[governance] Verisign to control what operating systems you can run on your computer

[Kerry Brown]

I fail to see how you believe a feature that is easily turned off endangers "the early egalitarian promise of a decentralised and bottom up architecture of the digital space/ opportunity". Some form of authenticating the OS before loading it is inevitable in this era of malware. All OS' will have to implement this or they will not be secure. Apple is implementing this as well. Linux or any OS can also implement this. Most manufacturers have said it will be easily turned off. I'm not apologising for Microsoft. I run a mix of Open Source, Microsoft, and Apple OS' on my computers and servers. I see some form of checking the OS before loading it as a welcomed security feature. I look forward to the open source community using this technology as well.

The only issue I see is the use of certificates for this purpose. The public CA system is increasingly insecure.

Kerry Brown

From: parminder [mailto:parminder at itforchange.net]
Sent: June-07-12 7:03 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Kerry Brown
Subject: Re: [governance] Verisign to control what operating systems you can run on your computer


On Thursday 07 June 2012 06:47 PM, Kerry Brown wrote:

I don't know what the fuss is.

The fuss is about the incremental but unmistakable manner in which the digital space/ opportunity is getting centralised, and tied to the control of a few global monopolies. This goes against the early egalitarian promise of a decentralised and bottom up architecture of the digital space/ opportunity. One can always argue that separately any of the individual steps in this direction is not by itself of such monumental significance, as you try to do, but their collective impact on our digital ecology is what should concern us all, that is we are indeed inclined to be so concerned. It is the separation of software from the hardware which is credited with starting the IT revolution. Shouldnt a process of reversal of such separation concern us.


parminder


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