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CueCat At It Again
Michael Rothwell
(the author of Foocat)
wrote in to tell us that our friends at Digital Convergence are not giving up on their quest to defend their
3rd grader calibre
"encryption" of their "intellectual property". Since they've
changed their EULA,
and mass mailed California, they have no excuse (the old EULA has no restrictions on reverse engineering the hardware, and mass mailing in California makes it irrelevant anyway). Anyway, you can read
DC's response (a misnomer since they don't actually answer any of the questions). The site has other fun tidbits like reports of DC visits, and linkage to all sorts of good info about how to remove the serial number from the CueCat, and what DC is planning on doing with your info (besides giving it to
crackers).
They're pissed at the name "FlyingButtMonkeys" because the management at DC are all a bunch of Flying Butt Monkeys!
There are no such thing as UTICA and DCMA, or I don't know what they mean. There are UCITA and DMCA.
Awwwww, come on...
.
/. . Don't read the story. Go take a break. But don't lambaste the rest of us for doing our part by lining up to take our turn to give these dopes a well deserved boot in the arse.
It's fun to mock idiot companies.
What are we gonna do, kick Microsoft around some more?
It's really sad and pituful that these dopes think that they have something special that the courts should protect for them when a bunch of pizza-chomping hackers figure it out on their own in their spare time. Stupid loser companies.
These guys (companies of this ilk) are stupid. They don't get it. It is our moral duty to drub them mercilessly and mock them until they shrivel up and die
Yeah, the story's getting old. And stale. And smelly. and rancid. The fact that it has hung around so long is not the community's fault. It is illustrative of the pure boneheaded stuborness that this kind of stupid-head company embodies. So, yeah, if you're tired of the story blame the DC's and M$'s of the world, not
Political and legal issues aside, I think Einstein said it best, "Sometimes one pays the most for things one gets for nothing."
Damnit, slashdot needs a spellchecker! (And I need to use the preview button).
Heh. You aren't the first one to ask that question, and I doubt you'll be the last. DigitalConvergence hasn't bothered to answer that very large, very IMPORTANT question, and I doubt they will either. Considering their profit model (give away barcode reader, collect user information, sell databases full of user data to advertisers), why would they? I'm sure they know that if they _actually_ answered that question, we'd all be laughing our asses off...
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
--
now at UPC Database you can directly scan an object with the cuecat, and add it to the database if it's not into it. It's fun, i added a Staedler eraser, lighter, cigarettes, CD-R, "facial tissue" kleenex-clone, etc
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I'm calling my lawyer now ;) You'll be getting clueless letters RSN.
The point is, there was no original agreement unless you opened the software package and installed the software. The hardware was provided free of charge, without any statement of conditions at the time of the transaction (and in some cases has been mailed without request). This means that under US law (as I understand it) the hardware is YOURS. F'chrissakes, this is like a guy walking up to you in the street and saying, "here's a CD player and a free CD", walking away without saying anything more, and then suing you because you tried to play your own CDs in the player, with the reason for the lawsuit being that there's a message recorded on the CD he gave you saying that you mustn't play any other CDs with the player - even though you've never even listened to the CD!
UTICA states == New York? ;)
why is that a troll?
That's funny!
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Mail it postage due, though. Why should you have to pay to dispose of, or return their property?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The first HREF in his page...hit it, laugh
e to the i pi equals negative one
Yeah, but it still get unencrypted at some point, otherwise what's the point of having it at all? If you trust them not to store this info on their own servers when they say they won't, why not trust them not to disclose the info they have when they say they won't? Either way it's all based on trust.
(Yes, I know that it would take care of the site-cracking issue - so it may be a better option on those grounds, but I still don't trust them not to give out my personal info no matter where it's stored.)
Based on what evidence? It wouldn't be illegal for them to do so (assuming they change their privacy policy first, if neccessary), and it would probably be the one thing that they have worth selling.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Here's a way to fix the problem:
There is one thing that I proposed to some of the people internal at DC:
Store name, email, address and city client-side. Do key authentication between the client and server. Who cares if they have your zip code, favorite soda, and UID on the server-side if you know your personal info that ties you back into that is on your end. Setup a notification system that tells CRQ when an event has happened (the particular UID has won a contest, would you like to join this email list, etc). When you click yes to that event, it transmits your personal info (email, name, etc) to the server for inclusion in that event. This way, you can't tie the big-brother type info to the UID on their end, if the list gets sold your data is safe (just marketing stuff), they still get their bucks from advertisers...
Everyone's happy. Problem is conving the execs of this.
Anyone want to help me draft up a document?
(I am pretty intimate with the QUE system, I wrote part of it last year).
Encrypted personal info stored locally. (strong encryption using RSA or something). Wouldn't be too hard.
You have to realize that ANY company out there can change their privacy policy at will at ANY time. This includes sites that store your credit card, bank accounts, etc. YES, they would get into lots of trouble, but they COULD do it. Once DC gets big enough, they won't be able to.
I believe that they are also not going to sell their list if the company gets bought. Apparently there is too much mess that goes along with that (which is exactly why their policy states they will never disclose personal info. It's not in their best interest to get sued all over the place).
really? that's interesting because i didnt sign a license agreement (and never saw one) when i got my free Cuecat reader from Radio Shack. i took the device, but i never agreed to any license agreement. maybe the license agreement is on that cd i've never opened?
The DMV doesn't give you permission to kill people with your car, they give you a license to drive it.
not really a relevent comment since the govt. didnt give you the car and doesn't restrict where you can drive it. (among a vast array of other reasons why that statment has no relevence that i'm sure are obvious)
A more appropriate description would be the chrysler can't sell you a car and tell you that you cannot tinker with the engine if you want. It's yours, feel free to break it.
they also can't tell you that you are only allowed to use Exxon gasoline because that's what they intended when they built it.
Tivo doesn't give you permission to break down their proprietary video encoding technology, just to hack the hard drive and other non-critical bits (this is how companies make money).
Tivo also cannot stop you from taking apart your legally bought Tivo box and tinkering with the insides if you want. If you break it, too bad, the warranty is voided.
Remember, i never signed any license. i was given the hardware by the girl at Radio Shack. I own it now.
Sure, I could devote my life to developing Linux and giving it away for free. I could also never marry and starve my future children to death.
that's incredibly trollish and implication is stupid so i'll just say this:
Yeah, poor Linus. He really looks like he's starving.
Some companies need to make money to survive.
i'm cool with that. i got no problem with a company making money providing a product or service that's useful. but if they give me free stuff and then whine when i use it in a way they didnt intend, that's their problem.
Or should i be worried about the statue my girlfriend made out of all those free AOL cds? (maybe there's a license on them saying i'm only allowed to use them to connect to AOL and the statue violates their intellectual property!)
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Some vcrs have the ability to scan codes to program taping shows. It'd be interesting to see what someone with a video capture board and a CueCat could do. Heck toss in a IRport and have it so the CueCat scans a few barcode, waits until the show is on, changes the channel, saves the program, then changes to a new channel to save the next show.
Just an idea.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
If you're too lazy to go to Radio Shack, there's a web form you can fill out to get a cat.
-- Real free software sites don't use GIFs.
they are doing the smart thing by staying out of it - it isn't their product, their attempt at IP, etc.. The noise over it probably gets some more people in there, who end up with a catalog, too... they don't have a reason to object.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
This post provoked some interesting thoughts for me.
Q. How is cuecat different from an alarm clock? Or Why can I not redistribute the software on a free sampler CD?A. cuecat contains software, which are covered by different laws (i.e. copyright) to those covering the working of an alarm clock (i.e. patents). I own the device, I don't own the software.
Q. Why did the MPAA win their case against 2600? A. Because machine-readable code is a "device" and hence deCSS is a "circumvention device" under the DMCA.
Q. Why can't e-commerce sites offer a shopping method that involves a single click to purchase? A. Because this software method is patented.
Is it just me, or do the answers to these questions all seem to contradict themselves? Big business seems to want to keep their cake and eat it too. In the first case the software is protected like a literary text. The person in possession of a copy (like a book or a CD) can use it, but not reproduce it, translate it or whatever without permission from the owner.
