> If some piece of software I'm running is the only reason for you to refuse the connection, then you should be obligated.

In general, the obligation has been soft: "If everything adheres to the protocols, it will interoperate" is how we got the Internet. And the Internet was generally useful and so self-incentivized making software work with it with minimal stumbling blocks; nobody was gating FTP clients on only working with Oracle-branded FTP servers because then you couldn't access all the other FTP servers.

But that's not the only model, and I don't see an obvious argument for why should enters into it here. How does that "should" work? Is there legal compulsion? On what moral or philosophical grounds?

> It's slightly similar to how protected class laws work. You can block me for no reason, but not that reason.

Yes, and instituting those laws was a messy uphill battle over immutable properties of human beings. That is a far philosophical cry from "No thank you; I'd like to use all that Apple cloud tech without buying an Apple computer please." I suppose, unless we break the back of capitalism as a societal structuring model, in which case... Yep. We can make whatever laws we want if we throw out the current system.

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matheusmoreira 14 hours ago | parent [-]

> I don't see an obvious argument for why should enters into it here

This threatens to destroy everything the word "hacker" stands for. Everything this site is about. Gone.

I can't even get people on Hacker News to care about this. It's over.

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shadowgovt 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Hackers will be fine. If anything, this kind of measure-countermeasure foolishness from corporations gives them a really meaty problem to dig into.

It's just very unclear that the force of law is the right tool for the job to address that problem.

(Also, people on Hacker News can care about a lot of things simultaneously. One of them can be that adding the government's cudgel to the problem may very well make it worse; do we really want the government having to well-define things like "protocol" and "communication" to craft that law?)

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matheusmoreira 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's just very unclear that the force of law is the right tool for the job to address that problem.

Remote hardware attestation is cryptograhic proof of corporate ownership of the machine.

They're using cryptography against us. Everyone here knows how devastating cryptography is. Cryptography is subversive. It can defeat police, judges, governments, militaries, spies.

I'm actually worried that the force of law might turn out to be not nearly enough.

> do we really want the government having to well-define things like "protocol" and "communication" to craft that law?

Just ban corporations from using remote attestation to discriminate against us. If they try something else, ban it too. Don't even ban the technology, it's useful to us when used with our own keys. Just stop this abuse and discrimination.

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shadowgovt 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> Just ban corporations from using remote attestation to discriminate against us.

Whelllp, there goes my OneTouch login on my MacBook. :(

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Dylan16807 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Using one device to authenticate another device can work just fine without any anti-consumer lockdowns.

	▲	shadowgovt 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It can right now. Get the government in the business of deciding what is and is not "remote attestation" and good luck with that.