DMCA Invoked Against Garage Door Openers 563
boijames writes "In the latest bit of DMCA lunacy, copyright guru David Nimmer turned me
onto a case that his firm is defending, where a garage door opener
company (The Chamberlain Group) has leveled a DMCA claim (among other
claims) against the maker of universal garage door remotes (Skylink)."
OMFG (Score:5, Interesting)
This is such BS. Please, someone take the authors and sponsors of the DMCA and shoot them out of a cannon into a brick wall.
Whats next? Crayon suing other "crayon" manufacturers for making colored wax pencils? Georgia Pacific for suing other companies that process wood pulp?
You certainly didn't see Chevy suing Dodge for making a 1500, 2500, and 3500 line of pickups. Dodge never sued anyone else for introducing quad cab doors on 1/2 ton trucks.
This is simply got to be the most asinine law on the books recently.
Does actually make some sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then again, i dont think you can make a universal key, so someone must have been doing some bad thinking if they designed garage door remotes like this.
The complaints are contradictory (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't have it both ways.
Unless I'm really dense, the whole point of Rolling Codes is that there is an algorithm shared by the remote and opener that defines previously-used codes as invalid, so that a burglar who sniffs the code you use to open the garage today can't come back and use that code tomorrow. In that case, these devices should not be working, which should be grounds for the consumers to file a class-action, but it would be proof that they are NOT violating the patent on the Rolling Codes.
Re:Nice troll, Michael (Score:5, Interesting)
Is the DMCA retroactive? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is steadily going beyond ridiculous, making our country an even larger laughing stock.
Maybe not (Score:5, Interesting)
There are too many powerful groups with a vested interest to let this go by the way. Minor revisions, perhaps, but it's not going to create a huge ruckus or make any major difference to the law. Even if this particular case gains some notoriety, it'll be forgotten in a month and the vested interest groups will have won. Again.
Not that I'm jaded or cynical or anything.
Does this make my palm pilot illegial? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think this case could help my mother understand (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to be overly optimistic here, but I think this case could show just how bad the DMCA really is to Joe Public. It is not being used as intended (Take my copyrighted material off your website now! or Your taking my crapy "digital protection" off my copyrighted work, stop it!), but instead it is being used as a bully tactic. Right or wrong the copyright holder should be able to protect what he thinks are his works, but with the DMCA he has been given a club that is far to large.
Just being a little less optimistic, my bet is that one of the following happens:
But what I would like to see happen is that they loose a battle with the DMCA and it goes all the way to the Supreme Court. (Where in a 7 to 2 decision they decide that the Congress can extend copyrights indefinitly because that is a limited ammount of time - oh what wrong thread.)
I just seems like nobody wants to test this new law, but everybody wants to use it like the club it was designed to be. Somebody need to fight this thing in court, but that will take years and lots of cash.
All Your Base Indeed... (Score:5, Interesting)
they want a permanent injunction
they want all profits from Skylink's device
they want to impound all Skylink's stuff
they then want to destroy all of Skylinks stuff
they want treble damages
they want attorney's fees
but my favorite phrase is the "trafficking in a device that is designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing the technological measure" (referring to their rolling code tech).
Cmon, ya jokers... It's a freakin' garage door opener, not an eight-ball of heroin...
Sheesh...
Encryption Escalation? (Score:3, Interesting)
What happens then if you lose your remote, and you can't get a replacement except by mail from the manufacturer? And if you open the door manually, circumventing the (now lost) encrypted remote, are you violating the DMCA?
Will this mean more highly encrypted garage door systems won't be able to be exported? After all, we wouldn't want terrorists and rogue nations to be able to protect their SUVs from the prying eyes of espionage!
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Does actually make some sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. Universal garage door openers have a bunch of DIP switches that you need to set to match the frequency and manufacturer of the receiver. I have a Skylink universal opener, and there is one DIP switch for the frequency setting, 8 for the manufacturer, and 8 for the code. Do the math. It would take a long time to try each combination, and I think most people, if they noticed some guy in a car sitting in front of their house for a while, would call the cops.
Thieves do exploit automatic garage door openers, but there are more sophisticated devices that simply scan and capture the signal from a legitimate transmitter and use that to open the door. (That's why most new garage door openers have rolling codes - so the same signal isn't accepted twice in a row).
i dont think you can make a universal key
Yes you can. It's called a master key. You have to be a locksmith, or be really good at social engineering to get one. And it only works for a subset of models of a specific brand of lock. But, yes, if some guy goes to your house, and recognizes that you have a Yale lock, model $foo, then he could likely get a master key for it.