In the latter two, software is exactly like a physical device. Any instance of deCSS is a "circumvention device" and therefore illegal, just like illicit drugs or firearms (in some parts of the world). Similarly, development of work-alikes of "one-click shopping" infringes a patent just like making an unlicensed "Sex aid device for males".
They can't have it both ways, and the courts (all over the world) will have to decide which is the correct view or, better still, come up with a completely new model for software. The truth is that software is expression and the result of significant work, so it should be protected by copyright. The GPL relies on copyright law. However, software is also an integral part of many modern devices and we must protect the inventors of truly innovative things.
Is there any legal precedent in any jurisdiction that covers this dilema?
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
I went over to Michael Rothwell's page about it, and well, was completely underwhelmed by his initial response. Besides, lawyers will never take anything seriously unless mail addressed to them are from another lawyer.
So, perhaps a better response would have been something more like this:
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your letter dated August 30, 2000 regarding my website flyingbuttmonkeys.com. After consulting my lawyers, a few questions remain. I have summarized these questions for you here.
1. What Intellectual Property owned by Digital convergence was revealed on flyingbuttmonkeys.com?
2. Would you please cite the exact law I am accused of violating?
3. Would you please describe how one would consent to the End User License Agreement covered by the Cuecat and Digital Convergence Intellectual Property?
4. Would it be possible for the user to use the cuecat hardware without agreeing to the End User License Agreement?
5. If a user expressed consent to the End User License Agreement described above, please explain how the user would express consent to any changes made to the End User License Agreement by Digital Convergence or any other third party?
Thank you. I appreciate your response.
Sincerely...
Entirely off-topic, but this does raise the question, What would happen if I attempted to mail helium balloons, with negative "weight" (density, really)... would the post office pay me to send them?
If you think about it, though, this really is pretty cool technology. Now we indeed have what amounts to a URL from meatspace into cyberspace.
So what happens if I make a barcode that happens to point to DeCSS. Does my barcode become illegal?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Point well made.
They call me the working man. I guess that's what I am.
There has got to be more interesting news going on than another CueCat story. Hasn't Microsoft done something dirty and underhanded in the last week? Isn't there something...anything interesting going on in the world BESIDES CUECAT!
Moderation: (-1) Re-Redundant
They call me the working man. I guess that's what I am.
Not unless in your country politicians are poultry. Around here they are more often compared to snakes, weasels and chimps.
________________
They're - They are
Their - Belonging to them
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
that would be orfay at-thay attermay
Now you can sue me. I cracked your encryption scheme.
Explain to me what's funny about buying pet food online? I bought some dog chews on line (half the price of the local pet shop, a saving of 70 UKP for 200 packets). They actually came from another country! (the ROI).
Looking about, I stumbled apon the :CUECAT F.A.Q.S page and found some rather ammusing items. e.g:
Do I Still Need My Mouse Now That I Have A :CueCat Code Reader?
Yes. :CueCat has a different function from the mouse. You will certainly continue to use your mouse, but probably less often. :CueCat helps you get to the Web page you want instantly, so that you do not need to click repeatedly in search of what you want.
Do I Have To Connect :CueCat Through My Keyboard Port, Or Will It Work From The Mouse PS/2 Port?
The mouse port can not be used. If :CueCat is plugged into the mouse port, it won't read codes.
Remember: cats and mice don't mix!
Is There An Easy Way To Enter The Registration Code? Once you receive the email containing your code, simply copy the code and paste it into the appropriate box on the registration.
Will Staring Into The :CueCat Hurt My Eyes Like A Laser Pointer?
No. :CueCat uses LEDs for scanning. It poses no risk to your eyes.
You've really got to wonder about the target audience for these devices.
P.S. The subject is not self moderating, just clear labeling.
Cya!
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
Drivers are the nuts and bolts of the machine. If I make nuts and bolts for something I bought they're mine.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Want to vex a company sending out an expensive come-on device (like a bar scanner)? Do what I did and throw your CueCat in the trash. Digital Convergence is going to great lengths to gather demographics on people and track their Web activity and expends no effort whatsoever to protect this information from criminals. This tells me that this is a very good candidate for the trashcan: device and company both.
Please do tell DC you are throwing their device in the trash. Not only does this clog their email with disagreeable messages, but the more they hear about this, the more lawyers they'll hire. Perhaps they will try to start a campaign to require people to use their wonderful system and have the Feds fine you for throwing away your 'CurCat'. Not possible? Not yet; but our friends in Washington are working on it.
I'm going to have to print that out and frame it. I wish I had a domain name as cool as flyingbuttmonkeys.com. *sigh*
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But the principle is.
The principle of tying a license agreement to a piece of hardware. If DC can set a precedent for doing this, then it becomes easier for other hardware vendors to restrict the use of their products. If licenses can be tied to hardware you pay for, then we're really in trouble ("by using this Zip disk, you agree to be bound by...").
What is hardware?
Almost all computer hardware, and many other devices like electric toasters, contain logic chips and software to make the devices work. Combine this fact with something like UCITA, and hardware licensing may become, in the US, a reality. The hardware might not be licensed, but the software required to make it work would be. And device complexity and trade secrets could make it prohibitively difficult to load free software (Free Firmware?).
The CueCat is silly. The only use I can imagine for it is to catalog my books and records for insurance purposes. But the notion of using IP law to restrict what I can legally do with a "thing" is unsettling.
Imagine this future: Microsoft refuses to give video card manufacturers the information needed to develop DirectX drivers unless the card makers agree that all their products will have licenses explicitly prohibiting their use with anything other than Windows. Card makers may like the Linux hardware geek camp, but, faced with this threat, anyone selling "open" video cards would lose their Windows market.
Okay, stupid question. Clearly they're very good lawyers. They realize they have no legal leg to stand on, so don't even bother to site any specific laws broken or what specific pieces of information violated those laws.
For this very reason they're intentionally vague and unresponsive to his query because they know that they have no legal answer.
I love their list of partners and counsels. Man, all those people and that two page threat is the best they could do? Surely they could have dug up some vague little piece of law to scare these people off a bit better.
Of course, with CueCat's business in a nose-dive, they probably can't afford for much more than one of the firm's secretaries to come up with their threat.
Well...Considering that I actually drove through Utica within the past 6 months (I have fammily about 40 mins south of Utica, on rt 12...).
I would have to say that there are more than a few hundred people there. Its actually a city (albeit a small one). I would guess more like 10,000 people or so.
--Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Both companies gave away/sold loss-leaders in the hope of having customers sign up for a service. In Netpliance's case, the service was charged to the consumer while DC requires the customer to use the service so it can sell info to advertisers, but the net effect is the same: if the consumers obtain the loss-leader but do not sign up for the service, they are screwed.
But remember, the law does not guarantee that your business model will pan out. These guys have a strange business model - give away cool geek toys and hope to sell advertising - that they expect to work. I certainly won't be screwed if this company's business plan fails.
If you think about it, though, this really is pretty cool technology. Now we indeed have what amounts to a URL from meatspace into cyberspace.
That's pretty freakin' cool. Some people here have been making their own "URLs" by writing decoder software and scanning book barcodes, translating those into ISBNs and then looking the book up at amazon.com. There you effectively have a barcode on a book that is a "url" to a page at amazon.com.
Since there is software to print your own barcodes, and since we can now read the CueCat's output, we can effectively write our own URLs in the form of barcodes that CueCat can read. Perhaps that is what worries them. Writing some sort of competing barcode-to-URL system using a CueCat for commercial use would probably be problematic, legally, but for personal use I don't know what they're fussing about: as has been pointed out, they give these things away.
I certainly wish Michael the best and will keep watching this saga.
This may be slightly offtopic, but has anyone seen the Radio Shack TV commercials that mention the CueCat, and how it will help improve your web experience, by bringing you info about the products that you actually own. In light of all the slashdot talk, it made me laugh. Info from RadioShack, of course, can be found on their website.
--Xandu
--Xandu
I see no flaw in their business plan, nor any danger to the company. Those who wish to use the scanner as intended can still just do it. The presence on the web of other drivers doesn't make the CueCat useless for DC's intended purpose. DC's big mistake is publicizing the presence of those other drivers (or rather, reacting to their presence in a manner that brings down publicity. mostly bad, on them). This alerts millions of potential users that alternatives are available.
