Cell Phone Owners Allowed To Break Software Locks

An anonymous reader writes "The library of congress approved many copyright exemptions today. Among the exemptions were new rules about cell phones, DVDs, and electronic books." From the article: "Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday. Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations and let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books. All told, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. For the first time, the office exempted groups of users. The new rules will take effect Monday and expire in three years. In granting the exemption for cell phone users, the Copyright Office determined that consumers aren't able to enjoy full legal use of their handsets because of software locks that wireless providers have been placing to control access to phones' underlying programs."

How about not treating me like a criminal in the

first place and reversing the DMCA? Especially with crap that I buy and should be used in a manner I see fit short of mass distributing it to other anonymous people.

These exemptions are nice and all, and I know the Library of Congress does not have the authority to do more (only Congress itself or the SoC can repeal the DMCA) - but I feel I'm got punched in the face and the LoC is passing by and helpfully giving me a tooth back. What about all the other missing teeth?

How kind of them to smile upon us wretches.

but I feel I'm got punched in the face and the LoC is passing by and helpfully giving me a tooth back. What about all the other missing teeth?

That pretty much sums it up. I was thinking of it more like you just got the shit kicked out of you by someone, and the LoC was too weak to do anything to help you, but now that you're lying facedown in a puddle of your own blood he'll helpfully get you an ice pack.

These concessions are great, but they're like the Warden giving you an extra ration of food, when you're not supposed to be in jail in the first place. We shouldn't have to have these concessions granted -- all the things mentioned in the summary are common sense, and ought not be protected by copyright in the first place.

Plus, these concessions are just three years. Since they're not permanent, if they're not renewed constantly, they disappear. That makes them hard to count on in the future. When the media lobby got its copyright extension last time, I can't help but notice that there wasn't an expiration or "lets revisit this in 5 years" date; it was permanent.

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

I don't understand this story. Can someone give a car analogy please?

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``How about not treating me like a criminal in the first place and reversing the DMCA?''

Exactly. Nothing against rights holders protecting their rights, but if the DRM scheme prevents me from exercising my fair use rights, and I circumvent the scheme in or

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

If the only limit is that you can not mass distribute it, then you limit the ability of companies to offer products with more flexible and personalized limits.

Your business model is not a government entitlement program. The rest of us are not bound to rewrite our laws to support it.

Why exactly can't, for example, you and I come to some agreement that, for example, you write some song and I am allowed to listen to it exactly once since this we came to a mutually agreed upon price for which I agreed to listen to it only once?

You should certainly be able to do that under private contract law, but because your business model represents the grossest-imaginable violation of the Constitution's language authorizing copyrights, you should not be able to leverage Federal copyright law to enforce your terms.

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

Your business model is not a government entitlement program. The rest of us are not bound to rewrite our laws to support it.

Wow. What a load of crap. Here is the full extent of what the Constitution, which you cite, says about copyright:

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

Within this broad framework, it is the mandate of legislators to enact legislation and the judiciary to make ruilings that seek to best "promote the progress of science and useful arts" by balancing the needs for rightsholders to be motivated and the public's right to information. Some things, like national defense, are impractical or impossible to contract on a 1-v-1 basis. Likewise, it is impractical if not impossible to have a complete contract written every time any transfer or license of IP occurs. Therefore, much of what we think about IP is determined by judicious consideration of the balance. Now, you personally may not like where the balance was struck most recently. However, your statement of "grossest imaginable violation of the constitution's language" is hyperbole in the extreme, and, more to the point, absolute bollocks. Oh, I'm sorry, was I not actually supposed to cite the constitution and what it actually says? Was I supposed to take your bald assertion on faith?

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

Oh, I'm sorry, was I not actually supposed to cite the constitution and what it actually says? Was I supposed to take your bald assertion on faith?

No, you were supposed to actually read what you were cutting and pasting. Specifically, the part about a "limited time."