Anyway, back to remotes. This is ridiculous. Skylink is filling a market that wouldn't otherwise exist. When the remote for our garage door opener crapped out (well, it broke in half, but that's another story), I went to get a new one. Quoth the company (after about an hours worth of phone tag) "No, sorry, we don't make replacement remotes for those anymore. Why don't you try a universal remote?"
I think The Chamberlain Group doesn't actually give a shit about patent infringement (which is what this is about - go read the case). I think what we're seeing in this case, and with Lexmark, and with the many more cases that will come, is the result of desperation. These companies are looking for a quick buck in hard economic times and understandably so. The DMCA has given them a great tool with which to make this quick buck. Now, if Skylink was some new fly-by-nite company from China that was ripping off these remotes, I'd have a little more sympathy for the Chamberlain Group. But they're not. Skylink has been around since _at least_ 1993 (that I know of), and probably longer. There are Skylink products on the shelf of every Home Depot in the country, and they've been there for 5 years (that I know of). I sincerely hope the judge tells The Chamberlain Group to fuck off, but I suspect he won't.
Re:unfortunately (Score:3, Interesting)
er...Key Gun (Rakes the pins automatically)? Lock Picks? Sure, the general public can't get those. For a start, copyrighting the encyrption algorithm effectively gives the company controlling the door openers a monopoly on the remotes, once you have installed the actual door opener in your garage; does this sound similar to anything at all (Hint: starts with an 'M')? Secondly, as cryptoanalysts well know, the security of a message should not depend on the secrecy of the algorithm, only on the secrecy of the keys involved; copyright is no protection, because obviously the criminals that try to break it will abide by that.
If you do agree, you are just not thinking hard enough; this is a stupid law; don't be convinced otherwise
Master Lock vs. AA Locksmith (Score:5, Interesting)
Plaintiff makes a garage door opener that is keyed to Plaintiff's remote. Defendent creates garage remote capable of being keyed to many different garage door openers, including Plaintiff's. Purpose of garage doors is to secure property inside garage. Therefore Plaintiff's device is an anti-piracy (as in nautical theft) device, which is "circumvented" by an "unauthorized" (third-party) key (remote control).
This seems analagous to a lock company suing a locksmith for duplicating keys (assuming these keys don't say "do not duplicate" on them), since the company made the locks and keys to go with them, making the existence of a key not made by the lock company a circumvention device.
I wonder how long before we see such a suit filed?
In related news... (Score:4, Interesting)
It even shows a nice Battlefield 1924 logo when starting simcity 4.
I'm not lying
So is my bought battefield 1942 cd a circumvention device?
And can EA sue EA for making a curcumvention device that breaks EA's copy protection?
Re:What about the retailers of the Universal Devic (Score:3, Interesting)
If they win, I assue you that the products will be pulled fom the shelf by each location for fear of being targeted in a lawsuit.
All this will do is force us to buy openers from the manufacturer. Have you ever priced a remote for a Chamberlain garage door opener? They're something like $30.
Seems to me that the DMCA is being used to recoup profits for companies that have a seriously flawed business model or are generally greedy.
I can't wait for the backlash. It may take several more lawsuits and all the after-market stuff drying up before Joe Q. Public wakes up and sees how screwed we really are.
What's next? I'm going to be forced to buy only Genuine Dodge parts for my 2002 Durango? You mean I have to pay [insert insanely bloated OEM price here] for brake pads when I could've got after-markets for 1/2 that? I can only use Geniune Dodge oil and air filters (the latter of which is $30) when I could've gotten a FRAM filter for $9 at WalMart?
If thats going to be the case, I'll pay someone to total it and buy a 20 year old car that is
1. Easier to repair
2. Has a plethora of universal parts available
3. Gets really shitty gas mileage in order to thumb my nose at the tree-huggers
4. Is made of Pittsburgh steel and not fiberglass and tinfoil
5. Is so old that no one in their right mind would want to steal it or cut me off in traffic for fear of having me in their back seat
The tech... (Score:3, Interesting)
The summary judgment motion is the more interesting document, which (partially) describes how the technology works.
What it doesn't say is how Chamberlain's (the plaintiff) remote control resynchronises with the receiver. This is interesting, since it's this resynchronisation that Skylink's (the defendant) remote control uses to trigger Chamberlain's receiver. By doing so, Skylink circumvent the rolling-code mechanism that's supposed to protect the Chamberlain device from code-grabbers.