VACATION AT SHELL EXTENSION CITY
DAILY ROTATION
...because its a simple follow-up to their original threat.
They haven't answered at all, simple.
Simply ignore them, they don't have a legal leg to stand on (INNDTIANAL (I need no disclaimer that I am not a lawyer)).
---
"What, I need a *reason* for everything?" -- Calvin
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Since the whole point of encryption is to keep someone from being able to decrypt the data, it seems that a cracked encryption algorithm (such as the one with cue-cat) would be considered unsuccessful.
I think that following this logic would mean that any attempt at encrypting data (no matter how easy the algorithm is to crack) would automatically mean that your data was protected by law and anyone that could decrypt it would be stealing your intellectual property. In this case, what would be the point of developing more complex and harder to decrypt algorithms?
Maybe I'm a little off here, I don't know. In any event, this seems like a strange situation to me.
--
This company is asking for you to do them a favor (enter into a contract to take care of and return their private property) without asking you if you are willing to participate. If I was never given the chance to say ?NO", why should I be obligated? DC is abandoning this equipment in my mailbox.
Next time you travel on vacation, send your dogs, jewels, cars, etc. to DC, with the same kind of contract. They have to keep it, by your rules, and give it back whenever you want. Free insurance! :)
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This space left intentionally blank.
UTICA is a city in Michigan. Only they don't spell it with all caps.
-
I remember reading somewhere that if someone mails you something that you didn't order/request, than it can, under U.S. Postal Law, be considered a gift to you.
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Just be sure not to play with it like a frisbee with a dog, because then DC will sue you.
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
..or "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" as the master of Grok advised us in "The moon is a Harsh Mistress", his brilliant work on freedom in a post modern society over 30 years ago. Geez seems like sci-fi deja-vu day for me. Well, just read my sig...
Anyways, seems I have to remind my 20-something coworkers of maxims like this daily. If they tell you it's free it ain't...., Air Miles is NOT a way for you to get cheap flights, and Teddy's Club "Z" points aren't just about free TV's and stuff, its all about giving your personal private information away for free while the big corporations taking it tell you that little sample packet of new shampoo is a valuable real prize. Its all about *them* knowing you bought condoms last week on the way home from the bar, and something slightly more embarrassing a few days later.
While grabbing some links for this post, I came across something that while not completely summing up these thoughts, gave me an idea: let's call us all, no matter what decade we were born in, part of Generation "Z".
Okay, so this is all kinda off topic right? Not quite, remember the subject? Seems there are some young folks who realize the truth of that acronym, and are taking these supposed Free Lunches into their own hands, molding them into something which reveals their true nature and at great personal risk, sharing them with the rest of us...for free. Ironic, isn't it?
Going on means going far
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
By reading this post, you agree to run around the room naked with a cookie in one hand and a mouse in the other. It matters not that you do not read it. You have to do it anyway.
This seems like the standard rubbish. I found the same thing with my HP printer drivers. I have a deskjet on a 486/66 running Linux and Samba, and a couple of windows machines on the network with the windows deskjet drivers installed, and I seem to be breaking the license agreement. I don't know if I'm supposed to buy additional licenses from them or what? I can't see them saying that they don't allow you to have their printers on a network, or install the drivers on multiple machines, but it's in the EULA anyway.
Right, you're under no obligation to pay for or return goods you did not order, even if the sender offers to pay return postage, claims you ordered it, sends you nasty (but vague) letters, etc. So don't worry about that "you don't own this thing we sent you unsolicited" crap. IANAL, but the Federal Trade Commision said:
I gotta get me one of these things, just to take apart and play with...
[command INSERTWITTYQUIP failed: insufficient wit]
They can be used as small red flashlights.
There are instructions on how to do just that (batteries and all) here.
[command INSERTWITTYQUIP failed: insufficient wit]
I think it would be great to block them from accessing his site, just for laughs...
"Oh yah, it's gone.. see... you guys can't see it anymore."
If you're walking down the street and somebody hands you a pamphlet, you might throw it away in a block or two. But be careful!! That pamphlet may contain a contract that stipulates you must keep the contents of the pamphlet confidential or be liable for damages to the issuer!! Clearly that's ridiculous.
When I got my Cue:Cat the person at Radio Shack handed it to me with no mention of any obligation. I even asked, "Is this really free? I can keep it?" and the clerk responded in the affirmative. To claim that because a piece of software given to me at the same time - and which I had no intention of using - contained a license that extends to the use of the piece of hardware, and that the license is in force whether I accepted it or not, is quite a legal stretch.
We'll see, of course. If there actually is a lawsuit, we'll see whether those fancy New York lawyers are worth what DC is paying them. (I strongly suspect that the license would not be what they'd build a case on. Instead, they'd probably lean on the DMCA, and claim that the "codebreaking" necessary to use their device without their software is a DMCA violation. Still seems like a stretch, but I just can't imagine the license thing holding water.)
Well what if? Big deal! None of those things are legally binding in any universe I'm familiar with. Certainly the clerk at Radio Shack didn't have any idea what I thought, and she was effectively a legal representative of the company during that transaction. She gave it to me for free, I walked out with it, end of story.
There may be room for debate over the validity of click-through licenses, because I do indeed have to take an explicit action that acknowledges agreement with the license - even if I don't read it. But here, I just don't buy any claim that I'm bound by anything.
The catch is you're supposed to use it to scan Radio Shack catalogs, go to their site and drive advertiser (and purchasing) traffic. Not break the damn thing apart and use it as a toy to scan bar codes for no reason.
Says who? I don't recall reading that anywhere. I use the free stuff I get in my Happy Meals for all sorts of purposes never dreamt of (I hope) by McDonald's executives, and I haven't gotten any "cease and desist" letters from them.
There was a business plan here -- a business plan you chose to ignore but still applies.
Boy, I need your mail address for a long list of direct marketing campaigns I've been thinking about :-)
I don't think any of us are under any obligation to help stupid people make money. Clearly the company doesn't have any power to ensure I help them make money. Their business plan "applies" to them and them only. They don't gain special legal powers simply by creating and carrying out a business plan.
If you want to play ball and do what they say, that's fine by me. And again, please let me know how to contact you, because I'm going to be working on a few business plans of my own ...
There is absolutely no license involved in getting a Cue:Cat. Hell, they mailed the thing unasked for to thousands of magazine subscribers. When I picked up mine at Radio Shack, the clerk simply handed me the bag.
Now, there is a license on the CD they include with the device. I don't have one of those anymore, as I threw it in the trash can just outside the Radio Shack. I hear tell that it's got a pretty standard EULA on it that you must click through in order to complete installation. Those who have installed the software may (may) be bound by that contract, whatever it is. I, however, am not because I have not read it and (of course) have not signed it or otherwise made a legally-binding statement of acceptance.
No, not Richard III, but Jack Cade in Henry VI Part 2. Richard III did not overthrow the "rightful government"; he was the legitimate heir to the throne. He didn't need to kill lawyers to either become or remain king (just Henry Tudor, but he unfortunately failed to do that).
I tried to watch it, even made my wife quit playing with Linux to take a look. Didn't even make it past the first ten minutes, we were so busted up laughing our sides were starting to ache, and we couldn't see through the tears.
The script appeared to be taken entirely from Leslie Lee's Web Economy Bullshit Generator (http://dack.com/web/bullshit.html). Hmm, maybe Lee could sue DC for IP theft. Now that would be interesting....
Shouldn't the graphic for this and any further CueCat stories be changed from the news icon to the humor (Monty Python foot) icon?...
main(i){(10-putchar(((25208>>3*(i+=3))&7)+(i ?i-4?100:65:10)))?main(i-4):i;}
I have no use for it at all, but I felt left out since 30% of all slashdot threads are related to it. :)
________
Umm .. the fact that a EULA isn't a leagally binding contract? (Except in UTICA states)
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I find it interesting that the only use people have mentioned for the cuecat so far have been making databases of their items, and using the normal CueCat service.
There is so much more you can do with it... You can have your computer do things other than record data when you scan a barcode, especially if you print your own.
My friend had the idea of printing a sheet of barcodes, and having each one correspond to a playlist for XMMS. Just scan the barcode, and it starts playing.
