Cryptography and Competition Policy Issues with Trusted Computing

Short Description
cryptography, or at least on software that is tiresome to reverse engineer, are. being used to control aftermarkets:. - Mobile phone manufacturers often …

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Content
Cryptography and Competition Policy
{ Issues with ‘Trusted Computing’
Ross Anderson
Cambridge University
Abstract. The most signicant strategic development in information
technology over the past year has been ‘trusted computing’. This is popularly
associated with Microsoft’s ‘Palladium’ project, recently renamed
‘NGSCB’. In this paper, I give an outline of the technical aspects of
‘trusted computing’ and sketch some of the public policy consequences.
1 Introduction
Customers of the computing and communications industries are getting increasingly
irritated at ever more complex and confusing prices. Products and services
are sold both singly and in combinations on a great variety of dierent contracts.
New technology is making ‘bundling’ and ‘tying’ strategies ever easier, while IT
goods and services markets are developing so as to make them ever more attractive
to vendors. These trends are now starting to raise signicant issues in
competition policy, trade policy, and even environmental policy.
Ink cartridges for computer printers provide a good example. Printer prices
are increasingly subsidised by cartridge sales: the combination of cheap printers
and expensive cartridges enables vendors to target high-volume business users
and price-sensitive home users with the same…