I'm writing you all from the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, a junket^Wmeeting where they bring professors from around the country to Redmond to indoctrinate^Winform about the latest and greatest.

Somebody asked Bill Gates, in the Q&A session after his keynote, about Palladium and DRM's potentially sinister / big brother aspects. His answer pretty much dodged the issue entirely, but included one gem:

"We are the ultimate empowerment people."

Remember that. It's all about mechanism, not policy.