Does your DRM scheme contain an automatic sunset provision to ensure that you actually live up to your end of the copyright bargain... the part that says your work must revert to the public domain upon expiration? If it doesn't (and let me take a wild guess here: it doesn't), then you are not operating within the bounds of copyright law as envisioned by the framers.

That's not to say that the deal you're offering is necessarily a bad one for consumers, but in any reasonable world, the minute you take steps to ensure that your content can never enter the public domain, you should no longer be entitled to legal monopoly protection. You're just another looter looking for a free ride at public expense.

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Don't be ridiculous. DRM and the expiration of copyright are irrelevant to each other. This is the worst (and most popular) form of FUD with regard to DRM. When copyrights expire, there are any number of avenues for you to leave behind your DRMed file.

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

DRM and the expiration of copyright are irrelevant to each other. When copyrights expire, there are any number of avenues for you to leave behind your DRMed file.

Really? How so? Are you aware that rightsholders are no longer required to deposit a copy of their work with the Library of Congress? That requirement was established precisely to ensure the eventual availability of protected works to the public domain, and it didn't actually go away until 1976, I believe. Without the requirement to deposit a copy in an accessible form, all of your suggested "avenues to leave the file behind" are entirely voluntary.

But I'm sure that almost everyone who takes advantage of the DMCA's anti-circumvention protection has deposited unprotected copies for release to the public domain at the appropriate time... right?

Most importantly, in 50 or 60 years when the copyrights actually expire, will you still even want your 128kbps mp3? Of course not. The public domain file will be provided in a superior format from a master recording.

Um. OK, I guess, if you say so.

Moreover, there's no fundamental reason why future DRM can't include a system which automatically disables DRM upon copyright expiration.

Then there's no fundamental reason why future laws can't be passed to take that into consideration.

Just though everyone should know...

...that the DMCA anti-circumvention laws only apply to copyrighted content, not public domain works. Still, it is illegal to distribute circumvention technology. Will we have to wait for the DVD to go the way of the projector before we can distribute libcss?

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

Don't worry about drowning at the bottom of the 400 foot cliff; it's the fall that's gonna kill you.

Technically it's not the fall itself that kills you, but the rapid deceleration experienced at the end of it... Of course, once the fall commences you're inevitably screwed unless you had the foresight to save your own ass by packing a parachute.

Wow, finally a Slashdot analogy that fits the situation! I never thought I'd see the day...

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Most importantly, in 50 or 60 years when the copyrights actually expire, will you still even want your 128kbps mp3? Of course not. The public domain file will be provided in a superior format from a master recording.

And where, pray tell, would this recording come from? All would be fine and dandy if the original master recording is still around. But for all we know, the company having done such recording may long have gone bust, or they might still be around, but unwi

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

And where, pray tell, would this recording come from? All would be fine and dandy if the original master recording is still around. But for all we know, the company having done such recording may long have gone bust, or they might still be around, but unwilling to provide it for whatever reason.

Heh... stick around, and someone will eventually trot out the tried-and-true, "B-b-but there's no such thing as unbreakable protection. A friendly hacker will eventually come along and deprotect the work!" argument, using lofty-sounding language worthy of Madison himself.

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

But of course, any system which checks the validity of DRM licenses would be attacked as an invasion of "privacy."

If you have to validate the licence by contacting a remote server, not only is it an invasion of privacy, but if the remote server is inaccessible you lose the ability to use the content that you have licenced. So if the licensor goes out of business, you have ultimately lost access to everything you have paid for. I've brought up this comment with regards to DRM schemes like iTMS before, and invariably I get a comment like "There's no way a big company like Apple would go under" - what a naive claim. Big companies go under all the time, you only have to look at Enron for a recent example.

For me, this is the big deal - if my entire music library that I have *paid* for suddenly stops working, I'm going to be pretty pissed off.

