Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
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Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#2Great decision, though it'd be better if it was embedded into law and couldn't go away down the line. At the least DRM and legal protection should be either/or, like secrets vs patents. Part of the return the public is supposed to see for granting legal protection to IP is that the IP is then made widely available (as well as eventually entering the public domain) and can be built upon for personal use, commentated upon, etc. If somebody wants to just try to keep something secret or protect it with technology maybe that's fine to try to do indefinitely, but they shouldn't be able to do that and then also get the full benefit of IP law that was originally created around non-technically restricted information.
This is also a good starting balance in that legal subsidies are removed but it doesn't require manufacturers to nerf their tech either, which is an area that needs to be navigated very carefully in law given the security implications and the risks of unintended consequences. I still wish "right to repair" was "right to have work" but this seems like an unalloyed Good Thing regardless. Maybe it can catalyze a bit of renewed fight against the worse parts of the DMCA and the like.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#3> Specifically, it allows breaking digital rights management (DRM) and embedded software locks for “the maintenance of a device or system … in order to make it work in accordance with its original specifications” or for “the repair of a device or system … to a state of working in accordance with its original specifications.”
It would be interesting to know what "original specifications" means. How deep do these original specifications have to be adhered to? I'm sure DRM could be argued to be part of the spec at some level. I don't think this is quite the win Free Software Folks are looking for.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#4This is great! The push by large companies to replace personal asset ownership with perpetual rent is worth fighting against.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#5Based on “the maintenance of a device or system … in order to make it work in accordance with its original specifications” can I or can I not legally unlock a device to use a different OS/apps on it?
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#6This isn't enough.
Make it illegal to put DRM on hardware for anti-competitive purposes.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#7Based on “the maintenance of a device or system … in order to make it work in accordance with its original specifications” can I or can I not legally unlock a device to use a different OS/apps on it?
I don't think so, FTA: "“I read it as the ability to reset to factory settings,” Nathan Proctor, head of consumer rights group US PIRG’s right to repair efforts, told me in an email.
Although you could make an argument that the device never performed according to its specifications and your unlocking the device is merely an attempt to repair a fundamentally broken product, but that seems like it'd be a hard sell.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#8It doesn't mention it in this article but this could also have a profound effect on John Deere and allowing farmers to fix their own hardware.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-americ...
https://hackaday.com/2018/02/11/will-john-deere-finally-get-...
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#9For all the times the government does stupid things and we complain about it, this is a step in the correct direction.
I hope that at some point, this exemption will be written into law, and not just an exemption by the LoC. OTOH, if you think of this as the government being able to attempt this as a 'Free Trial' for 3 years, we can show them that this exemption does not have oodles of unintended side effects.
Edit: substantially clarify.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#10This isn't enough. Make it illegal to put DRM on hardware for anti-competitive purposes.
>Make it illegal to put DRM on hardware for anti-competitive purposes.
Can anyone give an example of DRM that isn't anti-competitive?