Economist: US Congress Should Hack Digital Millennium Copyright Act 129
retroworks writes This week's print edition of The Economist has an essay on the Right to Tinker with hardware. From the story: "Exactly why copyright law should be involved in something that ought to be a simple matter of consumer rights is hard to fathom. Any rational interpretation would suggest that when people buy or pay off the loan on a piece of equipment—whether a car, a refrigerator or a mobile phone—they own it, and should be free to do what they want with it. Least of all should they have to seek permission from the manufacturer or the government."
Gov't does NOT help the "little guy" (Score:1, Insightful)
Government regulations sure didn't help Eric Garner
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No, what didn't help Eric Garner was being choked by a police officer who told not to choke people.
Would you say the same thing if he was detained as a possible suspect in a burglarly, hit or run, or other crime?
The relevent facts, the only relevent facts are:
-NYPD is not allowed to use chokehold compliance techniques due to numerous accidental deaths being caused by it in the past
-The NYPD used a chokehold compliance technique on Eric Garner
-Eric Garner then died as a result of said chokehold compliance te
great US tradition... (Score:2, Funny)
...and when it blows up in their face, they should be allowed to sue to manufacturer too.
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you can sue anyone for anything in the country.
you could probably sue a ham sandwich if you wanted.
its been that from the start and not a recent trend.
all that matters is that you can prove your case in a court of law.
this is a good thing, as any arbitrary limits placed on a citizens right or ability to bring suit will invariably result in abuses by the potential plaintiffs who are now protected from suit. yes people bring stupid lawsuits. most of those lawsuits dont go anywhere when presented toa judge or
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And because I know someone is giong to mention the McDonalds coffee lawsuit lady....
most people who refer to that case dont know the facts of that case:
An elderly woman (79yo) suffered 3rd degree burns across large portions of her lower body because the combination of the extremely hot coffee and the type of clothes she was wearing held the hot liquid in close contact with his skin which made the burns worse than would otherwise have been expected.
She required extensive skin grafting as a result of said bur
Suits without merit (Score:4, Informative)
there's fuck all that stops anyone, individual or manufacturer from suing for any, or no, reason.
There exist rules against suits without merit [wikipedia.org], which can cause the plaintiff to have to pay the defendant's reasonable attorney's fees, sometimes with punitive damages tacked on for wasting the defendant's time. If plaintiff's counsel repeatedly fails to diligently investigate the merit of each case, counsel might end up fined or even disbarred.
Re:Suits without merit (Score:4, Insightful)
there's fuck all that stops anyone, individual or manufacturer from suing for any, or no, reason.
There exist rules against suits without merit [wikipedia.org], which can cause the plaintiff to have to pay the defendant's reasonable attorney's fees, sometimes with punitive damages tacked on for wasting the defendant's time. If plaintiff's counsel repeatedly fails to diligently investigate the merit of each case, counsel might end up fined or even disbarred.
Yes, but that does not prevent assholes from bringing worthless lawsuits. It might discourage even marginally circumspect lawyers from doing so, but the burden to challenge the merit of an action, once initiated, rests with the respondent.
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Hack it? (Score:5, Interesting)
They should repeal it completely. But that will not happen as every one of those congress-critters are bought and paid for.
Congress wants a more strict DMCA. Hell I bet some of those on capitol hill would support a death penalty for copyright violations.
Re:Hack it? (Score:5, Informative)
Remember when Senator Orrin Hatch said copyright holders should get to destroy infringers' PCs? [theregister.co.uk]
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Please tell me someone in his office was then caught downloading something illegally.
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Please tell me someone in his office was then caught downloading something illegally.
Almost as good. His website from around that time was created using an unlicensed version of whatever app (I forget the name now). You had to purchase a license to use the app. If it wasn't licensed, it inserted a watermark stating that an unlicensed copy had been used to create the page.
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IIRC, he also said that if by mistake they destroy a PC that didn't have any infringing software, they should suffer no penalty. Well, that's the way I recall it, but those weren't his words.
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of course, then you woudln't have copyrights infringers anymore
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I believe you're thinking of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, not the DMCA
Don't repeal the entire DMCA (Score:5, Interesting)
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They should repeal it completely. But that will not happen as every one of those congress-critters are bought and paid for.
