This has got to drive RMS nuts

Bill Sconce sconce at in-spec-inc.com
Tue Mar 1 07:45:01 EST 2005


On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 22:13:31 -0500
Greg Rundlett <greg at freephile.com> wrote:

> I just noticed that Microsoft has used the acronym 'RMS' to stand for 
> 'Rights Management Services'[1].  That has got to drive the real RMS 
> nuts.  Well, actually, I can't speak for him, but it kinda drives me 
> nuts because it seems like they are using their marketing dollars in a 
> thinly veiled personal affront to their nemesis.


Hm.  RMS himself does this with "DRM"(*):

    Of course, Hollywood and the record companies plan to use
    treacherous computing for "DRM" (Digital Restrictions Management),
    so that downloaded videos and music can be played only on one
    specified computer. 


-Bill

(*)
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html



P.S. The same paper has in one of its own postscripts the following.
One rule of propaganda is to first take over control of the language:

    When Microsoft speaks of "security" in connection with
    palladium, they do not mean what we normally mean by that
    word: protecting your machine from things you do not want.
    They mean protecting your copies of data on your machine
    from access by you in ways others do not want. A slide in
    the presentation listed several types of secrets palladium
    could be used to keep, including "third party secrets" and
    "user secrets"--but it put "user secrets" in quotation 
    marks, recognizing that this somewhat of an absurdity in
    the context of palladium.

    The presentation made frequent use of other terms that we
    frequently associate with the context of security, such as
    "attack", "malicious code", "spoofing", as well as "trusted". 
    None of them means what it normally means. "Attack" doesn't
    mean someone trying to hurt you, it means you trying to copy
    music. "Malicious code" means code installed by you to do
    what someone else doesn't want your machine to do. "Spoofing"
    doesn't mean someone fooling you, it means you fooling 
    palladium. And so on.



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