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Barcode Maker Responds After Forcing Drivers Offline
The following was sent in by Doug Davis from Digital Convergance. Plain text is his. Bold text is mine.
Digital:Convergence understands this Linux issue and the concerns expressed by the community. Had Digital:Convergence been approached by developers we would have been (and still will be) happy to work with them in a constructive direction. Instead, our products were reversed engineered and what has occurred is a public display of what is clearly our intellectual property. It is unfortunate the supporters of the open source community have taken steps to publicize intellectually property in-order to further their own goals and desires. Unfortunately, for us all, some of the people conducting these efforts would not voluntarily remove our IP, even after being contacted.
Thank god. These folks worked hard to write code to use this piece of hardware, and it would be unfortunate if they were forced to take it down. Imagine if Linus had been forced by Intel to take down kernel versions that used their intellectual property in the early part of the last decade. A lot of companies have bullied a lot of people in the last couple of years, and it's only getting worse. Your CueCat, like DeCSS, is going to redefine what IP is. Personally, I hope that when I get a barcode reader, or a DVD-ROM drive (or a car, or phone, or any other physical thing), that I'm allowed to rip it apart and tinker with it at my discretion. I think that's my right as a consumer.
In the strictest legal terms we had no choice but to proceed protect our interests. By posting our IP to the Net the Linux Community has forced us into a position of having to legally defend our technology . Under IP law if we don't PROTECT our IP, we loose any remedies under law to PROTECT our IP. This IS NOT ABOUT stopping hackers, but trying to get the "hackers" and such to WORK WITH US AND NOT EXPOSE US and destroy over 5 years of hard work by a group of "geeks, hackers and techno-whizzes" like each of you!
IP is a weird beast. If you don't defend it, you don't have it. I imagine if Adaptec or Matrox defended the IP created by the work of their "geeks, hackers and techno-wizzes" by forcing Linux driver writers to take down code utilizing their SCSI controllers, hard drives and video cards, their IP would also be unusable under Linux. Which is too bad because I use hardware that they created every day. Oh, and 5 years of development for "base64+XOR"?
Any professional and serious developer will understand the following: .........Unfortunately the Linux Community could of inadvertently created the WINDOW for the BIG companies to come in and control and profit from this process we have created. So if M$ or some other company decides to do what you are doing *for profit" and DigitalConvergence allows the open source group to continue with out proper licenses, DigitalConvergence could loose its ability to effectively stop them. The Linux Community would of actually had a DIRECT HAND in creating what it stands most vehemently against!
You start it off by saying "Any serious Professional will understand" which is a none-too-subtle way of saying, "If you're smart, you'll understand." Fortunately you don't say that any serious developer will agree. What you're saying is that the Linux community should happily take down the code out of fear of some big company (mentioning Microsoft is poor form: it screams like a bad political commercial where they mention a bunch of scary things just to make their ideas seem more true). If big scary Microsoft came along and released their own distribution, there is nothing we could do about it (provided that they played by the common rules of the GPL). That reality constantly exists, but that doesn't slow anyone down. It's not the point. If Microsoft wants to play by the rules of the GPL, I say let 'em. But by your logic, nobody should ever write and distribute source code, for fear that Microsoft would take it. That strikes me as a bit backwards.
It is our hope the Linux community will help us in our efforts by
- working with us to create a product to support your needs, and;
- stop and remove illegal posting efforts, and;
- encourage others in the Linux community to work with us
hand-in-hand to develop a various solutions and useful applications.
You too, can be part of this valuable tool and project!"
The weird thing about open source development is that code gets written where programmers itch. I bet you'll find support for #1, but less so for #2. See, your itches might not be the same as their itches. We all define valuable tools and projects differently, and our needs might be a bit different then yours. I don't think that folks posting this code constitutes "an illegal posting effort" any more then I think posting a driver for a scanner does.
Digital:Convergence supports the Linux/Unix community and plans to make a version of its software available for Linux available in the near future. Also, licenses are available for any developers wishing to work with any aspect of our technology. We welcome the individuals of the community to contact us and use a more professional, orderly and productive manner in adjusting our products to better serve, in tact and based fully upon our various Patents and Intellectual Property, your community, . Professional Licenses and Development contracts are available to the Linux/Unix community and we welcome your direct and professional contact.
If I own a Ford, do I need a Ford wrench to fiddle with my engine? If I buy a frame, do I need a nail & hammer from the same company in order to hang a picture on my wall? If your tools are the best tools, and at the right price, then by all means, I'd happily use your nail & hammer, but we live in a marketplace where competition drives everything, and you have competition. You have the advantage: you have the technical specifications and the most developed tools, wheras the open source guys are groping blindly in the dark looking for answers. Oddly enough this groping is a large part of the fun. It's a challenge.
And, by the way, the AT HOME - PERSONAL USE DEVELOPER LICENSE is $20 USD! So please, HELP US PROTECT, what a group of talented developers, have worked so very hard on for over the last 5 years!
J. Jovan Philyaw - Chairman & C.E.O. ceo@digitalconvergence.com
Doug Davis - President Technology Group ddavis@digitalconvergence.comI seriously wish you guys the best of luck, and hope you figure out a way to work with the developers who are writing this cool code. If you haven't alienated the developers, I bet they would be happy to work with you. My fear is that your business model is shaky: you've given away zillions of barcode readers, (no doubt at great expense) but failed to realize that they, like iOpeners and TiVos and Furbys and AIBOs and DVD-ROM drives and everything else physical, can (and will!) be ripped apart and played with by people. You're trying to use lawyers to take away people's rights to screw around with their own hardware, and that's a problem... your service strikes me as being about a lot more then a silly little barcode scanner and what people do with it. If your software serves a need, people will use it. If some hacker finds some cool other use for the hardware, maybe people will use their code too. This is very real, but this is a free country where we can tear apart our toys and rebuild them if we want.
On a practical note, you have a website and a net service. Thats different. Thats not a physical piece of hardware that someone can hold in their hands. You should focus on that, and not waste your energy going after hackers who are just poking around with a cool piece of hardware. I'm not a business guy, so I don't know what the answers are, but I do know a dead end when I see it. And don't forget that the percentage of people who are actually gonna mess with this stuff is very tiny. You should concentrate on making your services better for the huge majority of your users who don't run Linux, and wouldn't run software other then yours even if it did exist. It's the blinking 12:00 syndrome. Most users just don't change the defaults.
I'd also like to say something to the readers: don't get angry and attack these guys. They're just a group of guys trying to feed their dogs by coming up with ideas to make a buck. Yelling and screaming doesn't help anyone. It's easy to forget that every company is just a group of people trying to accomplish something; they aren't evil, even when they make mistakes or do things that we disagree with. But don't stop writing the code. I can think of many uses for this barcode scanner (like maybe software to index my DVDs?). It's still legal to reverse engineer, and that sure better never change.
I've contacted Digital Convergence a number of times to ask if I can have one of these things sent to the UK but I haven't had a reply. Does anyone know where I can get one or would someone send me a couple please?
This is a sort of half-assed, secondary argument by the Napster legal team. It carried no weight with the appeals court that has taken over the case.
Napster's winning card is the fact that Congress legalized all non-commercial copying of music by consumers using any digital or analog recording device in 1992, in exchange for mandatory "royalty" payments to the music industry whenever you purchase any blank digital audio recorder or media. Napster's defense is not based on fair use -- it's based on a statutory exception that defines all non-commercial copying as non-infringing. Hence, if Napster's users are not infringing copyrights, then Napster cannot be contributing to said non-existant infringement.
I like this thing. It is a great toy, and I can think of lots of ways to use it. I am sure that I am not in the minority here either.
/. are not members of Joe Public. The majority of people are going to do one of three things:
Just because there is a driver that will produce the barcodes in plain text does not mean that everybody is going to ignore their software. It also does not mean that they are losing on the scanner they gave me either.
The people that post here on
1. Use it with the software.
2. Give it to a friend.
3. Put it in the basket with all the other trinkets that they don't have time for.
They are trying to establish a new standard for locating information on the web. Kind of like a search engine that you pay for with your demographics. I don't think that it is a bad idea, but I also won't use it because I don't enjoy being profiled in that way. No matter what their business model is, I will probably be a loss.
Other members of my family seem to think differently however. So the toy they gave this household may yet fall into their plan. Some of the people that get these are going to play with it regardless of their intent. They have to have allowed for this, so it is something else they are protecting.
They must want to charge for the use of the cues. And the mining of the generated data. Can't they still do this even if the scanner is used for other things? They have some IP on that at least. The cue is distinctive enough that they would be able to license the use of the format.
The little bit of encryption that they placed on the machine really is more of an annoyance than any sort of protection scheme. Any money they planned on making on developer kits is money they should not have planned on. The smart thing to do here is encourage other software for the thing. It is the brand that will give them value. If the devices become widely used, everyone will know what a Cue Cat is. That is everything on the net.
If this happens, they can start selling Cats cheap to make up for the "lost" development revenue. Heck make some different packaging. Clear cases, colors, even glow in the dark ones! You know what I mean. Lots of people go for this stuff. These sort of things are very easy to do at this stage. All of the hard engineering is done.
Instead of charging for a developers kit, (what can it possibly contain anyway lamecrypt.h? and ourserver.h? ) they should be encouraging development to build the brand. Some of the developers will be very interested in using their servers others will not. Either way Cue Cat gets known, and that will have value. Probably in ways that they did not plan for. Funny how the net works huh?
They can provide many things on their servers freely in exchange for the capture of data. The marketing people will pay for this data without question. The better the brand, the more valuable the services that go along with it will be.
It is wrong of them to expect every scan to go through their servers anyway. Does not make any sense. What if the net is down, and I am working with my CD / DVD catalog software? Do I have to be online to make use of this toy? Lots of dialup users are going to think that this is foolish. Why tie up a phone line to scan something. Use of this will be kind of spontanious anyway. Having to be online will seriously limit how people will use these things.
They could sell these newly packaged cue cats to those that are developing at a profit, and include incentives to use their servers. Those that are interested will make a go of it, those that aren't will still be building the Cue Cat brand. One way they make lots of money, the other way they make a little. Either way they build value and nobody gets hurt.
Open development platforms always will get more attention than closed ones because of people like us who think of something, and just do it. Good ideas happen this way.
To the makers of the Cue Cat: Consider the advice above payment for the entertainment you provided me for the evening. Lot cheaper than the cost of one of those marketing brainstorm meetings. Try opening a dialog with people like me and you will get more ideas cheaper than you ever will using the high priced consultants that told you to keep the device closed.
If you back off I just might code something useful for the thing, and recommend that my friends get one.
Blogging because I can...
this is one of the funniest things I've seen on here :P
:P
:P
of course they wouldn't do that would they?
not even so it sends it's barcode jibberish
(as;dkjdfklajsdkfjf) and one line at the end (shutdown -r now^m) lol
scan something at the prompt, your computer shuts down
Would be nice if they'd admit that they didn't write it rather than implicitly claim it as their own work.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The problem with any potential patents here is that in order to establish a patent, the new technology invented must be, among other things, non-obvious to someone skilled in the business. Given that several different Slashdot readers working independently decoded the data coming out of the CueCat in full, in days or maybe even hours after receiving the device, any patent on the data encoding method itself is sure to fail this non-obviousness test. There may be other parts of the process, or "business model," which are patented, but these programs do not infringe on those other parts -- all they do is decode the data.
IANAL.
--
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
Doug always did when I worked with him (at Internet America) at least...
:P I always thought that was funny...
:P
I can't belive he's working with Jovan again.
Marketing Genius behind the Tripple-Edge Windshield Wipers...
Jovan is probably the best and biggest liar/cheat i've met to date
I do have a decent bit of respect for Doug's technical knowledge... but am kinda surprised to see him working with Jovan again...
And when presented in this fashion, it positively begs for a line-by-line debunking. In fact, after reading it again, I found myself taking issue with almost every line of the thing. This letter is a load of BS from a company that obviously doesn't respect our rights as consumers. I'm offended by it and I don't blame Taco for being offended by it and responding to it either.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If I were DC: I would focus more on my revenue stream. Since, after all, it's hard currency that "feeds the dog" not IP. /.'ed We've got acceptance from the geek segment!!!!"
How is DC: going to make money?
Will they make money selling these scanners? NO!! DC:/RadioShack are giving these things away.
Will they make money selling their software? NO!! DC:/RadioShack are giving this away.
How is DC: going to make money?
Easy, DC: can charge advertisers, product producers, service providers, entertainment providers, et cetra a fee for listing their product/service/content in the DC: database.
DC: can then sell targeted marketing data back to these said producers/providers for a fee.
DC: can even demand a cut of all sells generated from referrals from their site.
But now lets think about this. In order for this service to look really good do corporations you will need a lot of market penetration. IOW a CueCat on every desktop (B.G. 2000???) Imagine now DC: can send it's legion of sales slugs out into the world and proclaim the thousands or even millions of CueCats already in the market place.
Even if a BIG COMPANY tried to compete DC: directly they would have a huge barrier to entry. Look at eBay, look at PayPal, these two companies have effectively become the market standard for the service they provide. I doubt even Micorosft could bring down eBay (unless it offered to let them use IIS for free heeheehee).
I found this thing so cool I have a couple of them, one for each computer I own. I have started inventorying my books thanks to software from readerware.com. I have told my friends to go to RS and get one of these things. Now I am sure that many of them will install the DC: software as well (I installed it on one machine that my wife uses because she really liked how easy it could make going to web sites).
Why did I do this??? Not because I own stock in DC:, but because I saw great potential for this device and for the cost how could I say no.
The people at DC: should quit with the jack boot tactics. Instead they should be high-fiving each other yelling "All right we got
As for IP. I didn't even reverse engineer their encryption mechanism for the first program I wrote for the CueCat. I simply took a list of known bar codes and scanned them. I then used that information to create a look-up table of values and the character that value represents. Base-64, XOR aside a 13 year old could figure out how this thing works. But if the DeCSS rulings stand then I guess even VERY-VERY-VERY-BAD encryption will be acceptable.
DC: If you really wanted to make this thing hacker proof (if that's even possible), you would need to require a key-pair exchange from your web site at the time the user registered the software and everytime the CueCat was used. However, doing this would make it so that nobody used your hardware and thus your software.
DC: Start bragging on your web site about how great your scanner is. Start linking to all of these driver sites. Rember in order to get the scanner the user also gets the software. I'll bet the majority of people will install this software just because of kewl factor. This is where you guys will make your money.
Not so. The DMCA protects, in the way you're thinking of, access controls. If the numbers encoded with a barcode are copyrighted and encrypted content, then the DMCA would say something about software which unencrypted them. But hardware and software which simply displayed to the user the encrypted data as read from the paper would be okay, because they'd still need the approved access control software to view it.
But, because barcode aren't encrypted, the DMCA doesn't apply at all. The UCITA does, if you're in a location that has it, but that's it. And that only applies if you install the software.
No laws were broken by writing this software.
True. And as imp states, the phone-home is at the next level (actually, several levels up :-) in the stack. Application layer versus hardware layer.
Frankly, I don't see how this hack can threaten their business model.
A Linux guy writes a device driver that allows it to scan barcodes and not phone home. BFD.
Something that might bave been a threat to their business model would have been a Linux device driver that did phone home -- to somewhere other than Digital Convergence -- and tried to build a database of customer information for future resale to some other privacy invader.
While it's still possible that someone might code such a thing, who the hell would run it?
(For that matter, how many of us geeks would have run their Windoze software that phoned home to DCNV? ;)
Interesting thought - Windoze users are used to getting closed-source binary-only distributions of software, which makes this type of product (the :CueCat that phones home) feasible.
I wonder if DCNV will release source code to the Linux version of their client.
I wonder - if they do - who among us will compile and run it?
Maybe we don't want our computers phoning home.
Broader question: In a world in which there exist open sourced apps which don't phone home and which can be inspected at the source code level to verify that they can't phone home, why would anyone choose to run an app that couldn't be trusted?
The "Give away the razor, sell the blades" model isn't in jeopardy. Despite their management team's abysmal English skills, DCNV has an interesting product and viable strategy for compiling large databases of consumer preferences.
What might be in jeopardy, two or three years down the road, is the whole "hide functionality from the user and collect data surreptitiously" business model espoused by everyone from MSFT (think .NET) and Doublefsck on down to DCNV.
Trying to sue every species of penguin into extinction is gonna be a much bigger different kettle of herring than a cat-shaped barcode reader and some flying butt monkeys...
None of the stuff you mention even applies to this case though. Even if they were claiming IP rights to the actual printed codes, nobody is copying their bar codes. The protocol was reverse engineered, something that is apparently (remains to be decided in court) upheld even by the DMCA. Even if they claim it as a trade secret, reverse engineering can make it legally public.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You can patent a business model and keep others from using the same model. They've mentioned no such patent, and it wouldn't apply in this case anyway since nobody is trying to duplicate their business model (probably with good reason).
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yes, their buisness model is shaky - they had to know that some people would find a way to get around their software costs. But why not use this mistake for their own good. It sounds like CueCat may become very well supported under Linux - and with companies like IBM and SCO promoting Linux in places of buisness they could probably work with the Linux community to officially support the open source drivers, stop giving away their hardware and start selling it by promoting its market share, "poven reliability", and multi-platform capabilities. This could turn out very well for them. Bad publicity is better than no publicity.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
US6098106: Method for controlling a computer with an audio signal
Though I don't get the audio signal part. The text of the patent seems pretty similar though. And the patent seems really trivial.
Also, the patent covers the whole application, not the specific encoding scheme that the CueCat uses to talk to the computer with. So if the linux driver only allows reading of barcodes, it should be okay and not get tangled in this patent...?
--
What might be ammusing is an app that does phone home, based on an ID you choose and a list of barcodes that you choose...
You could choose to use the serial number from your scanner or one made up, and to scan a list of barcodes from your favorite products, or to download a list of such from the net...
Imagine if you and all of your friends started scanning the barcodes for your favorite small bands, thus tweaking the demographics "Hey look bob, thousands of our customers are fans of Band X, they've got as big a following as the Spice Girls (or whatever)."
Then they sell these demographics and companies like the RIAA buy them, and then start promoting bands like Band X more because of their already large following.
Use their own invasive techniques against them. Like a Neilson family taking bribes to watch certain shows.
Even better, you wouldn't have to sign any contract, and you'd be performing this intended use of the site, to look up products by their barcodes, so they'd have no legitimate problem with this.
Then, if they get too uppity, we simply reveal than a huge percentage of their demographics are completely false, driving them out of business when people refuse to pay for incorrect statistics.
Especially when many other barcode readers were out there allowing access before the CueCat came out.
--
They have no patent. As other posts have pointed out, they've not listed any patent numbers, so it's reasonable that they do not hold a patent on what was reverse engineered.
Secondly, the "protect it or lose it" defense does not apply to patents. This only applies to trademarks. Since there are most likely no trademarks being infringed upon in the reverse engineered drivers, this does not apply either.
I would say the fact that they are attempting insuate both of these in their letters, without providing proof of either (probably because they don't have either) is a fairly bogus thing to do. The best it will do is upset people, the worst it will do is bring legal action back against them.
** Martin
You're wrong. That only applies to trademarks. Patent is yours to do whatever you please with it and you can enforce it as selectively as you want. A trademark violation however.. If you don't defend that it's gone. Trademark is lot more abstract though(just a name) so it is understandable. So repeat after me: You cannot lose your patent by not enforcing it!
Umm. You know what? The loss-leader "business model" deserves to be destroyed. Utterly and completely. Nothing bad about that happening.
The driver permits access to the numbers/letters which are usually already printed on the barcode (just in electronic form).
Hal Duston
hald@sound.net
If Al Gore invented the internet, why is it named after George W. Bush?
I wouldn't take any company memo seriously if the CEO couldn't spell "lose" correctly.
Actually the bullseye and rectangular codes were competing standards, the rectangular code you see today was sponsored by IBM. This was in the 70's when IBM was "it", so their standard won. Note: this information is from a good article in Smithsonian magazine from last year.
Your are correct about barcodes being read from every direction, its part of the spec.
Then it would be identical to the ones we use
where I work. All I have to do was use the
keyboard entry commands and never scan bar code
when the bar code program isn't running.
Sure, and they can do that by having you sign an agreement up front restricting how you are allowed to use it. Unfortunately for DC, they didn't do that. Too bad.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
> Probably some guy who starts his memos with "IANAL..."
Or maybe McElwaine himself :)
Actually, according to their EULA, they claim that they're only loaning the CueCat to you, therefore, it's their property and they can control how you use it.
The problem they have there, is that the scanner is a GIFT untill you agree to the EULA and allow that it is a loan. OTOH, if you just throw the CD away unopened, it remains a nice gift. Even if you dod click agree on the EULA, it might still be a gift since the legality of click-wrap licenses is questionable. UCITA is not in force in most states and may never be.
It seems that by trying to maximise the hype by making what was intended as a loan look like a gift, they unintentionally made it an actual gift. Serves them right IMHO.
They are defending their right not to have their intellectual Property reverse engineered and openly distributed.
. html#PC90
:)), which is a completely different orange.
And, pray tell, which IP law gives them this right?
It is not copyright infringement - the drivers were independently developed, not stolen.
It is not trademark
It is not patented
It is, afaik, a trade secret.
A trade secret is acquired by improper means if:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/ch90.text
As you might have noticed, that law does indeed not mention reverse engineering.
You don't pull a microwave apart and put it back together then complain when you get radiation poisoning do you ?
But then we are into liability law (or rather, stupidity
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
And just to piss you off I picked up 4 from 4 different stores. Paid cash and gave then a bogus name and address at each. Wank! Wank! Wank!
Little do you know that Digital Convergence entered into an agreement with Radio Shack to get the register security tapes for each CueCat device. The images are integrated into their master database an correlated to your real identity (using your image captured at the cash machine). Then, to enforce their EULA, they put you onto every mailing list in the known world and flood your mailbox with junk. The postman, already irritable from fighting with your neighbor's rotweiller, decides that you and your 20 kilos of junk mail must stop. You come home after work and you are met by a hail of gunfire from the postman's AK-47. Death by marketing. Digital Convergence then wallows in smug satisfaction as you are placed 2 meters down in the earth. "That's the last time HE'LL ever fsck with us. Heh, heh, heh."
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
In his position, I would be pretty pissed off with all the self-righteousness and posturing in these messages, just 'cos some guy decided to reverse engineer his protocol and put his livelihood at risk, not even for serious reasons, but as an amusing hobby.
Two things. First, I'd be a lot more pissed at myself for not forseeing this inevitable outcome, and for relying on such a weak business model as this one could end up being. Second, it remains to be seen whether his business model will succeed or fail. I think the number of people who use these readers in unintended ways will be completely insignificant next to the number of people who take one home, throw it in a drawer and never touch it again.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Too bad you can't copyright a name or title. Try a trademark.
I can understand the company's need to protect their IP, however, this would be like M$ sueing the X consortium for supporting 5 button mice or something equally crazy.
however, If I had one of thoses scanners (I coulnd't get one in canada) I would certainly be writting code so I could mess with it in BSD or Linux or whatever the hell else I'm running at the moment.
Its really a waste of time for this company to go after some hacker in a dark basement somewhere (kinda like me) for playing with a nifty piece of hardware. Sure they could go to court and most likely some judge with his head up his ass would rule in their favor, but the code is out tere, and even if they could get all the copies off the net, it would be 10 minutes before somebody else would do the same damn thing.
Its simply a losing battle for a company that most likely in dire need of some funds after giving away a whole lot of hardware.
*giggle*. That old USENET archive brought back some pleasant memories. And besides, seeing ALL the CAPS in the ARTICLE from the CUECAT(tm) guys brought back some LESS PLEASANT memories.
So I figured I'd share the misery. :-) Glad to see I'm not the only one who remembers.
ObUSENET:
"Serdar Argic HOWLING THROUGH THE WIRES tour!"
"Un-ALTERED" (oh, we covered him!)
"PLUTONIUM!" (nuff said!)
Digital Convegience and Radio Shack didn't give this away for you to have fun with! You're supposed to make them rich! Now, get it right and go back to Radio Shack and buy stuff! Geez... darn iggorant public anyways... can't trust em to do anything...
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Unless they keep it encrypted all the way to their web site, where they've got the mate to the key that signed it.
Trademarks are the only type of IP with this requirement. If they are having issues with the open source drivers saying "cuecat", then they should just SAY SO and I'm sure that we could come up with a brand new name for the drivers that imply no public association with the people who
developed the Radio Shack software.
That's it! That's where that 5 year figure came from! It took 5 years for the MarketDroids to come up with a name!
It is a promotional scam for vendor lock-in. You're getting nothing for free, you're paying for the device in the fees to the service.
As long as you are told the conditions up front (i.e., have to sign a contract), I see no problem. Bad schemes will just die out because the marketplace won't buy them.
What I'm miffed about is that MPAA, DC and others don't have the balls to state up front what their conditions are. What they do is to try to cloak their merchandise as regular goods, and then sic lawyers at people when they don't use the goods according to their businessplan.
If every encrypted DVD had a sign saying "can only be played on DVDCCA licensed players in zone n, no other rights, including fair use, are transferred to the purchaser of this DVD", I'd actually be very happy because it would mean that Joe Customer will be informed about what the MPAA is trying to do with our rights.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
What Intellectual property?
What does RMS have to say about this? Surely the source to GNU/Bar_Code can't be stifled!
I'm sorry, but the arguement that was made about defending IP or loosing it is simply wrong. If you have a trademark, yes, you have to defend it or loose it (witness Kleenex and Xerox, for example). That is not true of patents or of copyright, however. I think that in some cases there can be anti-trust problems with selectively enforced patents, but I don't see that being a problem here.
And, of course, IANAL, and YMMV.
Silly signature limit . . .
Also from USPTO.GOV
Searching 1976-2000...
Results of Search in 1976-2000 db for:
cuecat: 0 patents.
No patents have matched your query
Well would you look at that!
Of course it is, so is the current CueCat. That isn't really relevent though. My point was that the hardware could have been done (from DC's POV) right.
If the output of the cuecat contain information that is copyrightable then, reverse engeering it could be legal. Let's look at the ula:
"... [The] CueCat reader contain trade secrets and other proprietary information of Digital:Convergence and its licensors"
Does the output of the CueCat contain proprietary information and/or copyrighted information?
But like you said, is the serial number infomation copyrightable? I would have to find out more information about the output of the cuecat. I bet you "something" in the output is copyrighted. Heck if they put "CueCat" in the output somewhere, that would be copyrightable, and therefor protected under the DMCA!!! Scary...
The ula states that, in more or less words everything about the cuecat is copyrighted,here it is:
Copyright
:CRQ and :CueCat are trademarks of DigitalConvergence.:com Inc.
Copyright 1999-2000 DigitalConvergence.:com Inc. All rights reserved.
MarNuke
MarNuke
Exactly. If you go into Radio Shack, they try to shove it into your bag, they don't try to warn you that it could be taken away later.
--
if someone were to write a handy Open
Source app that let you take the ISBNs off your books and create a
cool catalog of your home library or CD collection, suddenly they
could have a million people wanting their "free" device.
we now have just that, thanks to me and zarf.
see http://www.plover.net/~skip/
Patents can be enforced or not enforced; it's up to the holder therof to determine if they're actually being infringed.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Those Tercel's kick ass! I've got one, a 97', and my mom still drives her 85'! I wish they hadn't stoped making them :(
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
And even if they -did- stick a license on the hardware, is it enforceable?
If some company sells some product, they could stick a license on it that says if you use this product for purposes not outlined in the license, you have to stick a fork in your ear.
If I smash it with a sledge hammer instead of following their "license", does that mean I'm legally required to stick a fork in my own ear?
Just 'cause it's written doesn't make it so.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I got it! 5 years to make the "cute cat case"
Funny to see a CEO use the incorrect word twice in this document. He said "loose" when he meant "lose". They're not the same!
Spend less money on lawyers and more on editors!
-core
Neal Stephenson can be pretty insightful, all right. This seems like one more thing leading at least in the direction of real life spew hacker profiling. At least, if they actually do care about people who are running Linux working around their profiler by writing their own software.
The commentary is "less than optimal" in several places:
These folks worked hard to write code to use this piece of hardware
I'm not sure if that's true... I think it was actually pretty easy for them (according to other posts).
Imagine if Linus had been forced by Intel to take down kernel versions that used their intellectual property in the early part of the last decade.
Bad example... it assumes that there was some corporate IP being violated (or at least used) in both this case and with Linus. I don't think there was. No copyright, trademark, patent, or trade secret was involved in either case.
Your CueCat, like DeCSS, is going to redefine what IP is.
It better not ;) Seriously, I don't see where the DMCA would be invlolved here. DeCSS has a chance of messing up Fair Use and free speech for people, but this CueCat garbage won't have a chance. There aren't consortiums of monopolies, billions of dollars, a biased judge, and a special interest law helping these guys out (unlike in the DeCSS case).
IP is a weird beast. If you don't defend it, you don't have it.
That's only true of trademarks and trade secrets. I don't see how the former could be involved unless the free (speech) program calls itself "Digital:Convergence" or "CueCat". I don't see how the latter could be involved since no information was used other than the output from the hardware itself.
I imagine if Adaptec or Matrox ... their IP would also be unusable under Linux.
Another bad example... what IP? The card? Hardware isn't IP. You can patent it or copyright the design, but the physical object isn't intellectual property. It is physical property... of the consumer!
If Microsoft wants to play by the rules of the GPL, I say let 'em.
Yes, you are correct that their argument is bogus. If MS did this it would just be fine. However why should Microsoft make a derivative work? Just like the Linux guys did, they could make their own version. The Linux version could be used as documentation of how the protocol works, thus making the job easier. Your argument here isn't actually wrong; it just doesn't address the main point of the "big bad Microsoft" scenario. (It wasn't a valid point anyway.)
If I own a Ford, do I need a Ford wrench to fiddle with my engine? If I buy a frame, do I need a nail & hammer from the same company in order to hang a picture on my wall?
These are so-so examples... see other comments for better metaphores. For example you could improve the latter one, "the frame came with a nail and hammer but you used your own instead".
I'd also like to say something to the readers: don't get angry and attack these guys.
Depending on what you mean by this statement, it could be a case of "do what I say and not what I do". I agree that there should be no uninformed flammage, DOS attacks, mail bombs, etc. However, well worded arguments can and should be distributed and emailed to the company. We should _not_ stand up for this kind of behavior. And we shouldn't let a single person (like youself) be our spokesperson on the issue... see my critique above. If anyone should be a "spokesperson" it should be the author(s) of the Linux drivers.
So, I basically agree with you, but I don't really like a lot of the details in your comments. Some people will disagree with me too. Like some other posters said: I think it just would have been better if the article consisted mostly of the original letter and everyone had a chance to post their own comments on the issue without having to address the points made in the comments in the article itself.