Also, the ability to use DRM'd content *now* is a big deal. If I have paid for some content, why must I also be required to pay a licence fee to the owner of the DRM technology? This is usually going to either tie me to specific hardware (e.g. I'd have to buy a commercial BluRay player and HDCP capable TV), cost me an infeasable amount of money (wanna try asking Microsoft for a licence to decode WMP's DRM in your personal project?) or tie me to a specific operating system (why should I be required to buy Windows - an operating system that is completely useless to me - and a new computer to run it on, just so I can play some Microsoft DRM protected content? Seems rather anticompetetive to me - what we effectively have is a cartel of corporations who are doing their level best to lock anyone else out of the market.

Here is a real world example: I use MythTV as my PVR with a DVB-S card. I cannot use this system to pick up much of the satellite programming here in the UK because it is broadcast using NDS-Videoguard encryption. The *only* way you can use such broadcasts with a PVR (without going through the analogue hole) is to buy Sky's own Sky+ PVR system. Sounds anticompetetive doesn't it? Sky have a monopoly on satellite enabled PVRs in the UK because noone else can legally produce a PVR system that can receive many of the satellite channels. This doesn't just apply to Sky's own channels either - many channels that are touted as "free" are still encrypted using this system and you still have to buy Sky licenced equipment to receive these channels. (And before anyone suggests that Sky own the satellite, they don't - SES own the Astra 2 constellation.)

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

In practice, works that lose their protection are in the public domain, but you'd be a fool to think that this was a primary consideration of the framers.

      Let me point you back to the first clause in your sentence, specifically: "In practice, works that lose their protection are in the public domain". Then you go on to create a hypothetical argument to justify yourself, because apparently YOU know what the framers intended, and WE don't. Again - In practice, works that lose their protection are in the public domain. This wasn't any different back then. They knew that, otherwise an amendment would have been tacked on really quickly - when the first copyrights began to expire.

      We're talking about DVD's and music and other DRM'd stuff here anyway. I doubt very much that everyone wearing a Jar-Jar T-shirt with an image illegally ripped from a Star Wars DVD is going to stop Hollywood from "innovating" and making movies, so the progress argument is mostly moot in this case. Still-

      You think that copyright promotes progress - this is not true. Oh, it promotes progress for the author in terms of advancing the bank account. This does not guarantee, however, that this author is the best person to take a "next step" with that invention and create something else, however. The more information is shared (a great example being education, where knowledge is shared) the more likely you are to stimulate more individuals who have the potential to have their own stroke of genius.

      Copyright law as it currently stands exists to protect revenue streams. Not "progress in science and the arts". It's logical that a copyright owner wants to maximize this revenue. But that doesn't mean it's a good thing for society. A lot of us would love to know how certain things are done - at a software level for example - out of curiosity. But if we know how to do 'X' efficiently, some of us might be able to come up with Y, Z, or even a whole different alphabet. We're called criminals now, however. How dare we 'reverse engineer' stuff...

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

Why exactly can't, for example, you and I come to some agreement that, for example, you write some song and I am allowed to listen to it exactly once since this we came to a mutually agreed upon price for which I agreed to listen to it only once?

That's the way we'd do it if you were a wandering minstrel and I was a local lord of the manor, five hundred years ago. So am I supposed to phone Paul McCartney if I want to play Mull of Kintyre?

A few giant media companies control copyright on most of what we listen to or watch. They don't "come to agreements" with us. They use lobbyists to get laws made to legalsie the conditions they want. There is no negotiation, unless you count "take it or leave it".

Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th

Exactly. The cell carriers double-dip into the "subsidized phone" excuse. First, you have to sign a contract to make sure you're with them long enough for them to make a return on the phone subsidy. Then, after the contract is up, you can't take the phone with you to a new carrier, because they subsidized it.

As if anyone cares?

With copyright laws being so complicated and contradicting, people care less and less about them. Since it's virtually impossible not to break them, a general "I'm prolly guilty already anyway, who cares?" attitude is spreading.

The more laws you have, the more crime you create.

Re:As if anyone cares?

Interesting viewpoint - and one I highly agree with.

I wouldn't care so much about DRM - because I don't re-share files. If I purchase music, I'd like the opportunity to do with it as I see fit - and might even put the digital music on a family member's computer/music player.