I wonder how Skylink have done this - does their remote control learn how to resynchronise from an original remote control? Have they also needed to crack Chamberlain's code to be able to do this? If so, that's a second circumvention, isn't it?
Lastly, you have to wonder how buggy/weak Chamberlain's code/system is if it can be so easily circumvented. But I guess that's not relevant under the DMCA.
(IANAL)
(Anyone got a Skylink RC? Can you comment on the process of teaching it to open your door?)
DCMA violated, garage receiver insecure! (Score:3, Interesting)
It is.
However, this is closing the door after the horse has bolted and the plaintiff should be facing a class action for claiming that something is secure despite having a massive loophole that allows someone to force the door to open without the right, programmed remote control!
The DCMA is being used to try to get these things off the market because of the stupidity of the manufacturers in creating a basically insecure device and marketing it as secure.
The manufacturers shoudl be strung up - this stinks...
will they go after Volvo next (Score:1, Interesting)
You did miss something (Score:5, Interesting)
Their implementation is horrendous and practically invites this. If they wanted a secure sytem, the remote could query the opener for a current timestamp, and then it could use that timestamp to generate an appropriate code and send it. To make the code specific to one door, you could enter the serial number of the opener into the remote as a seed for whatever code generating algorithm it uses, just program it once when you first buy it. You can obviously only see the serial number if you're inside the house so that should be pretty secure. It sound like they just have a list of 1000 codes and they go through it in order, which is why they need the synchronization code, in case you hit the button when you're out of range of the door and your remote is on 48 while the opener is on 46.
I especially liked the verbal chicanery, where they use circumvent to mean 'got the door to open' rather than to mean 'break into the list of codes'. If the competing universal remote actually broke into the list of codes (which was encoded or protected somehow) then they may have broken the DMCA, but it seems like they just experimented with sending signals and found one that always opened the doors, it's not even reverse engineering, just discovering an undocumented API. Is a list of numbers even copyrightable? I wouldn't think so.....
And people laughed (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't wait until going through my office door right behind someone is an offense - since I didn't use my badge.
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"Don't let what you can't do stop you from what you can do." - unknown
DMCA? How about patent infringement (Score:5, Interesting)
Because of the patent claims, couldn't this lawsuit have happened even with DMCA?
If the patent complaints are found valid, isn't this a valid (from a non legal standpoint) action by Chamberlin? If so, then why is eveyone bitching about DMCA?
Re:This is good (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is good.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Our age didn't invent the stupid law or the weird implementation. Our age did not give birth to the damned silly lawsuit. The root of the problem is not the time in which we live, but the deterioration of the values of American politicians to which our age is witness.
It's a fascinating paradox: now, in an age with never-before-imaginable possibilities for public scrutiny of political actions, American politicians have become brazen in their pandering to special interests that run counter to the public good.
As Justice Stevens's dissenting opinion in yesterday's Supreme Court cited, an inventor had lobbied congress for a patent extension in the 1790's, not long after the laws governing patents had been given their initial form. Steven's citation notes that the inventor successfully lobbied congress for an extension of his patent, but Stevens noted that it took the man years to gather the support needed to make Congress grant his extension--an extension which Stevens opines was unconstitutional.
Contrast the men of those Congressional sessions with the people behind the DMCA and the sickening Sonny-Bonno extension, and you see the actions of men who don't see themselves as public servants, or as honorable men with the heritage of a nation to protect. Looked at this way, it's all intellectual clear-sailing and there is nothing surprising at all to be found in a law that facilitates lawsuits that raise the cost of innovation against the public interest.
Basically, 'they're creeps. They don't care. The results are not surprising.
Re:You did miss something (Score:3, Interesting)
it would seem riciculous that a sequence of numbers, or number, can be copyrighted...but isn't that massive long prime used in CSS encryption copyrighted? you're not allowed to host code with it in anyway..
Re:Initial Musings on Commerce and Property (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't sell me a crowbar proof door if it ain't crowbar proof.
Don't whine that stores shouldn't be selling crowbars.
And sure as hell, don't sue the guy making me a crowbar. Makes it sound like it ain't my door to bang on, makes it sound like it ain't your money to be suing anyone with.
Look, I don't know what to say. It's my door. I want to open it with whatever remote I damn well please. If it's possible for me to generate a remote for my door that doesn't actually require me to do anything particularly special *as the owner*, then the remote control I had doesn't actually protect me as much as I thought it would.