The CueCat reverse engineering is remarkably similar to this, except much more simple. The hackers merely had to figure out what the output meant, which apparently was pretty easy. They treated the CueCat as a black box, recording the output from the scanner and figuring out what it meant. No harm, no foul.
Copyright NEVER protects against reverse engineering. Only patenting does. And patenting also protects against clean room implementations. You cannot use the invention specified in the patent to accomplish the patent's claims, and ignorance is no excuse. You can make a clean room implementation and hope that it doesn't use the same methods to accomplish the same goal. If it
does use the same methods to accomplish the same claims, you are in violation.
I think in this case the intellectual property is probably copyrighted, and they are screwed.
Or is it Digital Convergance? If so, I'm not entirely sure I want to use a product from a company headed by somone who is semi-literate, judging by the myriad grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors in the letter.
--meredith
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis
It'll mean that Sony has to change their business model. Too bad for them.
You seem to be laboring under the assumption that just because a company formulates a business model, they have a right to succeed with it. They don't. If a business model doesn't work, the company that banked on it loses. They don't have the right to sue others to protect a faulty business model.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Check here... according to their 'license' which you have to go to their website to see, that is what they did: Go here
> Is this a joke? yeah, it is ;). hehe; i probably should have made the joke a little more obvious
No big trick. barcodes are designed to be read bidirectionally. Also, the cuecat has a single light sensor, Hold it however you want; all it looks for is changes in luminosity. That's why a "quiet area" is needed before and after the barcode itself.
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Why does no one see 3dfx to be the evil company that Digital Convergence has been made out to be in the above comments by Mr. Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda?
The only real difference between 3dfx hardware running well with linux, and Digital Convergence hardware running well with linux, is that Daryll Strauss signed an NDA with 3dfx and kept the IP of 3dfx closed source. Glide on linux is closed source. When was the last time a slashdot user played Quake3 under linux using glide, a *gasp* closed source piece of software. It was probably less than minutes ago.
Digital Convergence has every right to take the steps they have taken so far. As OSS advocates, we may not like it. But keep in mind, we are the ones breaking laws, not Digital Convergence.
You do not have the right to modify anything you buy Mr. Malda. If you buy electronics and build an FM transmiter of a moderate amount of power, the FCC will find you, and they will fine you. I'm all for civil liberties, and I personally agree that writing my own glide drivers, or my own bar code reader drivers, should be legal, and I should be able to distribute them. This is not always possible or legal in today's system.
If you modify your car to make it look cool by taking the bumpers off of it, again police will stop you. Its simply not legal. Neither is reverse engineering in this country.
The proper way to further the cause of OSS is certainly not defiance. Instead, simply do not buy the products of such a company. Let them know that if they had OSS drivers, and supported OSS, that you would buy from them, but until then, you won't.
When was the last time you bought a book from Amazon? Is the one-click patent so different from this case? Both companies are obviously holding close to something rediculously elementary for life. Boycott seems so worthless, but as one person it's just as powerful, if not more, than the one vote you get as a citizen through democratic process.
...could've been avoided had they included the license with the reader. It says:
:CueCat reader. (emphasis mine.)
Except as expressly permitted in this License, you may not reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, or distribute the
Since they didn't, how is one supposed to know? At any rate I think DC is waisting their time. As a previous post pointed out, it's being used as a cool toy, not as a means to access or contribute to their database. If they didn't want the hacks to hack it, they should've used a more sophisticated encryption alogrithm.
This is like Bill Gates claiming that Linux destroys 5 years work in NT (assuming Linux were a threat to NT). If you spend all that effort making a driver for Windows that works with all kinds of OS configurations and sound cards, and along comes a Linux driver ... THAT is NOT a theft of any of your work (even though if Linux were a threat to it, which I highly doubt, it only means your work is wasted, not stolen).
:CUE:CAT only useable for its intended purpose. I suspect design shortcuts were made in ignorance of the resourcefulness of the inhabitants of the people that really created the Internet so other people like Jovan could use it to market to millions.
Just how much of that work is really stolen in this? If DC does make and release a Linux driver, then what? I can assure you that if it is not satisfactory to the Linux community, they will still tear it apart. If you make the driver in object code binary only, they will reverse engineer it to source code anyway. An army of lawyers can't stop it because it all happens and millions of copies made before a lawyer even wakes up.
It sounds to me like MOST of what DC did was investment, and wants to even count Net Talk Live in it just to up the apparent ante.
It also sounds to me like technology poorly done. I don't know what technology you actually used because I haven't looked at it. But I know that I could have picked technology that could not have been cracked and thus made the
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Sorry... go here
This whole situation reminds me of X10. They come up with some pretty cool hardware that appeals to geeks. They give away a starter kit for free--give away the razors, sell the blades idea. Pretty cool, a ton of geeks fork over the $5.00 S/H. X10 sells a bunch of gear.
Geeks come up with some cool implementations of this hardware. They write some software, that works with Linux (X10 hasn't released any that I know of). X10 sells a bunch more gear.
The difference is that X10 is giving away the razors and selling the blades. The Digital Convergence guys are giving away the razors and trying to sell blades that can easily be made of of normal everyday household items.
Which, isn't neccessarily a flawed business model--someone brought up the blinking 12:00 analogy.
Also, convenience is an issue: Kool-aid sells two main types--with sugar and without. They make a much better margin on the 'with sugar' ones--but they aren't quite as popular as the 20 for $1 kind. I guess I mean that people will pay a lot for value added convenience--and Digital Convergence needs to work hard to provide it.
Anyway, I don't understand why it is that they don't sell a SOHO multi-purpose barcode? Seems like a cool peripheral. Hopefully someone will see the demand for such a product and release one--perhaps even X10.
-k
The DeCSS case that I assume that you're refering to is not a trade secret case. It's a DMCA case involving copyright protection being circumvented. And under the DMCA, DeCSS is illegal. It's the DMCA that is most likely unconstitutional.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
The real issue here (as with DeCSS) is that proper reverse-engineering is not unethical. Therefore, it should not be illegal either. Unfortunately, laws have been unfairly passed and mangled to the point that many ethical actions are now illegal.
Just because a company doesn't like people reverse-engineering their products, that doesn't mean that reverse-engineering is ethically wrong. What it means is that companies need to find ways of making profits that do not depend on keeping information secrets! Consumers should have a basic human right to figure out how something works and then take advantage of that knowledge in any way they wish.
Unfortunately, companies have succeeded in pushing government to outlaw reverse-engineering in many cases.
You can't encourage companies to behave ethically because they don't care about ethics. And you can't make legal arguments against these companies because the law is now usually on their side. The only thing you CAN do is make ethical arguments to your representatives and politicians urging them to retract legislation such as DMCA.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
I totally agree. Rob Malda doesn't have any experience in US law or open source software that qualifies his opinions any more than this site's typical reader. He barely obtained a BS in computer science (his words) from a less than prestigious university (when was the last time Hope gave MIT's media lab a shiver?). He's no better than your typical high school student who is interested in computers and politics when it comes to this story. So why are his "cutting insights" in bold on the main page of the article? Because he's a vain, self-important pretender who has contributed one thing to society: a web site that he sold before the ink on the napkin Andover wrote their initital offer upon dried. (Can you tell I don't like him?)
Should be a correction. There are instances in which it can be illegal to use a product in a manner inconistent with it's stated purpose. Generally because using the product improperly could harm others. This is why we have laws about what you can do with your car, guns, etc. I can't think of a single such law that would be applicable in this situation though.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I've got the same issue with Ixla who sold a cheap camera (so far so good,) and said that it could be a web cam, right on the box, (that what I wanted and why I bought it, to replace my aged B&W Connctix,) but they haven't even finished writing the DRIVERs yet.
This is on a Mac so it wont be a Linux/Unix issue until OS X is released, but Jezz Lou-eez! I'd love to write one for 'em and get to use my new Cam instead of feeling I should sue for false advertising.
Why are people so bad at estimating the strength and breadth of their markets?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Lets see if we agree.
How quickly it was broken is irrelavant.
There are no IP rights being broken.
The drivers are legal according to our interpretation.
Is this right?
Shit! I installed the Linux driver for this thing, and I've got 4th degree plasma burns. You're saying I have no right to complain about such an unsafe product??
The higer the 'degree' of a burn, the less serious it is, the higest number used is 3
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Just so you can keep this in mind, the first field of the period-delimited response returned by the CueCat is a -unique tracking number- used to provide statistical analysis for targeted advertising.
... ...) with a null, or with garbage. Then you're not being tracked by Digital:Convergence on whatever you brush against this thing.
Memories of the Pentium serial number fiasco, anyone?
If you're writing Perl scripts (or whatever) to do lookups on the cuecat site for UPC information, replace the first field (.C3SDJFH2E
I suspect someone told some geek to talk to the geeks on /. "in their language" to "explain the problem". He probably also believes every word of what he's said -- it feels like his work is on the line. However, he has no basis in history to prove that protecting his device like this actually helps (consider Apple vs "M$" in the 80's for just one example). Unfortunately, when your work is on the line, it's hard to realize this.
Gwendolyn R. Schmidt
Intellectual Property law takes on three main forms: Trade Secrecy Law, Patent Law, and Copyright Law.
Actually there are four since trademark law should be included as a form of IP (and a particularly insidious form at that).
It doesn't fall under Patent law unless they have a patent that hasn't yet been mentioned (this would have to be a patent on the software, because that's what's being recreated)
It's not even the software that's being reverse-engineered. It's just the protocol that the reader uses to send data to the computer.
It is a company's sad obligation to go after everyone who is violating one of these IP laws, lest they lose protection under the law
This simply isn't true. At least not in the sense that they are claiming. Companies are obligated to enforce their trademarks or risk having them become diluted and therefore public domain (note that the bar for a tm being considered "diluted" is still set pretty darn high). Since trademarks don't seem to be the issue here (though it could be, they were extremely vague regarding their "IP"), this doesn't apply.
Trade secrets must also be enforced, but in a different way. Companies must actively prosecute anyone violating an NDA or commiting espionage against the company. If the company can show that the secret was obtained illegally, they can prevent it from being used. However, if the secret is reverse-engineered, then it can be legally published. That's the trade-off of a trade secret versus a patent.
Something that I just learned is that there is a certain requirement placed on patent holders as well. According to this, patent holders may lose their recourse if they knew or should have known about an infringement, but take no action for 6 years or more. It should be pointed out that this does not require them to take action in all cases or risk losing control of their patent, which is what they seem to be claiming in their letter regarding their "IP." It simply means that they can't knowingly allow the infringement to occur for an unreasonable amount of time without taking action in that particular instance. Failing that, they only lose their recourse against that particular company or individual, not the rights to pursue other infringers. This seems to be designed to thwart "submarine patents." Not sure how effective it is at that, but since they don't mention any patents in their letter, it doesn't seem to apply in this situation.
Companies can selectively prosecute copyright violations to their heart's content. There is no requirement for enforcement, so this doesn't apply either.
Now, given that none of the forms of IP have been violated, what exactly are they claiming that these developers have done wrong? That's the real question, and one that they conveniently glossed over in their letter, instead preferring to try to intimidate, scare, and finally appeal to some imagined form of kinship. I found the letter to be quit offensive and demeaning. I'm going to write an email to them and tell them that myself.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You are going to call me a idiot when you fail to realize that the DMCA is no way what so ever relevant in this bs over this damn cuecat?
You are the fool, the idiot, the moron, or what ever you want to say about me. You are the one that can't put one and one together and come up with something corelated with another thing.
How would you explain it? You can't, you are to damn stupid to piece something together. If you ever read the damn DMCA you would understand that this is 100% involed with DMCA, and you would understand that before the DMCA something like this would be luaghed and tossed out of court before it's even reached the judge, and the planfit would be left crying. That is why we have the DMCA today!!
If you had a single working brain cell, you would understand that the law that protect non-digtal products are no longer the same laws that protect digtal products.
As far as people being corrupted, people have the freedom to make thier own choices, and to also have the freedom to express themself, but maybe you haven't heard that one? Maybe you don't know what give me the right and the right of others to express my feeling?
How about instead of my shutting up about the how this story is releated to the DMCA and instead tell the reading out there where to read the DMCA for their selves and they can make thier own choice. But maybe you don't believe that? Maybe you think we should all shut the hell up about the DMCA and have it rammed up our ass?? Isn't that what got us into this mess? It's lazy, stupid fucks that tell people to shutup and be quite that put us into the mess, and it's the strong willed people that won't back down that will get us through it. Go rape a dog you damn Nazi bastard.
I'm finshing wasting my time with a moron like you.
MarNuke
MarNuke
"It would be illegal for me to use a star-trek like replicator to exactly atom-for-atom replicate Ford many times"
That's interesting. What happens when that becomes possible? Most companies are, in all reality, re-using the brilliant ideas of a few. I mean the car is the car. "Fine German engineering" aside, it's still four wheels driven by gas exploding against cylinders. If you can pop one out of a replicator you don't need the Ford Motor Co., do you? You certainly don't need Mercedes-Fucking-Benz. When all that's left is the idea, I wonder how long our current social and economic system will last. A corrupt and idiotic congress may make the copying of physical objects illegal, but the law would probably be violated so much it would make the entire legal system a shambles. The whole game of supply and demand would be reduced to raw materials. And the real winners of that new economy might turn out to be the garbagemen - they would have all the raw material, of course.
The media is pretty diverse. Hell, Slashdot and 2600 are part of the media. Personally I'd love to see some tech site get ahold of the canidates/campaign managers/whoever and get the scoop on these issues. Even if it was some vague comment or look at out party's platform on this issue here would be interesting to know.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Wrong. Removing a firing pin from a semi-automatic weapon, thereby converting it into a fully automatic weapon is illegal, even though you haven't harmed anyone. Same with sawing off the barrel of a shotgun if you make it too short.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Their engineers must be pretty stupid if it took them 5 years to develop the cue:cat.
Inside Digital:Divergence.
Engineer: What's this funny plastic thing with the red cap and the two metal legs.
Engineer 2: I don't know, I'll have to look it up.
Sometime later.....
Engineer 2: I found it, it's an LED---Light emitting diode.
Engineer 1: Diode, I've heard of those somewhere.
Yep, 5 years folks.
There's no communicating with the hardware. The scanner plugs into the keyboard port and ouputs characters just as if they were typed at a keyboard. There is no communicating there, that's done on the level of the motherboard.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Always nice to see someone supporting alternative business models.
"So, ya want some more?"
"please...."
"bring me $300 tomorrow morning"
....
But seriously. If someone freely gives you something, they surrender all the rights of ownership to you. I seriously doubt that an agreement which you don't even see (and by extension have a chance to agree or disagree with) until after you are given a product has any legal weight. Sooner or later shrink-wrap licenses are going to be struck down as unconstitutional.
The Cuecat people are just pissed because their dreams of wealth are crumbling due to the flaws of a hare-brained marketing scheme. They screwed up, and now they're threatening those who took advantage of their offer, in hopes of squeezing money out of the market with a legal fist, if not with a genuinely marketable product.
zeke
Read the law:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ 35/ch29.html
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
"Copyright NEVER protects against reverse engineering. Only patenting does." not only does it protect against it, it also makes it unneccesary. because they patented item must be opened / described / explained.
Given some experience in electronic product cost estimating, I believe you're a little high in your $20 number. Here's my estimated breakdown: 1. Reader wand (plastic $.05, reader source illuminator $.02, reader receiver $.10, processor IC $.35, cord & plug $.25). Unit total: $.75 for raw material. Call it $1.00 assembled & tested. 2. Packing material, manual & license docs, CD. $.35 3. Postage, 3rd class or lower. $.35 (??) So the total is about $1.70 delivered to the target consumer. Now compare this to the value of the information. Very interesting...
In order to have a valid license, I have to be given the opportunity to refuse it prior to committing to it.
Ah, but you are given the chance to refuse. Your refusal to open or use a product is a valid negation. Thus, everything comes into view again.
Personally, in this case I don't mind CmdrTaco's comments with the story. Just think of it this way: it kept 100 or more people from posting them instead. The argument the corporate droid gave is obviously bogus, so best to knock it down straightaway and then we can argue how bogus it is instead of whether it is bogus. :-)
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
The guy asked the question and I answered.
And I got +2 because after a certain amount of karma gained you automatically get + 2. You should try it instead of hiding behind A/C with your comments
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Actually Aplpha and beta radiation are too slow and weak to penetrate the outer layers of dead skin on the body, they actually have to be ingested to do any harm, however, there isn't anything that will completely block gamma radiation. Just thought you'd like to know.
"God is REAL
If the out was only the barcode, no, it can not be copyrighted, but if the output from the CueCat is copyrightable, then it's protected by the DMCA.
MarNuke
MarNuke
They're backwards backwards. Selling Hardware wouldn't be nearly as profitable as selling an intangible "service" over the course of several years per customer. You can only buy hardware once, you can buy the service all the time. ISPs are always giving away free modems if you'll sign up with their monthly fee based service
Actually, since reverse engineering is legal, and since all D:C did was send a nice, threatening letter...nobody on either side has broken any laws. But this is the least of the problems with your argument...
They sure will. But will they bust you for taking apart your radio? No. You have every right to take apart your radio, and even to build a transmitter with the parts. They'll just bust you for transmitting over regulated frequencies without a licence.
You're wrong again. I can take any part of my car off that I want to, including the bumpers. And as long as I'm driving my bumperless car on my own property, the police have no right to stop me. On the other hand, if I go onto public roads like that -- if I go onto property that isn't mine, and break the rules set by the property owners -- then yes, they certainly can stop me.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
It is a company's sad obligation to go after everyone who is violating one of these IP laws, lest they lose protection under the law
Wrong, this is only true if there is an infringement of a trade secret or a trademark. Copyrights and Patents do not lose their clout if undefended, they can be successfully selectively enforced.
-- iCEBaLM
I believe you may be under the impression that I think reverse engineering is bad; quite the opposite. I am not opposed to things like DeCSS, the cuecat fiasco, satellite decoding, or anything else whatseover. I am very much in favor of it.
If we use DeCSS as a rough example, we see that, once accused of doing something 'illegal', the DeCSS crowd responds with 'but we had a moral cause; we wanted a linux DVD player'. This is nothing but 'making an excuse'. The *REAL* answer should be 'we don't NEED an excuse to do what we did. It is our right'.
I very much understand the history of software in use today.
If you make excuses for the reverse-engineering you do, based on some high moral cause, or whatever, you simply give your opponents (the industry) ammunition to fight back with. If you flat out come out and say 'I've always had the right to do this.' what can they say? They cannot fight you other than to try to show how you do not have that right.
But there's no law that says "if a manufacturer says that you can only do X with their product, then you must listen to them" for every X that a manufacturer could dream up.
--
I'm beginning to think that many of the reverse engineering projects these days are losing site of the fact that they are destroying a potential revenue stream for the original developers.
What's the beef?
If DC wanted to make sure that you only use the scanner with their software, why didn't they just make you sign a contract saying so when you receive the cuecat?
Oh, no. What they are doing, is that they pretend to give it away for free. Then, when someone exercise their right to modify the device to be suitable for their own use, they come running with lawyers and some half-cooked story about IP theft that has no basis in real laws.
Is it really our responsibility to protect their broken business plan?
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
History of Barcodes is at, of all places [Lasco Fittings]. It makes interesting reading - go there!
;-)
I do IT work for a medium sized PHVAC distributor, and we are both a Lasco Bathware and Lasco Fittings distributor. You would be utterly amazed at how many products in this industry do not ship with barcodes. In fact, there isn't even standardization among UPC's (like a 1/2" PVC 90 is different for everyone) in many lines. They're all afraid if they share codes you'll order from the cheapest supplier instead of the one you already have printed your own barcodes for! Or something like that anyways...
Chris
Even better, Rot14 is an assymetric public key system, where you can keep the decryption algorithm (Rot12) a Trade Secret!
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
The copyrighted work is the serial number implanted the data output of the cuecat. Not the barcode.
Or are you claiming that the DMCA covers the :C:C in some other bizarre way? No other data is being copied with the Linux driver, so I don't see how it could be anything else.
Is the serial number data copied by the linux driver? yes.
MarNuke
MarNuke
What I meant was that I was making an assumption about what the previous poster meant because I didn't understand them. Not an assumption about what the :C:C actually does.
This is what IS protected, and the DMCA states if you try to go around this scrambling you are "circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title [DMCA]."
What copyrighted work are you claiming to be protected by the :C:C? Some copyrighted barcodes? The DMCA states, in the introduction:
In other words, if there are thousands of other barcode readers, then the :C:C doesn't effectively prevent copying the barcode data.
Or are you claiming that the DMCA covers the :C:C in some other bizarre way? No other data is being copied with the Linux driver, so I don't see how it could be anything else.
--
>>Intel wasn't able to stop AMD and Cyrix from using MMX, even though intel claimed that it was something that was necessary to protect their business.
Well, that's not really true. Intel has a broad cross licesense with National Semiconductor and IBM. Both or those companies can clone and market any intel chip. So, Cryix, AMD etc. had IBM and National make their chips. This is also how VIA gets away with making some of thier chipsets for US consumption.
That patenet covers a different part of their software. You hook up a cable from your TV audio out to your soundblaster line in. When it hears the correct tone, it brings up a web page about whatever the advertiser wants.
Yes, I said advertiser. The one point of this is to bring up a web page along with the commercial. As to why anyone would install this I have no idea.
The Bazaar is being run by Fascists.
And populated by Chicken Littles, if you're any evidence. Do you realize that under real fascism, you would have been censored, or worse, for what you just posted?
Do you realize how much your statement dilutes the definition of fascism?
Make me aerodynamic in the evening air
Right. If you kill someone with a product, it's the illegal act of killing that's a problem, not that you did something unauthorized with the product.
--
This is not the same as trademark law. A company can still selectively enforce its patents without risking the loss of control that a trademark holder can suffer due to dilution. The link you give just explains that a company cannot take an unreasonably long amount of time to bring suit against someone allegedly infringing on their patent because it could result in material predjudice to the defendant. This bit of law could be designed to undermine "submarine patents." It does not require that the patent holder prosecute every known infringement as trademark law does, therefore their "defend it or lose it" claim is still false.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
No doubt. Do you want to see products from companies that have made a lot of money by screwing other people, or do you want to surf epinions to see what end-users actually find useful?
--
Include a good linux driver on CD shiped with this
thingy, and 99% of the users will not even bother
looking for an alternative.
As simple as that: People do not REALLY care about
freedom of krenel drivers, but they do care about
functionality.
Actually, according to their EULA, they claim that they're only loaning the CueCat to you, therefore, it's their property and they can control how you use it.
Counter-examples abound... renters can't completely control how you use their apartment... bankers can't completely control how you use their money they loan to you.
--
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
For all those who feel like responding to this flamebait, please don't. This idiot knows full well no one is claiming any rights to their software.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Wooha, a little "business logic" aikido...you want my personal habits data? Well, sirs and madams, *here* you have it!
This reminds me of an amusing story I ran across in the NYTimes: "Cultural Sabotage Waged in Cyberspace"...
;)..
// ///#\)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. DeGraff is hoping that his investment will be used for projects like making "anti-souvenirs," aimed at various social injustices and offered to tourists, or purchasing recorded books by conservative pundits so leftist speeches can be recorded over the original material and the tapes can be put back onto sales racks in book stores.
Clearly, this is no typical investment firm. RTMark (its name derives from "registered trademark" but is pronounced "art mark") describes itself as a brokerage that "supports the sabotage of corporate products." Its projects have included switching voice boxes in Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls and creating Gatt.org, a look-alike Web site that lampooned the World Trade Organization.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hmm...has anyone ever fiddled with their NYTimes cookies? I wonder what changing some of the numbers and letters would do to their tracking databases? Hmm...
Anyway, thanks for your wonderful suggestion!
______________________(
In light of this bull, I'll be taking my cuecat shooting with me this weekend...who needs targets when you have a perfectly good piece of hardware made useless to ideallistic blokes such as myself by the socially irresponsible behaviour of its manufacturer, eh?
If $20 actually got you white papers on the a project, that would be well worth it. ESP. if the white papers in this case did include information regarding the Audio:Cue system. I have no interest in audio cues, but someone out there just might. But what I might find insulting is IF for $20 you didn't get any documenation, do developers kit, and a contract agreeing all software is the property of Digital Convergence. An ACCEPTABLE contract would be a 'free for non-commercial use' as is standard in the Linux world. Terms like that from a corp. would be accepable, and no one could fault them for protecting their own interest. Now, for $20, a licence to profit from the CUECAT device on the other hand is a good deal, depending on the terms of the contract. A viewbar from AOL for example would likely pay for it self in a matter of days. Assuming a profit, it's most just for the provider of the hardware be compensated. But what really insults my inteligence, is the fact that these people are the copyright holders of their own software works, and those rights SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN AWAY . But let us put these statements to the test. I'll make an inquary regarding being a linux developer and who to contact in regards to bla bla bla. Let's see what happens?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
God, he is back... I worked at Internet America in Dallas for a while, and was around when Jovan Philyaw (sp?) and Doug Davis were hired. Doug is an ok guy, he is an old school hacker type, knows his stuff and likes tech. If you give him half a chance and work with him, he will probably ease up and maybe even help you. Unfortunately, Jovan is a snake. He is one of those PR media hack types who cares only about the companies image and how much publicity he can get. Chances are, while Jovan is CEO of this company, he is going to keep after this issue just so he can generate as much publicity as he can. Doug you can probably trust, Jovan should be thrown into the deepest part of the ocean. And Jovan, stop talking about those damn triple-edge wiper blades already, seems like that's all anyone hears about out of you.
This is what you do: modify the open source CueCat driver so that it does send back some product information to their servers whenever you scan. However, don't have it send back the info on the product you scan each time. Rather, make it send back the info on the same product (e.g. make it look like the only thing you ever scan is your Red Hat Linux box).
:)
Then, I bet TC will come up with a real reason to have a lawsuit
-----
Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness. -- Bertrand Russell
Giving away hardware and charging for software is idiotic. What brain damaged moron set them on this einstein financial strategy? Or are they guided by some sort of far-sidian genetic algorithm, cluelessly drifting through business space until either randomly hitting a jackpot or running out of money?
Ever since the threat of network computers came about, the price of PCs suddenly dropped quite a bit. This didn't benefit the hardware manufacturers whose margins dropped to razor thin. However they did make up for some of this by selling more units. Who did profit? Intel and Microsoft. They didn't have to lower prices because they have monopolies.
If there are any 22 year old shit-for-brains dot com CFO's listening; SELL the hardware and let the software be FREE!
Actually there is nothing stoping them from having a page them selves and using the output to link the customer to web sites. In light of recent events, this would be smart.
"put your cue here", and wether you have a mac, PC, or whatever you can attach the thing to, send off serial.bartype.barcode in their own encrypted form. They can still required the registration of the "cuecat" to use "their" service, each unit does have a serial number after all.
That way, they can track the movements of anyone and find out who's drinking Jolt cola.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
hahaha...
And they think a silly letter will stop us from reverse engineering their product and driving down their sales!
I'm sorry you can't claim ROT14 as IP. I have prior art. Back in the 80's I wrote a program called "ROTer" for the PC that took two command line arguements the first wat the ROT offset and the second was the file name you wanted ROTted. Thus to encode a file you would type: c:>roter 14 myfile.txt and to decrypt you would type c:>roter 12 myfile.txt You may use ROT14 for a nominal licensing fee that we can negotiate privately.
Wouldn't this be a clear case of reverse-engineering a product to make it interoperable with something else? AFAIK that is still allowed (the reason this defense failed for DeCSS is that it was also bypassing copy-protection, which is illegal under the DMCA. This is not the case here).
This applies if, for instance, I, under NDA with the MPAA posted the CSS code and the player keys. As long as they took reasonable steps to stop disemination of this information, they could still claim it was a trade secret.
But if I reverse engineered it, they lose all trade-secret rights (against people who base their code off of the reverse engineering) immediately. They could still continue prosecuting people who had violated the NDA, or did so in the future.
Not quite true. In the first example, 'resonable steps' aren't enough. If the secret gets 'widely disseminated' it's not a trade secret anymore, no mayyer how reasonable the steps to prevent it.
In the second example, if you reverse eigineered it, and the company bought your resultant information and/or product before it went widely public, and kept it internal, then it would still be a trade secret, even though it was reverse engineered on the outside.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
on a technical note, if mr. taco had put the letter in bold he wouldn't have been quoting it,
emphasis would have been added. i prefer to think of his comments in bold as simply an easy way to distinguish between the two, while maintaining
the credibility of the quote and nothing more.
I just "bought" a digital TV set-top box/service this weekend with just this sort of model.
Many, many cable companies in the US have done this for years. That is, their cable service comes with a set-top box for free or nominal cost during the duration of the service. When you cancel your cable service, you must either return the box to them or pay some large fine. However, this is clearly specified in the contract you sign when they install the box. If they just gave away set-top boxes over the counter at RadioShack, or mailed them to subscribers of Forbes, and hoped they'd sign up for cable service, they'd be SOL if people decided to use the boxes as doorstops.
Hummm I think it's time to go back :)
You can lose a patent by selectivly enforcing it
I don't want to be disagreeable, but I have to disagree. You can't lose a patent or copyright by failing to defend it. If I'm wrong, you'll be able to prove it by picking up an introductory textbook for a course on IP law. Email me the title of the book.
I agree that CmdrTaco should have kept his opinions as a sidebar or bookends to the letter in full. As I read, I skipped over the baldfac- er, boldface material and read the letter itself.
Aside from the interspersed comments, are we sure this is actually from a lawyer or official of this company?
There's several grammatical errors that make the letter sound like it's coming from, well, from a twenty-something hothead. "Would of"s and ranting allcap phrases are what I expect to see in the less decorous 'leet crowd, not from someone at the helm or hire of a respectable company.
Besides, if there was intellectual property litigation involved, the company would probably best be served by holding its temper and its collective tongue.
"Major asshole." --Dubya Bush "Big time." --Dick Cheney
[
Well, I seem to recall he had a definite fondness to BSD flavors and disliking of linux... but that might have also just been Bill H.'s influence.
He did have a huge ego... but the technical expertise to back it up.
I was surprised to not see Frank D.'s name associated with the company... He was like Doug without the ego... quite the hardware/software hackers.
True, but that wasn't what this tangent was about. They can bind you to certain things if you sign a contract with them, but they have no inherent right to control the products you purchase from them (or that they give you for free).
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Almost, except for the credit clause in older BSD licenses... Don't they have to give credit, or is this only if they claim they're using the BSD code?
And, mightn't they be liable for fraud by claiming they wrote the code themselves, regardless of the BSD license? I'd be a little pissed if I bought software from a company that they claimed to write for my specific application and I found out they just used free code and called it theirs...
If you sell something, or give it away, you no longer own the thing itself, so you are not in the strongest position to control use. Hence, expect the quecat folks to claim that they still own all those bar code readers they apparently gave away, and that some contract came into play when the reader was received.