Take Peanut Press for example. They encrypt(ed?) their books with your full name and credit card #. I didn't mind putting that on a few trusted friend's PDA's - but I'm not going to re-distribute it across hell and back.

I wouldn't even mind some kind of secure but un-protected form of music / content.

The digital content I purchased is watermarked in some un-removable way. If I share that music, then I'm liable in some form. Or I lose my ability to purchase more. That would work even better than losing my rights to what I already have. I'd be careful about my files if that were the case..

Re:As if anyone cares?

Can you imagine some guy taking your credit card info, purchasing lots of DRMed file protected by your name/CC# as you describe and then torrenting the hell out of them?

Now the company sues you.

I sure can imagine it. CC info theft is nearly trivial and not uncommon.

There are also holes in your other thoughts - files on a Windows computer can be distributed without owner's knowledge. I can imagine bots that spefically look for those files after they infect their host. And then send them into the ether.

About you not minding DRM - that's noble of you. But I want to wait on you decision after you change a couple of music players, the formats of your videos change, and E-books become the norm but not a standard. When your friends can't swap movies, music, etcetera with you because you all have different players that are completly incompitable with each other not because of a hardware problem (being digital) but as a programmed in limitation.

Great ideas you have. Very noble, sacrificing your rights to the poor corporations in all our names so you can have some shortterm convenience. Thanks for playing the idiot game. Please come again.

Think of the implications

What happens when your laptop gets stolen? What happens when someone implants a trojan on your computer that allows him free access to your data?

There are so many opportunities for (and cases of) data theft that being liable for the leaking could well be a

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I imagine if there were no consequences for killing someone else, there would be a dramatic increase in murder rates.

So we are bound by your imagination? In actual fact - perhaps you should look at some poorer countries that have less

This sets a bad precedent

Namely, the precedent of whitelisting the allowed activity in terms of excercising the fair-use rights.

Technicalities

In a purely technical point of view, what's the difference between being allowed to break the lock on your cell phone to enjoy its use to the fullest extent, and say, breaking the lock on your music to use it to its fullest extent? After all, you still paid for both.

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In a purely technical point of view, what's the difference between being allowed to break the lock on your cell phone to enjoy its use to the fullest extent, and say, breaking the lock on your music to use it to its fullest extent? After all, you still pai

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I might buy a phone for $1 and pay it off over 24 months. If I break the lock I am not paying for the phone.

Presumably you signed a contract to pay or subscribe to some service. The contract is still enforcible legally, they just can't hold your phone ho

Re:Technicalities

I might buy a phone for $1 and pay it off over 24 months.

wow, times must be really tight if you're making monthly payments on a $1 bill. poor guy.

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Yes, this is the usual practice in the UK. In Belgium the practice (and law) is that all phones sell at full price and are unlocked.

And in Luxembourg you have the choice. Either pay full price, and have free choice of provider, or subscribe with shop's affiliated provider, and pay less (... and have to stay for a set amount of time with a plan with non-zero monthly due).

If you actuall

Cellphone locks

Are not easily breakable except on earlier phones I'm afraid. SIM lock is not like DRM. It is possible to do it properly. For these kind of rulings to be meaningful they need to be backed up by regulation mandating that carriers give the key to unlock it (or not do it in the first place).

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Of course there is a difference between what would be theoretically possible, and what measures manufacturers are willing to take.
It would also be possible to make the IMEI (the hardware ID) of the phone really immutable, but in practice it seems to be eas

Oh, you're being granted "use" back again.

From TFA:

  "Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations"

In my day, we called this "fair use", and were allowed to do this as an exemption from general copyright rules.

From TFA:
"let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books."

In my day, we called this "use". It's why we buy the item in the first place - in order to use it. Not in order to sign a scarecrow EULA once the box is open.

Well done America - granting temporary rights to people that they should already have.

Re:Oh, you're being granted "use" back again.

