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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

#141

Post by drb91 »

guelo wrote: post #47
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…

I would argue this is better than congress passing new legislation because congress is broken and corrupt. If congresss were to write new legislation on DRM it would make things worse since they always take the copyright maximalist position since that's what corporate lobbyists want.

Err, you like non-democratic rulings because they AVOID corruption? Worked great for the FCC!

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#142

Post by mcdevilkiller »

cptskippy wrote: post #115
quadrangle wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ford is basically stopping production of cars anyway as they found that trucks are more profitable. But yeah, don't buy one of their trucks either. But what manufacturer is an alternative? Tesla set up DRM to artificially limit the driving range of their cars until you pay them a ransom to simply let your car drive longer distances!

> Tesla set up DRM to artificially limit the driving range of their cars until you pay them a ransom to simply let your car drive longer distances! That's a lie. Yes they have DRM in place to artificially limit the range of certain models, everything else you said is mischaracterization, misrepresentation, and lies. They saw opportunity in offering different ranged batteries of the same model, however the cost to pro…

Every company does this. It reminds me of Casio and their calculators. You can "hack" some of them just by painting a wire with a pencil, and it unlocks features of more advanced ones.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#143

Post by tintor »

cptskippy wrote: post #115
quadrangle wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ford is basically stopping production of cars anyway as they found that trucks are more profitable. But yeah, don't buy one of their trucks either. But what manufacturer is an alternative? Tesla set up DRM to artificially limit the driving range of their cars until you pay them a ransom to simply let your car drive longer distances!

> Tesla set up DRM to artificially limit the driving range of their cars until you pay them a ransom to simply let your car drive longer distances! That's a lie. Yes they have DRM in place to artificially limit the range of certain models, everything else you said is mischaracterization, misrepresentation, and lies. They saw opportunity in offering different ranged batteries of the same model, however the cost to pro…

Will this ruling now allow Tesla owners to fix this firmware range limitation of their cars?

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#144

Post by berbec »

TomMarius wrote: post #94
dleslie wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American McGee is probably the most famous example of this. > Dead-end jobs followed – washing dishes, polishing rings at a jewelry store, ringing orders at a record store and, finally, fixing Volkswagens at Uncle J.O.'s auto repair shop. > The tinkering that's required of mechanics appealed to the teenage hacker. The $6-an-hour job "was the first time I ever felt like I accomplished something at work," McGee said. >…

A lot of software engineers around me love poking in their cars

My nerdiest friend and myself have done engine swaps in our driveway, ranging from LT1s to VG30DETTs. Once we got the grease off, it was Wow time!

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#145

Post by ChuckMcM »

saagarjha wrote: post #125
ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

This is nice, but it isn't as nice as it should be. This is a section 1201 exemption[1] which is where the Library of Congress decides there needs to be an exemption to the law and puts it into place for a period of 12 months. Every year they review these exemptions and they often fall off. If you go to the link below and replace 2018 with 2008 - 2017 you can see exemptions for the last 10 years that have been added…

Exemptions last for three years I believe (your link doesn’t work for the other years, BTW), and the law has recently been changed to make them more permanent, requiring significant change in order to prevent automatic renewal.

That is awesome, I didn't know they had upgraded the exceptions to 3 years.

For folks who want to look at previous exemptions

2015 - https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2015/

2012 - https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2012/

2010 - https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/

2008 - https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/

2006 - https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/

2003 - https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2003/

2000 - https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2000/

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#146

Post by beat »

ngngngng wrote: post #72
jedberg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a raspberry pi and a bit of python however you can reset this tamper code once the whole assembly is closed. This sentence is interesting to me. It tells me that now mechanics need to learn programming skills to be successful. Software really is eating the world...

I'm convinced most successful mechanics could be successful programmers. The skill set of looking at a problem and debugging until you really understand the architecture and design of what you're looking at is very similar in both fields.

I grew up working on cars and motorcycles. The mindset is very similar. Since I work more in DevOps than as a developer, I often think of myself as a software mechanic.

Interestingly, I find the musician mindset is also very similar, particularly musicians who compose or improvise.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#148

Post by pgt »

beat wrote: post #146
ngngngng wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced most successful mechanics could be successful programmers. The skill set of looking at a problem and debugging until you really understand the architecture and design of what you're looking at is very similar in both fields.

I grew up working on cars and motorcycles. The mindset is very similar. Since I work more in DevOps than as a developer, I often think of myself as a software mechanic. Interestingly, I find the musician mindset is also very similar, particularly musicians who compose or improvise.

Software Mechanic is a great brand. I'm stealing it :)

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#149

Post by Teknoman117 »

TomMarius wrote: post #94
dleslie wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American McGee is probably the most famous example of this. > Dead-end jobs followed – washing dishes, polishing rings at a jewelry store, ringing orders at a record store and, finally, fixing Volkswagens at Uncle J.O.'s auto repair shop. > The tinkering that's required of mechanics appealed to the teenage hacker. The $6-an-hour job "was the first time I ever felt like I accomplished something at work," McGee said. >…

A lot of software engineers around me love poking in their cars

I'm a software engineer and I do most of my own car work. Can't do everything though, I don't have a lot of room for tools that I'd rarely use.

Paid someone to fix my air conditioning vents though because I'd have to half disassemble the interior of my car to do it and I knew it would take me longer to do than I could have the car out of commission. I really hate the vacuum controlled vents in mid 2000's Ford trucks. I had a vacuum leak - somewhere.

Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms

#150

Post by dahart »

chrisshroba wrote: post #75
jedberg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a raspberry pi and a bit of python however you can reset this tamper code once the whole assembly is closed. This sentence is interesting to me. It tells me that now mechanics need to learn programming skills to be successful. Software really is eating the world...

Is this true? There are mechanics everywhere, so why would every one need to learn to program something that could be made by one and sold as a commercial (or open source) project? Sure, there are many types of cars and situations that need handling, but there are far more mechanics than that. I'm genuinely asking this because I often question whether it's true that "everyone should learn to program", or it's more li…

> I often question whether it's true that "everyone should learn to program", or it's more like, "we have a programmer shortage".

I don't think the parent was saying either of those things. Cars are no longer mechanical devices; they're full of computers now. In order to service any modern car, you need an increasing level of computer tools & training. This has been a growing problem for a long time for independent mechanics who have had no choice but to refer people to the dealerships, due both to proprietary digital systems in the cars, and to the copyright laws that prevented legal home and third-party repairs.

> so why would every one need to learn to program something that could be made by one and sold as a commercial (or open source) project?

Maybe this is a theoretical question, as opposed to a practical one? Car manufacturers today are, by and large, not shipping open source products, and until now it has been illegal to reverse engineer those products, so no open source project could legally exist.

* BTW, total tangent of a side note, but might be interesting to you: the US Department of Defense (and I think other branches of the government too) define "commercial" software in a way that includes open source, in other words open source is commercial. The reason is that OSS comes with a license, it's not to do with whether the software costs money, nor whether the source code is distributed with the software. https://dodcio.defense.gov/open-source-software-faq/#Q:_Is_o...

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