Ok, let's pursue that. Let's assume the strongest position (I imagine, IANAL): A bar code reader recipient actually signed a contract promising to adhere to conditions of use dictated by quecat, in exchange for physical custody of the reader.
What's wrong with that? Well, if the law currently permits dictating any conditions whatever (except requiring breaking laws) in a contract that specifies conditions of use, why is that permitted?
Is it a natural or Constitutional right to micro-manage (as opposed to veto) the use by someone else of your property? Or should there be a private-black-box (PBB) model, where it would be illegal to write (or legal to ignore) conditions governing use inside the PBB. You could only write conditions based on activity or results observable outside the PBB, or having significant risk of harm outside the PBB. IOW, you could say "return it undamaged," but you couldn't say "destroy it when you're done with it." The former is outside the PBB, the latter inside.
I believe it's time to rein in rampant EULA hubris. There needs to be some limit on the conditions of use and terms of service that may legally be specified.
Most of the time -- unless your privacy is being invaded -- you can ignore stupid rules inside your PBB, so it comes down to the exceptional cases where a legal pretext to invade your PBB can be concocted, and that can't reasonably happen unless there's conditions and/or laws supposedly governing inside-PBB activity.
That's the real threat, and the real reason that contract conditions and laws governing inside-PBB activity should not be allowed. Existing laws whose intent is really to control outside-PBB effects should be rewritten in terms of outside-PBB observables, if at all possible. (It may not be, if the intent is to control risk, which is not directly observable).
Invading your PBB is Constitution-level stuff. There should be no easy way to create a pretext, and none without due process.
You don't pull a microwave apart and put it back together then complain when you get radiation poisoning do you ?
I heard of a case in the US when a burglar climed in someone's skylight, slipped, and impaled himself on a knife left on a kitchen work surface. He sued the house owner. And won.
If this is in the US, I'd have to say 'yes'.
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Ever use a Craftsman screwdriver in a way for which it wasn't intended? Did you break it?
A better question would be have you ever used a screwdriver for its intended purpose? I took down, moved and put up a fence this weekend and used screwdrivers as chisels, pry bars, hammers, nail pullers, digging implements and to clean under my fingernails, but not once did I actually install or remove screws with them.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
This applies if, for instance, I, under NDA with the MPAA posted the CSS code and the player keys. As long as they took reasonable steps to stop disemination of this information, they could still claim it was a trade secret.
But if I reverse engineered it, they lose all trade-secret rights (against people who base their code off of the reverse engineering) immediately. They could still continue prosecuting people who had violated the NDA, or did so in the future.
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Sorry to be pedantic, but first it is "Klystron" not "Clystron", but more significantly the thingy was almost certainly a "Magnetron". Actually these things run at quite high voltages, so need some care when playing with them.
This may be a bit offtopic, but it does relate to drivers 'n hardware from outside the company.
Does anyone have info on how to communicate with an Identix TouchSafe TS-500 fingerprint scanner. A local chop shop just got in about 100 of them and I'd like to play with it.
Thx.
---
Unto the land of the dead shalt thou be sent at last.
Surely thou shalt repent of thy cunning.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Concept, you have to get alot of money from alot of people. How much money do you make a year, how much can you make in 5 years?
:cue:cat device, according to my information, 50 Million. Building up a relationship with a company you can meet with demand, tooling the factory, design, testing.
In 1998, DCI spent $47 Billion on television advertising, $87 billion on print catalogs, $40 billion on direct mail advertising, $44 Billion on classified advertising, $14 on trade an consumer mags. The object was to establish them as the primary means advertisers used to relay web based media.
But the major thing you have to keep in mind is the design, implementation, and production of the
How many Cuecats can you produce in one day. How long would it take you to design one from scratch. How long to setup a network capable of handing the load of 50 million users, and keeping track of each users in a global database. Being able to cross reference that information with advertisers on the server next door, who then has to issue content on demand on a holistic demographic based on input fed.
But probally the longest part of this whole process is convencing people to invest money in your product or service. 3 years, no doubt! Documenting on hard copy, prospectuses, a system design plans that don't even touch the hardware aspect, but the vague concept of it all. This is the bussiness side of it, and it blows.
Plus there was the predisessor to Digital Convergence Infotainment Telepictures, Inc., as well as the other company, Digital Demographics.
(209.237.93.53 vs DCI at 209.237.93.52).
-----------------------------------------
Now, how long would it take you or I to complete the above task? We are geeks after all.
Phase one: Setup or purcahce or rent resources of someone's existing bar code database.
Phase two: impement centralized server to access this information
Phase three: develop hardware and software system
phase four: develop demographic database to customtarget individuals based on buying habbits
phase five: distrubute software / hardware
phase six: advertise system so to attract advertisers to your site, based on specific demographic forse fed advertising to maximize yield.
-----REMIND YOUR SELF THIS IS ONE SICK JOKE-----
-----Methphore for barcoding everyone in US-----
Remember, this isn't about barcodes to products, it's about demographics. How long would it take you to design an information system to keep track of 50 million people?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
50 million, the number is 50 million! But it's worse than mailing lists, real time advertiments feed to your computer, based on your buying habbits, and what you watch on telivision. checkout www.digitaldemographics.com
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
hehe that's a good one.
.oO0Oo.
shame you don't get it
If you are some sort of IT person I'm glad you don't sit in the cube next to me 'cos you sound like you're no fun at all.
If we had your attitude the 8086 would never have found it's way out of Intel and we'd be using something else. Oh damn, hoisted by my own leotard.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The manner in which the writer composes is not dissimilar to the form of his rendered speech.
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I'd like to share with everyone here, what I think to be, a striking revelation. As I sit here and read these comments, all filled with "IANAL", but still being quite insightful and informed on the laws of the land, I realized something.
Companies can't pass off intellectual property legal FUD on our community.
Then I wondered why this was, and the answer was right under my nose. Because our whole community is based on knowing intellectual property laws. From reverse engineering drivers, to open source licenses, the whole community is dependant in knowing these laws and using them for the betterment of the community. Without knowing the laws none of this would have been possible, not the GNU General Public License, not reverse engineering a printer driver, not building some of the most technically advanced operating systems amd tools in the world (*BSD, Linux, GCC, etc).
So this is just a small whack in the head with the cluestick for all you would be Digital Convergence's out there:
Intellectual Property Law FUD doesn't fly here.
(neither does most FUD, but thats a whole other story)
-- iCEBaLM
"...Privacy concerns may cause users to resist providing the personal data necessary to support this profiling capability. More importantly, even the perception of security and privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit Internet user acceptance of our technology and products..." --Digital Convergence prospectus
Now that's the ticket! The fact that this corp is attempting to mass a log of the purchacing habbits of 50million people, a log designed to be access by Digital Demographics on demand. But that's beside the point. It seems to me that the greatest interest in this product / serverice are advertisers, and linux users? And you mean to tell me Digital Convergence DIDN'T expect this?There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
There are three DeCSS cases currently in the US. 1 in NY, 1 in CT iirc, and 1 in CA. The one in CA is filed by the DVD-CCA and is a trade secret suit.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Microsoft dispite it's evils, does exersise commen sence.
Should microsoft have been handing this affair, they would have either:
1. Bought the rights to the software.
2. Bought the comapny issuing competive software.
3. Stolen the idea, and sued the origional copyright holder for infringement.
That's the honest (tm) way to handle such matters, and it's proper protocal!
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I agree with many of the above comments that in fact those who reverse engineered the software are not in violation of any rights (except potentially patents, which we have not yet seen.)
HOWEVER, the Open Source community should act to encourage behavior that we like. We like the fact that these guys give away their hardware, so we can play with it. So, instead of inane childish heckling, we should try to work with them. If I were a company reading this material, I would certainly try to refuse selling anything to folks in the Open Source community, and certainly try to make all my $ in selling hardware. After all, according to these guys, I can't have any rights in my software. That is not behavior that we should encourage.
So, grow up, try to deal with the real world, and praise these guys for at least making their hardware available. Because otherwise, next time you want to pick up something at Radio Shack, they'll make you sign a license.
Thalia
Where did he get his MBA, Cheez Whiz U?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
It did NOT take them 5 years to make a barcode reader and write the drivers for it... I have something akin to a week or 2 to write several device drivers for my one class, and the devices are harder to code for than a barcode reader...
It maybe took them 5 years to match up all of the numbers to websites, but that's not really the work of geeks, and it's not really related to us making their barcode reader work.
Heck, so WHAT if we make drivers for a free barcode reader, it could be... USEFUL! You're afraid of people finding something else to do with your barcode reader than look at web content. Look, I can surf the web with barcodes, all linked off a nice little database. I indirectly pay a company to do this for me.
We're not stealing your content, which is what you are really selling, right? I mean, you don't expect every grocer in america to toss their checkout counter for a silly cat shaped laser, do you?
Why not just say it, if people find something USEFUL to do with your barcode reader, they might realize that looking at advertisements on the internet based on barcodes is *GASP* just as boring and stupid as clicking on banner ads....
No offense to your lovely company. I'm sure that the barcodes are put to good use... The shopping cataloges and such come to mind...
Eh...
Taking something apart to see how it works, and describing your findings to others, is not a violation of any legitimate law. (The DMCA is illegitmate and unconstitutional, and its architects and supporters need to be cleansed via the flaying and boiling ritual described above.)
Furthermore, the DMCA is irrelevant in this case anyway. It only matters if you break encryption to gain access to a copyrighted work. I highly doubt that anyone is trying to claim copyright to the bar codes that are intended to be scanned with this thing. Even if they did somehow, the substantial non-infringing use of scanning bar codes you printed yourself should be sufficient to make the Linux CueCat driver legal.
--
You have a point. By media, I meant Big Media (i.e. the major networks, newspapers, magazines, publishers, cable companies, etc.), not the little guys. When you get to be a certain size, and are publicly traded, IP becomes this jealously guarded treasure that you will stop at nothing to accumulate, defend, and Congress-willing, extend your control over.
I too would love to hear the various parties' positions on IP issues. I just don't think they'll be willing to discuss it. That should scare us.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
and now they just laugh
.oO0Oo.
;-)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I support this business model. Free trials are a great way to get people to use a product and maybe later, pay for it.
What I object to are laws that say people have a right to make money on this sort of stuff.
You mention Sony and the PS2... They sell a PS2 at a loss hoping the license fees for games make up for it. A valid business model imho.
But, what about someone who decides they don't like the PS2? Sony is out a bit of money if the person buys the system and gets the default game, plays it once and tosses it in a box, never to buy more PS2 games. Should the law mandate purchase of at least twelve games?
What if I buy a PS2 and play games on it, thus satisfying Sony's business model, but would also like to run Linux on it. Do they have a right to say I can't?
If they're concerned, they should sell the system *and* twelve games, or whatever they need to break even, as a unit, or with a clearly written contract requiring the purchase of these games by a certain date. Unfortunately, few people would be willing to spend the $800 or so that this would cost on a system they may not like, so Sony would sell few units.
Instead, they gamble. If the PS2 is good, the games will rock and people will buy them. If the PS2 sucks, nobody will buy them and they'll lose money.
I would have been willing, had DC asked politely, without threats and lies (yes, provable lies) to makre sure any CueCat software I wrote would *by default* communicate with their servers, if used in a network mode. That is, if the user scanned something and wanted to look it up, the default server would be theirs, changeable to Amazon(etc) only if the user wished. Instead they lie and threaten, telling us any unquthorized use is against the contract (this is fraud on their part) and demand we don't use the product in any way they disagree with. This is where I stop supporting them in any way.
Instead of them having a reasonable business which I would support, and hobby usage as well, they try for 100% of the pie instead of 99.9% and lose my support and the support of almost everyone else.
It's not their business model, it's them. They're lying, threatening, assholes commiting fraud and I'll take any and all actions I can to see them bankrupt in a short a time as I can manage.
Step 1: Flood their service with repetitive and automated scans and created serial numbers.
Step 2: Reveal this to their potential customers, dropping the value of their data to zero.
Maybe the next group of people to try this business model will realize that fraud and lies aren't going to help them, those people I will support.
dude I've had a bar code scanner for 7 years
.oO0Oo.
they're talking about the windows software that does the amazon crap
as such they're just talking crap and being mardy 'cos they never thought that 500 or so would be used differently
they're whiny I don;t like them. I might fly to the US just to get one!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
First off, it seems odd to have a separate copyright for every single CueCat they manufactured.
Also, it seems odd to copyright something so trivial and small. See the copyright office's circular "Copyright Basics : What is not protected by Copyright?". It mentions "Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents" aren't copyrightable. Short strings of gobledygook are pretty close to "short phrases" or maybe a few other ones.
--
That's pretty cool, just don't tell any of us how you've reverse-engineered the screwdriver's construction and functionality to do these other wonderful things. Otherwise Craftsman IP lawyers will come banging down your door. :-)
make world, not war
Maybe the deveopers weren't the talkitive type?
And you think that's a valid defence against IP theft ?
I'm a developer. I get pretty pissy when people steal my IP, so I can understand PlasticPussy feeling the same. I don't know if there's a patent in here (there shouldn't be, because handle servers & Cooltown are clear prior art), but there's certainly copyright and trade secrets. If (as I believe) the developers clean-roomed this and didn't have access to any materials on which they could breach copyright, then that doesn't seem to apply.
Trade secrets though, they're certainly involved. The mapping from character string to URL is non-trivial (in a legal sense), even if it's trivial in a technical sense. The fact that it's _weak_ IP doesn't mean that it deserves any less protection. Pity these people - it's the only shit-hot tech they've got, no wonder they're attached to it. 8-)
Can I stand in the middle of the road holding a sign that says "By driving past me, you are legally bound to give me a million dollars."???
Just because I say it doesn't make it so.
They give you the device (free) and only after you get it home you read that you don't really own it? I don't think so. I don't think their "license" is any more legally binding than my sign.
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Heck if they put "CueCat" in the output somewhere, that would be copyrightable, and therefor protected under the DMCA
No, short phrases and names aren't copyrightable. Trademarkable though.
The ula states that, in more or less words everything about the cuecat is copyrighted
Yes, they'd like to control the CueCat as much as possible. Of course. But the consumer wants some control over their lives too, and the lines have to be drawn somewhere in between. In the end, democracy and capitalism were created to benefit the common citizen. Companies are a means to that end, not a roadblock keeping you from that end.
--
thats a pretty interesting idea
.oO0Oo.
you do need replicator manufacturers though
and they'll need to program the replicator because how do you describe a generic car to a computer. Some computer generated mdoels will eb better than others and so the value will go to the replicator systems that make the "best" or "fittest" replicated cars.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Funny, but it seems that they are trying to do on a larger scale exactly what the Nielson folks do.
My parents have been scanning things for Nielson for years. They have a nifty scanner that they use to scan purchases, mostly groceries, that are then sent to Nielson by using a cradle-like device attached to the scanner held up to the phone. They then get points that can be used to get gifts from a catalogue.
Thing is, I don't see how the data that CueCat gets would be of any use. The Nielson scanner has an entire keyboard attached that is used to classify stuff scanned and knows of all large stores in the area. CueCat seems to think they can produce solid data from noise. Good luck (not!)
This is a privacy intruding scheme. You can
then identify each reader. I wouldn't use it
even if I needed it then.
Using your argument, If I spoke in pig latin to avoid a total idiot from understanding me, then someone would be in violation of the DCMA for translating what I said. This Law is Fscked.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Not sure when LZW expires per se, but according to the article in The Standard, the GIF patent expires in 2003.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
He said he'd need my name and address -- standard procedure for all RS purchases anyway, IME. So I said "sure," and happily gave him someone else's address. He handed it over with a catalog, and off I went.
Arriving at home with my new toy, I took a good look at the bag it was in, to see if there was anything written on it like "By using this device, you agree to blah blah blah..." There wasn't. So, I tore that open, and took out the bag the CueCat was in. Again, no writing on it, and it wasn't even sealed. So I, er, let the cat out of the bag, and examined the device itself. There's a catalog number ("Cat. number" it says..heh), FCC compliance notice, Made In China...and for all you people wondering if it's patented -- Patent Pending, it says.
So here I have a CueCat that *would* be hooked up to my computer if I didn't have an AT-style connector (gonna go pick up an adapter later). I have agreed to no licence, nor have I even seen one. In fact, if it weren't for Slashdot, I wouldn't even know about one at this point.
And I don't plan to, either. The software's going in the trash.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Wow, your rousing "I have a dream" speech reply to my post didn't even come close to answering my question.
There was a display in this RS location touting MSN internet access. "Stand here and experience the web," it said, or something like that.
On the screen was an old Win3.1-style error dialog (the white ones with the big grey buttons) saying basically, "Your system is dangerously low in resources. Should I close the program Explorer to free up some resources?"
Ahhhh, yes. Experience the web, MS style.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Someone please e-mail me the Linux driver for the CueCat and I will post it on my website, and FIGHT LIKE HELL to keep it on there. My e-mail address is: jur@comp2go.net. My website is http://fairshare.t5media.com.
Note: I am a stubborn son of a bitch and it would be a waste of time to sue me, cause I ain't got shit!
Punctuation is nothing compared to the word "cat". It is to allow them to say "our cat is temperamental" in their FAQ as an excuse for its sloppy performance.
The new twist on this trait comes in the speed at which the community of hackers can swap knowledge. If it took a week for geeks in LA to get news to NY to raid the local tech store for X, and a month more for that news to hit Little Rock, the lawyers probably wouldn't notice.
Back in the good ol days, we posted stuff at 300 baud, uphill, both ways in 9 feet of snow...
We're victims of our own success, at times. Unfortunately, it just means that we have to disseminate and acquire these pearls faster, before the Big Bad Co. shuts them down. I'm getting to old to stay awake all night. :-)
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
hey moron. slashdot code is free already
Take this personaility test.
My intelligence is not insulted. That was right on my level.
Take this personaility test.
BS! If I was the first one to take one of these and try and get it up and running on my PC, and I call these jokers to ask about a developer license for Linux. The response would be the immediate standard Linux request response:
1. Huh? What's Linux?
2. No we don't support that.
It's the 'hackers' who caused widespread interest, and made this thing useful for Linux, these guys didn't see Linux on their radar, and made no attempt whatsoever to support it. This is the same as a million other hardware vendors how have been clued into the reality that Linux users are activists and we'll use your hardware with or without your 'SUPPORT.'
Even the vendors who open the spigot and say 'we support Linux' usually respond with at least #1 when you talk to them.
John
Searching the USPTO.GOV Site I have found the following information. Perhaps this can spread more fuel on the burning cat?
:CUE:CAT
:CUECAT
Trademarks:
1. Word Mark CUE CAT
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: COMPUTER SOFTWARE, HARDWARE AND PERIPHERALS, INCLUDING - HAND HELD INPUT DEVICES, BAR CODE READERS AND SCANNERS, INCLUDING - HAND HELD INPUT DEVICES FOR ALLOWING INPUT OF INFORMATION TO A COMPUTER; BAR CODE READER FOR ALLOWING INPUT OF INFORMATION TO A COMPUTER AND RELATED APPLICATIONS; SCANNER FOR READING CODED IMAGES ON AN ASSOCIATED PICKUP FOR RECEIVING CODED AUDIO FOR CONTROLLING A COMPUTER REMOTELY TO CONNECT TO THE GLOBAL COMPUTER NETWORK; SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE FOR INTERFACING BETWEEN A GLOBAL COMMUNICATION NETWORK AND RADIO, TELEVISION AND PRINT MEDIA
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 76020649
Filing Date April 7, 2000
Files ITU FILED AS ITU
Owner (APPLICANT) DigitalConvergence.com, Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 9101 N. Central Expwy., 6th Floor Dallas TEXAS 75231
Attorney of Record Lawrence E. Abelman Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
Current Status: Newly filed application, not yet assigned to an examining attorney
2. Word Mark
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: COMPUTER SOFTWARE, HARDWARE AND PERIPHERALS, INCLUDING - HAND HELD INPUT DEVICES, BAR CODE READERS AND SCANNERS, INCLUDING - HAND HELD INPUT DEVICES FOR ALLOWING INPUT OF INFORMATION TO A COMPUTER; BAR CODE READER FOR ALLOWING INPUT OF INFORMATION TO A COMPUTER AND RELATED APPLICATIONS; SCANNER FOR READING CODED IMAGES ON AN ASSOCIATED PICKUP FOR RECEIVING CODED AUDIO FOR CONTROLLING A COMPUTER REMOTELY TO CONNECT TO THE GLOBAL COMPUTER NETWORK; SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE FOR INTERFACING BETWEEN A GLOBAL COMMUNICATION NETWORK AND RADIO, TELEVISION AND PRINT MEDIA
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 76020648
Filing Date April 7, 2000
Files ITU FILED AS ITU
Owner (APPLICANT) DigitalConvergence.com, Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 9101 N. Central Expwy., 6th Floor Dallas TEXAS 75231
Attorney of Record Lawrence E. Abelman
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
Current Status: Newly filed application, not yet assigned to an examining attorney.
3. Word Mark
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Hand-held optical reader apparatus that reads machine readable codes on magazines newspapers, and other publications and products, for converting the machine readable codes to specific instructions to interface with a computer program for the purpose of, in combination with the computer program, connecting a user's computer to a web site on the global computer network
Mark Drawing Code (3) DESIGN PLUS WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS
Design Search Code 030104 241714 261709
Serial Number 76094794
Filing Date July 24, 2000
Files ITU FILED AS ITU
Owner (APPLICANT) DigitalConvergence.:Com Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 9101 N. Central Expressway, Suite 600 Dallas TEXAS 75231
Attorney of Record Sharon McClinton
Description of Mark The mark is described as: The colon and first "C: are colored for red, and the following letters are in stylized form with the second C being part of a design.
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
Current Status: Newly filed application, not yet assigned to an examining attorney.
Also wanted to point out that barcode produced 254 records so I don't think the invented that. Actually this dude invented the bar code!.
I will also run a patent search tommorow at work!
The hacked open source software is now being called "Qcat" someone posted it to freenet, I just found it. If it's not there, get a copy and post it to freenet again. Files there stay alive as long as people access them. The more versions the better.
...
That's the way to tell these guys to shut up!
The name "Qcat" is now public domain by nature, no one can claim trademark to it because it's in public use now. Freenet clients are available at
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
want keys?
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~blanu/keyin dex.html
A typewriter puts characters onto a piece of paper.
The :Cat (official name of the hardware) puts characters into your computer.
Could Smith-Corona resonably claim that you were stealing their IP for using a typewriter they made to type onto a different brand of paper than what they sold? NO
Could they sue you for it (and win)? NO
Can Digital Convergence resonably claim that you're stealing their IP if you're using a :Cat to scan barcodes into a different "brand" of computer OS? NO
Can they sue you for it and win?NO
You can use a typewriter to fill in the blank on a form.
You can use the :CAT to fill in the blanks on a form (their server, using their software). Lets call it the "send me to a website about _____ product (and trace who I am, where I live, etc.)" blank.
Could Smith-Corona resonably claim that you were stealing their IP for using a typewriter they made to fill in blanks on a form they did not print? NO
Could they sue you (and win) for it? NO
Can Digital Convergence resonably claim that you were stealing their IP for using a :CAT to fill in blanks on someone elses software or server? NO
Could they sue you (and win) for it? NO
Now lets turn it around a little:
Digital Convergence gave away (through Radio Shack, Wired, etc) the :Cat scanners. They now say that they aren't ours, and they only lent them to us. They say we agreed to this because we could have read the license agreement which was sealed up on their CD or filed away on their website. They also claim that we are only allowed to use the :Cat with their software and, by extention, any data developed by using the :Cat (eg. Joe scanned a UPC on a Playboy Magazine, Joe must have a Playboy Magazine, Joe probably reads Playboy Magazine, {or atleast looks at the pictures}, Joe might be interested in Penthouse Magazine) is theirs to review and use.
Can they resonably believe this is a valid agreement?NO
Can they sue you (and win) for not complying with this invalid agreement?NO
Can they sue (and win) flyingbuttmonkeys if they read a few lines of output (not program code) and make a program that uses their scanner? NO
Can Crayola sue (and win) Joe Bob's Crayon Company for making a red crayon after Joe Bob saw a child's drawing that was made with a red Crayola? NO
Lets say Smith Corona gave away typewriters. After we accepted the typewriters, they said that they aren't ours, and they only lent them to us. They then said we agreed to this because we could have read the license agreement which was sealed up on in an envelope in the box with the typewriter or the sign in the lobby of their corporate office. They also claim that we are only allowed to use the typewriter with their paper, and that anything we type (contracts, love letters, your "Great American Novel") is theirs (Maybe exclusively) to review and use.
Can they resonably believe this is a valid agreement?NO
Can they sue you (and win) for not complying with this invalid agreement?NO
Can they sue (and win) Joe Bob's Publishing for publishing your "Great American Novel" because you used a Smith Corona typewriter to write it? NO
Could Digital Convergence have made the :Cat to only be able to read their barcodes, which would only be meaningful with their software/servers? Probably
Would many people use want them or use them often? Probably not
Could Smith Corona make their typewriters able to only type on (their) specially coated paper, which you would have to send in to them to be developed (like film)? Probably
Would many people want them or use them often? Probably not
Could they sue (and win) Joe Bob's Quicky Developer if Joe Bob figured out a way to develop the documents developed on this paper? NO
Isn't it amazing what the answers are once you compare this issue with the "non-tech" world?
"I'd be a little pissed if I bought software from a company that they claimed to write for my specific application and I found out they just used free code and called it theirs."
This is M$. If they actually had the good sense to some fast reliable BSD code in place of the crap they usually write then I'd consider that a plus.
*boggle* I don't think numbers that small can be copyrighted.
Hal Duston
hald@sound.net
If Al Gore invented the internet, why is it named after George W. Bush?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I was replying to this:
I was pointing out the correct definition of 'loss leader', and why it doesn't deserve death, quiet or otherwise, which to me seems both related and relevant. Perhaps you should take your own advice.
We're talking about computers here. By that measure, the DMCA applies to everything, because everything computers do processes information. For example, I can't access slashdot without running a special program designed to decode slashdot's output. Does that mean the DMCA applies to Slashdot, and reading slashdot is a crime? I don't think so -- Judges aren't that stupid.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Is there anyone out there among the potential users of non-DC drivers for the CueCat who is actually interested in reading the proprietary DC codes? I've not seen any discussion indicating interest in that type of code; all I've seen is interest in standard, "open format" bar codes (Code 39, UPC, EAN).
Granted, some curiosity exists 'bout the CC codes, but since they lead only into DC's MySQL engine and hence their Little Big Brother, there's way less practical use for this format in the eyes of most of us than for the standard formats.
It's a classic conflict of goals here; we're interested in the cheese, Digital Convergence is interested in catching things with the trap...
-- Just another Stainless Steel Rat
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
I wasn't trying to imply that the DMCA applied here, I was just pointing out that just becuase you can break a control doesn't make it ineffective.
Can't be, there's nothing creative about taking one set of numbers and encrypting it. You can't copyright something that doesn't entail some creative input.
Sure, I mostly agree. If the information you use in your business was a trade secret which was leaked by someone under NDA or something, often you're denied the right to use it, until it's spread so widely that you can't help but to know it.
And yes, in the second example I assumed you were going public. If you let the company buy your silence, it would remain a trade secret.
Good afternoon- I realize that this forum is *NIX-centric, which is fine even tho outside my experience. Still- I've been lurking several places since I heard about the cat in the hopes that there might be some activity towards writing a resident decoding app for Win 9.X/NT for this thing, so that you could use it to scan in data for any application, but haven't seen anything as yet. My whole MO is monetary in nature- I work in a library and we are, as are all nonprofits, library or service orgs, strapped for cash. Any time that we can get a deal on hardware means better services we can provide. So when I heard "free barcode reader", I was immediately thinking about getting some, tossing the junk that came with them and using them for inventory, check out etc. Beats spending 90-140$ for a regular reader, and less stress- who cares if some kid trashes the thing-pick up another one. IMO, DC can't say a thing about it- I've seen no licensing agreement- besides what's to stop my mother from getting one, "deciding she doesn't like it" and giving it to me? Whoops, lost the software that came with it! At any rate, I imagine that there are probably more than a few cheap/poor folks out there like me that want to take advantage of a freebie to make our lives a bit easier. Happens all the time-look at all the stuff showered on doctor's offices by the drug reps- they'd like the doc to prescribe the drug, but they have no legal leg to stand on that "by accepting this (free meal, pile of post-it notes, pens, whatever) you agree to only prescribe our product"- you get the idea.
What chance? I went to Radio Shack. They asked me if I'd like a scanner. No mention of any licensing whatsoever. Absolutely no indication that any license is involved at all. So, you're saying that all it takes is a license posted on an obscure web site, and I'm now obligated to follow it, even though I've never been informed about it? I don't think so.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Im guessing that things are getting confused.
The way I see it the IP is not about reading output from the wand- its there and I can learn base64+XOR exactly the same way I can learn japanese - its just a language that the wand speaks, and if it speaks it to my computer then I can read it and learn it.
What does strike me as IP is the way the information that is read is then used - i.e. adding a few bits and bobs in, sending it to a pecific internet address which then forwards it on - that, written down specifically is an algorithm which can count as IP.
So it shouldnt be any problem reading the output of the cat wand, just writing a program that does exactly the same thing as their software (forwarding you to an advertisers site after adding extra info not gained from the wand).
Thats the way I see it anyway...
TTFN
Lauren
--
Lauren Child, lauren@laurenchild.net
OK, so show us your better solution...
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
I'm sure per the licence agreement at a fee of $19.95 for month, you are granted unlimited amount of time per month to use AOL as a coaster.
However, you find out later the fact this is not true, and have to pay an hourly fee to use AOL as a coster. It's more cost effective in the long run to find a local coaster dealer and pickup coasters who actually do have an unlimited use license.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
You own stuff you pay for. This is a seriously limited view. I have owned bank accounts and bonds in my name that I never paid for (given to me by my grandmother). I own the Christmas gifts given to me by family and friends last year that I never paid for. If paying for something meant you owned it, then people would OWN software, not license it.
Nope. It used to (in the US, anyhow), but not in a lot of years.
Google for "terry carroll" or the "copyright faq" for references on this and many other nifty copyright questions.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Actually the only rights as a consumer is the product sold work as advertised. If not work, then it is our right to expect repacement within specified warrenty period. The product was never falsely advertised.
:CRQ on my web page without their permision, their software is theirs to do with as they please. Just because they give it away doesn't mean I can too.
We as consumers don't have the right to the method a product is supported. You'll notice all the hardware that's out there for supported under windows but not linux, and the hardware that was only supported under windows 3.1 and not windows 95. We can not assume or force this company to conform to our standards, no can we force a company to right drivers for their hardware. It's in good form to do so, and right them.
But software drives are software, protected under copyright laws. I.e. I can't technicaly post a driver of my web page without the permision of the respective copyright holders. However, I can right a driver for a piece of software and do with it what I please, and the only way the hardware folk people would have any room to speak is if I misrepressented my work as being theirs.