I thought about this idea a bit, and realized I could use it for the arcade I am building. I wanted to keep the user as far away from the OS as possible, to preserve the arcade "feel". The way I hope to accomplish this is with a CueCat and a catalog of barcodes for each game. Just scan the barcode, the current game will stop, and the new one will start. It keeps the user focused on the games not the details of switching between them. I'm sure there are hundereds of other uses, just waiting to be thought up.
In regard to Digital Convergence monitoring flyingbuttmonkeys.com, they have also been monitoring my page. They would probably send me a cease and decist letter also, but they can't find my address.
Digital Convergence just needs to realize that they made a mistake, and that most people WILL use the CueCat for it's intended purpose. There is nothing they can do about it now... they are basically screwed and need to realize it before they get themselves even more messed up.
In short, don't complain about public weblogs.
Will work for bandwidth!
This has already been done. It's called "The Library of Congress."
Thanks for the info!!
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Oooo! I hope I get another sample of kitchen detergent soon...I'm running low on glycerin.
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
The MPAA puts some bad encryption (CSS) on DVD's, and has a bad, confusing EULA. So when somebody evil (a teenager, no less) cracks it and puts it on the internet, the MPAA's lawyers go berzerk and blame hackers (of course) who don't even own VCR's (of course).
:CueCat, and when a hacker cracks it, the lawyers for Digitalconvergence go berzerk and attack the wrong people (the guy who writes linux drivers for it).
Digitalconvergence (Stupid guys) puts bad encryption (The decoder algorithm is a simple modified base-64 XOR 67) on the
Am I the only one who sees so many parallels here?!
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Ok, this is goofy. I read the entire EULA, and it is going to be awful hard to hold that thing up in court. Never mind 'fair use', I don't think anyone has ever been able to liscense hardware. But, even that isn't the funniest part. They go on to say that they cannot be held liable for any damages caused by the use or misuse of the cuecat. This agreement is in conflict with the laws of many states. But, that isn't the funniest part, either.
The funniest part is that they insist that should you ever reverse-engineer anything on the cuecat, you must turn any derived data over to them, never mind the fact that you are in point of fact in breach of contract at that point. The fifth amendment covers this one. It is an interesting point that once you've reverse-engineered something, they can't require you to incriminate yourself by telling them.
Finally, this type of contract is going to be hard to enforce without an actual signature, in my opinion. I could just say I never saw the darn thing.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
Probably. There's plenty of them (and in other countries too), so you could have missed one.
John
The Church of the SubGenius -- because somebody had to put all that slack in there...
John
>but for personal use I don't know what they're fussing about: as has been pointed out, they give these things away.
Yes they mail them out for free. You can go to RS and get one for free. You can go to their website (as seen on the Discovery channel) and get one for free+S&H. They obviously know that not every single one of these that leaves the warehouse will result in revenue from someone using it with their service.
But they probably counted on some % when they charted their business plan and pitched it to investors. What this represents is a threat to reduce that %, potentially below their point of profitability (as if they really had a chance anyway).
So yeah, if someone were to try to offer a commercial service based on the cat and some software that was built on the foocat barcode code, they would probably have a strong legal case. But, another potential is for someone to make some windows shareware based on foocat that uses the cuecat to build a personal database of books using Amazon ISBN lookups or something.
Then you have (lots more) people going to RS to get one of these free with no intention of ever using the DC service. I think that is probably what they are trying to fend off. They screwed up.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
There's a trick to scanning a catalog from the Shack -- you have to sort of bend the page convexly before you do the scan. It has something to do with the slant, I think, and it's a pain, but it is if nothing else ironic.
/Brian
Which works out great for them in the long run -- when DC crashes and burns, such "intellectual property" as they have will probably be bought out by Tandy...
/Brian
Let's see... A full URL pointing to DeCSS is illegal; the same with http:// omitted must be illegal as well.
Suppose DeCSS is on the home page - this makes a host name illegal.
If the host name is replaced with an IP, it is still illegal.
Now, an IP can be written as an integer, the A.B.C.D notation is really a "syntactical sugar". This makes some integers illegal. Moreover, it is possible to find an IP address that will (in its integer notation) coincide with a UPC for an existing product. This will effectively make the product illegal, because all instances of it bear the illegal integer.
What a way to drive products off the market!
Hmm.. nice sentiment, but it sure hasn't been true in recent memory! Although it wasn't the US, remember what Shakespeare said about lawyers - they were a pain in the ass back in his day, too!
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
News Flash: DC has now added to their EULA for CC that you *must* trust them. Resistance is futile..
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
...with your stupid acronyms. It's a waste of time & bandwidth.
Why is there only one Monopolies commission?
First the innocent @ and now the damn : (in :CueCat)
What's next in this modern festival of punctuation abuse?
The ~, the `, the |||?
why not |Value| (pronounced 'absolute value')?
Why don't these f*ckers rest happy with the letter keys.
Damn there goes the *, coopted by censors!
It's probably too late, but in case anyone's still reading this thread (-:
The scanner definitely contains firmware (software in ROM) because it has to be able to perform a fair amount of processing to actually recognize the string of pulses as a barcode and correct for things like the variable rate of your hand's motion as you scan it. Then it has to identify which of the roughly 12 or 15 formats the barcode is in, and then actually extract the bits, a process that differs based on which format it's in. Doing all this in hardware (with a bunch of gates and registers, etc.) would be silly; they used a microcontroller with ROM.
So the copyright law prohibits copying this ROM and selling the copy, and precedents such as the Betamax case might help defend copying the ROM for personal use. Such copying would also be difficult and practically useless without copying the hardware too, which is probably protected by patent. Note: the scanner's serial EEPROM is an entirely unrelated thing, it just contains a small amount of data (apparently a serial number).
Lawyers: The Other White Trash.
I don't see a statement here attacking copyright.
You mean Slashdot's endless crusade against any corporation worth anything (read: that actually attempts to make money) doesn't count?
In this context? Nope. I don't see a statement here attacking corporations.
Taco says to go ahead and hack your CueCat even if your EULA says no. What am I missing?
Actually, the text of this article doesn't really touch on hacking the CueCat.
Furthermore, what EULA? I've got one of these things (from Radio Shack), and no licensing agreement of any sort was packaged with it.
I don't see a statement here saying that it's OK to break contracts. Trooooooooooooll!
www.animejump.com Webzine, isn't it?
Keep the CueCat stories coming!
"You will only be remembered for two things: the problems you solve or the ones you create." Mike Murdock
There are a LOT of people who are also uninterested in the service DC provides. But these same people also can't resist the fact that the stupid things are free. So they pick one up, start playing, and create their own use for them. And hence DC goes crazy because all of a sudden they aren't making money on their free giveaway. Personally, I have no problem taking advantage of their flawed business model.
It depends where how you look at it. The earth, being in free fall around the sun, weighs nothing. It is quite massive, however, when compared to average mass of items sent through the postal service. Unfortunately, the post office weighs letters instead of massing them :(
Weighed with respect to the :CueCat, the earth weighs only several
ounces.
Either way, it won't cost much to ship the earth anywhere.
I agree. I received a box from Wired magazine, opened it up.. there it was, a CueCat. I didn't ask for it, and I'm certainly not gonna pay to send it back. Would it be wrong for me to just throw this thing in the trash, if they are claiming they still hold ownership of it?
And what then, if they decide to ask for it back?
I wish there were some way to convince everyone to mail these damn things back to DC and see how they like *that*. Here, take them back.. make *NOTHING* on our information.
Already happened. I found two very nice windows drivers online last night. One has a nice user interface called catkit32 (big 3 meg file and was sold on e-bay) and the other one is a very compact device driver called catnip. (dll and EXE file about 30K in size packaged in a 26K Zip). Catnip is very nice. It resides on the tool bar next to the speaker icon. With it you can choose to provide any of the 3 components (ser,type, & data) and provide a tab, return or other string after the scan. Very nice. It is a true driver, small and effecient. Hats off to the author!
The truth shall set you free!
http://blort.org/cuecat/ for many links.
The truth shall set you free!
Does somebody have an MPEG or other rip of this? I dont get cable but wanna see it.
.
