-click ULAs all the time. Setting up dev stacks is very often so much easier and better documented. Working with open source software to develop open source projects is very enjoyable and very often I feel this is just the beginning of something very profound. With proprietary OSes I constantly have the feeling of banging against elaborately engineered limitations. This feels so counter-productive. Instead of producing something great why not spend incredible amounts of work-years on creating artificial limitations for the users, right. No thanks. In other words I like my computers to be general: link to this video
sp332on Hacker News • Mentions
On “US cybercrime laws being used to target security researchers”
Cory Doctorow's keynote at Chaos Communication Congress (2011) was about this trend. It's not technically feasible to make a turing-complete system that only does things that the creator likes. All anti-virus and DRM systems are provably limited unless general-purpose computation is removed. link to this video
higherpurposeon Hacker News • Mentions
On “EA is File Snooping with the Origin Client”
Basically everything Cory Doctorow has predicted 1 would happen with DRM, and of course what Richard Stallman said many years before that. 1 link to this video And now we're going to get OS level DRM that works through all of our browsers, thanks to Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and last, but not least, the W3C. Terrific.
zxcdwon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'”
> And if I decided to show one of them to a someone who gave me money in return, that still doesn't give anybody who didn't pay me or anyone else for that matter, any right to access that file, no matter how little "intrinsic value" it represents. Sure, this is unconditionally right if we go by the book and agree with the law. No argument here. Though, by going by the said law... The full albums, songs, movies, movie clips, whatever unauthorized there is in YouTube for example for billions of people to see every day creates a huge problem. For example here in Finland, any person listening to an unauthorized upload of an album on YouTube breaks the law. Practically a huge majority of the yout…
themusicgod1on Hacker News • Mentions
On “US Announces Withdrawal from TPP”
The TPP was far greater than a class issue. It was part of the War on General Purpose Computation ( link to this video ). It cut through class lines, into our ability to control the technology in our lives.