I can not post a copy of
But with the permision of the respective copyright holders of linux edtions, those I can post.
If your going to site a violation, then site the correct one. Digital Convergence is not respecting the rights of the respective copyright holders of people who have written software to use this device. They are interfearing with their right to distrubute their product.
Keep in mind that this is a software issue, and not a hardware one. That's a whole other can of worms!
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
"On the Internet, no one can tell you're a dog^WGreat Horned Antelope."
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
A little nit-picky, yes, but you'd think if they [DigitalConvergence, the Gods of stupid colon usage] were going to try and make themselves look good, they'd at least (a) proofread their letter or (b) find someone who has mastered the English language. Even grammar and spell check in Microsoft Office (scary, no?) would have caught most of the glaring errors in this letter.
As for a $20 developer's fee... They can shove it up their [insert favorite noun here]. How can you justify charging someone $20 to find out it's just base64/XOR? It's "Revenge of The Increasingly Stupid Capitalist Intellectual Property-weenie Economy!"
I don't think that DC would care if you used a $300 barcode scanner instead their free model, so long as you used their database.
Except that their scanner sends them a unique hardware ID -- making it very easy for them to track (and sell) your online movements.
What is the status of your Linux Beta, and where can download a copy?
Which 3rd party application can you reccomend to provide fuctionality under linux?
I'm a Linux developer. Is there anyone who I can contact in regards to creating applications under Linux to use the CueCat device?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
You don't pull a microwave apart and put it back together then complain when you get radiation poisoning do you ?
I don't personally, but people, notably so for North Americans, do seem to enjoy this kind of thing: stick a screwdriver in your eye and then sue the screwdriver manufacturer.
I often wonder what the morons sue the manufacturer for... failing to mount a ring around the business end to stop people excising their own eyeballs? Only to be sued again when another dickwit gets his fingers caught in the protecive ring? How do I undo a recessed screw with this new, safer screwdriver?
You would halve the Court traffic overnight if common sense was made a mandatory possession.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Judging by your choice of words, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when it comes to hardware and software, and probably don't know what a driver is. I'm not saying this to put you down, just to point out that you may need to do some more research before attempting to write about technical issues. In all honesty, there aren't really any relevant technical issues in this case, except perhaps how the reverse engineering was done. However, since the RE seems to have been done properly, DC really has no case. You seem to be thinking this is a copyright issue when it's not. They didn't copy anything from Digital Convergence. They figured out how the piece of hardware worked and they wrote their own driver for it. That's it. DC has no legal right to prevent them from doing that. At least they shouldn't under traditional copyright law, and currently don't even under the DMCA. If the DeCSS case continues to go badly, they could end up with such a right in the future, as it would be only a small step farther than what is happening to 2600.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I wonder of the designers took into account that there are some people out there who use the dovorak layout VS the QWERTY layout?
There are some users of any platform who choose to use keyboard maping as as the method of setting their keyboard to their personal preferences.
Just posted this question to tech support, at present they can only say, "doesn't work for the under Linux/Unix, and might be available for the mac next year". Perhaps if their 5 year plan actually included design rather than marketing, perhaps this rather simple issue would have been addressed! Note, I've not tested the output using a Dovork remapping.
Given that the Dovorak keyboard is popular among folks who don't have two hands, I would think it be a bad idea to have a device designed to read numeric data output it with alpha-numeric, and really BAD PR when discovered the company in question didn't support the handicapped.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
These guys could sell the reader at Radio Shack for $20 and still make a tidy profit. I took one apart and checked the design, the bill of materials and manufacuring can't be more than $5 per device. And for $20 they could move A LOT of these suckers, if you compare that to the price of your average barcode reader.
What they're really after though is consumer behaviour. From what I understand about the way the software works, each time you scan something it sends the encoded string to their web site where it gets decoded and then sent back to you. They also create a log of the serial number of the reader, the barcode read, and who the reader is registered with. This gives them a nice log of consumer behaviour. THAT'S what they're really after, and that's how they can justify giving away millions of readers. In the end all they want to do is sell targeted mailing lists to third parties.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
... HERE.
-----
then what is to stop someone from replicating a replicator? heehee..
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
In your example, the tinkerer making a liability claim against the manufacturer of the microwave. Nobody is trying to make warranty or liability claims against Digital Convergence. They're trying to figure out how the beast works, and find new uses for it. To use a microwave equivalent of what Digital Convergence is trying to do: GE would be sueing you for intellectual property violations when you put a CD in the microwave to see what it would do (don't do this with a CD or microwave you like, by the way). It appears that Digital Convergence is attempting to control how you use their product, not just protecting their intellectual property.
Hah! This wouldn't be paying nearly enough respect to the people who spent YEARS developing the concept of bar codes! What you should really be doing is designing your own way to universally and effectively identify a product based on a small printed region!
Oh, and on that note, did you know that you have to pay licensing fees to Uniform Code Council for permission to make and sell products with UPC codes? I'm not sure how or if this applies to private, non-commericial use of the system, but it's something to think about nonetheless.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
I wonder how they can forbid using their data format only because it is their invention.. how about other uses.. imagine the design and the shape of the device make it usuable as a bottle opener. Do they forbid me to use the thing as a bottle opener only because its shape is their IP and they give it away for free (assuming that I use it for other purposes than opening bottles)? Can they forbid me to tell other people that it is a great bottle opener and how to use it as such?
Probably not, every judge would laugh at them if they would try to sue me because I use their free gift as a bottle opener. So what's the difference?
The CEO and his pal had a number of grammar errors in their official response. They should have spent the past five years increasing their communication skills.
- They were planning to make money on the Linux drivers.
- They wanted to build in a tracking mechanism or other privacy-threatening features to benefit the advertisers.
If they were going to give it away free and/or open source, why would they be screaming about their IP? Besides, isn't it the case that an independently-written driver uses their IP, but cannot be their IP in itself? Obviously IANAL, but how can software I write become somebody else's IP, even if it works with hardware I purchased (or otherwise legally obtained) from them?bp
You don't pull a microwave apart and put it back together then complain when you get radiation poisoning do you ? Why should this be any different ?
'cause no one is claming to be hurt. your talking about the "falling down an open manhole cover" syndrom. IE: idiots doing something to kill themselves. Reverse engenering a product is NOT ILLEGAL. they are not taking away money from these people. they are not cutting into their profits. are the police being sued for using superglue to find fingerprints instead of sticking things together?
Dirty Pirate Hooker
This may sound a bit strange, but do we really need IP laws at all? I personally think the idea of Intellectual Property is a little silly. Once you share an idea with others (by simply telling them about it), it's no longer yours. Ideas are not property. An idea that isn't shared is useless, and an idea that is shared is beneficial to everyone who shares it. The whole idea of protecting ideas seems counter-productive to me.
And the biggest problem with IP laws is beyond philosphical reasoning. There are definite disadvantages to removing IP laws. I'm not blind to the arguments in support of IP.
But I personally think the disadvantages of IP far outweigh the advantages. I would much rather live in a world without IP than live in a world where IP is visciously protected and heavily guarded, a world of pay-per-play textbooks and absurd copyright lawsuits, a world where I can't even think about taking my computer apart for fear of criminal prosecution.
The Compaq case also shows what is wrong with Cleanroom reverse engineering - Compaq's bios has always been pretty lousy, and continues to be to this day.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wow. You really don't understand, do you? You're asking that people shouldn't do things with things they own (which contain no licencable content - this isn't an IP issue, whatever the story says) without the permission of the manufacturer? I can't connect a barcode reader to my serial port, swipe a few codes and work out how to use the little electrical signals that come down the wire?
Is that really what you're saying??
...and see what their sniveling CEO says to that!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Who designed it is irrelavent (they aren't copying the design and making new scanners), who marketed it is REALLY irrelavent (they aren't trying to sell something under the same name.) The distribution process is also irrelavent (they aren't trying to distribute anything) All they did is took the output of the scanner and made it into something they could use.
If somebodys bad busness model makes them loose money, it's not my problem. It's their problem and their funders problem.
If they think that they leased the things, they should have used much more maticulous methodology. A Radio Shack guy asking me "hey you want a CueCat for free" is not a lease. I find shrink wrap licenses to be crap (IANAL, but unless shirnk wrap license laws have ben passed in your state, they will have a hard time (UCITA.. look it up).
Your argument is baseless and invalid.
One should not get something for nothing (true... but these guys messed up.) One shuold not give away something and then expect everybody to use it the way they want.
The use of bar codes, no matter how creative, is not the exclusive IP of anyone except the copyright holder of barcodes. No more than a POS (Point of Sale) system is the IP of anyone. When it comes to the :Colon:CAT, when it comes down to it, it's just a bar code reader, and has 'bout the same protection as a mouse.
:Colon:Convergence has not pending is for the Audio Cue technology, which will likely disapear with advent of digital brodcast media. However, they don't hold a patent on the cable required, no is the audio cable their IP, no matter how creative they instruct you to use it.
:Double:Colon device. I'd be perfectly happy if all their demographics came from places they don't care about.
The only Patent I know of that
If worse comes to worse, you can always sell it on E-bay. "$7 handling fee. No exceptions" seems to be one of the cuecats that's actually taking bids. I'm sure there are plenty of folks outside the US who would be happy to actually pay for the
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I so worry that the QCat is "Give away" to generate popularity.. In itself not a bad thing...
It's the "take back" end of it..
With open source drivers if they did "take back" the QCat someone could create compeating hardware using a diffrent design.
Netscape tried to pull this.. and was thwarted by Microsoft whom we worry is pulling a similer stunt with IE
I might add that IP rights don't fade (excluding TradeMarks) a person can be sued for years of abuse of IP.. The publishing of the QCat protocal dosn't grant anyone any rights to use that protocal. It only makes drivers posable... If someone made a compatable they could be sued.
They want to bring this product into the market and use freebes to bring it into everyones home. Good deal. But by denfending the drivers and preventing us from making our own open drivers they also have the additional power of being the only scanner.
A new scanner could not simply use a new protocal and add support to the same driver if the driver is closed.
Microsoft could make a new scanner.. a new service.. and just patch the Linux drivers... and push thies guys off the market..
If however the drivers themselfs are closed then a compatable driver is not so easy to make...
I profesionally understand his worry. He is conserned this will allow someone to build a whole new QCat. However my own understanding of IP law tells me he is wrong.. that a QCat clone would be a major violation of patents.
By the way.. if they didn't patent the protocall then I can see reason for worry...
But then if he didn't patent the protocal.. there is no intelectual property..
I don't actually exist.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"We were giving something away for free and were amazed to see people taking them. They even thought they OWNED them!"
What a ridiculous situation. It's like Ford selling me a car and telling me I can only put Exxon gas in it because they own a bunch of Exxon stock.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Then you would need a legally binding contract signed by both parties. You can't just hand somebody something and then say that it was given under a list of terms and conditions. You have the right to be notified of the terms and conditions before you accept them.
Also, doesn't the right of first sale come in to play here? Once they give it away, they are stuck with whatever I choose to use it for.
As one final note, I know that they will say encryption was broken under the DMCA, however, when you read this you are breaking my encryption of the post. I encrypted it by converting all characters to their ascii values. Everyone who reads this posted has now broken my encryption to view copyrighted material.
--
Mike Mangino
Sr. Software Engineer, SubmitOrder.com
Mike Mangino
mmangino@acm.org
Wouldn't it make more sense to charge for the hardware and give away the idea? It seems that they are giving away the hardware and then trying to sell the ideas. This is like trying to move pudding uphill using a rake. Let's take this into a different arena: Has anyone ever used Avon Skin So Soft? (the non US /.'ers might not get this one). Have you ever seen the list of things that SSS is supposed to be good for? Everything from bug repellant to engine de-greaser, right? The comparison would be if Avon tried to sell those lists but then give away the product. Does this make any sense? Of course not, but tech companies don't seemed constrained by the laws of good sense any more, do they?
I think(hope) that this is one of the effects that we will see from the open source revolution. Companies are going to have to quit selling poorly implamented ideas as a product and instead go back to selling more tangible items. Luckily all the smartest people are on the side of the revolution. Can you imagine what would happen if these guys had developed some REAL encryption? Can you imagine what would have happened if CSS would have consisted of solid technology?
Politics, Culture, Food?
It's like their renting you the device, not giving it to you - the price of the rental is that you pay them for it's use.
It's a little scary, isn't it? We seem to be lacking the ownership of ANY property... we LEASE our car from the corporation, we LICENSE our software from the corporation, the insurance company and the bank OWN our houses, homes, and land... we don't OWN the barcode scanner, it's given to us...
I'm just getting worried about all this now...
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
You own stuff you pay for. If you pay for your house, you own it - until then, the bank does. If you buy a car, you own it. If you lease a car, you don't. If someone gives you a barcode scanner...
"...I am sure it is copyrighted in some manner."
It? What's copyrighted? You can't copyright a physical device (i.e. the cue:cat barcode scanner). I'm sure they own the copyright to their source code and the executable form of their drivers/software, but noone's illegally copying that. Some Linux hackers reverse engineered the protocol emitted by the scanner and wrote their own (completely indepented) drivers to read it and do something useful with it. What copyright is violated? What IP is violated?
NONE of their IP was stolen, or reverse-engineered
The piece of IP that was reverse-engineered was that which translates the scanned string to a URL. This is non-trivial (in a legal sense) and so is defensible IP.
Of course, in Europe (a neo-communist hellhole, according to most of /.), we have laws that protect the right to reverse engineer commercial products.
Because in this case, we didn't complain. If we had came to their tech-support crying "I broke my reader while hacking Cue:Cat! Please help me!", that would have been another thing. But now they want to put a lock on the microwave to inhibit me from opening it an radiation-poisoning myself!
I am sad this happened in the EU. I was blue-eyed and thought that such things "only happen in the US". OK, the court havn't approuved it yet so it is yet just a stupid company atempting to frighten people. Perheaps we should try to get a law tthat forbids companies to frighten people?
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
This rather poor reaction on their part seems to be thinking like a software developer when giving away hardware.
Software for a long time it seems has been developing these ridiculous licenses which the developer could make the end user "legally" bound to use their product anyway they wanted to. This has slowly built up to the point where the developers have and are attempting to pass legislation to protect these ridiculously broad IP "rights" which they have developed (ie DMCA and UTICA). These changes to IP make these developers think they can control their market by writing a license restricting the use of their software rather than designing a sound buisness model.
The problem is that this sort of use license shouldn't be available for any IP, in software or hardware.
What DC has done is attempt to extend these rights to a piece of hardware, and they can't seem to understand why this doesn't make sense to people. Oddly enough, people however still seem to think hardware that they have in their hands is theirs. Hopefully this attitude will be much harder to change than the attitude to software was.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
I just can't wait until these guys show up on fuckedcompany.com. They just made my pick o' the week...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I would much prefer to read and consider what both sides have to say than to halt and restart my train of thought while CmdrTaco interrupts with irrelevancies like "Thank god. These folks worked hard to write code to use this piece of hardware, and it would be unfortunate if they were forced to take it down."
---------
>I'm beginning to think that many of the reverse engineering projects these days are losing site of the fact that they are destroying a potential revenue stream for the original developers.
So just cause a commercial app exists, I would have to ask to develop an alternative? I bet Linus never asked anyone they would allow him to make his own OS. the Gnumeric guys never asked M$ whether they were allowed to make a spreadsheet. Boohoohoo.. someone may not make money on a certain product. big deal. but how ethical is this: You can use the hardware we gave you. but only with our software. How else are we going to invade your privacy?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Excuse me, but all the Open Source hackers did was copying some software
Incorrect. What the hackers did was learn to communicate with the hardware not "copy" software. There is a difference.
Pathetic. They don't have a legal leg to stand on, so they muddy the waters with crap like this. No, they aren't just trying to make a living. They are trying to salvage a badly screwed up business model by re-inventing the laws to support their position, to the detriment of all of us who are fond of computer freedom. Their hardware rights have little bearing on their software rights and that nonsense they wrote above reads like the worst FUD M$ ever wrote. Please, sue me. My attorneys will happily crucify this joke.
1Alpha7
Live to be Moderated
They "encrypted" their messages with base64+XOR. That is just like the Microsoft click-thru-license and Samba: under DMCA, workarounds are illegal. Prove me wrong, please?
What a promised land of corporate freedom; freedom of bullies to rule over people.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
I think the company feelings about this issue are quite valid.
I think they are completely clueless as to what IP really is in the first place, and mistakenly believe that if they don't like something, they can just throw lawyers at it and it will go away.
If you bought a chain-saw engine, manufactured some custom brackets, and fitted the engine to a racing go-cart, would you be stealing someone's Intellectual Property? What property exactly, the diameter and spacing of the holes for the mounting bolts? If the chain-saw company disaproved, should they sue everyone who makes brackets? Who sells brackets? Who publishes bracket-plans on a go-cart website?
Mr. Taco, I think it's in bad taste to intersperse Digital Convergence's response with your rebuttals. Better to post their whole response un-mangled, then post your commentary afterwards if you must.
I guess you don't have a clue that Doug Davis from Digital Convergance is lying through his teeth. His legalistic jargon is not closely related to reality.
Live to be Moderated
-- That whole third paragraph about the linux community helping Microsoft is hogwash.
;)
Though this reply isn't about the Linux Community, per se, the people as nmap believe that Windows 2000 is using NetBSD's IP stack
TCP Initial Window -- This simply involves checking the window size on returned packets. Older scanners simply used a non-zero window on a RST packet to mean "BSD 4.4 derived". Newer scanners such as queso and nmap keep track of the exact window since it is actually pretty constant by OS type. This test actually gives us a lot of information, since some operating systems can be uniquely identified by the window alone (for example, AIX is the only OS I have seen which uses 0x3F25). In their "completely rewritten" TCP stack for NT5, Microsoft uses 0x402E. Interestingly, that is exactly the number used by OpenBSD and FreeBSD.
http://www.insecure.o rg/nmap/nmap-fingerprinting-article.html
Hey wait,
Taco deserves the freedom to Editorialize as he wishes on his web page. I am happy he did it. I enjoyed reading it. I think it was well written and complete.
Enough of this Politically Corect, lets not ruffle any feathers crap.
When we have no rights left (they were sold to corporations by our duly elected reps in congress and executive offices) we will be dreaming of opportunities such as this where we can defend our rights.
BTW: The business model of this product (I picked up one from Radio Shack on Thursday) implies that they are recording the data and selling it without the users permission (or was it hidden in the shrink wrap). I think their model is flawed. Just like I think the Grocery chains model of holding us ransome for 'preferred savings cards' panel id card is flawed.
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss
subsolar
I have to agree. Can't expect people to treat you
as being editorially independant (isn't that
what you claimed back when the Andover purchase
happened?) if you choose to pre-flame a company's
response. Sure, they may well be wrong, and they
may well be short of ideas, but that doesn't give
you the right to go and speak for the rest of us
in posting the article.
Sorry, I would have to disagree.
If someone had posted the company's copyrighted software or they held patents on the software, they might have a point. All that happened was that somebody figured out how to decode the output of this thing.
As far as I can see (IANAL) the DMCA won't help them either, since this device is not protecting a copyrighted work (the device is a bar code scanner and the company does not own the copyright to information stored on barcodes). Reverse engineering is still not a crime, and if no copyrights, patents or trademarks were violated then they don't seem to have a legitimate claim.
Perhaps some definition of the term "clean room" is in order. A clean room implementation is one in which the hardware is treated as a black box, and then software is written to imitate its behavior under ever conceivable circumstance. The classic example of this was the Compaq reverse engineering of the original IBM PC BIOS. It would have been trivial for Compaq simply to slurp the BIOS off the EEPROM and make copies onto their own chips. That would be stealing, and not OK.
What they did instead was to give the BIOS to engineers who has not seen the assembler code on the chip and instruct them to duplicate it based on its behavior. So they sent various signals to the chip, and watched what it did as it booted up, and basically systematically looked at precisely what it was doing. They were then, with some trial and error, able to write code that duplicated all the observable behavior of the IBM BIOS. That is a cleanroom implementation, as evidenced by the fact that Compaq came out with a fine clone of the BIOS and was legally allowed to sell it. Mere use of the hardware is not enough to make it not a clean implementation
The CueCat reverse engineering is remarkably similar to this, except much more simple. The hackers merely had to figure out what the output meant, which apparently was pretty easy. They treated the CueCat as a black box, recording the output from the scanner and figuring out what it meant. No harm, no foul.
Walt
I don't think my arm is going to irradiate and fall off for messing with a barcode scanner... unless BarCodeScanner v2.0 has a new "anti hacker 'feature'"...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Very simple, sits and waits for a scan and then decodes. Use or abuse at your risk. Works for me, but YMMV. ISBM check number code swiped from elsewhere(cuecatd1.0 I believe). The rest is original
/\./,$value;
#!/usr/bin/perl
#initalize hash
$dec{"C3"} = $dec{"n"} = $dec{"Z"} = "0";
$dec{"CN"} = $dec{"j"} = $dec{"Y"} = "1";
$dec{"Cx"} = $dec{"f"} = $dec{"X"} = "2";
$dec{"Ch"} = $dec{"b"} = $dec{"W"} = "3";
$dec{"D3"} = $dec{"D"} = $dec{"3"} = "4";
$dec{"DN"} = $dec{"z"} = $dec{"2"} = "5";
$dec{"Dx"} = $dec{"v"} = $dec{"1"} = "6";
$dec{"Dh"} = $dec{"r"} = $dec{"0"} = "7";
$dec{"E3"} = $dec{"T"} = $dec{"7"} = "8";
$dec{"EN"} = $dec{"P"} = $dec{"6"} = "9";
$string = "";
while ($string eq "") {
print "scan code:";
$string = ;
chop($string);
$type = CueCatDecode($string, 2);
if ($type eq "15") {
$ISBNcheck = &CheckDigitISBN($string);
}
$decode = CueCatDecode($string, 3);
print "\n\n decoded = ".$decode . $ISBNcheck."\n\n\n";
open (outfile,">>samples.txt");
print outfile "input: ".$string."\n";
print outfile "output:".$decode . $ISBNcheck."\n\n\n";
close outfile;
$string = "";
$ISBNcheck = "";
}
sub CueCatDecode($$) {
$value=$_[0];
$s=$_[1];
@v=split
$dc="";
for ($i=0;$ilength($v[$s]);$i++) {
if (($i % 4) == 0) {
$c = substr($v[$s],$i,2);
$i ++;
}
else {
$c = substr($v[$s],$i,1); # Get One Byte of Data
}
$dc = $dc . $dec{$c}; # Builds BarCode from bcode
$c=""; # Clear Out Readdate
}
return $dc;
}
sub CheckDigitISBN($)
{
$value = $_[0];
$sss=0;
$ss=0;
$sum=0;
for ($i = 0; $i 9; $i++)
{
$sum = (10-$i);
$sss= $sum * substr($value,$i,1);
$ss=$ss+$sss;
$sum = (11-($ss % 11));
}
return $sum;
}
D'oh I mean FreeBSD and OpenBSD (said that before I looked it up.. hehe).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Makes reading about :cue:cat, Earth First!, and Digital:Convergence painful to read.
/.
What do you expect? This is
I don't think that open-source developers really "seem to feel they can do whatever they please", as you state. In fact, I don't think any of the developers of these drivers at any point considered copying the hardware design for the cuecat and selling or giving it away or giving away illegal copies of their software. What the driver authors did (as suggested by earlier posters) is similar to taking a car apart to write a manual about it. But in reality, the software developers are even nicer than that-- it would be like driving a car around a little bit to write a manual about it. AFAIK, disassembly of the devices was not required to write the drivers.
None of the developers are attempting to take IP from the company. It's been asked before and I'll ask it again-- what IP are we talking about? The hardware? Designs for that have not been published. The software? It is not being illegally distributed, nor was it used in the production of the drivers. The central server softwar? Not only not copied or distributed illegally, but also not used at all by the drivers. Reverse engineering is and has been legal for quite some time.
No one is doing "whatever they please" in a way that violates a law I'm aware of. Nobody is being screwed or trampled. How does this driver screw or trample anyone, and how was anyone screwed or trampled in its production? IP is valuable to OSS developers. OSS developers protect their IP with just as much zeal as closed-source developers, and have a full understanding that not everything can be free. However, until there is a law that takes away the right to make your own software (that in no way infringes on IP)-- there will always be people who out of the goodness of their hearts provide free software to make our lives a little better.
I am not scared of Digital:Convergence, they have nothing to stand on...
/cuecat/
http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~porterds
In fairness, the original programmers had to figure out how they were goign to accomplish their goals and then create code that actually did it. The hackers had only to observe the workings of the exisiting code and create a work-alike...
Because it's good manners. You are about to take a product developed by somebody else through hard work. Once they've done that, and attempted to make a little bit of money off it ( in this case ), then you go ahead and make a free version of the software. These people are trying to make a living, and you're robbing them of it. The least you could do is ask before your ruin their entire business model.
It's in the last line:
"Even if you don't read this EULA, you must abide by all of the above before using our product.
Editorial independance: "Andover will not encourage me to quash stories that are unfavorable to them or to editorialize in their favor when I feel differently."
Non-biased reporting: "I will refrain from advocacy when reporting stories."
I see Slashdot as a very political site, I can even remember a Presidential endorsement recently. I don't expect non-biased coverage of the things I read here, but fortunately I am a believer in Free Software so the advocacy doesn't bother me.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Even if Microsoft programmers are as incompotent as people at slashdot paint them from time to time (and I know they aren't), I doubt that it would take more than a day for them to reverse engineer the protocol.
Current US laws allow for reverse engineering to effect interoperability. Nothing more than that was engaged in here.
Finally, I think they are just a bunch of crybabies out to give opensource a bad name. Look how much whining they did. Look how unspecific they were about what IP was allegedly stolen. My guess is that they lost sales of some development kit or another, or fear such loss, and are using the IP argument to scare people into not blabbing.
You can use the hardware we gave you. but only with our software. ;-)). The abundance of programs such as GNUTELLA show that people don't really care too much what gets spread around (so long as it doesn't affect download bandwidth).
This is not a problem for most people so long as the company keeps the app updated regularly and provides a good upgrade system.
How else are we going to invade your privacy?
This is a bit more problematical and is perhaps where I am somewhat neive... Why would anyone want to invade your privacy? What the hell have I got that 'they' could possibly want? (Besides those metallica CD's
Having said that I understand that information about websites you visit etc could be used to target marketing at you specifically... well isn't that a problem now is it?
I really don't get the whole privacy issue, so long as I'm still allowed to say what I want I don't care who know's what I'm saying, if I did I wouldn't say it in the first place.
Now point out my mistakes...
Hackers, eh? Check out thier Press page:
:CRQ is a free-to-consumer software that interacts with any form of broadcasting and print media through cue coding.
:CueCat (Keystroke Automation Technology) is a free-to-consumer hand-held device that is attached to the computer and "reads" Digital:Convergence Corporation's proprietary codes and all known existing product codes to "interactivate" a cue.
"... Working in conjunction with industry-leading partners such A. H. Belo Corporation, RadioShack, NBC and Forbes magazine, Digital:Convergence's innovative technology allows broadcasters, publishers and manufacturers to instantly bridge their content or products to the Internet. The company's management team includes a roster of industry veterans from Time Warner, Hearst Corporation, AT&T, GE and ING Barings."
and this is where they think they have a legal leg:
Cue is a coding method for media that allows any form of broadcasting and print media to remotely control a computer by instantly driving a Web browser to relevant content.
(Bold emphasis mine) The DCMA strikes again - thier proprietary codes are their IP. I've never use a cuecat, so does anyone know if there's a EULA attached to the critter?
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
What about the VW beetle? Last time I checked that thing was tore apart every which way, modified, published, and more. This sparked a craze that continues even today - the VW beetle is apart of US history as one of the longest selling cars, most popular, etc - even though the thing came from Germany.
What is the difference here?
I saw it last night on freshmeat.
---
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Reading through the letter, it becomes obvious that these folks don't know what Intellectual Property is. Intellectual Property law takes on three main forms: Trade Secrecy Law, Patent Law, and Copyright Law.
Anyone taking apart their barcode reader and creating software from what they see isn't violating Trade Secrecy law, because reverse-engineering is permitted under Trade Secrecy law. It doesn't fall under Patent law unless they have a patent that hasn't yet been mentioned (this would have to be a patent on the software, because that's what's being recreated), and it doesn't fall under Copyright law unless folks are actually using code from the barcode reader's software or ROM, or producing a work heavily derived from them.
It is a company's sad obligation to go after everyone who is violating one of these IP laws, lest they lose protection under the law, but it's a sadder 'obligation' for a company to use FUD (even when they're apologizing at the same time), under the guise of protecting legal rights, to try to dissuade people who have every right to do what they're doing.
The question here is whether D:C knows it has no legal footing, but is ding everything it can to get people to stop anyhow, or if they read too much slashdot and think 'that's our intellectual property! We must defend it!' without knowing the ramifications of IP law.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
I think they blew it when they actualy made a special format for barcodes which requires special hardware to use. I have a laser barcode reader on my machine and it can't read the codes in the magazines. It can read everything else. Too bad they didn't just use 3 of 9 and sold the scanner unencumbered so it could be usefull. They want me to use a general use computer with a general use operating system to use their propritary hardware.. I think they missed the boat. I already have an industry standard scanner.
The truth shall set you free!
What most people have to realise is that this idea against reverse engineering in general is again an invention of the software developement industry.. In all the other industries, reverse engineering is common, and used by all.
For example, if you visit a car manufacturer you will see they have groups dedicated to tear down and study in detail their competitors' cars. I know also a few persons in the microelectronics field, who had as a project to design machines for helping reverse engineering. (for a big big player in the market) (those were physical machines to permit the manufacturer in question to open the chips and study each layer of them)
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
They know the following -
A barcode scanner is essentially useless
A barcode scanner is not something that people will pay for.
They have managed to nab the market for barcode scanner
Frivilous copyright actions irritate Slashdot
Geeks have a remarkable knack for coming up with uses for useless technology.
They realised that by giving the thing away, they would encourage some free open source driver development. Unfortunately nobody realised that they existed. They decided to advertise on Slashdot. But that costs money. They decided to get some free publicity by sending threatening letters to someone who would most likely mention it to Slashdot.
So this is just advertising. They'll probably say it was all a misunderstanding in a few days, and hope that we can forgive them.
They do have IP rights on specific issues of their barcoding,
Oh? Like what? Copyright, patent, or trade secret?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
------
They are defending their right not to have their intellectual Property reverse engineered and openly distributed.
-----
Sure they are. Unfortunately, there is no such right if the IP protection is protected by trade secret or copyright rather than by a patent. Trade secret protection is governed by state law. Here is an excerpt from the North Carolina statute. I'll bet your state's laws aren't much different.
(1) "Misappropriation" means acquisition, disclosure, or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied authority or consent, unless such trade secret was arrived at by independent development, reverse engineering, or was obtained from another person with a right to disclose the trade secret.
