02.06.10
Gemini version available ♊︎Microsoft Wants More Licensing Instead of Windows Bans
Photo by timedebugger
Summary: At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Microsoft super-lobbyist Craig Mundie requests new laws that complicate the Internet and ignore the real problem (Microsoft negligence)
Microsoft’s Craig Mundie is reportedly pushing for new laws, just as his colleague Brad Smith did a few weeks ago with help from the Huffington Post (simplification of eavesdropping to compensate for Windows botnets). Microsoft, which is paying a lot of money to the Democrats [1, 2, 3], is playing politics again.
To be clear here, Mundie and other Microsoft executives have enormous political power (especially the Gates family) and as we mentioned some months ago, Mundie is attending Bilderberg meetings. Mundie is Free(dom) software-hostile and he is among those who advise Obama [1, 2, 3, 4].
Anyway, the news is about Mundie calling for an “Internet Driver’s License”. Here is one take on it:
This is why I am sure that Mr. Mundie will begin implementing a license test for Microsoft Windows. You see, there are by some reports over 9 million “zombie” Windows machines disrupting internet use by relaying spam and spreading malware, and while Mr. Mundie may not be able to create an Internet Driver’s License, he is certainly in the position to promote a Microsoft Windows Driver’s License.
Mr. Mundie asserts that some authority needs be able to “organize the systematic quarantine of machines that are compromised.” Who is in a better position that Microsoft itself to require and verify the proper ability of potential Microsoft Windows users to be responsible, and in turn to deny that use if necessary?
In Australia, many Windows machines are at risk of being banned [1, 2]. The sheer numbers of zombie PCs run Windows. So Microsoft has got some nerve calling for an “Internet Driver’s License”.
This announcement from Mundie — not too surprisingly — came from one of those notorious events by the elites for the elites (it’s a bit like WIPO and it is also based in Switzerland).
So when someone who really should know better starts to push this sort of incredibly dangerous concept, it’s time to bump up to orange alert at a minimum, and the trigger is no less than Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos two days ago, Mundie explicitly called for an “Internet Driver’s License”: “If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance.” ( http://bit.ly/aWJ2ed )
Over in the New York Times, there is this new article about Chinese crackers which ends with the following paragraph:
“Microsoft and Adobe have a lot of zero days,” he said, while scanning Web sites at home. “But we don’t publish them. We want to save them so that some day we can use them.”
As we found out a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft had ignored known Internet Explorer holes for about half a year before disaster hit Google and other firms [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. This pattern of avoidable negligence [1, 2, 3] should have Microsoft banned from the Internet or even sued, according to some journalists. █
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Needs Sunlight said,
February 6, 2010 at 12:50 pm
I don’t see this as more licensing but as Microsoft’s Mundie trying to establish a Microsoft catechism as a requirement to using the network subscriptions. It’s more of the same old goal Microsoft executives have of getting a piece of every last electionic transaction and of excluding any other products or technologies.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 6, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Don’t forget “security as a lockin”.
ziggyfish said,
February 6, 2010 at 8:07 pm
“Won’t somebody please think of the children?”
Not only is this going to prevent the feedom of speech (which is what the Internet has become these days), but it will mean that kids won’t be able to do research on wikipedia, or similar sites without having a license.
Imagine the cost to the economy, that is already not looking good at the moment. How much will it cost the consumer (that already pays for anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spyware and anti-spam)? How much will it cost schools (that will only cost the taxpayers) and businesses will only push the cost to the consumer?
How the **** are they going to police this? Are they going to do this at the ISP level or at the OS level? If they do it at the ISP level? Either way there flaws in the system, like What about public Internet hot spots or I sell my computer?
All this does, as the article says “complicates the Internet” and makes the Internet scary. Most people that are using IE 6 are 50+ and they are already scared of the Internet because they don’t understand it. This solution is only going to scare them even more.
Who really wins here, absolutely no-one, consumers, taxpayers, children, governments and businesses. Even Microsoft doesn’t win. This will only drive people to alternatives like GNU/Linux or Mac.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 7, 2010 at 4:28 am
Criminals are not known for obeying the law, either. They won’t be stopped by the labeling of something “illegal”.