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Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

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Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#21

Post by Joeri »

colemannugent wrote: post #10
chisleu wrote: post #6

This 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?

The Content Scramble System on DVD's isn't anti-competitive, since all players can obtain a license for it, it's just anti-consumer.

The example I'd like to see is of a single work that wasn't pirated due to DRM. DRM is hidden behind this wall of lies where ostensibly it's about piracy but in reality it is not. The true purpose is to control legal playback behavior, like how all legitimate hardware DVD players respect the flag that marks ads as unskippable because that's a requirement to obtain a DVD-CSS license, even though that DRM was already cracked in the 90's.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#23

Post by xoa »

craftyguy wrote: post #18
xoa wrote: post #2

Great 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 u…

> though it'd be better if it was embedded into law and couldn't go away down the line I'd go further and say that there's nothing of any significance in this decision since it will likely go away down the line since it was not codified in law.

>I'd go further and say that there's nothing of any significance in this decision since it will likely go away down the line since it was not codified in law.

I don't believe you're correct here. If down the road the LoC and USCO did not continue this exemption, it still would have applied for the whole intervening time and anybody who took advantage of it during that time would be in the clear. At a bare minimum this is a specific material benefit to many people, and any knowledge, tooling and techniques developed to aid that during that time would still be valuable. That's not insignificant.

More long term, ultimately this is politics and that can definitely be influenced by "temporary" measures which later become permanent. In general in politics it's much harder to take away something specific granted to people who gain a concentrated benefit from it then it is to not offer it in the first place. Before having it people may not be able to visualize a future benefit, but after getting used to it they'll resent having it removed if it was at all useful. Constituencies develop. So if for 3+ years some people were more easily and cheaply able to get something dealt with or saw more competition for it and in turn better quality/reliability/price, and then all of a sudden one day they walk in and get told "well the politicians just rescinded this so suddenly you can't but only because they said so" well that tends not to go over so well. Particularly if it seems like "common sense" and there is no harm any general member of the public can see from it either. Appeals to distant corporate profits tend to be curiously unmoving...

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#24

Post by hathawsh »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #17

Would this apply to say, a third-party bought Cisco device? For those who don't know, Cisco devices have software that is non-transferable, despite being required to use the hardware, which can be freely sold. So technically if you sell a Cisco device to someone else, it can no longer be legally used because the software on it is pirated. Wouldn't this exemption arguably guarantee your ability to use the hardware you…

Interesting. It seems like Cisco's attempt to make their firmware non-transferable is not enforceable because it's in conflict with first sale doctrine, which is part of the copyright act of 1976:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#25

Post by crwalker »

imglorp wrote: post #19
crwalker wrote: post #4

This is great! The push by large companies to replace personal asset ownership with perpetual rent is worth fighting against.

On that note, I wonder if the law will ever view misprepresenting the ownership of a device as fraudulent business practice. Suppose some hardware is sold to you, in the ancient ownership sense[1]. Then some time later, the maker decides that you must use only authorized parts, or they will not continue to provide a cloud service for it, or that it's just plain EOL. Then, you never really owned it - you were renting…

Yeah. More broadly, I think digital devices should be loyal to their owners rather than a 3rd party like the manufacturer or a surveillance/credit/ad agency.

Part of the solution may be legal, but I also think that the architecture of the device will need to change, e.g. to remove the technical ability of the manufacturer to remotely brick it.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#26

Post by smt88 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #16
skunkworker wrote: post #8

It 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-...

I'm terrified. I saw John Deere code, and its tortuous. Nobody should try to fool with it without serious study.

This is also true of elevators. The vendors intentionally write awful code so that only they can fix it.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#27

Post by bduerst »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #16
skunkworker wrote: post #8

It 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-...

I'm terrified. I saw John Deere code, and its tortuous. Nobody should try to fool with it without serious study.

"If it's not broken, don't touch it"

For the longest time Zara used an MS-DOS based POS system, and hey, it worked.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#28

Post by ocdtrekkie »

hathawsh wrote: post #24
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #17

Would this apply to say, a third-party bought Cisco device? For those who don't know, Cisco devices have software that is non-transferable, despite being required to use the hardware, which can be freely sold. So technically if you sell a Cisco device to someone else, it can no longer be legally used because the software on it is pirated. Wouldn't this exemption arguably guarantee your ability to use the hardware you…

Interesting. It seems like Cisco's attempt to make their firmware non-transferable is not enforceable because it's in conflict with first sale doctrine, which is part of the copyright act of 1976: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

I read it as an attempt at a workaround for first sale. That they can't stop you from selling the hardware, but can prevent you from selling the license. IANAL, if it's invalid, great.

AFAIK Cisco doesn't actually "enforce" this, so much as uses it to withhold providing updates. You need a support contract to download updates yourself, and while you can request an update be sent to you if there's a vulnerability you need to patch while not under a support contract, that is only applicable if your license is legitimate (i.e., that you are the original owner).

In practice, most old third party hardware just gets used for homelab purposes, since it's not "legitimate". Which, as a side perk, actually keeps the resale prices of old Cisco hardware super low, which is nice for people who want enterprise class hardware at home.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#30

Post by lostlogin »

Multicomp wrote: post #9

For 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:…

It’s very much a paid trial, but I like this way of framing it.
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