Elsewhere in the NC statute is wording that makes reverse engineering an affirmative defense against trade secret misappropriation.
If the CueCut dudes filed a claim in court claiming that their trade secrets were reverse engineered, it would be a simple matter to get such a claim dismissed.
States are pre-empted from passing laws which give patent like protection of IP. If you want patent protection you have to get a patent. Otherwise if you sell a product, people get to take it apart and see how it works.
Michaelangelo
I cannot disagree more!
All that has happened here is that someone has taken their scanner, plugged it into a computer, scanned some barcodes, seen what they got, figured out how it was converting the barcode into the data it supplied and finally wrote a bit of code to turn the data from the device into something useful. They didn't go near the distributors software (it wasn't even close to being complicated enough to need that) so all they did was use the hardware the manufacturer gave away for free as it was intended with different software.
Now ask yourself this, if Ford gave away car fresheners for their Fiesta and then asked people to remove from websites the instructions for how to fit the freshener to other models of cars would you say "the right channels have to be used when dealing with other peoples work is concerned"?
I think this is a simple case of a company who are trying to implement a business plan with a potential flaw ("the WINDOW for the BIG companies to come in and control and profit from this process we have created"). Guess they should have made sure that door was closed BEFORE they handed the things out. Besides, do you really think that MS would need the Open Source community to help them crack this OR that MS would be deterred from rolling drivers for this into their software by claims of infringment of IP rights.
Bottom line I think they are stupid....not mallicious just stupid.....ah well so much for another dot.com dream!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
With regards to your other comment, I understand your point, but being a crappy coder I could more quickly build a barcode scanner (the parts are available at radio shack) then code a new toolkit. But if I wanted to use QT I wouldn't mind paying for the licensing fee, and in this case the BC software is $20!! That's piddly to about 90% of programmers out there. You know it and I know it.
Third point is wrong; the reality is that IP law is a very strange beast indeed.
:-)
There are definitely situations within which if you do not take action to defend your intellectual property, you lose the RIGHT to defend it at all!
(had this explained to me by a lawyer quite some time ago... details are shaky)
Likewise, cue:cat! (wHaTe^er) can claim IP-- have you looked at their bar codes? They are all slanty with funky stuff around 'em.
On a more serious note, they could claim real IP in terms of the contents of the bar code-- if there is some alternative bit of info or some alternative encoding in use, that is IP.
-- there's no such thing as "Defend it or lose it" under IP law. If 200 people rip off MS Windows and MS prosecutes 2 of them, there's no such defense as "Well, your honor, MS didn't prosecute the other 198 people..." This is a MASSIVE LIE made up by companies who want to shift responsibility. ANYTIME you see a company say "We had to ... or lose it" they're lying.
There's no such thing as 'defend it or lose it' under copyright law. It is true under trademark law (dilution of trademarks), but, while they don't identify just what IP has been 'violated', it seems like trademarks are unlikely to have anything to do with it, so you're right enough in this case.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
The best part was that the store was having a sale -- buy a microwave, get a free home microwave inspection (where a guy would come out and test your oven for RF leaks). Of course Josh had the guy come out and test the microwave AFTER he had taken it apart and used it to make his standing-wave-generator. The guy was scared shitless but tested the apparatus anyhow.
My point is that your example is a particularly cogent one about using a product in a manner for which it's not intened.
Ever use a car as a nutcracker? You jack up a drive wheel, put it in fourth and put a brick on the gas. Then you throw nuts into the gap between the wheel and the ground. Works VERY WELL with fresh walnuts.
Ever use a stereo as a degausser? You short a speaker line through a long spool of wire, ram a bunch of iron things into the center of the spool, and use the volume knob to degauss.
Ever use a Craftsman screwdriver in a way for which it wasn't intended? Did you break it?
Using products in ways in which they weren't intended is a big part of the American ideal. If the Wright Brothers hadn't used bicycle parts in a way for which they SERIOUSLY weren't intended, it might take a lot longer to get to that ski vacation today...
In addition to this, I had just realized that DC's lawyer(s) might just be telling DC what they want to hear so that they (the lawyers) can get more $$ from DC by spending more time with a fruitless case. ;)
Just my $0.03
- Examine software
- Abstract to figure out how the software works
- Write new implementation
because the problem there is that they directly saw DC's IP (their software source code).But the FlyingButtMonkeys didn't reverse engineer the software, they reverse engineered the protocol and built their own software to use the protocols. So clearly they didn't copy any of DC's source code.
--
Which means that the Commander wouldn't be able to guarantee that his inspired thoughts would be foremost in our minds if he opened them up to the hazards of moderation. I hope that he (and his compatriots) will do this in the future, and even consider modifying this story to remove his commentary.
-- there's no such thing as "Defend it or lose it" under IP law. If 200 people rip off MS Windows and MS prosecutes 2 of them, there's no such defense as "Well, your honor, MS didn't prosecute the other 198 people..." This is a MASSIVE LIE made up by companies who want to shift responsibility. ANYTIME you see a company say "We had to ... or lose it" they're lying.
Completely untrue. Are you a lawyer? This is a major tenant of trade secrecy law.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
I feel your pain. I commited one of these attrocities - Boulder Panic! and Boulder Panic! 2 both use punctuation in the name. After trying to have a conversation by email about Boulder Panic! 2 I realized just how silly it is to put an exclamation point in the middle of a product name (or even at the end.) It got worse when I released a special competition version of the game called Boulder Panic! 2: The Challenge! *SIGH* Needless to say, all future products I've got planned no longer use punctuation in the name - it's just too much of a PITA to work with, and if you run a grammar check on a document that utilizes such a name, well, things just don't work out ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Does anyone know how I can get ahold of the linux drivers. I have looked and haven't been able to find them. I know people might not want to post URLs, because it would allow the Digital:Convergence to track the them down, but if I could find out the name of the gzip file or something, I could look on gnutella. Thanks.
You don't pull a microwave apart and put it back together then complain when you get radiation poisoning do you ?
AAMOF, I knew a guy who pulled his microwave apart and put it back together as a microwave transceiver for the ham radio 2.4 GHz band. No, he didn't complain about radiation poisoning, and if he had the company would have rightfully claimed that he'd voided his waranty.
The thing is, if you sell (or give) me a microwave or a bar-code scanner, I can use it to anchor my boat, prop open my window, or carry water to feed my dog. You can void my waranty but you can't stop me from mounting it on a pedestal and calling it a statue.
Now, if someone had decompiled/dis-assembled their copyrighted software then they might have a leg to stand on, but that (AFAIK) is not the case.
Laches is a defense to patent infringement. Just because Unisys tried to sue to the contrary doesn't mean anything (especially since their claims haven't been answered in court).
Okey, so they really want to declare war over people writing linux drivers, huh? Well, this is going to be a reasonabley small number anyways, so their market research isn't going to be lost from us Linux users. It the M$ users that, is where they are going to get the majority of their information from for market research. Lets write some M$ drivers and distribute these on the net. Like at shareware.com, or where ever windows users get their software from.
Also, another fun little thing to do is set up something to repeatedly scan garbage items, such as, say M$ software boxes. And just have it scan them for hours on end, screw with their data. Or scan silly things.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
In the world of capitalism, you have an idea, you try to make money from it, you face competition. If you are successful, you get rich. If not, you don't. Clearly, what has happened here is that they did not anticipate the opensource community in thier mathematics. Now, thier whole business model is shown to have a flaw, and now they are beating thier chest and trying to scare us away. They have no leg to stand on legally, as far as I can see. You cry out to us that, "Oh my goodness, the bigger, badder companies will come in if you don't stop!" Yep, we will hack thier hardware too. Enter Tivo, etc.
This is the same as when little kids play games. One gets mad when he loses and cries foul because he didn't know all the rules. Capitalism is a hard game to master.
Eventually companies will learn that the paradigm has changed. It happens. Don't cry about it. You could have made a quick buck 5 years ago. Now there is no market for your product. Change your business model.
This reminds me of quarts watches. Once not too long ago, the Swiss were the defacto in watchmaking. Then someone came up with the idea of the quarts watch.(in fact, he was Swiss, I think) But the Swiss didn't anticipate the quarts watch catching on. Look on your wrist. Mine says Timex. That's Japanese, I believe. The paradigm changed. That is just the way capitalism works. Live with it. Learn from it. Try something else. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
Well, at least he didn't disable comment posting which would have been someone else's solution for enforcing their viewpoint. I'm surprised by this place over the past week. Going to hell in a handbasket real quickly now.
No, it's not. And consider this: if it were, would you be able to use a Microsoft mouse with Linux?
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Here's an idea, instead of whining that people reverse engineered the hardware and that product of the reverse engineering (the linux drivers)could be used to make neato software that does stuff like a record keeping type software for the likes of DVDs, CDs, books, etc. Why don't they just take that market too and write the software that does neato stuff. That way the ideas we all thought of right away when we heard "free barcode scanner" are implemented by them and we think, hey, they listen...but no...they whine about it instead. For all we know this is just kind of a stall so they can get software like this out.
I installed their software, the little screen thingie said they wanted to make it as popular os the mouse. In order for this to happen, they have to make more than one use for it. Think of it in terms of if that guy who invented the mouse bitched when other people made them, I dunno but I dun wanna play quake on a touchpad....
Obviously you have no idea what a troll is or you would not have displayed your ignorance by making a comment like that. But what should I expect from an AC.
Now, if I were these guys, I would not be too worried if some geekoid types reverse engineered my scanner interface. Heck, I would not have used XOR as my encryption routine, but that's another story.
I would worry if someone worked out a way of using that knowledge, and the scanners I had given away for free to launch a rival service. Posting this code for them must seem like the first step down that road. And of course, now that business models can be patented, there is a good chance they have gone and done that (of course, I don't know whether they have, and I'm too lazy to check).
So maybe the precious IP they are defending is not XOR, but their business model. And while business model patents are plainly ludicrous, maybe they could only persuade someone to lend them money to give away the scanners free by relying on such a patent ? Who knows.
They definitely need help in the PR department....
Pingle
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
...the cellular phone business. You sign up for service and get a free phone. The difference is that you don't get a free phone if you don't sign up for service. Once your contract is up, you can use the phone with someone else's service if you so choose. So, if we follow CueCat's business methodology, you could go to any cell phone business, ask for a phone and walk out with no obligation. The problem lies in CueCat's business model. It's no one's fault but their own that they didn't sign people up to the service when they got their barcode reader. They can't start adding restrictions when the person receiving the hardware didn't agree to anything in the first place.
But why is the rum gone?
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
>You don't pull a microwave apart and put it back together then complain when you get radiation poisoning do you ? Why should this be any different ?
:) I *won't* complain to these people if the GPL'd driver doesn't work.
Shit! I installed the Linux driver for this thing, and I've got 4th degree plasma burns. You're saying I have no right to complain about such an unsafe product??
Quick - someone get me a dermal regenerator!
Heh. I don't know why you even attempted to argue against LEGAL reverse engineering... you don't even attempt to provide a solid case, just a mini-troll. Anyone can call anything IP, as they call their generic scanner product.
My best interpretation of your statement is, "you don't pull apart this scanner driver with your own, then complain your driver does not work.". To this I would say, true
If anyone is smart over there, they may be reflecting on how they could have worked with the community better. UMAX does not bully the SANE people who write drivers for their scanner. Hardware drivers are the *perfect* candidates for GPL'd software... my UMAX scanner was made OBSOLETE under Windows 2000 because UMAX chose not to write Win2K drivers, suggesting instead I buy a new scanner from them (to which I say "fuck you!").
The Linux scanner driver crew SANE hey have no profit motive for screwing customers.
The business model relies on a web server-based lookup, based on the handle that the plastic cat reads. If they have the dawnings of a clue, then their server won't care what the client is.
:Cues.
This might actually be the reason for their actions in the first place.
From the other article:
When they sent the letter (Aug. 30), my software did not touch the DCNV servers to look up
It might have bugged them that someone was writing software for their hardware that just looked up ISBN#s on amazon instead of their server (and in general leave the coice of servers to the coder/user). This would indeed seem to be a threat to their business model, although IMHO a minor one due to the above mentioned blinking 12:00 syndrome.
You know, I keep a lot of old junk around (I can say this when my wife isn't listening!) and "make" stuff with it, or fix stuff, whatever. If I need a resistor, capacitor, whatever, I just look first in my "good" parts bin, then in my "junk" pile, then in a store (and a good store is getting harder to find all the time) so I don't see how people can tell me what to do with all the stuff I collect, define to me when it's offically "junk" and I can literally "hack" into it, etc. It's MY 2 cents, after all!
- real hackers don't have sigs -
Thomas claimed that the protocol is IP. I think that's false. Even if it were, the actual embodiment of "the protocol" is not one specific string of bits that it spits out (no more than an image generated by a Adobe Photoshop is the IP of Adobe), but rather the set of rules for generating that string of bits, namely the logic/code stored in the CueCat and in the driver on the computer.
Additionally, if this were the case, I think they'd have to have a patent on the rules for the protocol. Otherwise, the rules for the protocol were independantly figured out, which is a legal way to get the information under trade secrets law.
--
It seems like the only thing they could possibly be referring to as their intellectual property here is their specific (and earth-shatteringly trivial) encoding of the bar codes. There is certainly nothing innovative about the encoding technique. So it seems roughly equivalent to claiming a particular number as your intellectual property. I'd like to read the patent, but I'm already at capacity for patent-related outrage this week.
On the other hand, the bar code reader aside (which I've actually found helpful in testing some bar codes I was printing), I think the digital convergence stuff (meaning mainly the airwaves signal stuff) is kind of neat. It seems like a primitive but positive step towards some kind of actual (for lack of a better word) convergence. Not that I want any right now, but I still think it's cool.
(Also, is it true that you have to defend a patent or risk it falling into the public domain? I thought that was only true of trademarks.)
Wow...Between this company taking 5 years to write barcode software and IBM saying it would cost 6 gazillion dollars to add ALT tags to it's Olympic sites -- I realize that maybe I am working in the wrong place....(You see, I am kinda lazy and underpaid -- so I would love to work somewhere where I could spend 5 years on a device driver/Barcode reader or get paid $1000 dollars for each ALT tag.)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
OK, let's see here:
- So many CAPITAL LETTERS whenever he's REALLY CONCERNED that you DON'T GET HIS POINT. The guy reads like Robert McElwaine. You know, "UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this
IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED."
Well, ACTUALLY, in this CASE, this guy's DIS-couraging it, but MY BASIC POINT is the SAME!-
Abysmal English skills. This guy's a CEO?
Finally, and most seriously, a complete failure to grasp the concept of IP. Nowhere in his rambling spiel does he actually articulate to what "property" he makes claims of ownership.- "reversed engineered"?
- "intellectually property"?
- "we loose any remedies"?
- "the Linux Community could of inadvertently" Could OF?
This in just two paragraphs. Jesus H. Christ, I've seen kids in grade school with better English skills. Call FuckedCompany now!- "if we don't PROTECT our IP, we loose any remedies under law to PROTECT our IP"
The rest of the screed is more of the same. Incoherent rants about how a geek with a few lines of Perl is a dire threat to their entire business model and a furtherance of the Micros~1 monopoly. Yeah, and flying monkeys might come out of my butt. (Oh, wait a minute... that's what started this!)No, you dipsticks, that's trademark law. If I create something called the CueCat (without the dippy colon in front of the "C"), and it's a plastic cat-shaped barcode thingy, and he doesn't sue me, he stands to lose the right to use the word ":CueCat" to describe his plastic cat-shaped barcode thingy.
Netpliance (with the I-Opener and the resulting arms race of BIOS upgrades and anti-hack measures they wasted time with) missed the clue train, but at least can claim they faced a genuine threat. And even they didn't try to sue anyone.
But these guys, good Lord, they haven't just missed the Cluetrain, they aren't even at the friggin' station!
In closing, I'm pretty sure think there's more than one reason the "threatening letter" was merely a vaguely-threatening letter and not a real cease-and-desist.
1) As flamed ad infinitum on /. last week, any case against the developers of :CueCat(tm)-related hacks is likely to be extremely weak.
2) If Digital Convergence doesn't even have proofreaders, what the fuck are they using for corporate counsel?
3) And on that corporate counsel, if they do have corporate counsel, could one of them kindly bitchslap their management team and explain the difference between trademark law and "whatever the ring-tailed rambling fuck" (that's waht I'm calling it, because they've utterly failed to explain it - again) they're trying to use as grounds to sue an open-source developer with a funny domain name?
And how is that different from anyone that you might know? --sugarman--
--sugarman--
Is there by chance a Windows version as well? I'd love to take an inventory on CDs.
Or better yet, have a program where you can find drivers for said hardware just by scanning in said hardware's barcode.
Apparently, you have an opinion, and you don't let facts get in your way of posting it. The "O-S Community" generally respects IP. What they do NOT respect is a Lawyer-happy company suing independent developers for developing something the the company *claims* is their IP, just because it exists.
You might want to double-check the definition of IP.
bp
There is nothing illegal about reverse-engineering the protocol. And, a 'clean room' implementation of the _protocol_ has nothing to do with whether or not they have the _hardware_.
Yes, but if:
1) no patent exists that covers the protocol, and
2) the direct object code wasn't disassembled and copied
then there can't be any problem. It doesn't matter if I buy a Ford, throw away everything but the motor, figure out how the motor was connected to the rest of the car, and create a different rest-of-the-car (without even looking at the origianl rest-of-the-car). Unless the interface between the moter and the rest-of-the-car is protected, I can do whatever the heck I want with it. I could pee on the motor if I wanted. I could record the electrical outputs of the motor and broadcast them on the internet.
It would be illegal for me to use a star-trek like replicator to exactly atom-for-atom replicate Ford many times, put my own brand name on them, and sell them as mine. Otherwise, it's legal.
--
It is sad that big bad software company decides to work with the "Linux Community" only after their IP is exposed. What these companies are failing to understand is that there is an INCREDIBLE MARKET right under their nose, and if they choose to ignore that market - well, as any student of economics will tell you, the market will provide a solution.
Furthermore, as a non-Linux user, I object to being grouped into the collective "Linux Community," but only because I choose to use BSD. True enough that BSD users do frequently get the spoils of whatever wars Linux wins, but by letting companies off with *only* Linux support, we are not accomplishing the true goal (all hail RMS). Indeed, there is probably a better name for our community that will encompass all OS's, text editors, browsers, licensing schemes, and other insert-your-holy-war-here items.
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
If you're not using their software, they're not snooping on you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Quick, patent this idea before they do.
all barcode scanners must read across (either way) the barcode - the difference in supermarkets and such, is they normally have at least two and usually more beams (either separate or via mirror/prism) that cross each other so the code can be read at any angle.
You bet! Barcodes were designed to do this, because you couldn't guarantee that a checkout clerk at a grocery store (the original intended audience for the things) was going to accurately position a can of beans every time. The original answer was a bullseye shaped code. Quickly, someone (DEC?) managed to get rectangular codes working with a sizable margin for error, and that's what caught on. A few places, eg UPS use newer codes that employ a grid of pixels; theirs even has a bullseye in the middle.
Grocery stores have fairly reliable units actually, employing a collection of mirrors and a rapidly spinning prism.
But barcodes just care about being swept over the code; they can't tell what orientation they're in. And most barcodes have checksums arranged so that if you read them in backwards it's no trouble at all to reverse them.
I suspect that the five years of development dealt with the server that these things try to access by default, and the silly looking plastic case. Barcodes are not a difficult technology.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Yes, they chose to give it away (actually, to provide it to Radio Shack for a price, it's Radio Shack who gave me mine). If they don't like what I choose to do with my new toy, they shouldn't give me any more. Other than that, they're out of luck. If I want to take it apart, use a driver some has written, and generally take advantage of the gift they gave me, they're out of luck. Let'em whine, "unhappy" doesn't equal "wronged".
Tough.
Nels
See what I've been reading.
If someone gives you a barcode scanner...
You own it. There's no redefining the terms of the transfer of title after the fact like these guys are trying to do. I have a receipt from Radio Shack that says I bought my CueCat for $0.00. Contract made, device sold, end of story.
right under DMCA. Isn't that just incredibly sad?
I think though a good point is made. If they concentrate on the website they could
probably pay the bills with AD revenues.
Remeber the phrase "No matter where you go. There you are."
We're here!
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
And you're planning on doing a clean-room implementation without the using the hardware exactly how?
They database EVERY SINGLE BIT OF INFORMATION they can and sell it between each other. Data whoring ANY data than can be turned into information is what many companies are beginning to do. All of the 'enter your info to proceed to download' is just your everyday datawhoring. People don't want to invade your privacy, GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATIONS DO. Sure they are run by people, but nobody takes accountability when there are 30 people involved in a decision that makes investors happy. It all comes down to GREED in the end. They want more money. Thats it. Do you want me to know your home address and personal information so I can come a'knockin on your front door to sell you some soap? Educate yourself more, don't be a republican, and be wary of most people in general anyways. You never know how crazy or what insane freaking idea someone has about the most basic concepts of life. If you give up your right to privacy, speech comes next.
Join The Kult, Spread the virus, and wake people up. Fight the powers that be.
-=Gargoyle_sNake
-=-=-=-
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Yes, but Nissan aren't preventing anyone else from making a tool that will adjust Nissan brakes.
Jeff
stty erase ^H
I'm thinking that their "5 years" of development was in making the processor in the CueCat itself. If you take your CueCat and scan something, you'll notice that you can scan forwards, backwards, sideways, upside-down, flipped to the right, to the left, and so forth. All of these methods work really well, and that obviously took a _lot_ of talent, IMHO.
Is this a joke?
Recall your last visit to the grocery store. Does the clerk at the front take the item, find the barcode, align it so that it faces a certain direction, and then carefully guide it straight across the scanner?
Does the pen-like thing they use to scan your library card have sticker that says "this side up?"
I don't know anything about the science behind barcode scanning (and obviously neither do you!) but it seems this is a mechanism built into every barcode scanner since the creation of barcode scanning.
--
Are you sure. I thought
Copyright - Automatically in effect, never goes away, lasts for Life+70 years. Strong legal Protection. Restricts copying, lending etc.
Patent - Bought, for industrial processes. Lasts 25 Years. Strong legal protection. Doesn't disappear in that time
Trademark - Has to be registered. Strong Legal protection. Has to be protected else right is lost.
Trade Secret - No legal protection, once its out its out.
So what exactly are they defending? Copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret?
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Or is there something I'm missing? ok bye.
Axel
Axel
mhm23x3, alt.fan.karl-malden.nose
now, IANAL, and so therefore, if I am WRONG, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let me know so that i may correct myself, and issue an apology according to what is in this post. however, i do not see where doing something for the
2^3 * 31 * 647
But what if the company "rented" them to the end user?
So long as you returned the unit in acceptable condition (as rented plus reasonable wear and tear), exactly what would there be for them to complain about?
I would think that if it took you guys 5 years to write software that was reverse engineered in 2 weeks then perhaps you didn't do so great a job.
.not to mention that they still would have a good quality, extremely cheap scanner available that people would still have to pay money for since you can't copy a scanner.
I'm betting that if the CueCat developers had dumped the "encryption" part they could have had a product to market in much less time. .
But, what do I know about business. . .
** Martin
Then they would have the right to cancel your rental agreement and take the scanner back!
It still does not give them the right to take my code away.
Ex-Nt-User
So they have a business model based on the idea that nobody will reverse engineer their product. This may sound like a good business plan, but the response to this shows why it is flawed - they have no legal leg to stand on. Clean Room Reverse Engineering is perfectly legal, and this is what the linux developers have done.
If they were to sell the scanner at a reasonable price, I would buy one. $20 for a barcode scanner doesn't seem like a bad deal to me. However, they give them away. Is it my fault that they do that?
Your argument is basically an ethical argument. Is it right to put a company out of business because have made some flawed asumptions?
Not all business models are sound. This is a fact of life.
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
IMHO, if a company wants to try to limit access through specialized tools, fine, but they shouldn't be able to stop me from using whatever tools I want or develop on my own.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
This business model, as you describe it*, should die, and we should encourage its death every time it rears its ugly head.
It is a promotional scam for vendor lock-in. You're getting nothing for free, you're paying for the device in the fees to the service. If you aren't allowed to use the device except for the service, then device is uselss in any other context, so it is an outright lie to claim that the device is free, as it is being leased as a part of the serivce.
Why is this evil? Because there is no compelling reason to do business this way, except as a technique to trick the gullible into signing long-term service contracts, thus locking them in a payment schedule and a particular hardware vendor and service provider.
An honest open market approach is to sell or rent the devices that can operate with one of many services providers via open standards. You get a choice for the device, a choice in the service provider, and a lower barrier to entry for both device manufactuers and service providers. The costs are up front, not hidden behind marketroid double-talk, and will be cheaper in the long run.
[*] I always thought loss-leader meant you sold under cost initially to gain market share, then set a reasonable price once you're established. Neither the CueCat or FreePC really fit this model.
Um... Aren't pre-binding contracts illegal? Isn't the entire point that both parties agree?
Oh, wait. Not after UTICA* I guess.
* Probably the wrong acronym.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Why they think that some third party developing a compatible driver is a violation of their IP. Does this mean that Ford, GM and Chrysler could sue Haynes and Chilton for publishing manuals on the repair of the vehicles?
<p>
Non-digtal products are not protected by the DMCA. The cuecat software is.
<p>
You can take the scanner itself apart all day long with a number 1 screw driver until you get bored, but if you reverse engineer the software the cuecat use, it is illegal since the software is protected by the DMCA.
<p>
MarNuke
MarNuke
My father-in-law gave me his reader (which some magazine helpfully mailed him), and I was going to use it under Linux, but I've changed my mind. If I want a barcode reader, I'll go buy one that's free of this kind of crap.
Ah, but you see yours is free of that kind of crap. According to federal law (which would supercede the "you're just borrowing our hardware, and you're forbidden from reverse engineering our hardware" provision of their license.) any unsolicited item mailed to you may be considered a GIFT. As a gift, it is 100% yours, and you don't have to worry about the provisions that claim the hardware is really theirs.
This however wouldn't apply to the ones picked up from Radio Crack.
The code was never illegal.
No one had to dissassemble (reverse-engineer) the device itself to figure out what was going on.
The code was developed by sniffing the protocol and what it was doing over the cable.
The courts have upheld that sniffing the protocol/cable has always been legal.
This is just a company crying out about not having a lock on what people do with their toy.
A host is a host from coast to coast
but no one uses a host that's close
Really? It doesn't come across that way to me. Responding point by point often makes the core arguments clearer. Of course, there is also the side-effect of some people putting inane comments after a bit they don't really have an opinion about, instead of snipping.
The line-by-line format, which I guess is intended to create an impression of, "Not one single word of this makes sense!", disrupts the original statement's flow and development.
But the "flow and development" aren't the important parts of an argument. It doesn't matter if they are disrupted, in fact it sometimes reveals just how absurd some things really are.
However, I do think that Taco should have posted the letter normally, and replied to it with a comment, just like everyone else, if only in good faith to the company.
The :CueCat reader is only on loan to you from Digital:Convergence and may be recalled at any time. Without limiting the foregoing, your possession or control of the :CueCat reader does not transfer any right, title or interest to you in the :CueCat reader.
what happens if I get it and throw it away? can they demand money from me for not being able to return it when they recall it? sounds like bullshit to me.
z.
disclaimer: I might be right.
If ya don't read the EULA, you can't read that last line so it doesn't matter.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
"I used to work at a library, our barcode scanners could do the same thing, this was about
five years ago, so this technology existed before the CueCat people even began
developing the CueCat."
I think it would be really, really funny, if the
method used by your library scanner was Patented,
and the CueCat device violated that patent. It would be a nice, ironic underscore to the fact that the software in question is LEGAL, while Patents are another concept entirely.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I noticed in the decoder software on freshmeat that the encoded information is in 3 parts, sperated by .s . The code says serialnumber, barcode type and upc number.
Has anyone done any testing to see if the serial number part is unique for each barcode scanner. If so, then this is how I see their plan, and why they complain.
You must register (name and email) to activate the software, they now tie a person to a particular scanner. Every time you scan something and the cuecat software sends you to a web page, you re-direct through DC first (DC looks up the UPC number to find the manufacturer, either they are re-directing, or the software is communicating this information directly.
If I scan in a few books, or blank cdrs or CDR labels, the UPC code is transmitted and they find out that the manufactureres are Del Rey, Verbatim and Fellowes respectively. THEY NOW KNOW WHO I AM AND SEVERL THINGS I OWN OR AM INSTERESTED IN.
If I hook up my TV and CD player to the audio input. I can get relted content from TV shows or from my music cds. They now know what I am listening to (and presumably own) and what I am watching (bye-bye Neilson).
These people are gering up to collect marketing and consumer preference data on a scale that is unbeleivable. Wired, Forbes and Radio Shack may be the first, but you can bet they are not the last to "give these away".
Of course they do not want you to be able to decode these things and use them any other way. They loose the marketing link if you do. They can not track waht you are scanning and they loose data that in the long run will be worth millions to them and to the manufacturers they intend to sell this stuff to.
Just think of it folks. You scan in A pack of blank CD labels and it takes you to fellowes web site, but now they know you have a cdr drive, and verbatim can send you junk e-mail about every marketting scheme they have for CDRs, and CDR manufacturers can send you mail concerning new CDR drives. YOu scan thank inkjet cartridge and yes, it takes you to a place on the web where you can order a new one, and now paper manufacturers who make paper optimized for inkjet printers now have your email address. If you watch a particular show, or view a particular commercial, they can now target information to you directly.
Now this will be unsolicited email, it might actually be for things you would use, since it directly relates to things you are watching or scanning in, but do you really want this kind of marketing data about you connected to your email address and name.
If you are going to use the software that they provide, I highly recommend getting a disposable email account, using it to register and after getting your unlock code mailed there and retreiving it, close the email account forever.
You may say I am paranoid, but are you willing to risk it
I think....therefore I am
I reject your reality
How cute, next -- even if you don't sign my contract binding you to giving me all your property if you take this candy you still must abide by it.
This is why EULA's are abhorrent/stupid and UTICA/DMCA are going to make even more of a mess out of the IP landscape.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
Indeed. Witness the huge flap when Unisys suddenly decided to enforce their patent on the GIF algorithm. Unisys' official story on the subject was that although in theory, the GIF format should have been free, it contained a patent-protected algorithm (LZW compression), and their failing to charge license fees over it was "an oversight." It wouldn't surprise me if this was actually true (as opposed to a convenient fabrication), but it still sucked.
On the other hand, the Unisys GIF thing at least had the effect of forcing some people towards PNG, which is a good thing. With apologies to Princess Leia, "The harder you grip your intellectual property, the more clients will slip through your fingers."
Get over it. You guys GAVE me the barcode reader "Come in to Radio Shack and pick up YOUR free barcode reader!" the ad said. It's mine. And just to piss you off I picked up 4 from 4 different stores. Paid cash and gave then a bogus name and address at each. Wank! Wank! Wank!