Congress wants a more strict DMCA. Hell I bet some of those on capitol hill would support a death penalty for copyright violations.
I don't think all of it should be abolished it completely, for example as a freenet node opporator appreciate the safe harbor clause.
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This is a case where someone like the EFF needs to get behind any individual who is hacking in a way clearly is NOT in violation of the intent of copyright/patent protection, let someone sue the doer and get the whole thing undone. I'd gladly throw money at them for a "DMCA kill opportunity fund". Congress will never get behind removing the DMCA, both parties have been bought and paid for.
What will likely happen is any such case will be dropped, hacking will continue to be legal as long as you watch your as
DMCA was always flawed ... (Score:5, Informative)
The DMCA was so badly written as to more or less entrench rent-seeking and remove property ownership from consumers.
Instead of saying "yes, you bought this product, it's yours", they've entrenched the "oh, you've only licensed it and we will tell you how you're allowed to use it".
Sorry, but if I bought it, I retain right of first sale. Which means I should be able to do anything I want with it, because it's my property.
This absurd notion that they still own it and define what I can do with it is stupid. If I don't own it, why should I pay you for it?
But, of course, the law was written to hastily ensure corporate rent seeking, because it was paid for by lobbyists.
Re:DMCA was always flawed ... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is true with one exception - the DMCA was not badly written, it was exceptionally well written. This was the INTENDED effect.
They would have you believe that the DMCA is to stop people from downloading copyrighted songs/videos/etc, but the true purpose was to provide them a legal means of market control. If no one can make (DVD/Blue ray players/that one tool required to fix your car) EXCEPT them, then they have a strangle hold on the market and can do as they please.
The greatest scam politicians pull (And do so often) is convincing the public that a law is for something completely different then it actually is.
Re:DMCA was always flawed ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If no one can make (DVD/Blue ray players/that one tool required to fix your car) EXCEPT them, then they have a strangle hold on the market and can do as they please.
Exactly. It is in no way in my interests as a consumer to have, say, a region-locked DVD player, or a Blu-ray player that won't let me skip to the contents I want to watch instead of sitting through legal notices that don't even apply in my jurisdiction, or a PVR where I can't transfer my HD recordings to a different PVR if the first player is defective and needs to be returned. There is literally no-one who gains from these restrictions, not even the content creators or the manufacturers.
However, the current state of intellectual property laws prevents anyone from (lawfully) competing in that market with a better offering, because patents and anti-circumvention rules make for very good ways to be anti-competitive without actually breaking any laws. And that is in the interests of the organisations that control those rights.
Selection of notable titles (Score:2)
It is in no way in my interests as a consumer to have, say, a region-locked DVD player, or a Blu-ray player that won't let me skip to the contents I want to watch instead of sitting through legal notices that don't even apply in my jurisdiction
In theory, it benefits you as a consumer in that you'll have more than zero desirable movies for your DVD player. Studios were threatening not to release any movies in the format unless the format includes region locks and UOPs. What good is a DVD player without movies to play on it?
Re:Selection of notable titles (Score:5, Insightful)
And the correct market response to that would have been to call their bluff, and then enjoy the movies from those that survived. The idea that all the studios would have stopped releasing their content anywhere but in theatres is utterly implausible and was never a serious threat.
Would have stuck with VHS (Score:2)
And the correct market response to that would have been to call their bluff, and then enjoy the movies from those that survived. The idea that all the studios would have stopped releasing their content anywhere but in theatres is utterly implausible and was never a serious threat.
The idea is that studios would have ignored DVD and stuck to VHS and its generation loss, Rovi Macrovision analog copy protection, and NTSC/PAL/SECAM/MESECAM region lock until they could launch their own competing format with better DRM. Witness Video CD and SVCD never taking off in North America, and witness the industrywide switch from HD DVD to Blu-ray Disc when the latter offered region locking and stronger DRM (BD+, ROM Mark, and lack of rich menus on non-AACS discs).
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>industrywide switch from HD DVD to Blu-ray Disc
Do people still use blu-ray media? I thought it got lost in the negative gap between DVD and getting stuff over the internet.
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I thought [Blu-ray] got lost in the negative gap between DVD and getting stuff over the internet.