To call this "granting" rights would be a misrepresentation. This is nothing more or less than an attempt to restore certain rights which were made (erroneously) illegal because of the DMCA and related legislation. It's a temporary policy not necessarily out of malice, but simply for convenience in writing legislation. Adding more laws to the books on a permanent basis without observing their consequences might just create an even bigger headache.

Low opinion of government notwithstanding, the fact that this is coming under mandatory review in 3 years is a good thing. Once again, Slashdot attacks people in government for doing the right thing (in this case, taking steps to correct a previous wrong). Do you honestly think that Congress got together and said, "let's take away our own rights and the rights of our constituents, too!" or is it possible that the DMCA simply fell victim to expert lobbying and a level of severity that simply wasn't anticipated?

Requirements for usage restricted equipment

Regarding locked-down handsets, there are two requirements that I think should be imposed. When companies sell equipment that has (technical) usage restrictions from its normal, unlimited usage

1. such usage restrictions must be time limited (i.e. no phones that never can be used with another operator)
2. the customer should always have the choice to buy either a restricted or unrestricted version (i.e. a shop cannot only offer to sell you a given phone as part of a subsidized deal, if you want to buy that phone with no restrictions at full price you should be able to do so (at whatever price the shop would classify as full price. I do not want to impose any rules for this, only the principle that the customer always can choose))

hard questions

He's just opened up some pretty tough definition questions. Who counts as a "security researcher"? Who counts as a "film professor"?

Sign up now to be a faculty member in the film department of my brand new internet university!

DeCss now legal?

will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations

Which you can only do by bypassing the copy protection. Does this make DeCSS [wikipedia.org] legal, and the "no breaking encryption" clause of the DMCA void?

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Sigh. Read the SUMMARY. These laws allows certain people to break a law that you otherwise can't/shouldn't break. Basically it's saying : we allow this for the greater good. See it as the license to kill for James Bond. He can kill, but you can't.

In other

Don't understand

Hi all,

    I don't really follow the bit about being allowed to copy snippets from a DVD. How exactly are you allowed to do that legally? Does that mean it's okay to use DeCSS for such a purpose? Can decss now be legally shipped with distros "for the express purpose of only copying snippets" ?

    If cracking a DVD is still illegal, then does is this kinda like the right for a man to bear children. We can't actually do it, but we now have the right :) ?

In Soviet Russia...

...or actually the rest of the world, it's generally neither illegal or impractical to unlock a mobile for use on any network. AFAIK, the only UK networks who still SIM lock their phones are Orange and T-Mobile (and maybe 3, I forget), and you can get most phones unlocked for about a tenner.

I did so recently with an old SonyEricsson from T-Mobile when I discovered that my Orange Windows Mobile powered PDA was useless as a phone.

The mobile market in the US seems a bit peculiar generally.

No payola?

I guess the cell phone companies didn't get their checks in to their congresscritters' campaigns in time.

I Knew I Slept Long...

Okay, I knew I had slept long...but I didn't think it would be April Fools Day, yet. They're actually _decriminalizing_ limited circumvention of draconian DRM? What a joke!

Cellphone locking

There are 2 kinds of cellphone locking, there is the locks that prevent you using any other network and there are the locks that disable features such as the abillity to load MP3 files directly from a PC for use as ringtones or the abillity to read camera pictures back from the phone without going through per-pay services (Verizon mobile is notorious for this kind of locking crap). It would appear as though this copyright office ruling only covers the first kind (network locks) and not the second kind (feature locks).

This is more meaningful than most seem to realize

Yes, all of these explicitly-authorized activities arguably fall in the domain of fair use, and should have been allowed to begin with, and most of the exceptions seem like they don't directly affect most people, but they create a huge crack in the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions.

See, the big problem for consumers isn't so much that the DMCA outlaws circumvention, but that it outlaws circumvention *tools*. If you read the text of the law, it actually doesn't prevent you from circumventing copy protection (because it specifically allows Fair Use). What it does is prevent you from creating or distributing anti-circumvention tools.