As I read this article, my first thought was "Comments should've been plaintype, original letter in bold." Putting his thoughts in bold just made it seem like he was stuffing his ideas down the letterwriters throats without giving the public forum an opportunity to comment.
In as much as Cmdr's comments are so tightly woven with the core of this story, this post represents a form of fascism, imho.
It's such a radical departure from the way this view would have been discussed in the past, and leaves a bad taste.
The Bazaar is being run by Fascists.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Shortly after that, they offer this bit of enlightenment:
I assume that this includes all data pumped out by the reader, which then conveniently covers the translation of said data into a format usable with something other than DC's software. It continues:Here, they cover their ass some more by saying, "If you figure it out, you have to tell us. And, by the way, don't use that info with anything but our software." This is completely in line with the above response from their CEO. He's saying the exact same thing.So, according to this license agreement, anybody who posted the code to circumvent their data encryption and tagging is in violation. There remain some questions as to whether or not the license is activated by simply using the :CueCat (they state that it does). Most seem to think that the license isn't agreed to until you break the seal on the software. As I have absolutely no knowledge of how exactly that applies, I'll skip my speculation on that point.
It seems, though, that unless you intend to use the :CueCat with only the DC software, you are in violation of the agreement. For this reason, I am returning my :CueCat to Radio Shack tomorrow and letting them know why I'm doing it. I'm also going to make sure that my Parade-readin' redneck relatives know that the :Cat is a "bad thing". Note: I admit I read vos Savant's column, but that's it... really.
Will this make a dent in their marketing? No way in hell, but it's the principle of the thing, y'know?
In all seriousness, though, while I've never been a member of the "data wants to be free" crowd, it's not hard to see how most forms of intellectual property are going to be ruthlessly abused by the suits and that, in the end, the drawbacks of IP are going to outweigh its benefits. This hardly means IP rights are going to go away or be scaled back to reasonable levels, but they could, and they should.
In this particular case, these turkeys don't have a leg to stand on. Even if they did, who gives a rat's patootie? The market of end users these guys are trying to reach is so much larger than the smattering of hackers who need or want a barcode scanner. I have no use for one. I'm having trouble thinking of what I could possibly use it for beyond gee-whiz value. For most business applications I have at present, I'd use a different scanner along with shrinkwrapped software to interface with my shrinkwrapped POS and inventory control software. (At least until someone writes a real free retail system!)
Finally, I really wish that the suits would read their marketroids' press releases. Spelling and grammar are significant. It doesn't matter much to me if the comments in your source code are written in proper English (in fact, that would make me wonder!), but if your marketing people are semi-literate, that makes me wonder about your management. When I worked for [three-letter broadcaster omitted], I was constantly amazed by the sub-fourth-grade language skills demonstrated in corporate press releases. And believe me, it strongly influenced how I perceived and dealt with their reps. In most cases, I was obliged to assume they were idiots. In the case of Digital Convergence, the content alone would have been enough.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
As one final note, I know that they will say encryption was broken under the DMCA, however, when you read this you are breaking my encryption of the post. I encrypted it by converting all characters to their ascii values. Everyone who reads this posted has now broken my encryption to view copyrighted material.
The DMCA doesn't even apply to their encryption. If they don't own the work (barcode), they have nothing to which access may be controlled under the DMCA. The only DMCA issue would be the reader serial number.
--
Agreed, he's confused; I wish he could have just laid out the legal claim that they're making so we could understand it, but his lumping together of all the different types of IP suggests that he doesn't know the legal justification.
However, I'm afraid you're confused too--my best guess is that the type of IP they're claiming is not trademarks, patents, or copyright, but trade secrets, which do have to be actively defended.
I have this idea that all these guys have done is said "hey! Hackers are doing something with our product that's bad for our business! It must be an IP violation. Send out the letters!" and then they haven't thought beyond that.... Could it be that simple?
--jbfHaynes and Chilton DO PAY ROYALTIES for the drawings and pictures of the cars they describe repairing...
Many of the technical drawings come from the manufacturer!
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
To use their hardware it prefectly legal. The thing is, their software is in the firmware. The firmware is their intellectual property. To use the cuecat, you have to use the firmware. To go around the firmware is strictly prohibted by the DMCA.
Here it is:
Basicly, becuase of the lame Base64-XOR, it's protected, since it's a "a technological measure that effectively controls access".
This rest of it can be found here.
MarNuke
MarNuke
"The defend it or lose it" deal is for *trademarks*. It doesn't apply in this situation.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
So what?
I hereby state that anyone who reads this post is bound to give me 1 million dollars, or kill themselves.
Do you think that you are bound by this now?
Shrink-wrap licences may have some legal force for software. However, that is because copyright law was specifically added to recently to give them more force.
This hardware itself is NOT a peice of software. It is not covered by the same law. The shrink-wrap licence of this type has no force. It can ONLY apply to the software.
--Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
C'mon, dude. Their legal demands are ridiculous, but you're looking a gift horse in the mouth. If you don't like it, don't use it. Or make a holster or something for it. It's really lame to bitch about the the quality of something that you got for free.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It's not them, error correction and ability to tell which direction is being read is built into the barcode pattern. Any reader of barcodes must necesicarily be able to read in all sorts of funky directions.
DC is not in danger if people reverse-engineer their software, even if their software is indirectly their only source of income. Here's why:
DC distributes their software with the scanner Anyone who gets the scanner is not going to bother getting software somewhere else if it already comes with it. Not many people wipe their hard drive and install Linux, *BSD, etc. when they get a new computer; they keep Windows.
The local software doesn't do everything I'm not certain of this, but I assume the way the software works is that it deciphers the bar code, then sends the bar code and manufacturer code to some website where it returns a URL referrer to the web page belonging to the product. The money is being made off of hosting those companies' barcodes on that central server. I assume it works this way, otherwise people would have to get a new software version with each company agreeing to use the barcodes.
One may counter this argument by saying "Well, what if someone reverse-engineers the server and offers a rival barcode service?" This is no threat to DC, since to use another server a different version of software would be needed, which means people would have to install it on their own, and thus I refer you to my first point.
The only danger to DC is that it may look silly in the eyes of other companies for losing control of its scanners, but I doubt that most of the people who picked up the scanner immediately got to work reverse-engineering it on their Linux-powered web server at home.
If any DC marketing people are reading this, it has been proven before that you cannot keep people from trying to reverse-engineer the software. A few examples are DeCSS (even if 2600 lost, it's only a US precedent...) and the Netpliance I-Opener. Netpliance, after the slashdot story about putting Linux on it, reportedly made it impossible to do this. If you are really paranoid here, just do something like that, use DES encryption on the barcode or something.
# debian/rules
may itself be actionable (in other words, flyingbuttmonkeys.com could have a countersuit against this company if there's no IP to have been misappropriated). For example, in Cardtoons v. Major League Baseball Players Association, 208 F.3d 885 (10th Cir. 2000)(holding that private threats of intellectual property litigation are not immune under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine when they do not arise under the Sherman Act, nor under the First Amendment because they do not involve petitions to the government). See also American Broadcasting Co. v. Maljack Productions Inc. (sorry, I don't have the cite), where a court refused to dismiss a claim under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act where a cease and desist letter overstated the scope of plaintiffs rights.
"...[I should be] allowed to rip it apart and tinker with it at my discretion. I think that's my right as a consumer."
..
But that's not their argument is it ?
They are defending their right not to have their intellectual Property reverse engineered and openly distributed.
You don't pull a microwave apart and put it back together then complain when you get radiation poisoning do you ? Why should this be any different ?
.
Sounds like they oughtta hire some Open Source people! ;>
Groan... Okay, that was lame. Heh.
UGH! i hit submit when i wanted to hit preview... grr!
MarNuke
I went to Radio Shack Friday and requested one of these things. It always makes me nervous when they ask me my name when you buy something there, but I told him anyway. He promptly gave me a reader, their new catalog and a reciept. On the reciept was my name, address and home phone number. I don't remember giving them that info, but it's possible that I did long ago. They also scanned the bar code from the CueCat. Which I guess was to tie my info with the scanner so they could track my use of it.
So now I have this thing, but I have not installed it yet. I'm a little concerned about installing the software and becoming bound to some software agreement, then having them build a database of every item I scan. Has anyone found a way to use this software and block any spyware that may be installed with it? I have a major problem with people tracking my surfing habbits. I delete cookies on contact, and run the Ad Blocking freature on NIS, so the last thing I want to do is to start adding data to a database with my personal info attatched to it.
Does anyone know for sure (they have to be) if they are collecting information on the users of these things? And if so, how is the info being sent back to the mothership. I would like to use this thing, but not at the price they are asking.
Please don't moderate this Offtopic. I know it's borderline. But this is related and kinda important.
Yes, but they don't have a legal leg to stand on. Nobody is misusing their intellectual property by using their hardware. Intellectual property would be a patent on barcoding, but they don't have one. Intellectual property would be a copyright, but I can use their hardware without breaking the shrink-wrap on their copyrighted software.
They should feel free to ask us not to use their hardware, but when they try to force us not to, I refuse to cooperate with their impolite request.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
But you can get internal burns from leaking microwave radiation
Really? Are you suggesting that Digital:Convergence first developed and produced the hardware, and only then started thinking about the software? Come on. I quote:
What makes you think that that implies 5 years of work to develop just the software? While I have my doubts about the 5 years, I do believe the entire product is meant here. From the first idea all the way to development of hardware and software, production up to the point it was available to the public.Compare apples to apples
Indeed. Comparing the time between reverse enginering some software and developing a product is comparing apples to oranges.
-- Abigail
Commander,
Whilst I can appreciate your desire to rip to shreds some of the specious arguments presented in this letter, I would humbly suggest in future that you refrain from doing so. The first law of public posting is that someone else always has a smarter angle on the whole thing than you do, so if you act in a restrained manner and don't rip into the offender, someone else will.
Or, to put it simply, next time just post the original letter and invite comments. This way, the Slashdot hordes (ranging from rabid to rapier-witted) can do the barking for you, whilst you can maintain a modicum of disinterested independence.
Please consider.
Regards,
TFBW
Copyright? On this post? I think not.
Especially if they're tools you developed, and not an atom-for-atom copy of the company's tool.
--
I live in virginia. Here, your personal information (address, etc) is considered property that can be used in exchange for services or product. The fact that the radio shack people asked me for my name and address legally constitutes a sale.
CmdrChalupa
(who knows not how to change his sig)
CmdrChalupa, who finally changed his sig (drop -FlogSpammersNow- for my real address)
Fsckin' suits
:wq
If they are given away, they're yours to rip apart. But what if the company "rented" them to the end user?
http://docwhat.gerf.org/software/per l/barscan/
It includes my and a friend's Perl code, and our C code and a copy of other people's stuff including Pierre's first version of the kernel driver.
Have fun!
The Doctor What (KF6VNC)
... is a better grasp of the English language.
don't forget that the percentage of people who are actually gonna mess with this stuff is very tiny. You should concentrate on making your services better for the huge majority of your users who don't run Linux
This goes against what linux is trying to achieve: to bring it to the masses and make it a viable option for the desktop.
The days when linux was an unknown ant, crawling around the feet of the giant MS are coming to an end... These guys have to view linux as a viable revenue stream
:can't vendors! understand; just how freaking h@rd it is to read aNything and eVerything that's written about their freaking ~products using punctuation as product name?
:cue:cat, Earth First!, and Digital:Convergence painful to read.
Makes reading about
ouch ouch ouch.
Laches is a typical defense to trade-secret violations, as it is for patents and trademarks. Laches is not, however, a defense to copyright violations. It doesn't matter how long a copyright owner waits to prosecute you or anyone else; he always reserves that right. He may sometimes be estopped from prosecuting past infringements, but he nearly always may prosecute future ones. (As always with these things, there are exceptions, like when the delay is especially egregious, but that's the general rule.)
Does anyone know if I can get something similar to a cuecat in the UK? Ratshack are going under here. I want to reverse engineer the tesco home shopping system, so I can barcode scan my rubbish and have my computer automagically build a new shopping list :)
-Max.
To all the poeple who say that reverse engineering is illegal, you don't own the barcode reader etc. I say: I never saw any EULA. I'm told it appears when you install the software which I never did. Therefore, even if you believe in EULAs, I was never presented with it. So how can I be bound by it?
So you feel that, whenever I wish to make a piece of hardware that I own functional on my computer system, I should always call or e-mail the manufacturer first? Let's see. Who do I call first....
So I should pay $20-30 in long distance phone calls (or wait weeks/months for an e-mail reply) just to be able to use this stuff right?
If you buy the hardware (or the company gives it to you for free), you own it. You have the right to do with it as you will.
The glories of fair use.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Their business model is one I support, and one that I could see growing quite quickly - the one where you give people some physical thing that ties them to the service that pays for it. I don't think that it's a bad business model - but it needs legal protection because it would be very easy to destroy it.
No business has the right to anyone's money. If some company chooses to give away some widget because they think that you can't use it without paying for their service, that's a gamble.
As we all know, not every gamble pays off. There should be no additional legal protection for those who choose a risky business model. Intel wasn't able to stop AMD and Cyrix from using MMX, even though intel claimed that it was something that was necessary to protect their business.
It's like their renting you the device, not giving it to you - the price of the rental is that you pay them for it's use.
No, they're giving it away. If they wanted to rent it, then fine let them rent it. The way things stand they are giving it away. It becomes YOUR scanner, if you wanted to, you could drop it off a cliff or run it over with your car, it is YOURS.
I don't think it's your right to destroy their business.
They don't have any RIGHT to have their business model succeed. They bet on the wrong horse, tough luck for them.
Sure, the device isn't their business, but it's a vital (and vulnerable) part.
A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, so too is a business plan. If they made a bad assumption about how the devices could be used, then that is their fault and their problem. As long as nobody stole and code from them, there is nothing questionable here.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"....plans to make a version of its software available for Linux available in the near future."
I get SO tired of hearing companies say that without adding a DATE to that. To me, it says that they're not going to invest time and effort into something that they don't feel is worth the investment; that if they wait long enough, people will stop asking.
In truth, their company would immediately discounted from any kind of component selection process because no 'serious and professional developer' would put their business on hold waiting for anything labeled 'the near future'.
I hope that all of their competitors see this, and take it as a queue to do exactly what CueCat won't do: Everything to sell their product.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
NO! The product barcode format (EAN if I'm not mistaken) is a public standard! In a sense, every product designed to put barcodes into things generates "barcodes that the cuecat could read".
Still no indication from Digital Convergence as to what intellectual property they're talking about. There's only patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret. They don't mention a patent. It's not a trademark issue. It's legitimate to reverse engineer a trade secret. And even with the DMCA, I don't see how copyright law can stretch this far. I doubt that they do either, or their letter would have said something concrete.
Symbol owns majority of bar code scanner patents, so DC either pays royalties to Symbol (most likely) or is in for a surprise.
Since when is originally written code, created through reverse engineering, somebody else's Intellectual Property? They asked the open source developers to remove their IP? And just how excatly do they propose to do that, if the renegade developers did not have access to their source code? What are they supposed to remove - the part that makes the driver work?
---
---
Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
> Each device has a unique serial number. You can
> see this number spit out with the perl decoder
> available on the net.
Fortunately, the CueCat servers don't care if you force the scanner ID to all 0's when sending your request, just as they don't care if you set your activation code to the literal string "ACTIVATIONCODE". Perhaps this is another fact that Digital Convergence doesn't want you to discover through reverse engineering?
Get a :Cue:Cat scanner at your local
Radio Shack and then throw it in the garbage
(or do anything other than use it with the
RadioShack catalog). If you're feeling energentic, collect :Cue:Cat scanners from all of the Radio Shacks in town.
This will inflict more economic costs than GNU/Linux users picking up free :Cue:Cat scanners for their use and only occasionally using them with Radio Shack catalogs (as would have been the case if :Cue:Cat had not attacked this free software).
NONE of their IP was stolen, or reverse-engineered. A driver was merely written. I'm sorry, but these guys are idiots. If current law upholds their complaints, this country is in a truly sad shape indeed.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Maybe if they'd more mention of the nice cheap developer licence they wouldn't have got the 'hackers' playing quite so much.
But then if they'd have 'mentioned' the license when requesting the removal of code from websites people would have responded better. (or did I miss something in all this) - were they polite or just use strong arm tactics...alot can be mis-contrued from how you do things
I called in a favor this weekend and asked an attorney to look at the issue. For obvious reasons, they don't want to be identified (but I can go so far as to say that this particular attorney likes imported beer. Good thing I do too!)
Anyway, the opinion is that no illegal activity has taken place. According to posted descriptions, the re-engineering activity which occured took place within permitted boundaries of US law. Furthermore, posting of the re-engineered driver to the Internet and use of the driver by persons who have NOT clicked agreement with their contract, is perfectly legal. In addition, if someone mailed you the device unsolicited or if Radio Shack gave you the device without telling you that it was on loan AND if you did not click to agree with their contract, the widget is yours for permissable use within US copyright and patent law. You can't rip it apart to find out how it works and then start cranking out clones, but that's just about the only thing you can't do with it. Specifically, using a different software driver which avoids reference to their site and/or usage tracking technology, is perfectly legal. If they wanted to bind users to a contract dictating terms of usage, they didn't do it properly and unless you click on the "Agree" button on their contract, no usage contract exists.
Have fun!
PS: The commenting interspersed with their reply letter disturbs me. It looks like heckling, for which I have no respect. Please, next time just present the response and comment on it afterward. Please don't abuse the forum. mjs
From: Bruce Ide
4 8211&mode=thread)
3 GkDScRwqFQCfaZTH
To: ceo@digitalconvergence.com
CC: ddavis@digitalconvergence.com
CC: ontheweb@usatoday.com
CC: malda@slashdot.org
Subject: Cuecat Reverse Engineering Effort
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 10:02:33 -0600 (MDT)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Gentlemen,
Reading the letter to the community
(http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/09/05/05
regarding the reverse engineering of the Cuecat barcode reader, I
have a few comments which I would like to convey at this point.
First, the right to reverse engineer a product for interoperability
purposes has legal precedent which has been upheld by the courts on
several occasions (Sony vs. Connectix being the latest one that I am
aware of.) Had I had anything to do with the development of the
drivers in question, I would currently be initiating my own legal
proceedings requesting a summary judgment stating that I am in no way
infringing on the Digital Convergence IP. After receiving that (And I
WOULD win, given previous legal precedents.) I would then follow up
with a harassment lawsuit requesting damages sufficient to give any
other company attempting this tactic pause. In this case, I had
nothing to do with the development of the drivers in question but I
hope my suggestion has made its way back to the original developers
and that they take it under consideration.
Second, the IP laws as originally designed were intended to stimulate
innovation and protect small inventors. They are currently being used
by large corporations to prevent innovation and intimidate small
inventors. Had the legal landscape been similar to this a decade ago,
Linux would never have been created because each computer would have
shipped with a license stating that you could only use it in the way
the hardware company intended, with the copy of Windows that came with
it being your only choice. Undoubtedly were you to desire to upgrade
your software, you would have had to have bought a new computer. This
is clearly not what our founding fathers intended when they created
the IP laws.
Third, if we, the community, do not stand up to large corporations
when they attempt to use these tactics to intimidate us into silence,
we will lose what rights we have to use the hardware we bought and
paid for in the manner of our choosing. Computing as a hobby will
cease to be, and the best and the brightest programmers in the field
will go elsewhere, leaving only mediocre writers of mediocre software
in a mediocre field with none of the growth that you may have noticed
over the past decade. That's not good for the community and it's not
good for the companies which serve the community of which Digital
Convergence is one.
Fourth, given the above, I must question both the ethics and the
intelligence of a company which does not realize the above. Truly,
alienating a potential customer base is not a good way to do
business. I take the same stand with any company using these tactics
to spread fear and intimidation in the community: I will never buy
your products. I will never recommend your products in any project I
work on. I will never work for your company. In a managerial position,
I will never hire as an employee anyone who worked in your company
after these tactics came to light. I will encourage all of my friends
to take a similar stance. You have plenty of competitors. I shall
patronize them.
Thank you for your time.
- --
Bruce Ide bruce.ide@echostar.com
http://www.paratheoanametamystikhood.net
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I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think the company feelings about this issue are quite valid. Someone should have contacted the company directly before just going out and doing directly without permission. I am not sure what the legality on this issue is, I am sure it is copyrighted in some manner.
Definately this was approached the wrong way. This is not to say that I do not support the open sourced community, quite frankly, it is one of the best systems for designing software there is. But the right channels have to be used when dealing with other peoples work is concerned.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
If you really want to make these guys angry, you could write software that outputs barcodes that the cuecat could read. Unfortunatly, they probably *would* have a valid IP complaint against such software...
And "Content Provider"?
This guy is confused. Trademarks and patents have to be defended. Copyright does not. He's talking as if they were the same thing. He needs to sit down and have a good talk (and listen!) with his lawyer.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The real question is where does the right of the consumer begin and the right of the company end. If company X provide a product for a specific purpose does the consumer has the right to use the product in any way he feels fit? Would I as a company would have the right stop the consumer from using it as he seems fit. These are the question that need to answer quickly.
As I see it is that technologicly, the CueCat could have been made secure (from use by other than DC) by encrypting the barcode using a public key built into the CueCat.
Yes, that would have increased the price somewhat, but I would guess that thing thing costs atleast $20 anyways, waiting a couple of months before they released it, and using RSA would have saved them from having to worry about other systems using their expensive hardware.
If I own a Ford, do I need a Ford wrench to fiddle with my engine?
Maybe not, but if you have a Thinkpad, you need an IBM screwdriver. (I don't know if this has changed yet, but I certainly hope so.)
On the flip side, if I want to develop QT apps for windows I need their toolkit. Why is that ok? Why can't this company want people to use their toolkit for their hardware? Because they haven't succumb to the GPV? Give me a break, this stinks to high heaven of hypocrisy.
My suggestion would be a POLITE letter to these folks explaining that, no matter how hard they try to stop it, there are going to be people who are going to take the CueCat apart, reverse-engineer it, and post their notes on what they found. Pointing out the flaws in their business model may also be appropriate.
Trying to stop reverse-engineering is like trying to shovel water around with a pitchfork. Heck, I DEPEND on it to generate usable info about hardware that's no longer made or supported. Where would I (and other old computer/hardware collectors) be if someone decided "No, you have to buy all new stuff."
Perhaps the best way to say it (with apologies to the producers of "Field of Dreams") is: "If you build it, they will hack." It comes as naturally, and as unavoidably, to us engineering types as breathing.
I sympathize with DC, but their claims that hackers are posting DC intellectual property are out of line. The only things the hackers posted were a description of the "language" used to converse with a hardware device, and code to implement an interpreter of that language. Last I heard, the law did not permit closing off a language or an interpreter of one as IP. If this is still the case, then DC is flat out wrong in their claims. If this is no longer the case, then I weep for yet another egregious erosion of our liberty.
It is true that trade secret law requires that the company demonstrate that it tried to protect its secret. If they were found to be negligent in this, then the secret cannot be defended. Clearly here, the fact that the codes are almost plaintext demonstrates this negligence. The stockholders should sue.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
don't sell it, and don't give it away. If you do otherwise, you may as well concede that people are going to hack it. People have been hacking hardware since our ancestors started flint-knapping, and no pack of lawyers is going to be able to stop human progress in this regard.
On a related note, Jack Valenti should realize that the only way to eliminate piracy in the film industry is to stop producing films. The film industry should realize that the object of the game is to maximize profits, not to minimize piracy, at which point they should come to realize that Jack Valenti is obsolete.
Okay, okay, I misspelled 'tenet', so thanks.
However, in trade secrecy law, if a secret is revealed, it can still be a secret as long as it is stopped before being 'widely disseminated.' Thus, if people violating TS law aren't stopped, TS law protections disappear for future violations.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
A lot of companies are still new to all of this and need to be convinced, pissing on someones head is not known for its persuasive power. Perhaps you should leave the diplomatic stuff to others. Anyhow how long was it before you released the slash code ?, and where are the other fine coding achievements and submissions to help projects that entitles you to way that we about the place We all define valuable tools and projects differently, and our needs might be a bit different then yours
Basically the company was not in a helpful mode and panicked when they saw that their software could be dispense with. They are quite possibly on very weak ground defining their XOR as vital IP, but the way to resolve it is not to send the endless screaming hordes waving placards to their front door, methinks its some quiet emails and representations from sane parties. These days we could ask redhat or even IBM to phone them and suggest that they help negotiate the problem away.
Bah, rein back on the unilateral action there, whatever about think before you email a quick response, surely theres a lot to be said for think very very carefully before you dangerously rabble rouse editorialise.
C.
I sometimes write stuff
From the: But-I-don't-wanna! dept.
:) I mean, if I'm coding, let me code. I don't want to talk to the public about it. It's tough (especially to talk non-technical), time-intensive, and generally not-fun. That's why I let my marketing people do the talking for me.
The only problem, of course, with killing off PR ppl and having the programmers and front-liners talk to the public is that they general don't want to!
Now, I will agree intensely that lying PR people ought to be drug into the street and shot. No question about that. Being radical by just having your programmers talk to the public is kinda asking for it, though.
Blog,Twitter
It was given to me and a lot of other people. As much as they'd like to claim that it's leased, they screwed up when they shipped it out to all those Forbes subscribers. Postal regulations take precedence over any agreements and anything sent without the consent of the recipient is thier property not the senders at that point. The Rat Shack stuff may be a different story, but I don't think so, based on how they're doing the transactions. I've got this little reciept for a catalog/CueCat that I paid $0.00 for. Since it's material goods, they can't "license" it- the contract for the goods in question was set in stone at the time of "purchase". Since it was not said that it was a loan of the CueCat at the time of the transaction, it can't be one (Otherwise they're dabbling in fraud at the interstate level... Not a good thing for them.).
Now, having established that these things are likely to be the people who have them's property, who needs permission? I don't. The law allows me to do whatever I please with the thing.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Why they think that some third party developing a compatible driver is a violation of their IP. Does this mean that Ford, GM and Chrysler could sue Haynes and Chilton for publishing manuals on the repair of the vehicles?
In order to publish such a manual, one has to "reverse engineer" the car in question. Haynes even brags that every manual is "based on a complete teardown and rebuild" of the car that it's for.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Laches also applies to trade secrets, which is surely the angle they're going to take on this, since none of the other forms of IP possibly makes any sense. But of course, if you can reverse engineer it, then it's not a trade secret, but such companies rarely take that for an answer.
It is, in fact, my right to do just that. Here's a bit more on rights:
Here's some more...
While I'm sorry these guys didn't IPO and make a billion dollars, I will not, repeat,
WILL NOT
allow them to bypass my rights (see above for a refresher) for the sake of making a buck.
Clear?
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Not one of his replies really addressed the issue you were trying to bring up. I don't understand how people could be so blind to the fundamental reality of what you're saying.
I also don't get what intellectual property they're trying to protect. Once a trade secret is out, it's out, and has no more protection. I think this is even true if someone under an NDA leaks it. That's how they work. The only concievable thing I think they could claim for intellectual property is if they had patented the idea of scanning a barcode encoded URL and automatically sending you to the website.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Explain this to me--I honestly don't get it--what's so great about this type of business model? In particular, what's so great about it that it should be given special legal protection to encourage it? Please explain.
--jbfYou're quite right to say that such claims are hogwash when applied to copyright or patent disputes, but AFAIK it's true of trademarks that if you don't defend them, you may lose future cases on the grounds that what was once your trademark has become a common word.
Apart from that niggle I pretty much agree with your analysis.
--
Xenu loves you!
I'd also like to say something to the readers: don't get angry and attack these guys. They're just a group of guys trying to feed their dogs by coming up with ideas to make a buck.
Their dogs are attack dogs, better known in certain circles as lawyers.
Their explanation is pure bullshit, starting with the fact that it is only for trademarks that the principle "defend it or lose it" is valid. Besides, what exactly intellectual property they are trying to defend from hackers? They are wonderfully vague on this point and the reason is that what they'd like to defend is not legally defensible. And spare me these sob-sister stories about five years of sleepless nights. There is nothing technologically interesting in their toy. They came up with a business plan which, as usual, didn't survive contact with reality. Film at 11.
I don't like guys whose knee-jerk reaction is to send threatening but legally meaningless letters.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
All this whining about "intellectual property" convinces me that the folks behind CueCat have a only the foggiest notion of what intellectual property is, and I think that the "crime" that the folks that made a kernel driver for the CueCat really comitted--what really freaked out the CueCat suits out-- was that they pried loose control of the valuable marketing information that CueCat is capturing and sending back to the CueCat servers. I think we should be watching very carefully to see what kind of things start showing up in that data stream...especially since I bet the "official" client software is quite capable of silently updating itself to do whatever the suits want it to.
-=Maggie Leber=-
To which KFury spurted: Completely untrue. Are you a lawyer? This is a major tenant of trade secrecy law.
Bzzt. It's a tenet [sic] of Trademark law.
DC: We gave away a product for free, and now people are figuring out that they can actually use it! What can we do?!?
DrS: That's a very good question... I better put on my patented Stuponitron helmet.
--
not plane, nor bird, nor even frog...
But wait, I thought no contract could take away rights. E.g., I can't sign a contract that takes away my right to free speech for some amount of money. Likewise, if reverse engineering was a "right", then no contract could prevent me from, say, buying a product and reverse engineering it. I guess the question is whether reverse engineering is a "right", or just an activity which is not illegal.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Completely untrue. Are you a lawyer? This is a major tenant of trade secrecy law.
Apples and oranges.
If _YOU_ have a trade secret and want it to remain that way, _YOU_ have to make sure that _YOU_ don't publish the secret. (Pretty obvious, right? If you want to claim in court that it is a secret, you can't go around telling people about it).
If _I_ independently discover the trade secret (that is - has not signed an NDA with you, didn't break into your office to get my hands on the trade secret, etc), _YOU_ can not drag me to court.
If I got my hands on the trade secret in an unlawful way, on the other hand, you have to go after me to show that you are protecting your trade secret.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
rip it apart and tinker with it at my discretion. I think that's my right as a consumer.
/. to the effect of "consumers
have wallets; citizens have rights." Too many
people use "consumer" where they should be using
something like "citizen". It plays right into the
mentality of people like the MPAA, RIAA, and IP
sharks/lawyers. It's subtle, but it's one of the
little things that got us to the place where this
stupid barcode thing is even an issue.
I saw a sig here on
.. is on their servers. If you don't link to their server, you're not using their IP. Period. As I have previously mentioned, you have the option of going out and buying a completely different make and model of barcode scanner and doing exactly what the so-called "hackers" are doing here.
.. programmers as legislators .. *that's* an interesting thought ..