On the contrary. I still use Blu-ray because after I've bought a disc it is mine, permanently and unambiguously, and with the full force of my country's consumer protection laws behind me if anyone tries to interfere with my use of it.
I am not vulnerable to an on-line service yanking a series I'm watching from their library when I'm only mid-season. I am not vulnerable to disruption at my ISP interfering with my enjoyment of the film just at the crucial moment. I am not vulnerable to arbitrary price hikes i
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I prefer hard media in my hands, for all the reasons you state. Add to that list much higher quality video and audio, and you'll be golden.
PS - you use a player to watch your media? How 2002... ;)
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Player's (slightly) less buggy and crash-prone than AMD drivers. ;-)
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I thought [Blu-ray] got lost in the negative gap between DVD and getting stuff over the internet.
On the contrary. I still use Blu-ray because after I've bought a disc it is mine, permanently and unambiguously, and with the full force of my country's consumer protection laws behind me if anyone tries to interfere with my use of it.
That's why I buy DVD. I don't buy BD-DVDs (aka Blu-Ray DVDs). The movie industry is still having a very hard time with people buying BD-DVDs.
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Some of us are still stuck on dial-up as we live in big sparsely populated countries with shitty broadband providers.
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Right, but if consumers may lawfully crack DRM in order to perform actions that are otherwise legal (under fair use or the equivalent, say) then in practice this is unlikely to be a problem. If it ever is, you just regulate or outright legislate such that anyone selling works in electronic formats for profit with DRM applied must lodge an unrestricted copy in escrow with some official body to ensure that the work can be used as the law otherwise permits once it has been lawfully acquired.
Ultimately, any cre
MPAA owns TV news (Score:2)
The general public as audience, via their respective governments, can impose whatever terms they want to ensure fairness
Not if the creative industries have captured the governments [wikipedia.org] through their co-owned news media [pineight.com].
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There is still no legal Linux DVD player in the USA that I've found. The only "legal" ones are in Windows emulation tools.
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and witness the industrywide switch from HD DVD to Blu-ray Disc when the latter offered region locking and stronger DRM (BD+, ROM Mark, and lack of rich menus on non-AACS discs).
Um, none of that had anything to do with it. It was Sony mortgaging itself to the hilt and selling 49% of Sony Pictures to pay Fox to stay BD exclusive and Paramount to be BD exclusive as well as the end cap exclusivity agreements with Target and BlockBuster and others that caused the tipping point. Until Christmas 2007, HD-DVD was still ahead technically: HD-DVD players existed and executed stated features while BD was "wait until the next release" and pulled a Microsoft, always late and under delivering.
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And the correct market response to that would have been to call their bluff, and then enjoy the movies from those that survived. The idea that all the studios would have stopped releasing their content anywhere but in theatres is utterly implausible and was never a serious threat.
The idea is that studios would have ignored DVD and stuck to VHS and its generation loss, Rovi Macrovision analog copy protection, and NTSC/PAL/SECAM/MESECAM region lock until they could launch their own competing format with better DRM. Witness Video CD and SVCD never taking off in North America, and witness the industrywide switch from HD DVD to Blu-ray Disc when the latter offered region locking and stronger DRM (BD+, ROM Mark, and lack of rich menus on non-AACS discs).
Yes, HD-DVD did not have region lock where BD-DVD did not. However, that had nothing to do with why BD-DVD won out. IIRC, BD-DVD had a higher amount of data, and simply had a wider deployment since Sony put a BD-DVD player in every Playstation 3, so game makers and more were already pushing BD-DVD for that reason alone. There was no similar push for HD-DVD except the ill-fated Add-on for the XBox that Microsoft did. If Microsoft had made it built-in component, then there probably would have been a bigger ba
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This! I find it impossible to believe that the same industry that released movies on VHS (knowing it could be copied) to collect on that long tail would have refused to ever release on DVD. If they had, surely whoever bought their catalog in the fire sale would gave released them.
Note how when CSS was cracked once and for all, they didn't stop releasing on DVD even after Bluray came out.
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the same industry that released movies on VHS (knowing it could be copied)
VHS tapes could be copied at a substantial degradation of picture quality. This degradation became even more significant once Rovi figured out how to fool VCRs' gain control and color compression circuitry and licensed this "Macrovision" technology to home video distributors.
they didn't stop releasing on DVD even after Bluray came out.
