With this allow people to hack iPhones to disable "brick if 3rd party screen"?
Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
31–40 of 354 posts
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#32It 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.
How is that fact making you terrified in the context of this discussion?
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 th…
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Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#34It 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-...
The article said this has already been the case for commercial farm equipment since 2015.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is quite horrifying. I am not sure if the elevator ride will be the same again for me.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 respec…
DRM is sometimes useful to delay the pirating of games.
It would be nice if they were forced to remove it after 1/3/12 months.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Make it illegal to put DRM on hardware for anti-competitive purposes. Can anyone give an example of DRM that isn't anti-competitive?
DRM on a game, application, or media assets, for example? Which is most of the use of it.
Before widespread online DRM you could resell any of those used, which made them worth less over time as more used copies became available. Today you can buy many DRM riddled games for almost the same price you got them 5 years ago since the company selling them can maintain a monopoly.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, sounds very narrow. Basically you can take things apart for repair, but not to turn them into something else, or modify them for interoperability. But it does create a gray market for the information obtained by people who legally break DRM for "repair and maintenance." Information set free can be used for anything, wink wink.
Could interoperability be argued to be returning them to their original specifications in some cases? E.g. the product could interact with most computers when it came out, but since then a competitor has come onto the scene and the manufacturer hasn't implemented features to make it work with them. Therefore, jailbreaking and making it work with them would sort of be returning to what the situation was when you first…
17 U.S. Code § 1201 (f) already seems to provide some protection for reverse-engineering (including the circumvention of "technical measures") if it's done for the purpose of making a program interoperable with other programs.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
IMHO (not a lawyer), this is one of those things the companies put in a EULA that won't stand up in an actual court of law. It's basically bullying their own consumers. If pressed on it they would probably fold, but not before making you spend a ton of money on lawyers.
Re: Copyright Office Ruling Imposes Sweeping Right to Repair Reforms
#40This 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…
While it would be hard to argue in court, a copyright holder attempting to extend copyright beyond the scope of that copy-related right could be misuse of copyright[1]. Based on the doctrine of "unclean hands", a judge could rule a copyright to be unenforceable if the copyright holder tries to enforce some type of property right clearly outside the scope of the copyright protected work.