I haven't looked into palladium recently, but, I remember back when it first made online news coverage. The basic goal of palladium initially was to create a reliable and trusted mechanism for data exchange between computers, primarily for the business side of things. It also provided an avenue for court orders on possession of certain types of files to be enforced. Palladium has some great ideas behind it that would greatly help online businesses, some chip makers, and M$. However, there is little the consumer has to gain from palladium. In fact, palladium pretty much destroys privacy and security. What's amusing to me is that there's a trusted entity worked into the palladium scheme. Who is the trusted entity? M$? The government? I sure as hell don't trust either of them to do anything with my computer.

IMO palladium is a way for large companies that are supporting it to gain a solid place in the market and to monopolize on the consumers. The sad thing is, most people are far too ignorant to even comprehend what palladium means for them. They couldn't care less about who makes what they use or how it works or whether or not there are better possibilities. From what I've read about palladium, I don't believe it's even constitutional to begin with. If it ever does materialize, I'm sure the EFF will have a lot to say about it.

My only concern is that with such large corporations involved, and with such dumbass politicians involved, we're setting up to have some serious problems. With the DMCA, INDUCE act (renamed something like IICA i think), Patriot Act, and whatever new legislation that supports palladium implementation, it'll practically be illegal to own a computer as we define it today. The computers of the future aren't going to be the kind we've dreamed of, they're going to be sorely encumbered, under-performing, DRM locked boxes. I only hope that something gets moving to stop this trend.