The film Ishtar skipped DVD and went straight to Blu-ray.
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Actually, with decent VCRs, a 1st generation copy was hard to tell from the original (though a second generation copy was noticeable). Macrovision didn't actually work on a lot of VCRs (I owned several over the years and none of them were bothered by Macrovision). For those that were, you could easily get a 'video stabilizer' to get 'the best viewing quality'.
BTW, Ishtar was released on DVD everywhere but North America. But if you don't mind defeating the region codes, I see that the Italian version has an
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Well, *I* have a DVD player, and I feel a strong need for it, but I have *never* used it to play a movie, and don't intend to. It's my preferred means of backup (though I do wish DVDs were more durable...I don't really trust them for over a year).
OTOH, I'm beginning to replace DVDs with usb drives. They're much more expensive, but also much more reusable. And they hold more.
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To be fair, you couldn't do "anything you want" with a dead tree book either, at least not if it involved putting it a photocopier and share with a million friends. The problem with the DMCA is that it's a general umbrella against copying and everything else they don't like you to do with it. And through the decryption key license agreement they got all the companies making players by the balls.
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To be fair, you couldn't do "anything you want" with a dead tree book either, at least not if it involved putting it a photocopier and share with a million friends.
That not fair because that's not remotely what we're talking about. That's not doing anything you want with it, that's making more of it. The thing itself is not changed. That's why we have a whole separate body of law for IP, because it's fundamentally different from physical items. If you buy a book, you're free to rip out chapters and then sell it as the expurgated version, or make notes in the margins and sell it as the annotated version, so long as you don't misrepresent it — but that's not even
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The DMCA was so badly written as to more or less entrench rent-seeking and remove property ownership from consumers.
Instead of saying "yes, you bought this product, it's yours", they've entrenched the "oh, you've only licensed it and we will tell you how you're allowed to use it".
Sorry, but if I bought it, I retain right of first sale. Which means I should be able to do anything I want with it, because it's my property.
This becomes much more interesting in 2014 than it was when the DMCA was first passed. Back in those days, "mobile software" was typically shipped on a CD, and installed on a mobile device by way of a docking station. This is far less common now than it was at that time. Moreover, the "this product is yours" logic becomes murky with tablets and other similar tech. I ran into this recently myself. A friend of mine gave me a tablet. He got it in a BOGO sale last year at Verizon Wireless; said BOGO sale only r
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On the other hand, if one were to modify a phone's baseband in such a way that has it working on the wrong frequencies, or configured in order to make a mess of the cell tower, does the "it's my phone" argument still hold?
Yes, in a rational world it is very definitely still your phone. But if you jam the tower or transmit outside the frequencies you are permitted, you may be criminally and civilly liable.
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The problem was always that they wanted it both ways.
If I've bought it, I own it, and I can do with it whatever I want.
If I've licensed it, I expect to see the terms and conditions of that license somewhere, anywhere, but in any case I won't have to pay for the same thing again if it gets damaged. No more payment for getting my fifth copy of that album because I've lost and broken it so often, I'm now entitled to download or stream it as often as I want, because hey - I've already licensed it.
You can even t
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That gives me a fair chance to decide not to purchase said item from you.
Unless, for example, it is proprietary software that your government requires you to use for filing tax returns or otherwise keeping your business license valid.
Re:DMCA was always flawed ... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is also why acoustic couplers were invented. Since anything plugged directly into the phone line was "against the law", hackers worked around it. You plugged your phone into the line, and the acoustic coupler into your computer/device, and you placed the telephone handset on the acoustic coupler. You were not actually plugging your device into the phone line, thereby bypassing the "law".
Hush-A-Phone (Score:2)
Not DMCA as much as CDMA (Score:2)
When you "buy" a phone from Verizon, you're not actually "buying" a phone. You're leasing a phone. It is not and will not ever be your phone, it belongs to Verizon, you're just using it.
I was under the impression that this problem was limited to carriers using the CDMA2000 stack, which allows the carrier to program the subscriber identity directly into the handset. In the United States market, that means Verizon, Sprint, and Sprint's MVNOs. The GSM stack, on the other hand, was designed from the ground up for unlocked phones and SIM-only plans to be sold separately, wh
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They may need to have the software flashed to the right version for the carrier for some of the features to work
And when carriers refuse to flash any phone that isn't theirs, you get lock-in.