Now I know I may need to buy a new door, or I may decide to accept the risk. But it's my door to make that choice with.
--Dan
Re:You did miss something (Score:5, Interesting)
I sure hope that they did not spend too much on that rolling code system. It sounds like a freaking joke:
OK, so let's assume that the rolling code is a 6-digit number. It only changes when the garage door is opened, and the only change is that the rolling code is incremented by three. I'd bet dollars to dimes that the scrambling algorithm is simply an xor of the identification code and the rolling code. Meaning that only one known value is necessary (your identification code) to derive the other (the current state of the rolling code). Keep in mind that I'm no cryptographer (IANAC), but judging from their description of the cryptosystem, its only a half-step up from rot-13.
That's not encryption...its a slight mathematical obfuscation. Maybe the DMCA would be a bit less unfair if there were a distinction made on this one.
Re:You did miss something (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You did miss something (Score:3, Interesting)
Except that that would complicate the UI of the remote (requiring at least 10 digit keys) and invite data entry errors--heck, some people can't even dial a 7-digit number without misdialling. Garage door openers usually require you to "register" a remote with the opener by pressing a button on the opener while pressing the remote button. This could be modified so that pressing the registration button on the opener makes it transmit a shared key to the remote via low-power INFRARED to lower the possibility of someone snooping the key. They could also use a direct connection instead of IR (maybe some contacts on the opener that the remote is pressed against), but low data rate IR is so damn cheap that cost shouldn't be an issue.
Re:Initial Musings on Commerce and Property (Score:5, Interesting)
Legislators aren't above telling you what you can do with the stuff you think you own. All you have to do is convince them that there are negative effects to the public at large if you're allowed to do what you want with your own property. In theory, I can go along with this. But where do you draw the line? Where do things get silly?
Let me give you three examples:
Example one:
In the west, "land use" and "property rights" fights have been going on for decades. "How dare the damn new world order guvment tell me I can't do what I want with my own land! I own it! That gives me the absolute God-given right to stripmine it to the center of the earth and fill the hole with toxic waste if want to, by gum!" I've known ranchers who hold views this extreme. I've known ranchers who literally plowed up access roads on their property because the state passed a law saying that through-roads (roads connecting one publicly accessible road to another) had to be publicly accessible.
Example two:
In your own house, I'm willing to bet you have more than one cleaner with a label that reads "It is a violation of federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling" or words to that effect. So here's a couple of household cleaning tips: #1 - The best bathtub cleaner in the world is to take liquid drain opener and brush it on all the surfaces then sprinkle it with a scouring powder that will form a sort of paste and hold the liquid in place. Let it sit for an hour (with windows open and good ventilation) then come back and scrub. You'd be amazed at some of the greasy, stained, crudded-up salvaged tubs and sinks I've rescued with this method. Tip #2 - This method is illegal. Consider that and consult your conscience before employing it.
Example three:
The New Jersey state legislature has proposed legislation designed to make repairing firearms so ridiculously burdensome that no one will do it. Check out this link.s [cnsnews.com] What that means is that if the extractor (a $5, easily-replaceable part) on the 1911 Colt left to you by your grandfather breaks, you have to fill out forms and turn the gun over to the state police for examination (with no guarantee written into the law that they'll ever have to give it back to you) and jump through all sorts of other hoops to get the thing fixed in-state. Or just break the law, fix it yourself, and risk a $10,000 fine and 18 months in jail. What's that, you say? It's yours? It's legal to own? You think you should be able to repair stuff you own without going, hat-in-hand to the state police for permission and procedures? Not if enough legislators can be convinced that the public has an legitimate interest in what you do with your own private stuff.
Where I live, it's de facto illegal for me to paint my garage door without approval of a quasi-governmental committee. (It's called a "home owners association" and where I live, the state grants it major power over my life and property. YMMV.)
So your example of, basically, "Why shouldn't I be allowed to do what I want with my own property?" doesn't really hold water. Governments make rules that often forbid it. Men and women with badges and guns enforce those rules. Individuals enter into contracts that encumber them with silly rules because life is darn near impossible to get through otherwise if you live near other human beings.