D:C is just flustered that people are using their free hardware to do things they didn't intend it to do, and haven't realized that that horse was out of the barn the moment the scanner ended up in an end-user's hands. They just don't have the moral right to authorize only certain uses for something that ceased to be theirs the moment it left the store. They might have the legal right to do that, but that's more a case of stupid law than anything else -- perhaps we should be hacking the legal system instead.
Hmm
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
Suppose you bought a Toyota. No, suppose the company gave you a Toyota. It came with instructions saying "Use only Toyota Gasolene in this vehicle". You take the car home, and it works great, but the nearest Toyota Gas Station is 18 miles from your house which is inconvenient.
Toyota sent me a newsletter warning about cheapo oil filters. They said that only Totoya brand oil filters meet manufacturers specs because Toyota doesn't publish the specs.
They didn't go so far as to say I would void the warranty if I used filters from other companies who have reverse-engineered them.
Since their arguments have been shown to be specious -- no IP was used in the reverse engineering of reader -- and they have no legal recourse, why doesn't someone repost the source code to the cuecat software?
There must be someone out there with the source who is willing to call their bluff.
Free the source code.
Personally, I hope that when I get a barcode reader, or a DVD-ROM drive (or a car, or phone, or any other physical thing), that I'm allowed to rip it apart and tinker with it at my discretion. I think that's my right as a consumer. As long as you recognize that you probably won't get it for free. This is another bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you case, like banner-ad-removers, TiVo, etc. It's destroying a business model which is useful for consumers. Aside from the "bullying", it's unfortunate that this model will soon die (along with the free stuff that comes with it - bar code readers, TV programs, web pages, etc).
I'll bet most of us said "no." Now, while we might very well support the writers of that code, The suits at digital convergence shouldn't feel free to lump us all together as offenders. That lends itself to more anti-Linux FUD by the mainstream press who get ahold of this letter. I mean, imagine an article quoting this letter that said "Digital Convergence is upset by the actions of the Linux community..." instead of "Digital convergence is upset by the actions of several programmers..."
It's not that I think we should leave these guys high and dry; I think they deserve our support. But at the same time we must force Digital Convergence to say what they mean and not toss stereotypes around.
Just do what I do, give them fake information. I've got quite the collection of fake names located at http://www.aaroncity.com/radioshack/
Barcodes are designed to be read left-to-right OR right-to-left. You obviously can't read them top-to-bottom!
The reading is based on the timing of white-and-black, and assumed that the bars are passing by the reader at a reasonably consistent speed. Thus, it doesn't make a lot of difference how fast or slow you scan, as long as you're within the limits of the scanning device's tolerance.
I really doubt there's a whole lot of innovation in the scanner itself. Barcode-reading technology is pretty advanced, with a lot of much bigger fish looking for an edge: NCR is far more likely to have the next big advance than some backwaters wannabe startup.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Digital Convergence says that it wants to protect its IP. However, it has yet to make clear what IP it wants to protect and under what legal theory. Come on Digital Convergence ... say something more intelligent than just "we don't like what you are doing, so stop it".
Taco,
Next time, post the message and your opinions separately, and let people form their own opinions.
An equivalant would be if a President gave a speech and someone printed it, inserting comments telling everything wrong with it.
Your "hackers like to tinker" argument, is less of an argument than "reverse engineering IS legal and is not the IP of the one reverse engineered".
But since you have already spoken for us, no one hears that.
Forget the Cue:Cat, I say we start writing drivers for those scanners at the local grocery store! Aren't they the same thing? Now did Cue:Cat reverse engineer them to get the Wand? Plus with the grocery store ones, you get to hear that cute little beep! I feel jip'd.
From my personal use of the CueCat with version 0.0.4 of the kernel driver (/dev/cuecat is so awesome :), I'm thinking that their "5 years" of development was in making the processor in the CueCat itself. If you take your CueCat and scan something, you'll notice that you can scan forwards, backwards, sideways, upside-down, flipped to the right, to the left, and so forth. All of these methods work really well, and that obviously took a _lot_ of talent, IMHO.
;)
However, the only thing that the Linux community has "hacked" is the communication protocol, _not_ the CueCat's microprocessor! If someone did hack it and publish the lithograph diagrams, for instance, then that would be a different matter entirely in my opinion. The Linux driver and the source code fits just the communication protocol, which any company out there could have easily come up with (who knows, perhaps some other devices already use that same protocol!).
Just my $0.02
The requirement under trade secret law (you're looking for the word "tenet", not "tenant") is that you KEEP IT A SECRET, not that you send out threatening letters or file lawsuits. By definition, nothing that's present in a device you send out to millions of customers is a secret, so there is no claim under trade secret law.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
What are you trying to sell?
If you're product is a hardware product, then your IP is the hardware, you should do everything you can to sell more of your hardware.
If you think you're product is a software product, you're probably fooling yourself. I doubt the hardware is 'insignificant' to your business.
Lastly, if you think you're both, then you have a long-hard road infront of you, especially if you can't provide for all who want it when you want it.
Apple tried to do that with the original MACs, and they're still paying for it (I won't even talk about Quicktime)... IBM tried to do it with their MicroChannel Bus: Even IBM doens't use it in their PC's anymore. Soundblaster is still trying to do it (try getting their sound driver for the 2.2.17 kernel..), and I don't use their card because of it....
If you produce something, do EVERYTHING you can to sell it, and if you can't do something, whatever you do, don't stop someone ELSE from doing it!
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
If these people do wish to sue, I'm sure they have enough resources to harass most people into compliance, whether or not they are in the right.
Here's another solution;
Completely RE the thing. Starting with the hardware. It is what, a photodiode, some chips and a ps/2 passthrough cable? A qualified electrician could get the schematics for "A generic barcode scanning device" onto the web by this afternoon. Write the drivers for "Generic" device, and state boldly on the webpage that although there is no reason why the drivers shouldn't work with the colon-cat, they are not written for it and there are no garauntees, implicit or otherwise to the effect that they will.
This isn't about drivers, or Linux, or IP, or any of that. Their business is collecting data on the online habits of individual users and selling that data to the highest bidder. Failure to use their proprietary Windows drivers breaks their business model. Boo hoo.
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Funny, but I love my mother enough to do all I can to educate her about banner ads, data mining, and how to protect her online privacy. In an age where companies are relying more and more on the clueless masses to walk to the slaughter for their bottom line, I would think that more tech savvy types would be alarmed that someone was using loss leading as a means to hook their loved ones into unending telemarketing calls.
Ignorance of the laws of cyberspace only puts the masses in chains.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
In order to sue under DMCA, the suit will have to be brought by the owners of the copyrighted content. So if I scan the barcode on a can of Spam, then Hormel is the one that is going to have to sue me under DMCA. Digital Convergence doesn't have any arguments under DMCA. That's why MPAA (not DVDCCA) had to bring the DMCA suit against 2600. (This is based on the assumption that MPAA represents everyone who uses CSS. I would like to see that proved false, some day.)
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Their business model is one I support, and one that I could see growing quite quickly - the one where you give people some physical thing that ties them to the service that pays for it. I don't think that it's a bad business model - but it needs legal protection because it would be very easy to destroy it.
It's like their renting you the device, not giving it to you - the price of the rental is that you pay them for it's use.
I think it would be cool if my Mom got a "free" device that would let her read Email and do basic Web stuff, even if it had a great big ad across the bottom (FreePC style). I for one don't want to see the business model that would permit that to happen, be destroyed.
IMHO if their license says don't reverse engineer the device, then pretend it didn't exist. I don't think it's your right to destroy their business.
Oh, and trying to say that this device isn't their business (that their business is the website and their services) is drawing attention away from the fact that, say, if someone were to write a handy Open Source app that let you take the ISBNs off your books and create a cool catalog of your home library or CD collection, suddenly they could have a million people wanting their "free" device. Oops.. now they can't give it away. Sure, the device isn't their business, but it's a vital (and vulnerable) part.
As for the Adaptec's and DVD-ROM drives of the world, well, that's a wholly different argument because they CHARGE for the hardware. They made their money up-front.
- Steve
They admit that the drivers were created by reverse engineering. How then is this their IP?
It already has legal protection; they simply chose not to use it.
The legal protection is contract law. Make the customer sign a contract that explicitly states what is required by the customer, states what uses are permitted, and states that using their product in conjunction with competitor's products is prohibited.
Digital Convergance, the companies that sell DVD movies, the makers of the iOpener, and countless other businesses won't do this, of course, because they don't want the customer to be aware of the terms prior to the sale. They know that people will refuse if they know what they are getting into. Well, that's dishonest and deceptive, and I won't fucking tolerate it.
(Another reason they won't put these contracts up front is that there are anti-trust laws against it. But I would favor the repeal of these anti-trust laws if consumers were informed up-front about their (lack of) rights. Buy a DVD, sign an agreement that you will only play it on a DVDCCA-licensed player. Take a free CueCat, sign an agreement that you will send everything that you scan to their server, along with the CueCat's serial number which was also scanned at Radio Shack and linked to your name and address. Buy Microsoft Windows, sign an agreement that you will only run Microsoft apps on it. Make these ridiculous "agreements" explicit and let the market embrace them (*snicker*) or wipe them out. And if there's no contract, then there's no restrictions beyond the "default" restrictions state by, for example, copyright law.)
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
...has nothing to do with IP or any other crap like that.
It seems pretty clear to me that this company is all about collecting personal information about you. Now, we're used to companies like Doubleclick et al. using various schemes to figure out where you browse, and generate models of your on-line behaviors automatically. But the CueCat thing is designed so that they can find out about things in the real world, too. They WANT you to scan things in your house (books, products, magazines, TV shows, etc), and when you do, their software does a quick lookup for you, and gives you the shovelware connected to whatever it is.
But it ALSO remembers who scanned what, and they can generate a much more impressive profile of you as a consumer: what do you watch, what magazines are you reading, what books do you have, etc. And I'll bet that THAT's what their business model is all about---more invasive consumer profiling.
And THAT's why they can't tolerate the Linux drivers which don't do the lookup through their servers---because they don't let them form that profile. They've probably calculated their (hugely expensive) giveaway scheme to give a particular rate of data generation through their servers, and if they don't get that, then their business model is shot to hell. Of COURSE they're going to try to prevent people from getting around their software: every person using the Linux driver is the same as a reader thrown away to them. So I'm sure that if a developer tried to work with them, they'd spend a lot of effort urging them to direct all connections through the Digital Convergance servers.
My father-in-law gave me his reader (which some magazine helpfully mailed him), and I was going to use it under Linux, but I've changed my mind. If I want a barcode reader, I'll go buy one that's free of this kind of crap.
Happy Premise #3: Even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won't.
While I suspect that he knew some of his arguments were flawed, I don't think we're reading the words of a professional PR type, or anyone with experience reading contracts, for that matter.
Consider the lack of polished language, and the obvious lack of grip on the concepts of IP, trademark, and open source.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
OTOH, I believe the poster who suggested that they're trying to compile deep demographic information is probably right.
I'm talking about the software aspect - you know, what this ENTIRE Slashdot story is about.
Get that in your head, or shut your piehole.
We're not stealing their product. It's free. What we choose to do with it, is really quite up to us. If they don't like it, then charge for it. But even then, we reserve the right to hack it.
I cannot believe how many /.ers responded to this troll. BZ!
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
*Note* I haven't followed this closely, so if someone has an answer, feel free to reply.
What is so special about this barcode reader. I mean other then the fact that it is free? There are many MANY point-of-sale places that sell barcode readers rather inexpensively.
What is the "driver" situation? Most barcodes readers are just a keyboard wedge device that just emulates the keyboard. The decoding of bar codes is done in the reader itself, not the drivers. That is, unless this one is like a "winbarcode reader". In which case, I wouldn't touch it with a 40 foot poll anyways.
Again, if I'm just talking out of my ass, reply and tell me what the big deal is with THIS reader. That is, other then it's free.
While very true....the whole forms a hardware device. It really becomes somewhat silly at this level.
Actually software is specifically loaded from a device, can be copied etc. This is firmware. For all intents and purposes (unless your a PIC programmer), it is part of the hardware.
Is that enough to make an EULA apply? Is outlawing reverse engineering from an EULA even legal? It certainly hasn't been tested in court yet.
Personally I think this is silly. No matter what any EULA or Law says...it is my RIGHT as a consumer to take things apart and use them in whatever manner that I see fit.
Besides, unless they want to claim ownership of the physical hardware, then they have no right to tell a person what they can do with it
I think its time to change the law to say that ALL contracts of ALL types are required to be signed contracts....get rid of this shrink-wrap bull shit.
--Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
A bar code reader with obfuscated output no harder to figure out than a secret decoder ring? THAT's IP these days? Fine, I claim uuencoded rot14 encoded text to be my increadibly earth shatteringly important, gen-U-Ine rocket science type intellectual property.
More seriously, bar code readers are NOT any sort of rocket science these days. There's really nothing worth protecting as far as reading the output goes. Knowing how to read it's output doesn't tell anyone anything about the reader that they couldn't easily guess with 100% accuracy without even looking at the thing. The less information that is available about communicating with hardware, the less valuable it is.
As for the free source helping MS out, the fact that they have programmers capable of making Windows even get through the boot process tells me that they could SURELY have figured the simple obfuscator out with no help from the Open Source/GPL community. It's REALLY that simple. I even said to my wife a few days ago that something like that would be GREAT for a High School or edvanced elementery school math class. It's challenging enough but attainable for students at that level. (I'm not a teacher, It was just an idle morning coffee sort of thought).
By referring to that as valuable IP, Mr. Davis is effectively wandering around at an international grand master's chess competition talking about the mind numbingly complex strategies and logic involved in Tic-Tac-Toe. The funny sound in the background is raucous laughter.
but trying to get the "hackers" and such to WORK WITH US AND NOT EXPOSE US and destroy over 5 years of hard work by a group of "geeks, hackers and techno-whizzes" like each of you!
Small hint: sending a nastygram from a horde of lawyers is NOT a good way to open that dialog. Some people have found that 'Can we sit down and discuss this' is a lot meor effective than 'Listen here palley or we bust your kneecaps'
There IS SOME innovative thinking going on with the CueCat. Having a server that allows the user to scan catalog barcodes and be taken to the product page is possably a good idea. I would suggest working to protect that rather than the simply obfuscated standard hardware. The real objective is to have the consumers out there using the CueCat and Digital Convergance servers to scan catalog items. Make sure that those servers are reliable and their databases are extensive. Perhaps even add additional information that's otherwise hard to find. Make sure that when a retailer wants that feature for their catalog that they sign up with Digital Convergance for that service. So what if a few geeks use the CueCat as a general purpose barcode reader, as long as they use your server when they want to look up an item in a catalog!
A final point, I realise that Radio Shack is not the geek haven it once was, but REALLY! Of all of the retailers to work with SURELY Radio Shack was one of the MOST LIKELY ones to have customers who could and would figure it out and further, consider doing so a moral imperitive as well as a fun way to waste an hour or two on the weekend! If you show off your cool new car at an auto mechanics convention, expect the hood to be raised!
/* Bar Code Reader */ /* Author: [removed to protect the author] */ /* 9-3-2000 */ /* works only with ":Cue :Cat (tm) Bar Code Reader */ /* This software is free, has absolutely no warranty nor */ /* claim of fitness for ANY purpose */
#include
#include
long readline(FILE *fp, char *buffer, long maxsize) {
char *ptr=buffer;
char nxtchr,tstchr;
long count=0;
nxtchr=getc(fp);
while(!feof(fp)) {
if(nxtchr==10) break;
if(nxtchr==13) {
tstchr=getc(fp);
if(tstchr!=10) ungetc(tstchr,fp);
break;
}
if(nxtchr!=10) {
*ptr=nxtchr;
count++;
ptr++;
*ptr=0;
}
if(count>maxsize) break;
nxtchr=getc(fp);
}
return count;
}
int firstdigit(char *cptr) {
int offset=0;
int num=-1;
switch(*cptr) {
case 'C':
offset=0;
break;
case 'D':
offset=4;
break;
case 'E':
offset=8;
break;
}
switch(*(cptr+1)) {
case 'W':
case '3':
num=0;
break;
case 'G':
case 'N':
num=1;
break;
case 'q':
case 'x':
num=2;
break;
case 'a':
case 'h':
num=3;
break;
}
return offset+num;
}
int seconddigit(char *cptr) {
int num=-1;
switch(*cptr) {
case 'n':
num=0;
break;
case 'j':
num=1;
break;
case 'f':
num=2;
break;
case 'b':
num=3;
break;
case 'D':
num=4;
break;
case 'z':
num=5;
break;
case 'v':
num=6;
break;
case 'r':
num=7;
break;
case 'T':
num=8;
break;
case 'P':
num=9;
break;
}
return num;
}
int thirddigit(char *cptr) {
int num=-1;
switch(*cptr) {
case 'Z':
num=0;
break;
case 'Y':
num=1;
break;
case 'X':
num=2;
break;
case 'W':
num=3;
break;
case '3':
num=4;
break;
case '2':
num=5;
break;
case '1':
num=6;
break;
case '0':
num=7;
break;
case '7':
num=8;
break;
case '6':
num=9;
break;
}
return num;
}
char gDecodedString[128]="";
char *decodestring(char *thestr) {
int i, thestrlen=strlen(thestr);
char tmpstr[32];
strcpy(gDecodedString,"");
for(i=0;i>> %s\n",part3,result);
}
}
}
}
else printf("Huh?\n");
}
return 0;
}
what commander taco is doing is childish and disrespectful to slashdot readers and the guy who wrote the letter. instead of allowing slashdot readers to read the letter and form their own opinions on what is being said, taco is forcing his own opinions down everybodies throats. as a reporter, taco should adopt a degree of professionalism and limit his comments to short remarks. everything beyond that belongs in the comments section -- even for taco. he is no more qualified to refute the letter than an ac like me. if taco wanted to discredit the letter at the time of the post he should have gotten a lawyer to do the commenting. or at least somebody who is involved in the cuecat ordeal like one of the guys who wrote a linux driver for the thing. i'm not saying that i agree with the cuecat guy. i just think it's a shame that slashdot would demonstrate such unprofessionalism. in a way, taco's behavior discredits the entire slashdot community because it indicates a biased and closed mindset.
Could someone please post a link to a mirror of the lastest version(0.0.9) of this.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Is there any reason that a trademark must be defended in order for a company to retain it's rights? When companies say they are only sending out C&D letters to defend their IP, it seems like we'd be better off if this type of thing did not exist. If a company must constantly defend every perceived attack on their IP, they go after little projects like this. According to the law as I understand it, they must do this to keep their rights in case another company may come along in the future and cause them massive financial loss. It's time to change trademark laws to make it less of a hassle to defend your IP.
GM better sue my friend, he is using the trunk of his car to store clothes because he has live out of his car 2-3 days a week.
Dammit they better sue me too. I once used a GM car as a chair at a Drive-In Theater
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Then again, their statement really did invite a response. I mean, they could have at least contacted Grammar Nazi for an edit...
sulli
RTFJ.
I walk into radio shack and say "gimmee"...I'm handed a plastic bag containing a scanner, a CD, and misc paperwork. I throw away everything but the scanner and happily begin scanning my cereal boxes, cds, and books.
What license did I agree to that I am now violating??
When I got home, I opened the plastic bag, plugged the scanner into my laptop and loaded up an editor. I then proceeded to scan an ISBN on a book nearby, and sure enough a bunch of characters spewed out onto my editor screen.
Now, what is there to reverse engineer here. All I have to do is figure out what those characters mean. I haven't signed anything that said I wouldn't try to figure that out and it's debatable whether such a contract would be legally binding anyhow. As far as I can tell, these guys do not have a legal leg to stand on because I have not in any way been obligated to keep anything a secret.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Yes, but assuming they're claiming trade secret protection here, unless they're alledging that the software developers stole the relevant code or whatever (literally stole, as in broke in to a server or something), their trade secret just went away. With a trade secret, it is perfectly legal to attempt to reverse engineer that secret, and assuming the reverse engineering succeeds, you can no longer claim that whatever is a trade secret.
Silly signature limit . . .
I recently bought a small Playschool (TM) plastic toy for my son in which plastic shapes such as squares, triangles, cylinders and stars are inserted through identically shaped holes in a small plastic ball. Since my son is 7 mo. old and cannot yet walk, he was missing the square piece, which was on my dresser. Being a smart lad, and not much given to griping to his local distributor (me) he forwent the proper channels and produced some wooden alphabet blocks which were lying nearby and, with a squeal of triumph to let me know of his accomplishment, promptly inserted all of the blocks into the toy.
I stood there in terror, knowing that his actions had just made me liable under US Law, for he had just contrived his very own solution to a problem at hand!
I now nervously await my cease and desist letter.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
this company has sold the razor blades and tried to get us to buy the razor WHAT? someone duct taped our blades to a stick?! LAWYERS!!!!
---
Unfortionatly, it's not the usage of their hardware that's the issue. It's the posting of the specs of the protocol used by the hardware for software use. This is *NOT* a 'clean room' implementation, either. The actual hardware was used to do it.
So what? On the planet I live on, you can't copyright or patent an interface, and reverse-engineering for the purpose of interoperating is legal. If somebody is trying to say otherwise, we don't play little clean-room games, we call Bullshit! good and loud. And go ahead doing what is right, and what is our right.
--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
--
not plane, nor bird, nor even frog...
Digital:convergence and its suppliers shall not be liable for any indirect, special, punitive, consequential, or incidental damages including, without limitation, lost profits or revenues . . .arising out of the use or inability to use this Website or any DigitalConvergence product or service.
So wait... They're bitching about us hacking a driver for it, when they themselves use Open Source tools like Apache and mod_perl? Hmmm, that's like biting the hand that feeds you, no?
Doug Davis,
2 11) sent by you and just had a couple of comments to make.
:CueCat people have reverse-engineered and built are Digital:Convergence's intellectual property. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
:CueCat device. You yourself mention that they are reverse-engineered implementations in your response, implying that you do not believe that they are copies of Digital:Convergence's own code. This means that they are the IP of their individual authors, not of Digital:Convergence.
I have just read the response sent to slashdot (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/09/05/0548
First of all, you seem to be under the impression that the drivers and decoders for the
The code and drivers that Digital:Convergence wrote are their IP, granted. And if anyone was to copy that code and claim it as their own, that would indeed be copyright infringement.
However, all the drivers and decoders I have seen claim to be reimplementations, reverse-engineered from the output of the
Secondly, (in case you are confronted with a case of copyright infringement in the future) the 'Enforce it or lose it' principle with regard to IP is only applicable to trademarks. Copyright (which covers computer code) does not come under this rule. Copyright owners can choose not to prosecute some infringers, and lose no rights when it comes to prosecuting others. (It is in fact the cornerstone of one of GNU/Linux's foundations - the Free Software Foundation's General Public License (GPL))
Hope that this helps with Digital:Convergence's position on this subject.
Adam Spragg.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Other than the spelling error, ('lose' is spelled with one 'o'), this is a fact that we in the open-source/'geek hobbyist' community understand all too well - and protecting our IP is exactly what we are doing here.
Specifically, we are fighting an intense battle to protect our rights to develop and maintain our own intellects. We do this, in part, by studying how things work, and finding novel new uses for them. This often does involve reverse-engineering, which, as has been pointed out many times, is still generally considered a real legal right...even in many parts of the United States, despite what some people seem to think.
You (Digital Convergence inc.) have added yourself to the sadly growing list of corporate bullies who have been working hard to infringe on our rights to our own intellects (occasionally while insulting them at the same time) by trying to besiege us with laywers, and undermine us with lobbyists.
"Any professional and serious developer will understand the following:" (as you say)
Since we cannot afford a platoon of lawyers and lobbyists to defend our intellectual rights for us, we have to do it ourselves. Many of us choose to maintain these rights be using them. For example, generous developers have exercised their intellects to develop a means to play DVD's on Linux, BSD, and, presumably, BeOS, OS/2, (and who knows what other operating systems), not 'steal DVD movies' (for which purpose there are far simpler means - e.g. 'bit for bit' copying), but to develop and maintain their own intellects and skills, and to maintain their right to make fair use of property that they have legally aquired, and then they've released the results of their research so that others can gain practical knowledge from them as well. Others have devised file-sharing protocols (e.g. 'napster', freenet, etc.), studied file formats, and so on, for similar reasons. They and the results of their experiments and research are a valuable intellectual asset to us.
So, to reiterate, I think I can safely say that we will continue to defend OUR intellectual property rights vigorously from knee-jerk reactions like this, as it is the best means we have to counter the lawyers, lobbyists, and money that you have to attack those rights with.
Should you and corporations with similar outlooks come to your collective senses, I'm confident you will find that a more friendly and rational relationship with generous open-source developers and hobbyists will profit you greatly.
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I wish I had a domain name as cool as flyingbuttmonkeys.com...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have a curent and very real need for this. a friend is setting up a bar and wants to give out "Membership cards" with a barcode on them. there are lots of barcode programs out there for database tracking, and a free scanner seemed like a good idea. it's silly to think we could be sued for trying to make this setup work. could I be sued for screwing a lightbulb into a celing fan instead of a "lightbulb manufacturer aproved socket"? Incidentaly, if anyone has some code laying around that would make the barcode database thing work.....
Dirty Pirate Hooker
You do an innocent bit of /. moderating on a Windows box and then when you submit you find that your use of the mouse's scroll wheel has completely mangled the moderation you wanted to make and then you have to make a post just to clear that moderation before the meta-moderation corrects it and bangs your karma down but then someone will probably moderate this one down so the karma's going to take a beating anyhow ...
Oh well.
Try my web page :-)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
BTW, I ordered 3 cuecats from their website, and am using them to catalog equiptment and data tapes. A much better idea then being a corporate marketing tool.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
/************************************************* *****************************
:Cue:Cat (tm) Reader decoding program. *
* ****************************/
/* Ring the bell. */
/* Ripped from mmencode. Used with permission. */
/* Copyright (c) 1991 Bell Communications Research, Inc. (Bellcore) */
/* Upper and lowercase are swapped from mmencode. */
/* Used as three byte integer. */
/* Pad short runs. */
/* XOR with "ccc". */
*
* Copyright (C) 2000 Hal Duston *
* *
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify *
* it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by *
* the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or *
* (at your option) any later version. *
* *
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, *
* but WITHOUT ANT WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of *
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the *
* GNU General Public License at http://www.fsf.org/ for more details. *
* *
*************************************************
#include <unistd.h>
int main(int argc, char *arg[]);
static ssize_t decode(char *outbuf, const char *inbuf);
int main(int argc, char *arg[])
{
char inbuf[512];
char outbuf[512];
ssize_t len;
while((len = read(STDIN_FILENO, inbuf, sizeof(inbuf))) != 0)
{
inbuf[len] = '\0';
len = decode(outbuf, inbuf);
outbuf[len++] = 7;
write(STDOUT_FILENO, outbuf, len);
}
_exit(0);
return 0;
}
static ssize_t decode(char *outbuf, const char *inbuf)
{
static int index_64[128] =
{
-1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1
-1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1
-1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 62, -1, -1, -1, 63
52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1
-1, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40
41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1
-1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1
};
static char pad_64[4] = { 0x10, 0x34, 0x0d, 0x03 };
const char *inptr = inbuf;
char *outptr = outbuf;
int ch = *inptr++;
long n;
int i;
while(ch != '\0')
{
if(index_64[ch] < 0)
{
*outptr++ = ch;
ch = *inptr++;
}
else
{
n = 0;
for(i = 0; i < 4; ++i)
{
if(index_64[ch] < 0)
{
n = n << 6 | pad_64[i];
}
else
{
n = n << 6 | index_64[ch];
ch = *inptr++;
}
}
n ^ = 0x434343;
*outptr++ = (n >> 16) ? (n >> 16) : '\0';
*outptr++ = (n >> 8 & 0xff) ? (n >> 8 & 0xff) : '\0';
*outptr++ = (n & 0xff) ? (n & 0xff) : '\0';
}
}
return outptr - outbuf;
}
/* Bar Code Reader */ :Cat (tm) Bar Code Reader */
/* Author: [Removed to protect the author] */
/* 9-3-2000 */
/* works only with ":Cue
/* This software is free, has absolutely no warranty nor */
/* claim of fitness for ANY purpose */
#include
#include
long readline(FILE *fp, char *buffer, long maxsize) {
char *ptr=buffer;
char nxtchr,tstchr;
long count=0;
nxtchr=getc(fp);
while(!feof(fp)) {
if(nxtchr==10) break;
if(nxtchr==13) {
tstchr=getc(fp);
if(tstchr!=10) ungetc(tstchr,fp);
break;
}
if(nxtchr!=10) {
*ptr=nxtchr;
count++;
ptr++;
*ptr=0;
}
if(count>maxsize) break;
nxtchr=getc(fp);
}
return count;
}
int firstdigit(char *cptr) {
int offset=0;
int num=-1;
switch(*cptr) {
case 'C':
offset=0;
break;
case 'D':
offset=4;
break;
case 'E':
offset=8;
break;
}
switch(*(cptr+1)) {
case 'W':
case '3':
num=0;
break;
case 'G':
case 'N':
num=1;
break;
case 'q':
case 'x':
num=2;
break;
case 'a':
case 'h':
num=3;
break;
}
return offset+num;
}
int seconddigit(char *cptr) {
int num=-1;
switch(*cptr) {
case 'n':
num=0;
break;
case 'j':
num=1;
break;
case 'f':
num=2;
break;
case 'b':
num=3;
break;
case 'D':
num=4;
break;
case 'z':
num=5;
break;
case 'v':
num=6;
break;
case 'r':
num=7;
break;
case 'T':
num=8;
break;
case 'P':
num=9;
break;
}
return num;
}
int thirddigit(char *cptr) {
int num=-1;
switch(*cptr) {
case 'Z':
num=0;
break;
case 'Y':
num=1;
break;
case 'X':
num=2;
break;
case 'W':
num=3;
break;
case '3':
num=4;
break;
case '2':
num=5;
break;
case '1':
num=6;
break;
case '0':
num=7;
break;
case '7':
num=8;
break;
case '6':
num=9;
break;
}
return num;
}
char gDecodedString[128]="";
char *decodestring(char *thestr) {
int i, thestrlen=strlen(thestr);
char tmpstr[32];
strcpy(gDecodedString,"");
for(i=0;i>> %s\n",part3,result);
}
}
}
}
else printf("Huh?\n");
}
return 0;
}
or a marketing issue?
These guys have made this product available FOR FREE to perform a specific task. If new drivers for this piece of equipment completely circumvent the reason for its FREE existence... hell YES I'd be mad if I were them.
This is more similar to the iOpener, than the DeCSS case. This has little to do with IP, more to do with revenue that the product is generating.
because no one is entering a legally-valid contract with ANYONE that binds them to anything when they obtain the scanner at RS. A good case can be made that the transaction is in fact a SALE for good and valuable consideration (i.e., my name/address info that I give RS in exchange for the scanner). No conditions were placed, no contracts signed. Voila! Free and clear of any BS their Web site pushes about it being "on loan."
