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Why I’m Suing the US Government

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Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#81

Post by jessaustin »

ryanswapp wrote: post #57
marcelluspye wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure everyone's aware of the stated purpose of the section. It's not like there were a bunch of execs and lobbyists sitting around going "there's too much creativity in the world." But the intentions of the legislation don't change its consequences.

Oh they very much do. Legislative intent is a major factor that many judges consider when enforcing legislation. Intent often has a very big impact on consequence.

IANAL, but this could cut both ways, couldn't it? If the judge decides the effect is different than the intent, she could either say "the intent is valid so let's ignore the effects" (what you seem to advocate here) or "the effects are not what was intended so until the legislative branch makes a change we'll use the following interpretation in order to make the effects more like the intent". There may be a standard way of deciding between these two alternatives, but I don't know it.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#82

Post by cwyers »

astazangasta wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #33

Circumvention by itself definitely shouldn't be illegal, and it's probably unconstitutional to make building and researching circumvention mechanisms illegal. But I don't buy Step 2. > EFF is representing plaintiff Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a prominent computer scientist and inventor, and his company Alphamax LLC, where he is developing devices for editing digital video streams. Those products would enable people to mak…

The real problem, of course, is that the Internet today consists almost exclusively of private companies profiting from other people's content. Twitter doesn't pay its users, it makes money off their tweets AND by having them look at ads (yes, this is work). Similarly with Facebook, or with any review aggregator (Yelp, Amazon, Google+), monetizing the free labor of others. The DMCA protects certain forms of property…

Twitter isn't profiting off their users, or at all for that matter.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#83

Post by chasing »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #37
zekevermillion wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine tinkering with a Tesla could cause some heartburn for Elon. There are safety issues, which are real. What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice? Also interesting, recently heard about a guy who can reprogram some diesel trucks to get better performance (probably at the expense of NOX emission…

> What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice? We can't let these hypothetical worst-case scenarios be an excuse to stifle innovation. What happens if we let people modify their microwaves and a terrorist uses his to give kids cancer!?!? What if we let people tinker with their toasters and somebody uses one…

> We can't let these hypothetical worst-case scenarios be an excuse to stifle innovation.

Yes, we sure can.

I don't want your "innovation" killing a bunch of people.

If you can't innovate without endangering people, you need to "innovate your innovation" and come up with a way you can do it safely.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#84

Post by eigenmeister »

dudifordMann wrote: post #56
eigenmeister wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major objection to 1201 is that it legally precludes what would be fair use in an unprotected work. Breaking HDCP, for instance, is still illegal for a use that would pass a four factors test. Do you have a link on the John Deere suit(s) you mentioned? That's one I'd be interested in following.

i think it relates to this: [1] http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere [2] https://theamericangenius.com/business-news/farmers-cant-leg... it seems to concern the idea, as mentioned above, of ownership vs a permanent license of the goods purchased or in their minds.. leased?

I've read the wired piece; GP said 'is being actively tested by John Deere and various farmers', implying that there were other lawsuits.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#85

Post by Practicality »

LukeShu wrote: post #80
ryanswapp wrote: post #28

I studied section 1201 thoroughly during law school and I think this post doesn't give a fair characterization of it. The reason this statute exists is because companies were unable to devise protection for copyrighted works that hackers were not able to immediately circumvent. As a result, the government stepped in and created 1201 to make it illegal for someone to circumvent some form of access control that a compa…

> As a result, the government stepped in and created 1201 to make it illegal for someone to to . Doing was already illegal. Therefore, doing in order to was also already illegal. People are upset that is now illegal, for all purposes, not just doing . > The purpose of the statute isn't to but is to . I don't see anything wrong with that. What's wrong with that is that it also does (even if that isn't the "purpose").

While your points are correct, I think the use of variables actually makes it harder to follow

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#86

Post by beardicus »

rayiner wrote: post #33

Circumvention by itself definitely shouldn't be illegal, and it's probably unconstitutional to make building and researching circumvention mechanisms illegal. But I don't buy Step 2. > EFF is representing plaintiff Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a prominent computer scientist and inventor, and his company Alphamax LLC, where he is developing devices for editing digital video streams. Those products would enable people to mak…

I fail to see how your quoted text has anything to do with twitter making a buck. The target here is the end user being able to do more with their paid content, including overlaying other content. Substitute a wikipedia entry as the example if twitter is causing a hangup. There are already limits on fair use when profit is involved... this is more about letting users use content in ways that are not prescribed by the big content producers, and being able to develop the devices to do so without breaking the law.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#87

Post by astazangasta »

cwyers wrote: post #82
astazangasta wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem, of course, is that the Internet today consists almost exclusively of private companies profiting from other people's content. Twitter doesn't pay its users, it makes money off their tweets AND by having them look at ads (yes, this is work). Similarly with Facebook, or with any review aggregator (Yelp, Amazon, Google+), monetizing the free labor of others. The DMCA protects certain forms of property…

Twitter isn't profiting off their users, or at all for that matter.

Twitter has a market cap of $13 billion mostly because of content produced by its users. The only possible way it can make money is by showing ads to users (getting them to do free labor).

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#88

Post by mtgx »

zekevermillion wrote: post #70
belorn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if I tinker with a regular car and put a nitrous oxide engine? The safety issues, which are real, could allow someone to plow into minivan on its way to Little League practice. It could explode. It could cause a massive fire. It could go way faster than the speed limit, bypass the limits of the breaks, and go against any number of laws. So... does this mean I could sue Ford if someone modified a Ford car…

I would argue self-driving car software is different. If license terms permit modification, and a modified version is running in a car that causes damage, then there will be an argument as to whether the modifications caused the wreck, or whether it was the underlying software and thus the manufacturer who is responsible. Tesla, quite rationally, would not want to give users a permissive license, given this obvious l…

How about using the same tactic many smartphone makers use:

"We're allowing you to unlock your bootloader, but if you do, you're voiding your warranty."

Similarly car makers could say as soon as the user unlocks the car's systems for modification, the company is no longer responsible for any accident that might happen.

It seems like a rather good compromise to me.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#90

Post by zyxley »

ygjb wrote: post #71
rayiner wrote: post #33

Circumvention by itself definitely shouldn't be illegal, and it's probably unconstitutional to make building and researching circumvention mechanisms illegal. But I don't buy Step 2. > EFF is representing plaintiff Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a prominent computer scientist and inventor, and his company Alphamax LLC, where he is developing devices for editing digital video streams. Those products would enable people to mak…

Um, if I am a content consumer that has legitimate access to content streams from two different sources, why am I not allowed to multiplex those streams in a way that is useful to me? This is not about Twitter, or CNN, but the users ability to consume content that they have legitimate access to in the way that they choose. Replace twitter in this example with the ability to feed an audio stream into a speech recognit…

Another example of a simple consumer service that could take advantage of this and already exists: RiffTrax. Right now they have to use the "the customer has to use two different players, figure out the audio settings, and get the timings right themselves" method.
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