So where do you draw the line? Do you refuse to have a credit card out of high-minded principle and a practical concern for your own privacy and then make an inconsiderate ass out of yourself, causing problems for those around you [tuxedo.org] just so you can say you adhere to your principles? Do you become a hermit, squatting in a shack in the forest? Or do you do as I have done - figure out where you draw the line (I disagree with the ranchers in example 1 and the legislators in example 3, but will take my chances by continuing to violate the law as in example 2) and accept that life involves compromises and that it's really OK for the government to tell me I can't do certain things even if I wish they'd just leave me alone?
It's a tough lot of thinking you're getting yourself into when you decide to be aware of what's going on around you, when you lose your innocence of the greed that underlies so much of our rules of personal, professional, and business interaction. Sometimes I wish I had never started down that path.
Straw man? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd bet dollars to dimes that the scrambling algorithm is simply an xor of the identification code and the rolling code.... That's not encryption...its a slight mathematical obfuscation.
So you're saying, these guys are so stupid, I bet their encryption sucks. Wow, that encryption really does suck! What idiots!
And if their "scrambling code" is AES, or Skipjack, or Twofish, what then? (OK, so these codes are too new, but even say DES would be much more than enough to secure a garage door opener.)
I'd say XOR is a minor fifth up from rot-13, but that's beside the point. You're right that XOR is woefully easy to crack; in this case there is an easy, short-linear-time attack if you can sniff them once.
Re:Initial Musings on Commerce and Property (Score:3, Interesting)
And sometimes things don't work out worth a damn, anyway. Despite the fairly reasonable deed restrictions in my neighborhood, a guy rented the house next to me that simply didn't care about them. He literally parked his backhoe on his lawn. He literally ran his trailered backhoe into cars parked on the street and then told the owners that that they deserved it for parking on the street. He said he frequently towed big trailers, everyone knew it, everyone knew that he was liable to hit anything on the street, and therefore it wasn't his fault if their cars got dented.
And he had a great habit of coming home drunk at 3AM, firing up his *extremely* loud Harley, and revving the shit out of the engine for about five minutes - just long enough to wake up the entire block but not long enough for the police to get there.
What happened when the HOA started sending him letters? He immediately filed suit against the HOA, the members of the board individually, and the management company alleging all the actions taken against him were a result of racial discrimination because he had a biracial child. Funny thing is - living next to him, I know that he didn't move his child in with him until after he started getting the letters.
The HOA was cowed. When our lawyers found out that he had previously been charged with murder (charges were dropped, btw), all the residents just started hiding in their homes and avoiding the guy.
Two weeks ago, he moved out. According to the homeowner, his lease was up and he just couldn't make the rent anymore. I breathed a sigh of relief that two years of hell and sleeping with ear plugs had ended.
My point? HOAs suck. They have far too much power (depending on jurisdiction) over good residents who try to obey the rules. They have far too little practical ability to deal with serious problems.
My apologies for the OT rant.
Re:The complaints are contradictory (Score:5, Interesting)
DMCA adopted by EU (Score:4, Interesting)
It still needs to be made into law in the individual member nations, so far only Denmark and Greece have implemented it.
not the same (Score:3, Interesting)
1, 2, 3, 4 is not an original work of authorship. If you could use some weird encoding mechanism to turn the windows code into exactly that list '1, 2, 3, 4' that would have no effect on my ability to use the list 1, 2, 3, 4 for my own purposes.
The door opener company was claiming that their software code was copyright which i don't deny, but seemed to be confusing that with a list of numbers contained within or produced by that software - and that piece I don't think can be copyrighted. If I use a luhn checking script to generate all possible Visa card numbers, can I copyright that list and sue Visa for issuing cards with numbers that appear on that list? That seems to be what this company is doing.
Re:Does actually make some sense... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, so the customer needs to (regularly) come by and check on the progress of his new house while you're not there? No problem! Put his shiny new lockset on the back door, or the door into the garage, and require the subs to enter and exit via the front door.
(My experience: I just changed a "low-end" Schlage deadbolt. Before I threw out the old lock I removed all of the pins, since it was keyed to match other locks in the same house. Exactly 10 tiny pieces of metal (and 5 springs) fell out of the cylinder when I unscrewed the back. That means there was one shear line, the one that corresponds to the homeowner's key.)
Re:Does actually make some sense... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure how this works, but it means the builder can issue keys to his subcontractors without creating security issues for the homeowner later.
Plus the same master key can work in all the builder's current projects.
Re:Straw man? (Score:2, Interesting)
Nothing wrong with XOR, it is a primitive op in many symetric systems. The weakness lies in what you XOR against.
Re:Straw man? (Score:2, Interesting)