Re: Not DMCA as much as CDMA (Score:2)
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Actually, there were a few laws passed regarding this
In which country? In the USA, Ting (last time I checked) worked only with Sprint-branded devices, not Verizon devices or devices branded to one of the Sprint wholly owned MVNOs (Boost and Virgin).
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My GSM phone is locked to my provider. They're supposed to unlock it once the contract is up (in Canada) and there are lots of directions on the net on how to do it as well as small shops offering the service but strictly speaking unlocking your own phone is now illegal due to updated laws pushed by America.
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Though if you build one yoruself, they will require the ability to test it to ensure it doesn't harm the network in anyway.
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I really hope nobody is still leasing land line phones... But according to that article as of 2007 there were still about 580,000 mostly older or elderly people leasing land line phones. [wikipedia.org]
If you have a parent or grandparent, maybe you can help them get out of one of these leases... seriously: take a look at what your grandma (or someone's grandma) is still paying every month on her phone [qltcls.com]
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Sure, but the transaction of renting the phone didn't look at all like a purchase either. It looked like a rental and if the phone failed, AT&T would fix or replace it unless it was very clearly abused. Because it was rented, there was no such thing as "out of warranty".
So to modify the statement, "if I just rented it, better send a replacement when it fails".
Of course, then the courts decide that the practice wasn't legal and forced them to allow anything meeting their published technical specs to be p
Already lost the "complete freedom" argument... (Score:5, Interesting)
>> Any rational interpretation would suggest that when people buy or pay off the loan on a piece of equipment—whether a car, a refrigerator or a mobile phone—they own it, and should be free to do what they want with it.
This argument has already lost in the public square WHEN IT HARMS OTHER PEOPLE. For example:
* If you own a refrigerator, it's already illegal to just discharge the coolant into the environment
* If you own a car, it's already illegal to just set it on fire, and in many places you can't store it certain places (like your front lawn)
If you narrow it down a bit (e.g., "root your phone = legal but proceed at your own risk") I could get behind this guy, but when we're starting to talk about hacking automobile electronics that other drivers and pedestrians depend upon for their own safety...you can probably see where we're developing a slippery slope.
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people have been modding car engines for over a century, get over it. If someone kills a person with their car, existing law covers that situation.
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people have been modding car engines for over a century, get over it. If someone kills a person with their car, existing law covers that situation.
That's right.
"Modify" your car by not maintaining the brakes and you rear-end someone or run over a pedestrian well, you're at fault regardless of the reason.
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You are at fault for the condition of your car regardless. This is true whether you maintain your own brakes, you let someone else do it, or you just ignore it. This is why you don't need "extra special anti-hacking laws". The laws from 3000 years ago already adequately address the "new" problems people are worried about.
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You can mod your fridge to run on alternative refrigerant, you just have to ensure you don't harm others when doing so (ie: You may not pollute). You should be able to mod your Playstation with a modchip, but you have to be certain not to pollute while doing it (ie: Don't use lead based solder... although frankly the pollution is rather different than refrigerant pollution since its your own home, so chances are nobody cares).
You can mod your car to have a remote starter, you just have to ensure you don'
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All touchup solder is still lead based.
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... but when we're starting to talk about hacking automobile electronics that other drivers and pedestrians depend upon for their own safety...you can probably see where we're developing a slippery slope.
And yet I can take the stock brakes off my car and install after market, or even home built custom components to alter the performance of one of the most safety critical systems on the vehicle. I can even custom build an entire vehicle if I want to. (Well, I probably shouldn't).
I would suggest that the skill/coordination/attention/mental stability of the driver is by orders of magnitude a larger risk than anyone tinkering with the ECU or other electronic systems on the vehicle today.
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I don't know about the US, but here in the UK building a custom vehicle means subjecting it to a very strict testing process. Like the MOT, except far tougher to pass. If you meet the standards, the vehicle gets a certificate declaring it road-legal.
Re:Already lost the "complete freedom" argument... (Score:5, Insightful)
Straw man -- go f* yourself. You are the problem with American society today and I hope that you are just trolling versus truly believing what you just wrote. The gist of the argument isn't people should be allowed to use things they own or rent to hurt others, the argument is: when someone purchases a product, they should be entitled to own it.