I love hearing how DC is backpeddling to cover their asses. It's comical the way they think they can pull this off, I hope they keep trying for a good long time. Meanwhile I will sit back, laugh... hayduke out
------------------- a man with a good car needs no justification '93 90S 150K
The internet is like pandora's box; let somthing out, and you probaly will never get it back in. DC won't win this battle, and if they were smart they would use the recent happenings to thier advantge. Mabey write thier own version for linux and realease it open source. The real money for them to make from this is selling ":Cues". Nobody can make thier own cues because it's a server side operation. They can still make a shitload of money if thier software is open source and dosn't collect coustomer data, just by selling :cues. But sadly they are a bunch of controll freaks, so they will continue to bitch.
[...] a very compact device driver called catnip.
I was unable to find this with Google or AltaVista. Is there a link for that driver?
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
It actually doesn't seem possible that there could be such clueless tossers.
Frankly, I'm starting to believe strongly that certain people at Radio Shack and Digital Convergence are laughing their asses off at how they got a bunch of hackers all riled up for nothing, and a shitload of free publicity that brings vitally needed attention to kickstart such a radically different, not to mention ambitious, business plan. After all, as has been pointed out many times, savvy Linux users are a rather small part of the total potential audience for the CueCat, and even open-source free Windows 95/98/2000/ME drivers would only be used by a small minority of savvy users of that operating system (save the obvious jokes about that, please).
I've had quite enough experience with people who don't grok computers, some otherwise fairly intelligent people at that, to see clearly how the great mass of people who might use the CueCat would never bother to download and use such open-source free Windows 95/98/2000/ME drivers, even if large blinking purple "CLICK-ME-NOW" links walked right up to them and bit them on the eyeballs.
It's not as if the original blatherware that came on the CD-ROM's is nicking their credit cards, is it?
People who don't grok computers except as odd and expensive appliances are alien, make no mistake about it, just weird to those of us who cannot imagine caring so little about even great blaring differences in, say, the choice of a primary operating system. They just don't care!
The smart, monied technology folks at the top have got to know this, to have been trusted with even their own little checking accounts, let alone many tens of millions in other people's money.
Think about those vaguely threatening, chain-rattling "pseudo-cease-and-desist" letters from some apparent loonie-bin escapee that seem almost parodies of the MPAA/RIAA pit-bull letters (for DeCSS and MP3's), and tell me if I'm wrong, eh?
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
I don't believe that I'm the only one who's seen the half-hour long CueCat informercial! Has no one else seen this?
It is the this really creepy (makes X-Files seem normal) half-hour long brain washing explaining how "the Cat" will forever change the face of the Internet (for the mindless dullards on AOL maybe). Click here for the list of times you can be brainwashed too!
During the 30 Minutes Hate they actually say corporate buzz words like "Information synergy for total Internet access". All I can say is WTF?
But if you watch the commercial (bring a friend), you will quickly understand whay they are SOOOO uptight about us hacking the little red light puking pussy. It is very very clear that they are spending TONS of cash in an attempt to saturate every Internet houshold with one of these things to corner their piece of directed advertising. During the "show" they demostrate "actuall users" (with brain slugs) using the Cat to scan everything from their breakfast cereal to golf clubs.
Plus, if you stop by your hand Radio Shack you can get even more Cue accessories for your Cat that will hook your TV directly to your computer. That's right, they are paying big bucks to several TV shows so that they can continue to gather information about what you're watching in an attempt to better focus advertising to you. They are not going to stop hounding us about hacking this thing for a long, long time. BAsically until they go bankrupt or are declared the new Big Brother, which ever comes first.
They can be used as small red flashlights.
That's the best idea I've heard so far!
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Thanks in advance to the kind soul that put together the Windoze driver for this thing. I had originally thought to use it for library work, but another wrinkle that I have discovered is that the scanner has limits on the length of codes it will accept. We use 3 of 9 13-digit codes on our materials and many other libraries do as well. The cat won't scan anything over 10 digits, I believe- haven't fiddled with the cut-off point, but know it won't take the 13 digit codes. If your local public or school library bar codes their items and the cat can read it, why not give the thing to them (along with the URL to the Windoze driver so they can get some use out of the thing.) Now RatShack or some other outlet should look into making this thing unscrambled, put a better case on it and undercut the low end of the bar-code scanner market. Plenty of small businesses and non-profits would hop onto it for 10$ or 15$ instead of the 140$ for a full-blown scanner, and of course the development work has already been done and paid for by the dumb folks backing DC. The one I have has taken a decent bit of abuse ('cause my 2 year old thinks its really cute-oh another idea- cut the tail off and let a kid play with it.) and still reads ok. My .07 (inflation) worth...
As an avid /. lurker I knew in advance of my going to Radio Shack to get my :CueCat what was already brewing... I had my questions already laid out in my head..
I asked the guy behind the counter (the smarter looking of the two) if they had any cuecats' and he handed me one. Proceeded to ask me for my info and then scanned the upc.. I asked him if there was ANY way they could track me with this thing, and he assured me that there was NO way they could... and proceded to show me that the upc on another Cat was the same... and there was NO way they could track me if the upcs' were different... as if they were going to issue millions of Different UPCs' (One for each user) Yeah Right..!!
I also asked him If I now OWNED the Cat, and once again he assured me that I could do with it whatever I wished.. It was Mine.
This guy tells me he's handed out hundreds of the things at two different stores.. And I know he's spread the same bullsheit to anyone who bothers to ask about privacy concerns..
Is this what Digital Convergence has instructed the radioshack employees to say? Or was this guy just totally clueless and trying to make himself seem like a privacy expert..
SpaZ
Stupid can opener! You killed my father and now you've come back for me!
All the hubris of Microsoft, with none of the finesse. At least Bill Gates has impeccable timing, which these guys seem to lurch unsteadily toward. Remember, he started out as a dumpster diver, so he didn't make these kinds of mistakes until he was huge.
information is immaterial
Right. Next you'll be telling me that Napster is "protecting the artists."
Furthermore, If you're the real Bruce Perens, I'm Mickey Mouse.
Hey, if you say you are, I'm not going to argue.
Bruce
Bruce
I am the real Bruce Perens.
their 3rd grader calibre "encryption" of their "intellectual property"
Also see any Slashdot article on Napster, the RIAA, DeCSS, etc.
However, also notice that this attitude is abruptly reversed whenever the GPL comes up.
I don't see a statement here attacking corporations.
You mean Slashdot's endless crusade against any corporation worth anything (read: that actually attempts to make money) doesn't count?
I don't see a statement here saying that it's OK to break contracts. [The persons being attacked by DC never entered a legal contract with them].
Taco says to go ahead and hack your CueCat even if your EULA says no. What am I missing?
Bruce
Bruce
I am the real Bruce Perens.
It also comes with an audio cable, to send your browser to advertisers' sites during commercials. Probably you could use it to automatically mail the advertiser, eg. to protest their advertising, or whatever.
I would like to know Radio Shack's thoughts on this. Right now, it's probably driving lots of foot traffic into the store, and they are hardly mentioned. I wonder if they would step in and stop this nonsense if they became associated with this fiasco.
...why I would want a cuecat? I mean, a barcode doesn't encode some "universal" information, does it? It's just a lookup into a table that the scanner is presumably hooked up to, right? In this case, it converts to a URL, but only if you use DC's service....so the cuecat is useless unless you use the service? And if I'm not interested in their service, why would I be interested in the cuecat?
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Plus, since I got mine before they changed the EULA (even assuming that it applied to me, which is impossible because I've never been presented with it), then they could not unilaterally change it after I agreed to it.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
So? I am under no obligation to support somebody else's business plan. And a business plan is not a license. A business plan is not a guarantee of success.
The company will lose money if all you do is play with the device scanning rogue bar codes and not use it to buy Radio Shack merchandise.
Wah.
This means they will stop giving them away, and we'll be the losers...