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
I don't know if it's totally clear but what that PR rep had to say is a complete work of fiction. There's literally no truth in it. Let me count the ways:
... or lose it" they're lying.
... or lose it".
-- nothing done with the Cuecat was illegal
-- there's no IP for the Cuecat people to defend - identify it! I dare you! "By posting our IP to the net" my ass!
-- there's no such thing as "Defend it or lose it" under IP law. If 200 people rip off MS Windows and MS prosecutes 2 of them, there's no such defense as "Well, your honor, MS didn't prosecute the other 198 people..." This is a MASSIVE LIE made up by companies who want to shift responsibility. ANYTIME you see a company say "We had to
-- That whole third paragraph about the linux community helping Microsoft is hogwash.
-- there aren't any illegal posting efforts
-- if it took them five years to develop a BARCODE SCANNER which MUNGES the normal output in a trivial manner before outputting it, I am a Great Horned Antelope. I'm not? Well then I guess they're lying again. I talked to a friend of mine at Symbol, and Digital Convergance approached them to make this device earlier this year. (Symbol didn't end up making it.) Their company has been in existence less than one year. Symbol could make a run of these for you in a few months.
And what I really hate is that the lies are so pervasive that they end up shaping the whole debate. People can only see past a certain limited number of lies at a time. So they'll catch a few, but then they'll accept the bigger lies like "We had to
Random thought to any company executives who happen to be reading this: you know, if you truly wanted [your company] to be a radical, different company, try this on for size. Fire any and all PR people. Just fire them. Don't hire any more. Ever. If there's a story where you have to talk to the press, let one of the principals do it - the guy who programmed that feature, or whatever. No matter how big the company gets, DON'T EMPLOY TRAINED LIARS TO DEFEND IT. Because that's what a PR person is - someone trained in the art of creating believable lies day in and day out. People catch on to this, believe it or not, even though it's a very slippery thing to catch on to, and they end up with (at a minimum) a vague distrust of that company, because they know they're being lied to but can't quite figure out exactly where. It's the reason Microsoft has such a bad reputation. If VA or Red Hat or anyone else truly wanted to break the mold, they would abandon the institutionalized lying. This would prevent that distrust from building, as well as keeping the company on the straight and narrow - without a wall of lying to protect them, the company execs get good feedback whenever they're doing something wrong.
I think the first company to do this has the potential of being a very different, much more
people-friendly company than we've seen in the past.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
My point was that it's only a big deal and a hidden practice in the software industry...
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
Must go to Radio Shack and pick one of these things up so I can start "breaking the law" and "infringing DC's IP..."
#include "Judas Priest--Breaking The Law.mp3"
_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
First off CmdrTaco, good comments. Second, these guys are absolutely clueless about IP...you don't have to 'defend' against reverse engineering, and in fact, you can't. Third, it took them 5 years to bring this product/business model to fruition? Fourth, the letter was signed by two high level people in the company, and they couldn't bother to review it for correct grammar and spelling?
My suspicion about their business model is this: The company is heavily pushing their device through deals with print media, such as Parade magazine. Those who are chronically unable to correctly type a URL will request the CueCat, and use it. Those who wouldn't use one won't order one. So that means most of the hardware they give away will be used as they intended, which will generate revenue for them when someone scans a URL bar code. Except now you have a bunch of geeks who have figured out the hardware and are developing other ways for it to be used. So now other geeks are going to request their free CueCats, and they're never going to use the bundled driver. So a lot more hardware is going to be given out that will never generate any scanning revenue for them.
Well yes... That was the general idea.
There is no particular reason for their software to know the real barcode anyways. All that really needs to know is the backend systems. Such a system would not prevent someone elses front end software from being used, but it would effectivly prevent the scanner from being used with any other database. (which really seems to be the intent of these letters anyhow)
Also, I really don't see any point at all in signing the data, I don't think that DC would care if you used a $300 barcode scanner instead their free model, so long as you used their database.
Note that you could use ElGamel or ECC instead of RSA, its just that ElGamel is painfull in small hardware and ECC is patented up the wazoo.
probably hit the nail on the head, there... market research can be worth a fortune to some people... I wouldn't be surprised to find that data stream is what they're so concerned about protecting
check out this page from their website: That pretty much says it all, so essentially, yes, they ARE evil :-)
"DigitalDemographics is a wholly owned subsidiary of Digital:Convergence. It is responsible for the creation and analysis of the largest consumer database which provides the unique combination of web tracking with all forms of media. With aggregated data from broadcasters, publishers, and educators our licensees will always be on the cutting edge of information marketing"
Not the same thing at all. I don't recall being presented with any sort of 'license' for the cuecat.
Besides.. unlike *software*, the transfer of material goods has VERY LONG STANDING basis in law.
If they said 'here's your free cuecat' and didn't give you any contract to sign.. THEY GAVE YOU THE HARDWARE.
Software is a different matter altogether.
If someone did what you said with our GPL code, we would go ape shit because they *illegally* broke the license.
We, the public...the people of the USA are defended by the simple fact that if we pay for it we own it. If we own it, we may do with it what we will. This has held true for a very very long period of time. Without this simple fact we'd stagnate and lose our edge in the world market. We'd also have government and lawyers in our homes bugging us while we are sitting on the can. So, my questions are: How is this different than what Microsoft tried to do to Slashdot? Did the people doing the work on these drivers sign a contract with the company who made them? What is their legal basis, and how to they legally defend their stance? Where can I get a copy of this code to through up on a mirror site? We must stand and fight for liberty. If we don't we've lost before we've started. In a fight some will be put to the test. Taken to court, lose proptery, and so on. We have to except that. We kind of world do we want to leave to our chuildern? Please stand strong and don't back down. PS: This message is protected by the DMCA. It is also a letter to my legal counsel.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
All too often, I cringe when I see the open-source community make 'excuses' as to why they do what they do.
For instance, the DECSS thing. Everyone says 'we did it to make a fre eplayer for linux'. Bullshit. It was done simply because it was possible.
And before someone tears me a new one for saying this, please realizet hat what I'm saying is you shouldn't NEED an excuse to reverse-engineer stuff. YOu don't NEED a noble purpose; it's your RIGHT to rip stuff apart and figure out how it works!
Saying 'oh but I just wanted to make a free player' or 'but htere is no linux version of the cuecat and I wanted to make one' is just FEEBLE! Stand up for the truth.. the fact that you did it because IT IS YOUR RIGHT.
What if they packaged the cuecat hardware in a plastic bag and had the ole "by opening this bag you agree to not reverse engineer the device, blah blah blah etc."?
Anyone know the legal issues relating to this scenario?
I wasn't discussing at all whether something is legal or not. I was argueing the pointlessness of comparing the time to developing the entire product (claimed to be 5 years) with the reverse engineering of the "open software hackers" (claimed to be a few days or weeks).
Your entire posting is irrelevant in that respect.
-- Abigail
No, thats what public key cryptography (RSA, ElGamel, ECC etc) is all about, the CueCat hardware has the Public Key, the great database in the sky has the Private Key.
Thus only the great database in the sky can find out what the barcode actually is.
There is no need for the front end software to actually know what the real barcode is.
A few enterprising individualls might change their own Public key to decrypt to their own private key, but such a hack is significantly more difficult than simply decoding the output like in the present case.
I'm assuming you mean that the :C:C is protecting copyrighted data in barcodes,
First NEVER EVER ASS-U-ME. The :C:C is not protecting copyrighted data in barcodes.
because the DMCA only covers copyrighted data.
duh.
Decoding the output of the :C:C isn't accessing protected works, it's descrambling data that could be gotten by merely using a normal barcode scanner.
yes, but!
The scrambling is being done in the :C:C, not in the barcode.
This is what IS protected, and the DMCA states if you try to go around this scrambling you are "circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title [DMCA]."
Do you understand what that means? If there is some simple, stupid, piece of junk "technological measure" and you try to decode it, you are breaking the DMCA.
Believe what you want to believe, but that is the what the DMCA does. You can ignore this, and ignore what I said on my other posts, but damn it, it's the f'ing law. Go read the damn DMCA! You can hide your head in the sand, ignore the DMCA, and wish it will go away, BUT IT WON'T unless you do something about it. The sad thing is it to late, and to many powerful minds to change to get it repealed.
We are in a "new world order" and the people will get screwed, so go ahead and believe the crap you posted here.
MarNuke
MarNuke
It used to be, actually - until auto makers finally realized that there was a huge aftermarket for custom autos and let other shops work on souping up production cars (with lucrative results for all).
lf.o
GNUcat
Instead, our products were reversed engineered and what has occurred is a public display of what is clearly our intellectual property.
If your "intellectual property" is a trade secret, then "it ain't secret no more". Bummer for you, but under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) adopted by 40 states, reverse engineering is not an "improper means" for appropriation of a trade secret. Perhaps you guys are confused about your rights under the law? What exactly do you believe created a "duty to maintain its secrecy"? If you think that it was the purchase of your product alone, then you are living in a fantasy world.
If your "intellectual property" is a copyright, then you are way out on a limb, since copyright does not protect facts or ideas, but only the particular expression of them, and even then only if the fact/idea does not "merge" with it's expression.
If your "intellectual property" is a patent, then it's already disclosed (that is a requirement for getting a patent), so I doubt you should be worried about "public display". This is really the only form of IP where you might have a case.
I agree with many of your comments and issues with IP, but I do not agree with the way you have sliced up Mr. Davis' document.
It would have been nice if you had done something constructive. Sending some questions to Mr. Davis would have been a good start. Having him clarify some issues. Explaining to him that his positions need further clarification or he will be ostricized by the Linux community. This was an oppurtunity to start a dialogue with Mr. Davis.
Instead you have filled his poorly done response with childish taunts.
I wish you had done something constructive. This was an oppurtunity to gain insight into a corporate mentality and perhaps to enlighten a corporation. I truly doubt Mr. Davis will listen to you or anyone else in the Linux community now.
A shame. A waste.
Under IP law if we don't PROTECT our IP, we loose any remedies under law to PROTECT our IP.
I challenge any attorney out there to support this with case law. I have consulted with IP attorneys on this very matter and have been told that, except for trademarks, this is totally false. IANAL, so I could be wrong, but I doubt it. If you ARE a lawyer, and I'm wrong, please point to freely-available references justifying your opinion.
Given that the above-quoted statement is false, we have two (and ONLY two) choices.
1. Doug Davis is STUPID.
a. He is NAL, and he either makes statements about legal principles without consulting AL, or he consults STUPID L and believes them.
b. He is AL and should know better.
2. Doug Davis is a LIAR. He knows what he says is wrong, and says it anyway.
Again, if I'm wrong about my premise, please correct me in this forum.
If we have drivers to read the protocol from the scanner, and understand how to go from scanned code to their web ads we can increase the level of noise in the system arbitrarily:
- collect code/url pairs in an open database (as many as we can get our hands on)
- write a user app that allow you to specify how many random code/url pairs to use when browsing an ad
- have that app get those url's
Example: I want to use the :::::::Q:Cat::: to get info on the new Widget. I fire up the software, specify "50", scan the widget and the software starts doing HTTP Gets to 50 random coded URL's, and the one URL I'm really interested in. The random ones go into the bit bucket, the one I'm interested in gets send to a browser (to do it right you'd have to make the User-Agent string look like your browser, etc.). The ::: folks see a stream of 51 requests with no correlation whatsoever and can't do anything useful with the information.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Apparently you misunderstand the issue.
It's not about someone STEALING hardware, or hacking up existing drivers.
It's about someone exercising their right to make their piece of hardware work how they want it to.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They don't get to trample on our rights to explore technical problems and discuss our solutions, in order to feed their dogs. Their threatening legal tactics are no different than those of the MPAA in the DeCSS case. The fact that they're a small company is no excuse - indeed, it means that every person there holds more responsibility for the actions of the company, not less.
Note the vauge references to "intellectual property". What do they mean? Was copyright violated? Was a patent broken? Was a trademark violated? Taking something apart to see how it works, and describing your findings to others, is not a violation of any legitimate law. (The DMCA is illegitmate and unconstitutional, and its architects and supporters need to be cleansed via the flaying and boiling ritual described above.) Oh, and to my knowledge (IANAL) only trademarks need to be defended with vigor to be recognized; patent and copyright holders can be more lenient and still retain their legal rights.
So: fsck 'em if they can't take a hack.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I am so sorry to see that your vague, bellicose rantings at the open source community still haven't told me what the actual problem is with someone legally reverse engineering the CueCat, but I suppose that being merely geeks and hackers makes it okay to not express your concerns clearly enough so that other people can actually understand what the fsck you're on about.
Anyway.... When the guy at Radio Shack tried to push one of your cute little scanners off on me, he didn't have software for -any- of the OS I use(Mac and Linux), and didn't know when it would be available for either. Of course, by throwing your lawyers at the open source community, and making a lame promise of Linux software in the future doesn't help users like me -now-, but then by being a lamer who doesn't use M$ anything, I didn't get bit by the LoveBug, either. I guess the happy trade off is in my favor, not yours, since I probably -won't- want to use CueCat after all the sword rattling about this.
But I can tell you that when my mother or other close relative or friend tells me about the CueCat that they have, that since your business model is, at best, nebulous, that it probably is just another means to collect and track personally identifiable data about her and therefore shouldn't be used. It's perfectly reasonable to assume, given the layout of a free scanner, Radio Shack association, and how the device works that this is -exactly- what is going on. It's too bad, since I think once the scam is finally out in the open, that someone will link you folks to DoubleClick and you're collective goose will be cooked. Privacy is awfully important to people these days and giving away her static IP address in exchange for a gadget that scans barcodes in an ad flyer doesn't seem like much of a fair trade to me.
Wish you all the luck in the world as you try for fame and fortune, but for me, I'll be the educated consumer and look prices up the old fashioned way.
Sincerely,
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Unfortunately, for us all, some of the people conducting these efforts would not voluntarily remove our IP, even after being contacted.
Thank god
'/Quote'
Now come on, when asked reasonably it's surely good manners to remove the code if only for a brief period of time whilst any legalities are dealt with. I'm beginning to think that many of the reverse engineering projects these days are losing site of the fact that they are destroying a potential revenue stream for the original developers. Have a care, if you want the product first ask the developers, if they say sure then fine, if not the badger them about it until they give in, but don't steal there technology - ETHICS people!
I don't think the real problem is IP. If it was, then it would be a fairly clear-cut problem. As far as I can tell, all cue-cat is is a barcode reader which returns a universal ID number-- which is then sent in software to the company, which then forwards the computer's browser to a web page.
That's it.
So which pieces are genuine IP, and which are Business Model Legal Defense? The former, I think, represents hard work which they have a right to hold onto. The latter represents them using lawyers to try to force people to not take advantage of their business model.
I don't see much of a market for this scanner-- I guess that's their main problem. Trying to put one in everyone's hands might work, but more likely, people will think "great, one more piece of crap to plug into my machine". I-openers are at least great products which have obvious and well-addressed market openings. The guys at CueCat just seem like they are reaching. I haven't seen their product, but if my understanding of their system is right, then it is underwhelming no matter how well implemented it is.
Then the question becomes, what IP are they defending? The ability to read barcodes? To do so by hand-held scanners? Or to link codes to webpages? Except for the latter, all are pretty commonly in use. And the last, well, they can have that technology, as far as I am concerned.
This is a non-obvious, novel use for a scanner. So I do think they have some genuine IP here-- though none in the hardware driving department, which seems to be what they are complaining about. As for links to Amazon, etc, well, my opinion is that it is IP, but pretty pathetic, worthless IP. Good example of how even bad ideas can be IP if they meet the requirements.
There have been a lot of comments here asserting that DC's legal argument is bull, that while you can patent a device, you can't patent a device driver or a device driving technique. As legal advice, this is flat-out wrong. While you may argue that such a patent law is, philosophically, a poor idea, or that a business strategy based on such a law is, financially, a bad idea, the law as it is very clearly protects such a strategy. Which is why any driver hacker who bothered to call his lawyer complied with DC's demands.
A patent protects a method which:
i) is new and non-trivial
ii) does something concievably useful
iii) works
It says that the patent holder that method.
It doesn't matter that you came up with the idea independently, mined the resources and built the device with your own hands, and wrote the code with your own two eyes and ten fingers. You may be just using the laws of physics but if you don't have the patent-holder's permission, you are breaking the laws of manon, and he will not hesitate to put you behind very physical bars for doing so.
Even if you encrypt in the reader and decrypt in the software, someone can reverse engineer the software and release the keys, as was done to DVD's CSS. If you let software do some descrambling, and give that software to anyone, even as object code, you're already doomed; you may as well not scramble in the first place.
The entire article IS relating to the legality of what was done.
The thread you are on started by wondering if the fact that it took five years was accurate.
You wrongly said that all that had to be done was to have the code copied.
There was no copying occuring.
As for the argument about the time, that was a pointless argument since there was no agreement as to wheather they werer talking about the entire project or the scanner encryption or anything else.
While his posting was irrelevant to what you were thinking about, I think you were wrong in attacking what he was posting about as there seems to be no agreement on the definition of terms in this thread.
Fact is:
1. the decryption was VERY simple
2. The other inventions involved were not particularly interesting wrt the bar code scanner.
This must not have been all they were talking about when they said 5 years.
As somebody noted elsewhere, the 5 years probably also included marketing/building the audio linking.
They did not however indicate this in their letter. I wonder exactally how much detail they've paid attention to in what is going on.
Most of us took your arguments in this thread to be that you were arguing that what was done was illegal, because it was not obvious (the kind of thing that invalidates a patent.). Sorry for the miscommunication, but please be more specific in your postings next time
I saw it, but I couldn't believe it.
This guy writes the same way he speaks.
The same sentence, rendered in formal English:
The writer composes in the same manner in which he speaks.
'Nuff said.
Okay ya know... I think this BarCode scanner thingy is cool for two reasons...
1. It has a shiny red light 2. It is free
Everyone has the right by, by claiming the product as there own, to do whatever they damn well want to with it. So someone wrote some drivers for it. YEE HA! It just shows that what took them 5 years to develope took another 5 days to write drivers for.
This Product could be a great thing but do to an anal-retentive CEO it might fade. It scans a barcode (which I do believe is at every foodmart and gas station in the world) and takes you to that distributors website. Big wow! The whole point of a product is to make it grow. I quote Nick Hexum...
If people like your band right away. Somthing is wrong. You are not breaking the mold. You are being easily digestible.
This CueCat just shows how important the OpenSource community is. Think about it... A simple CueCat mod-ed by the "geeks, Hackers and techno-wizzes" could organize and check a DVD collection. It could inventory. It could be a light saber. It could even become a cool computer version of that 'Barcode Warriors' game they had so long ago where certain barcodes created a character and then you would link up to your buddies and fight RPG style to see who would win. This can all be done by innovation and the ideas of others. Digital Convergence needs to realize that they alone can't make a product great. I mean look at Play Station... Yes it is a game console, but with out the ideas and the creations of other companies working with Sony to create games that kicked ass, (FF8) it would have faded as well.
~BHM
"Join me on the nail side of the thumb!"
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I am significantly underwhelemed by Mr. Davis rant. The poor spelling,poor grammar and general tone of "you darn kids!" almost makes me laugh. Did you proof-read your statement at all or did you just expect your bar-code reader to do the work for you? I saw "Something About Mary" last week and remember the scene when the lunatic in Ben Stiller's car starts going off, "No man, it's 6! 6-minute Abs!" when Ben calmly explains than somebody else could just as easily come up with "5-minute Abs" and he comes unglued. Mr. Davis sounds a lot more like this in his letter than he does a serious businessman. But, as always, That's Just Me. RK
Ok, this is the reason Digital Convergence is upset. DC makes their money selling codes at about $50/each to advertisers in different media. The consumer sees an ad, swipes the code. The driver software sends the code request to a MySQL database that interprets the code into a URL, after intercepting the user's unique ID code.
The reason DC is able to make money is not because they can move you to the site easily with the bar code scanner, it's because they can autmatically track the demographics of users who swipe codes.
DC has set up a completely seperate company called Digital Demographics to handle this. This is where the money really is.
Homegrown drivers that don't require the user to sign up and let their demographic pants down would obviously scare DC.
Also, the DC codes system is proprietary. The CueCats can read normal bar codes, but only CueCats can read DC codes. Figure it out for yourself.
... for your own private purposes, sure. But should it be legal to post reverse engineered software in public forums for all to grab? That's a form of distribution. I think it's the distribution of IP that's bad, not the reverse engineering of it.
You can laugh without eating a sandwhich, but you can do both if bring one.
1. Each device has a unique serial number. You can see this number spit out with the perl decoder available on the net. (I will not post link, for fear of having author harassed) This RISK needs no explanation.
2. Their database depends on customer contributions, just like CDDB does. They clearly state that the submissions become the sole property of them. (In case you were thinking about polluting the database in protest, as I did, it appears that the submissions are queued up and reviewed by humans.)
I'm also annoyed that the damned device has no off switch or a cover for the scanner LED. My computer desk now gives off an eerie red glow at night unless I cover up the ugly cat-shaped device.
Still, I can't see they have any hope of defending this. AFAIK, there are no patents on the absurd encoding scheme they use. They gave away the hardware (I will not be bound by a shrink-wrap click/through license on hardware!). And now now they're bitching that someone can potentially built a better mouse trap.
I'm not angry with this company, really. It's more like pity for dreaming up such a poor business model. I hope the employees are looking for other jobs, as these folks won't be around much longer, IMHO.
There seems to be a concensus among proprietary computer hardware and software makers that the complex nature of their products should be protected by law to prevent "geeks, hackers and techno-whizzes" from exposing their inner-workings to the masses.
.........Unfortunately the Linux Community could of (could have) inadvertently created the WINDOW for the BIG companies to come in and control and profit from this process we have created. So if M$ or some other company decides to do what you are doing *for profit" and DigitalConvergence allows the open source group to continue with out proper licenses, DigitalConvergence could loose (lose) its ability to effectively stop them. The Linux Community would of (would have) actually had a DIRECT HAND in creating what it stands most vehemently against!
This assumption is akin to the auto manufacturers demanding that the aftermarket part makers stop providing performance enhancing equipment that any shade-tree mechanic can install.
It's very similar to the system created by the real-estate or legal professions. If they keep the interface to their processes complex enough then the general populace can't gain access to the inner workings. After all, if we can all DIY then how will they profit. The proprietary mindset requires mass ignorance to make money.
But once an enterprising geek, hacker or techno-whiz decodes the mumbo-jumbo and simplifies it for others to use, doesn't his solution become his intellectual property? IP that he or she should be allowed to distribute as he or she sees fit?
And how did these guys get to be CEO and President when they write like this. Common errors but someone who's carreer depends heavily on communication should know better.
Any professional and serious developer will understand the following:
Of course, the #5 Honda wrench is also known as a dead-blow mallet.
Love, Stu
its called point - counter point bro.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I contend that the reader that I have is mine, base on the following reasons. When I went to Radio Shack and asked the manager if they were giving away free bar code readers, he said "yes". I repeated "Are they free"? And again he said "yes". He even gave me a reciept for the reader and the catalog with the price of $0.00 listed for each item. I kept the reciept, and consider it to be my proof of ownership.
I have not opened the software, I have not read the agreement, I did not break a seal indicating that I had accepted an agreement.
My only agreement is with the manager of the Radio Shack. And twice he told me it was free. Free has very a special meaning, it means FREE.
Thus far I have not used it because I don't have any software that I feel comfortable using.
I am hoping that some kind soul will get around to making some nice windows software that will allow me to use it without having my surfing and shopping habbits tracked.
Some people got them unsolicited in the US mail. By federal law, if you mail something to someone, without their soliciting it, even if it was in error, they own it.
These rules were put in place after people came up with the "clever" idea of sending people at random a box of "stuff" followed by a bill for said stuff. Any clause in a contract that is contrary to laws in effect in that place, is automatically void.
I can't comment on those that picked them up in person. I have a sneaking suspicion that various bits of uniform commercial code apply however, and since no contract was presented (not even an "open this package and agree) I have a sneaking suspicion that they also get considered gifts, which you can dispose of at yor leisure.
Organizer:New England Rubbish Deconstruction Society;The NERDS,first US team in the UK Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars
I looked all over Friday and couldn't find the source... but DC says someone still hasn't taken it down? Who!! If you know where it is please post here or let me know! thx.
l1011c@bellsouth.net
Yes.
No.
The only reason I buy craftsman. They didn't even ask for a receipt. Just grunted, walked to the isle, grabbed a new one, scanned it and handed it to me.
Really, I think these companies misunderstand the nature of the internet. Once the something gets out there really isn't any way to get it back. Cease and desist letters aren't going to do any good because they only work in the US. I have the code, you have the code, your friends all have the code.
Maybe a better stance would be "Hey, I'm glad you OSS people want a scanner that will run in Linux, we had no idea. Soon we will have a pile of delightful apps and hardware aimed at the Linux OS. Thanks for all your help."
That might be a little more well received.
Icebox
I didn't agree to any license on their device. That's the issue here. They messed up and didn't put a license on the package, you only saw it if you installed the Windows software. I never installed that software, and I'm sure many others here haven't.
Icebox
Where is your arguement? That babble you call a comment just now made me stupid. Slashdot isn't bashing the ideas of another company. Where the problem lies is the company known as Digital Convergence is complainign because someone wrote drivers for Linux to make the silly thing work. It isn't destroying their innovation and hardwork. It is letting them know that
HEY! There are other users who are interested in this product and are helping you by making drivers for you at no expense.
It is a free lunch for them and they turn around and go nuts because of it. Besides... who could make a decent profit off a CueCAT anyways with its initial design. It scans barcodes and they give the thing away for free. Hmmm.... nope I don't see one except royalties from the distros where the barcode takes you too. Kinda like having an AD on a website.
~BHM
"Join me on the nail side of the thumb!"
Forgive me i stole some of this from Bashcat by Dirk van den Brink, Jr. .cueget http://t.dcnv.com/CRQ/1..ACTIVATIONCODE.04.$CUE.0 .cueget | grep desc | cut -c 6- -` .cueget | grep url | cut -c 5-`
-----------------------------------
clear
echo "Scan product.."
read CUE
CUE=`echo $CUE | cut -b 7- - | tr A-Za-z a-zA-Z`
wget -t2 -T1 -q -O
DESC=`cat
URL=`cat
echo "Cue Cat Barcode Scanner"
echo $DESC
echo $URL
netscape $URL
yeah..um...at 5 bucks a pop to create i dont think they are loosing close to what the "hacker community" cost netpliance. Considering I hosted and wrote for the largest i-opener related website, hosted and wrote the windows/dos ports for the qnx decryption program and not one person came after me or anyone involved (in the legal sense). why? cause they never signed a legal contract, like in this they never forced you to agree to any ToS or agreement. IF they tried to sue they would have no leg to stand on. (IANAL, just experience with "h4xx0r community" and "l33t" free toys)
It is my understanding that trade secrets can only be protected by secrecy and non-disclosure agreements. If Digital Convergence has a trade secret and someone "discovers" it without agreeing to non-disclosure and without getting information (either directly or indirectly) from Digital Convergence or a developer who has agreed to non-disclosure, then isn't that information fair game?
For example, if Ford figures out a way to double the fuel economy of a car, they would certainly consider that a trade secret. Presume that I'm tinkering around under the hood and discover that they've put a 14.37 degree bend in the fuel injector, and I determine that alone is necessary to increase fuel economy, and I notice that Ford has not protected the design with a patent, then isn't it fair for me to "sell" to Chrysler "my" idea of a bent fuel injector? Or bending the fuel injector on my older Ford car?
Now, if an OSS developer had read and agreed to the software license that comes with the Cue Cat barcode reader, AND that license specifically stated "...you agree not to reveal protocols or design information you discover from reverse engineering this product...", then PERHAPS they would be able to legally argue that their trade secrets have been violated. But, alas, I don't believe this is the case, as previous discussion indicates that the developers have not installed the software or read the documentation on the setup disk which came with the Cue Cat.
Which brings up another question, can indirectly resolved protocols and design information be subjected to NDA?
I wonder if Digital Convergence negotiated an NDA with Symbol Technologies or if maybe they figured out how a barcode scanner works by reverse engineering...
Long live FREE information!
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
The lesson - don't email fscking stupid letters to slashdot and expect to be treated better than everyone else.
lf.o
Almost, except for the credit clause in older BSD licenses... Don't they have to give credit, or is this only if they claim they're using the BSD code?
Code licensed under any BSD-style license (even the BSDL 2.0 without the advertising clause) requires the original software's copyright notice (© Regents of UC Berkeley or something like that) to be inserted in the documentation. More BSD copyright information can be found at FreeBSD.org.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
A quick scan found the necessary "cuecatd.pl" script and I'm now on my way...
Thanks, Digital Convergence!
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I think its time to change the law to say that ALL contracts of ALL types are required to be signed contracts....get rid of this shrink-wrap bull shit.
Sounds great, but that might make it harder for corps to make money, therefore it will not happen. People are, in general, too ignorant about things such as IP, the DMCA, UCITA, etc. Do you hear the presidential candidate talking about such things? Nope. I did some searches at vote-smart.org on the speeches that they've given, and can hardly find any mention of intellectual property issues, except for a couple comments where they say they support strong protection of corps' IP. Since nobody talks about this stuff and the media has a vested interest in avoiding the subject as much as possible, nothing is likely to change.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Under IP law if we don't PROTECT our IP, we loose any remedies under law to PROTECT our IP.
WHY DO PEOPLE THINK THIS!?!?!
If you don't protect your trademarks Then you loose them. You do not loose patents, and you do not loose copyrights! I don't know what the hell kind of IP Digital:convergence thought they had, (or why it took them five years to make a barcode reader...) but it sure as hell wasn't a trademark, you didn't see these hackers using their l33t-4ss colon. did you?
There is no such thing as 'IP-laws', rather IP law referes to the laws governing patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Patents and copyrights are similar, but don't really have anything to do with trademarks.
and you never loose rights to the patent or copyright untill it exspires.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Because, you see, every major automaker, every year, goes out and purchases one of each of the competitor's products, tears it down, analyzes it, and publishes (internally) a report on what was found.
:)
Any good idea (that isn't patented or legally protected) will be taken note of, and may find its way into a future project. Any bad idea or poor tradeoff will be laughed at.
There is a very long history of "reverse engineering" in the nuts and bolts world. The software world should expect no less.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
....RadioShack) then it seems reasonable that Digital Convergence will loose a MUCH higher percentage of the customer base than will the companies related to the IOpener or DVD cases would.
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I've set up a mailing list. Pierre and some of the other developers of the kernel/userspace apps for the CueCat are already on it. If you're interested:
mailto: majordomo@quantumlinux.com
body: subscribe barcode
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*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
I've been interested in the hardware side of the CueCat - have a look at this page for some info on what lurks inside the plastic case... I wonder if they'll send me a C&D letter...
Does noone remember the correct spelling of Lose any more? It seems the net has changed the spelling of this word.