The real problem here is that various forms of intellectual property have been combined to squeeze consumers into a corner. [X] device makes life easier, has become a social norm, is required for work, or whatever other justification for its purchase. Company [Y] has a patent on [X] so that for the next 21 years the control it's distribution. They apply a firmware that restricts the usage of [X] device relying upon the DMCA and copyright law to prevent you, or others, from making the device more useful or extending it's life beyond the artificial limitations imposed by Company [Y].
Despite that fact that you've paid the device off, Company [Y] has stopped supporting that version of the device, and you have physical possession and the ability to modify it, doing so is now a criminal offense (despite not causing harm to anyone) because the government says so. It's completely ridiculous--at least to me. I do not put corporate profits above all things, which is probably the failing here. The fact that we purchase and accept these artificial and economically driven limitations is a sad state of affairs.
I have a 7 year old laptop that is perfectly usable, except for the fact that the manufacture has locked it down specifically to create an artificial limitation on it's usefulness in order to maximize their profits. I no longer purchase any products from that company and encourage everyone I know to move away. The US needs a return to quality, not an headlong dash into planned obsolescence backed by governmental protectionism.
It's pitiful. Completely pitiful. And argument that it "could" harm the children should, similarly, be thrown away.
God damn it; I'm mad as hell...but I'll keep taking it because I have bills to pay and a family to feed. Motherf*ers.
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It is a complete straw man. GP is talking about liability, whereas TFA is talking about the illegality of circumventing electronic protections.
These are two completely different things. If GP is advocating for the anti-circumvention measures of the DMCA, GP would be advocating for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not cool.
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While your comment is completely reasonable out of context, in the context of this discussion it is completely anti-freedom. The problem here is that the DMCA makes rights opt-in by government, rather than out-out. That is to say that laws like the DMCA assume that you have no rights unless the government or a corporation allows you them explicitly. That is so anti-American it makes me want to vomit. The standard arrangement needs to be that you can do with your property whatever you please as long as y
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Anyone else remember when electronics came with circuit diagrams on the inside of the [easily] removable cover? Things didn't require special tools to work on and repair yourself. Oh, and you could actually BUY replacement parts instead of tossing the whole thing in the bin and getting a new one?
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1. Many MANY people already heavily modify their cars and historically this has not been problematic to the safety of other drivers or pedestrians.
2. There are already safegards for this in place such as annual safety and emissions inspectsion. Granted not every state requires this, but I see nothing wrong with a law that states "your car must meet these safety parameter to be driven on public roads". which could include (an in many states already does i
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Ahh...nice to live in a state where there aren't any emissions checks. I didn't realize this was something states other than CA did frankly, until r
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There's a HUGE difference that you're ignoring: those things you mention as not being allowed to do are already illegal. They're laws that were put in place according to the democratic process.
In contrast, what the DMCA says is effectively "anything the copyright holder unilaterally decides he doesn't like is also illegal, with no public debate or recourse whatsoever."
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I still own the fridge. I may be barred by law from venting the refrigerant to the atmosphere but that law is entirely separate from the question of ownership. As long as I properly recover the refrigerant, I am free to modify it. It's not the manufacturer's choice at all.
Same for the car, it's between me and the law, the manufacturer gets no say.
As for the car electronics, once again, no say for the manufacturer. If the state has a safety concern, it may insist that I get a SAFETY certification IF the car
Bought and paid for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Any rational interpretation would suggest that when people buy or pay off the loan on a piece of equipment—whether a car, a refrigerator or a mobile phone—they own it, and should be free to do what they want with it. Least of all should they have to seek permission from the manufacturer or the government.
Any rational interpretation would suggest that when rich people and large corporations buy or pay off the loan on a congressperson, they own it, and should be free to get whatever legislation out of it they see fit. Least of all should they have to deal with interference from busybody economists trying to tell them what's "rational."
Dan Aris
shouldn't this apply to software too? (Score:4, Interesting)
If I buy software, shouldn't I have the right to modify it? But I bet most software LICENSES have wording that says I cannot.