We lose yet another marketer collecting information on us via hidden motives. We lose another way for companies to make money off us. Small loss.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Check out The Leasing of America for a more extended rant on how recent changes in the law take away individual's property rights in favor of giving special rights to special interests.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
On the other hand, you are well within your rights as a consumer to sell that single disk you got in the mail to anybody you wish (presuming you made no copies). You never agreed to any license, after all. Unless you're in a UCITA state, in which case being born constitutes agreement with any and all licenses that anybody wants to arbitrarily hold you to :-}.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
First off, there's a big difference between attacking ONE company's supposed IP and attacking IP in general. DC is refusing to even say what their intellectual property is. These people aren't copying DC's code, so copyright isn't applicable, and if they have any patents (on base64+xor?!), it'd sure be nice to see them.
The reason their "intellectual property" is getting quotes around it is because it deserves them.
You mean Slashdot's endless crusade against any corporation worth anything (read: that actually attempts to make money) doesn't count?
What crusade? :)
No, I mean it. There's no crusade against corporations in general, rather against corporations that violate privacy, or intellectual property, or do one of a large number of other Bad Things. That the corporations who are doing Bad Things tend to be the ones that put money first on their priorities... well, says something 'bout human nature, no?
Taco says to go ahead and hack your CueCat even if your EULA says no. What am I missing?
That you never signed the EULA; that if you never installed the Windows software you never even saw the EULA. That if they sent you a CueCat without you asking (and they did, to many people) it's ILLEGAL for there to even be a EULA. That the right of first sale means that, if you purchased the thing from a third-party vendor (eg. RadioShack) the EULA is unenforceable (though basic copyright still is). Tht kind of thing.
Right. Next you'll be telling me that Napster is "protecting the artists."
Pardon, but that wasn't a statement of opinion he just gave. That was a statement of fact.
DC HASN'T got the cojones to specify what sort of property is being infringed. They say "hands off our IP", but refuse to say what that IP is. I'd like to know. What IS their IP? These folks aren't infringing on copyright... so does DC have patents on the decoding process? What patents? They aren't saying! (And if one CAN get a patent on base64+xor... well, that's pretty messed up).
If you honestly had a legal defense against someone who was attacking you, you'd say what it was, right? These folks DON'T. They're bluffing about owning some nonexistant IP. And that's why we all are so pissed.
I don't see a statement here attacking copyright.
I don't see a statement here attacking corporations.
I don't see a statement here saying that it's OK to break contracts. [The persons being attacked by DC never entered a legal contract with them].
I do se a troll.
Suppose a software company sent me a CD in the mail and I ripped open the package with out bothering to read labels or license agreements, and put the CD in my CDR burned a bunch of copies with out ever installing it on my machine. Suppose I then and gave them away, or even sold them. Would I be guilty of piracy? Common sense tells me, no. The company sent me something with out me asking for it, I can't see how they can control what I do with it. Same goes for the CueCat, I didn't ask for it and did not enter into any agreement with DC, therefore I can do what ever I want with it including taking it apart, writing my own software for it, of even shoving it up my ass if I want to. (Not recommended! :)
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
but I'm finding that tormetning Digital Convergence is actually, well, kind of fun.
I suppose it's just human (or at least geek) nature to enjoy needling clueless boneheads who have more dollars than sense. This is especially true when they throw public temper tantrums through expensive law firms that all come down to "MOMMY!!! I gave Jimmy my cupcake AND HE ATE IT!!!!! WAAAAAAAH!!!".
It's made that much funnier by the fact that DC tried to hide the fact that they can track an individual's buying interests using an indudtry standard coding scheme and what amounts to a secret decoder ring.
The cherry on top is that crackers have already managed to steal their database. If anyone should be suing, it's a toss-up between DC's investors and the people who's information got posted to usenet due to DC's negligence.
Otherwise people could ship you expensive stuff and demand that you pay for it.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Look at the bottom of the things that RS are handing out. It clearly states that Tandy is the manufacturer. They're an investor AND the supplier of their barcode reader- they make money either way it goes down.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
XORed Base 64 protocol? Barcodes? Hate to tell you this bub, but neither qualify as IP- vast amounts of prior art there, not to mention that nobody that Digital Convergence is harrassing (yes, harrassing) has done anything other than a clean-room reverse engineering of the protocol (which can't be made as IP...) between the barcode reader (which could concievably be IP, but we're not copying the reader- which would be the only possible IP violation in this context) and the PC.
There is no IP or IP violations involved here.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You hit that nail squarely on the head.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
You may not be interested in buying pet food online, but if you don't have a car and have several pets, or, say, a very big dog, you may like the convenience of having pet food delivered to your home, for example. And what if you do your grocery shopping at small specialty stores and you don't want to have to make an extra stop just to buy pet food?
No, selling pet food online is a reasonably good idea if you're realistic about your real market and have a good order processing and fulfillment operation in place.
Digital Convergence, on the other hand, took cheap, essentially unencrypted barcode readers that spit out transparent data as transposed ASCII to a keyboard port, and expected to use them in a business predicated on controlling all use of the scanner's output.
Doing so is not all that difficult--if you diustribute "smart" barcode scanners that only work through, say, a public/private keypair encryption scheme in which the scanner needs to be fed a site's key and then spits out data only that site can decrypt.
But that hardware would have cost money, which may be why no other company has tried giving away barcode scanners en masse prior to this in the 20-year history of cheap barcode wands. It boggles the mind that in the four years this was in the works, no engineer, no product development person, no lawyer and no investor saw the hangar-sized hole in the business plan.
3rd-party Cuecat drivers for Linux pose no serious threat to DC's business model. Even if every Linux desktop user got a Cuecat, it wouldn be a drop in the bucket compared to their Windows audience.
No, the problem is what happens when alternative drivers show up in the Windows shareware and commercial worlds. Already, the $40 shareware package Readerware has added CueCat support. If DC loses this battle, as they should if anyone hopes to continue using a screwdriver or a butter knife to open paint cans, everybody will support it. Real Jukebox and Windows Media Player will allow you to catalog CDs without inserting them into a drive. Grocery shopping sites will let you scan items you want to reorder. Companies in the e-coupon business will latch onto it, all bypassing Digital Convergence.
If DC didn't want this to happen, they should have either made a smart scanner with public-key encryption built in, or they should have required a signed contract from consumers prior to giving it to them. Both of which, of course, are expensive and ruin their business model just as surely as these drivers that took someone a half hour to write in a clean-room manner.
Tape it to the sidewalk next to the mailbox and mail it to Venus COD. The Earth is very heavy, and the delivery should be spectacular.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Bite the hand.
I think Taco is saying that since DC changed their EULA, they must recognize that the original EULA did *not* prohibit reverse engineering and that those that got in early like flyingbuttmonkeys are free to do as they please.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
I've got four. Three are actually plugged into computers (office, home, in-laws). I've got more computers at home and at the office, but I use X to connect to them so one keyboard does it all.
/. stories thinking someone's got an original idea, but just shopping lists and catalogs. Yawn.
However, I really wish I could find something to do with them. A CD catalog isn't helpful since CDDB already did all that work for me. As far as books, I find that the majority of my books don't actually have Bar Codes. Even if I was able to create such a catalog, it wouldn't tell me anything really useful like where I *put* that book or CD.
The vast majority of my videos are things that I recorded myself. I don't have a computer in the kitchen and running upstairs before I throw out the peanut butter just doesn't seem like a good idea.
I really wish I could think of something to do with them. I keep reading these
They can be used as small red flashlights.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
This has been there since the first /. article:
http://www.jounce.net/~maarken/decode.html
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Ok not that I don't pretty much agree with your stance on IP and fair use and all that but...
is Slashdot on some kind of Jihad against digital convergence? This is getting a little weird.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Something is a little odd here. By accepting to receive the CueCat you sort of agreed to the original agreement. DC changed their agreement and then mailed everyone. At what point did the second agreement become a contract agreed by both parties, after all I never exchanged anything the second time round. Thus while the first agreement is legal, I reckon that the second is null and void - or am I missing some absurdity in the USA legal system?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Michael's code is here.
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
they say I can't have the hardware connected to more then one computer at a time. Uhhh... and can only be used on a single machine at any one time.
Okay, so I toss out my elaborate 'Y'-adapter hookup and use a KVM switch instead. It only talks to one computer at a time, right?
(I've gotta wonder -- are these guys really this clueless or is it all an elaborate plot to distract hackerdom from something serious?)
No, no, no. It ain't ME babe,
It ain't ME you're looking for.