But with these explicit exceptions in place, the tools needed to achieve the allowed circumvention become legal. It's possible, for example, that allowing DVDs to be ripped for educational purposes makes libdvdcss legal, because it now has a legal use. And if you can legally acquire a copy of the tool needed to break DVD encryption, you can then legally exercise your full Fair Use rights.

Re:Read or Die?

In the UK unlocking has not damaged the industry at all. Here you sign a contract; you can't break the contract, so therefore even if you unlock your phone, you still have to pay the remainder of your contract.

That sorts it all out in one.

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You pay once to have a phone number assigned to you and get a SIM-locked handset (for cheap due to big subsidy from the telco) but if you actually want to talk on it, you have to buy creditcard sized vouchers with a taped over code. Remove the tape, type

Re:Read or Die?

I think the mobile phone industry can take off just fine without locked down handsets.

I live in Europe and I have never seen or heard of anyone who has their phones functionality locked down. Most people don't buy phones here, they get them for "free" when they sign up to a years contract. At the end of the year you get an upgrade to a new handset and can keep the old one and do what you like with it including using it on other networks.

Re:Read or Die?

You must be new.
It was quite usual to have a "SIM lock" on phones provided for free, especially with pre-paid contracts (where you pay a certain amount for a number of call minutes, can call for that amount of time, and then have to pay again to continue using the phone).
As there is no fixed-term contract with monthly payment in this construction, the only way to cover the cost of the phone is/was for the provider to hope that you buy enough call minutes.
To prevent you from changing the SIM to one of another provider (with cheaper call minutes, for example), they "had" to lock the phone to the SIM.
However, after a certain amount of time you could request a code to release this lock. Or you could use a hack and have it released immediately.

Re:Read or Die?

You guys are totally off the track, they're not talking about SIM locks. They're talking about software locks, which is the ability to install software on your phone that for example allows you to play mp3's or view divx videos which are not DRM protected. Not whether you can get a cheap phone on a contract then break the contract and go to another carrier with cheaper call rates, that has nothing to do with this at all.

I have some experience developing applications for Microsoft Windows mobile smartphones. They have always allowed vendors to choose what level the OS is locked down. By default the Windows Mobile OS is not locked down, which is something I must commend Microsoft for, however vendors of mobile phones can choose to change this such that the Windows Mobile OS is either totally locked down i.e. doesn't allow any 3rd party applications to be installed or run, or locked in such a way that the user is prompted to verify software should be run that has not authorised by the mobile phone vendor.

This is a discussion about whether or not small DEVELOPERS can get into developing applications for the mobile market or whether it is going to be left to the big players to decide what software we're allowed to have on our handsets.

As mobile phones become increasingly more like mobile pcs, this is a big issue. If the day comes when this is the platform on the market, and XP, Linux and all other desktop flavours of operating systems are history, which is actually quite a likely scenario, then how locked down a system is to 3rd party developers becomes a major issue for personal liberty and freedom of choice. If we cannot choose what software we can develop and run on our computers we have lost our ability to communicate freely.

Basically I simply don't think any locked down system is going to prevail simply because the market will ultimately reject it in favour of who ever supplies a system that is not locked down. In terms of features no locked down system is going to compete with another that allows any developer in the world to create new applications for it.

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Otherwise, I thought USA is governed by President, Representatives and Senate. The only Library that had government power was in the japanese anime "Read or Die" and that was the British Library. Who is a library to decide what can be hacked? That is a matter of legislation, reserved for the authority of elected officials only.

The Library of Congress houses the U.S. Copyright Office. Thus, the current Librarian of Congress had the Copyright office pass the following regulation: Exemption to Prohibition against Circumvention [loc.gov]. They did so with the authority given to them in Tit [copyright.gov]

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Since when the fuck does anyone give two-shits what the library of congress says?

1998.

Where'd they get this authority????

From the DMCA, which gets its authority from the US government, which in turn gets its authority from the voters of the US.

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From the DMCA, which gets its authority from the US government, which in turn gets its authority from the voters^H^H^H^H^H^H corporations of the US.

      There, all fixed...