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This is not correct. The copyright only restricts distribution. As in, yo
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In principle, even running a program without a license means the program gets copied to RAM, and therefore is copyright infringement. (Microsoft, Apple, Google etc. could probably sue anyone stealing a computer or smartphone or tablet for copyright infringement if the thief ever used the co
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If you have legally acquired software, you are explicitly permitted to make any copies necessary in the normal process of running the software. IIRC, you are also allowed one backup copy. (IANAL, and as always if you are going to base any important decisions on details of the law you should get advice from random pseudonymous people from random jurisdictions on the Internet.)
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The EULA is bunk, null and void. First, it is a contract of adhesion: by the time you are forced to "agree" to it you already own the software, so there is nothing for you to agree to. For the same
EULA URL on package (Score:2)
First, it is a contract of adhesion: by the time you are forced to "agree" to it you already own the software, so there is nothing for you to agree to.
Nowadays PC software is often sold as a download instead of as a CD, which means you usually have to agree to some terms before clicking Buy. And even for software distributed on CD, publishers have started to print the current EULA URL on the package for you to take to the Internet terminal in the store and read.
For the same reason, there is nothing you gain by agreeing (i.e., there is no "consideration")
Even failing the above, the consideration for a click-wrap contract is that you're allowed to decrypt the copy that you own. Defenses to the tort of copyright infringement (17 USC 117 etc.) are not
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The owner of a lawfully made copy (Score:2)
If you don't have the source (Score:2)
you don't have the modifiable part of the software.
Disassembly (Score:2)
Please can we try to use the English language? (Score:2)
Nowhere in the Economist article do they use the word "hack" because - again - some dipshit is using the word "hack" to mean approximately whatever the hell they want it to mean.
"Hack" != "use"
"Hack" != "terminate"
"Hack" != "amend"
Either send your editors back to junior high grammar, or maybe exercise some editorial judgement and stop this silliness.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying it's the work of a hack writer?
Re: (Score:3)
MATLAB, C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Perl (numerical comparison only), PHP, Python, Ruby, and R
It's pretty common shorthand for not equal to.
Re: (Score:2)
Removing the DMCA is not possible. (Score:2)
Removing the DMCA is not possible. It would require a complete revolution against the US Government on the issue eliminating all participants in every branch of the Government as too many people see the rights of users to control their electronic equipment as the catalyst for a world wide economic depression the likes of which we have never seen,
The US Population has been conditioned since the days of the Atari 2600 Crash of 1983 to believe that limiations on who has the right to make software should be tig
No need for console maker veto anymore (Score:2)
The US Population has been conditioned since the days of the Atari 2600 Crash of 1983 to believe that limiations on who has the right to make software should be tightly controlled and if its not the result is Market Collapse.
I've collected some of the console peasants' arguments in this page [pineight.com]. But this 1980s argument that "the market needs the console maker to act as a sole curator with veto power" has largely evaporated thanks to the Internet. First, it's easier to find a reviewer whose tastes match yours. Second, the playable demo has been around since the shareware era. And third, much of the 1983-1984 crash of the North American video game market was due to distributors that would offer retailers a money-back guarantee for r
The 1983 crash in a nutshell (Score:2)
Bought and paid for lawmakers (Score:2)
"hard to fathom" (Score:2)
What kind of idiot economist says things like this? It's designed to enrich the corporations and take away the rights of the People. It does a great job at that. It's what critics said would happen before it was enacted and the power structure likes it just fine. You sound like a fool when you pretend it's a mistake.
ha ha ha (Score:1)
Hacking implies keeping DMCA around. NO! (Score:2)
The DMCA needs to be thrown out with a bunch of the other fecal detritus that's been inserted in modern US law, to the detriment of everyone.
Hack or crack? (Score:2)
Without the government nanny state looking over our shoulders, we can crack open an egg and heat it in two seconds in our modified micrOMG it burns!!! Big brother, where art thou?
Fool's paradise (Score:2)
Has the author seen the incoming Congress?
OCILLA vs. right to refuse service to anyone (Score:2)
You're seeing the intersection of 2 things.
The first thing is OCILLA (17 USC 512). Online service providers have a duty under OCILLA to take down a subscriber's copy of allegedly infringing work on a copyright owner's reasonable request. The subscriber can plead that the use is not infringing, such as if it is a fair use of the complainant's work, to have the work put back up.
But the second thing is that service providers reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason (other than perhaps