-- Alastair
With :CueCat, they sent it to me in the mail, unsolicited. Therefore it is now legally mine
:CueCat. If there isn't, do whatever you want with it. If there is, you are under no license only straight copyright law, which allows you to reverse engineer.
Absolutely! If people are being pressured by these jerks they should talk to a lawyer and their postmaster! I don't know if there is any software actually inside the
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Yeah, but you still have to trust them not to store your personal info, because the info still goes through their server at some point.
And since they're storing your UID and a list of sites you've been to or whatever on their server, what's to stop them from changing their privacy policy, grabbing your personal info (the only need to do it once) and linking it to all your past activity? With the rate that companies violate and/or arbitrarily change their internet privacy policies these days, I don't think I'd trust any company these days not to do this.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
I was just reading the license agreement and it informs me that I may not have the CRQ software loaded on more then one computer. Why in the world do they care? They are giving th esoftware aware free. Not only that, but they say I can't have the hardware connected to more then one computer at a time. Uhhh... and can only be used on a single machine at any one time... ok then. Anyway... Isn't this like me buying a hard drive and being informed "Buyers of this hard drive may not store MP3 files on it, nor can this hard drive be used in more then one computer system" What in the world?
For the second event, you can write a bit of software to quickly scan books and lookup ISBN's, just as you said. The point? Reselling large sets of used books on E-bay, or just for cataloging your home collection of stuff.
:CueCat: (forgot where the ":" goes) ID.
They are really missing out - what if they had provided free (in both senses) libraries to work with the CueCat that fed back any information you scanned back to the servers? They could do it all by ID, just by knowing which regions CueCat's were shipped to. Sure people could strip out the part that sent back the info, but how many people would really do that? I wouldn't if I knew all it knew about was my
They could also have added software to let you build up a database of your personal stuff. If they were really smart it would operate indepndently of the computer to hold fifty scans at a time and redock with the computer later.
Oh well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My favorite part of the new letter Rothwell got is the bit "remove portions... which assist or induce others to [hack the cat]"
So now I can't even tell my friends how nifty this thing is because, knowing my friends, they will immediately take it apart? I can't wait till this ends. Of course in the meantime I'll go get a few more cause my lamp just burned out.
To DigitalConvergence, or to "whom it may concern",
I run the website kart.dhs.org, which hosts the BeClueCat decoder, listed here:
http://www.bebits.com/app/1537/
DigitalConvergence has been visiting my website since September 15th. Certainly they know I exist.
I have yet to receive a 'cease and decist' letter from your legal consels, Kenyon and Kenyon, and I feel left out. So many other people have received FedEx'ed letters "WITHOUT PREJUDICE [sic]", yet I have not.
Kenyon and Kenyon's neglect to C+D me might be construed as "prejudice", since so many others have gotten scary letters. As a BeOS user I realize that I'm part of a minority. Don't you care enough to send your goons after me too? Do I need to agree to a special cease and decist EULA before you can send me one? Perhaps it's because you don't have any contact info. (name and address sent to Digital Convergence)
To put it in a nutshell:
Here I am. I'm looking for answers. If you have a beef with me, let's get in touch and I'll listen to your side of the story. If you want to play silly games, I and thousands of other individuals will continue to screw with you. Your business model is beyond flawed; it's despicable. Digital Convergence employees: get out now and cut your losses.
--
the guy at the counter said, "We're giving these away in exchange for your name and address."
I gave my name and address. I was even truthful and gave my real name and address. The counter guys statement was a verbal contract and I was not required to sign anything.
BOOM. The deal is done. My state (NC) has not passed UCITA, so the software that is on a CD that will not see inside of my drive has a bogus EULA that means nothing.
Even if you got your CC at RadioShack, the DC letters are legal posturing that amounts to so much hot air.
Repeat it over and over, and shout it from the rooftop:
"A binding agreement other than provided in by common law requires a signature from both parties after ample opportunity to review it."
Some text hidden inside a box that can only be viewed under certain conditions after an item is bought and paid for does not qualify. Whether technically true or not, convince everyone you know that this is fact. Then we can watch CC and its ilk roll over and die.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Sorry to hear about your mate. At least he probably died instantly.
But remember, the law does not guarantee that your business model will pan out.
Except under an economic model known as "corporate socialism". Which certainly appears to be the way things might be heading in the US.
The people behind this are big.
... and that was the best job of design they could do? The thing sucks at something like three different levels. It looks bad. It has no good encraption. It is distributed in a way that is a licencing nightmare.
You know, everytime a company does something like this, I have to smile, 'cause if the barrier is this low, I'll make a killing.
As soon as I loose my scruples.
I agree. I get a really good laugh every time I see another fumble by Digital Convergance. This story made my morning! :)
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
There is no "illegal" stuff. This whole thing is just legal intimidation. They know damn well that there is nothing illegal about this. They are just hoping that they'll scare the guy enough to make him stop.
If you read the letters posted carefully, you'll note that they never actually accuse him of doing anything illegal. At one point they use the phrase "unauthorized or illegal". That "or" is important. They're hoping he'll panic and take it down before realizing that "unauthorized" has nothing to do with "illegal" in this context.
The cake is a pie
Who said that? Cuecat has a pretty solid license agreement that you must agree to before taking the device.
I don't see it that way at all. If DC (or anybody, for that matter) mails me something that I didn't ask for, how can they force me into a license agreement?
The DMV doesn't give you permission to kill people with your car, they give you a license to drive it.
That's true, but I don't think the analogy is valid. I'm the one who makes the decision to get a driver's license. The DMV doesn't just mail them out.
What open source zealots have to get in their heads is not everything can be free.
I don't think that has anything to do with the issue here.
Some companies need to make money to survive.
There's nothing wrong with making money. If a company provides a service that I deem valuable, then they deserve to make that money if I choose to spend it on their service. But what DC is doing is saying, "Here's a product that you didn't ask for. You're free to use it as long as the manner in which you use it benefits us."
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
It was given away for free, so there's really no need to get so emotional about not cracking it (as opposed to something you pay for, like Tivo).
/.'ers don't really care about the CueCat, they care about their rights. Big businesses (especially with the new "E business model") try to control consumers, and it's important to let them know that we have rights as well.
To tell the truth, I don't really care about CueCat. Sure, it's a fun toy to play with, but this is really about something much bigger. If I were to give you an item that you didn't ask for, I'm basically giving up all rights to tell you what to do with it. If Columbia House sends you a packet trying to get you to sign up for their service, they're not "allowed" to bitch at you because you used their selection booklet to shop for discs you'll end up buying elsewhere.
I could go on and on with analogies, but the point is this: most
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
I thought that because DC has contracts with at least 2 large companies in the Dallas area (Dallas Morning News; WFAA(CH 8)), would make DC give up the fight. The reverse-engineering is making the devices more used (I only got one once the linux drivers was avaliable). Their main (only?) source for income is being able to sell the bar-code lookups for either TV or publications. AFAIK, you can still do these lookups even with the "stolen IP" drivers.
>Since they've changed their EULA, and mass
>mailed California, they have no excuse (the old
>EULA has no restrictions on reverse engineering
>the hardware, and mass mailing in California
>makes it irrelevant anyway).
I do not understand how they can change their ELUA after someone already accepted it (I have not because I have not read it or installed it yet).
Don't I have to upgrade their SW or HW and to have to agree to a new ELUA? It is not my fault that they had a fault in it.
TKrabec Pahh
Like it said in the summary, some states actually give legal exemption from EULAs in cases of mass mailings, etc. DC gave away their product with the assumption that all consumers are idiots.
The whole infringing on their IP thing is getting kind of old though. We need to come up with a fresh angle... Maybe I'll register livegoatporn.com and post pictures of goats and Cue:Cats. There's nothing in the EULA about that...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Now if your sister had mailed her dog to you...
If they had never visited the site at all, their letters would be foolish and based on hearsay. To threaten someone with a lawsuit based on hearsay is harrasment as well.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's only boring to people with short attention spans who can't pay attention to something long enough to protect their own rights. If we give up on this the powers that be (taking away our rights) gain a little ground. We can't give in an inch, or let even the smallest precedent be set.
This stuff is important, and it always will be. It's amazing to me that there is so much apathy about important issues when they are first brought up, while there is still time to fight. And so much outrage once it's too late. For example, UCITA. It was hard to get more than a hand full of people worked up over this ridiculous bill before it was passed, and now that it's legal I'm seeing more and more people shocked at what it does.
It's as if people expect the government to protect all of their rights automatically. Wake up people you have to fight every step of the way. Even a on a smaller issue such as CueCat.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Check out deBarcode.com
but being in the UK..... I have a flatmate in california
Thats a big flat.
If someone scans an item that isn't in the database, they enter a description. Eventually, the database will be filled. eh?
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Yeah it's magic for smuggling stuff.
I can buy all the nice cheap american food, gasoline and computer equipment load it in through the bathroom window and out of the front door and not only do i avoid customs but I save myself those nasty shipping costs.
I'd quite like one or two to play with in my appartment but being in the UK i'm not quite sure whether or not u can walk into radio shack and pick one up.
I have a flatmate in california so hopefully he should be able to pick up a couple and we'll do all the 'illegal' stuff outwith US jurisdiction.
:)
They must fear that people (large numbers) who get these things will never sign up for their service but instead use it with non-DC software. They almost certainly will keep after websites that post the scanner code (IMO).
Now, granted - a few linux geeks getting their hands on one of these and using fooCat_barCode instead of the cuecat software shouldn't make any difference. These guys probably wouldn't subscriber to their service in any case and finding an alternate use for the thing simply spares it from the landfill.
But if someone were to take the fooCat_barCode stuff and use it to implement a windows shareware program that gets wildly popular as a replacement for DC's service, that is a different story.
So, I think they might fight with whatever they have left to keep this source off the net for as long as possible. This, of course, is a losing battle. That doesn't mean they will/should give up. Someone's dink is in the fire right now for not properly preparing for this challenge to their business model. They will have to answer to whoever put up the cash for this little venture. There is no way they give up now.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
The last time I was in London (around 3 months ago), there were a number of huge advertisments on the tube for a site called something like IHaveMoved.Com. I've not seen them advertised anywhere else in the country since.
The purpose of this site is to inform people and organisations that you have moved house. They seem to get their revenue from address harvesting. The companies seeking the infomation pay for it.
I read somewhere that it cost a million pounds just to start up this site, including the outlay for advertising. How the hell are they going to recoup this money, even if they do attract users to visit them and set up an account?
Enough about the Cuecat. It's a bar code scanner, not a cure for AIDS. It was given away for free, so there's really no need to get so emotional about not cracking it (as opposed to something you pay for, like Tivo). Let's move on to more important topics.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
What if you asked "Does this come with any kind of license agreement?" Or you knew that it came with a license agreement prior to getting one -- you just chose to ignore it?
Don't forget the cardinal rule -- there's no such thing as a free lunch. When you received a "free" piece of hardware, a piece of hardware that was easily $5-10 to manufacture, you must have thought to yourself "what's the catch?"
The catch is you're supposed to use it to scan Radio Shack catalogs, go to their site and drive advertiser (and purchasing) traffic. Not break the damn thing apart and use it as a toy to scan bar codes for no reason.
There was a business plan here -- a business plan you chose to ignore but still applies. The company will lose money if all you do is play with the device scanning rogue bar codes and not use it to buy Radio Shack merchandise. This means they will stop giving them away, and we'll be the losers, because a couple of hackers couldn't swallow their pride and say "Gee, I got this thing to work with Linux. But the company gave it to me for free. Maybe I should buy a few products using it and its Windows program to return my gratitude."
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Who said that? Cuecat has a pretty solid license agreement that you must agree to before taking the device. And it pretty much confirms what the cease-and-desist letters say more verbosely: the CueCat is licensed, not sold or given away.
Personally, I don't see a big deal about issues with licensing agreements. So what if the hardware maker wants to grant a license instead of giving you all the rights?
The DMV doesn't give you permission to kill people with your car, they give you a license to drive it. Tivo doesn't give you permission to break down their proprietary video encoding technology, just to hack the hard drive and other non-critical bits (this is how companies make money).
What open source zealots have to get in their heads is not everything can be free. There are certain precedents that set up a capitalist society, and for better or worse we must live in this society. Sure, I could devote my life to developing Linux and giving it away for free. I could also never marry and starve my future children to death.
Come on, even the poster boy of open source has taken a more realistic route. Wake up people. Some companies need to make money to survive.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Don't like it, DC? Include some return postage.
They could if they wanted, but you're still under no obligation to return it. As you stated, they abandoned it in your mailbox. And wouldn't it be considered mail fraud to imply that you have obligations to uphold on something that they sent you unprompted in the mail?
Maybe some better paid geeks than me could get a lawyer (Any openlaw people here want to take it up?) drafting a cease and desist letter to send to DC, to force them to stop using any sort of EULA on the devices they are mass mailing. That would also make a really nice press release, something that might even make the major news outlets, the ones that investors read.
I almost felt sorry for this company a couple of weeks ago. Then I installed their S/W. Looks like I'll have to go get another one that isn't covered by their EULA, and have some fun with it.
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
It seems a better business plan for the cuecat would be to sell them for ~$10 with a software package that allows the user to do all the things you mention and then some:
:) Why? I don't know, but kids groove on that kind of stuff. Have fun electronic kits: barcode keycards with a simple lock for the home computer, or little Susie's room. Scan books as they are read to make a book reading progress chart.
:)
- scan food packages: generate grocery lists. download nutritional info and compare it to popular diet plan guidelines (e.g. Weightwatchers). Using current in-stock food, recommend recipes to cook. Allow for auto-reorder with local/online grocery store when certain items need replacing.
- scanning books/CDs/etc for insurance database. Provide hooks for spreadsheets & common databases, along with included simple app. Setup agreements with insurance companies so you can upload your lists to their system (an insurance list in your house is no good if your house burns down; and that's the whole point of such a list)
- dynamically generated barcodes on gym equipment, encodes machine type, time/difficulty on machine. Add a bit of memory to the scanner, and you digitally log your workouts, then sync with the fitness software to log your progress. Integrate with nutritional monitor.
- toys toys toys! Sell a special Lego Mindstorms edition. Sell cheap software that allows kids to print barcodes on stickers. They can barcode their toys, their clothes, their sisters
- Finally, provide engineering samples cheap to those who want them (hardware, drivers, no apps), contingent on the user agreeing that they will not sell (distribute?) hardware/software using the scanner or drivers without the companies consent. Then everyone knows what they're getting into before hand.
I think I've just given out several ideas to make some clever people rich. If you use these ideas to become a gazillionare, I'd appreciate a little 'Thank you' note
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
I like your analogy, but I think it can be further improved:
It would be like a stranger left their dog at your doorstep, with a note saying, "Have a dog. Feed it alpo, and play fetch with a stick."
You'd think you could do whatever with the dog: keep it, give it away, neuter it, take it to the Human Society.
But then, the stranger shows up, sees you playing fetch with a frisbee, and calls the cops for not following the instructions he left you.
That's how I see it, anyway.
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
How about a few Cue Cat Competitions - in the spirit of the Olympics? First up is the Cue Cat Collection - how big a pile of these suckers can you amass? No doping, please. Second, find a use for it, other than being able to purchase a second copy of a book you already own without having to l a b o r i o u s l y type in the book title at Amazon.com.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
>no sig
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
Umm, they have almost $200 million in private equity funding (Read: Cash in bank from big companies with no stipulations on how to use it and it can't be taken back).
They're not going anywhere for awhile. They're through their first and second rounds already.
This is not your typical dot-com startup. The people behind this are big.
Personally, I liked the 'Dead Horse' icon suggestion...
--K
---
THEN YOU ARE A THEIF, AND A PIRATE!
Ford, GM, and Daimler-Chrysler have recently hired DC's team of lawyers to file suit against roughly 92.7 million US car owners who have made "unauthorised modifications" to their cars. Numerous auto parts store chains have been subpoenaed for their receipts to obtain lists of customers who may have purchased parts to "illegally modifiy" their vehicle or purchased reverse engineered documentation on their car's inner workings (Haynes/Chilton manuals). It is the car maker's position that all of these acts constitutes THEFT OF IP under the recently passed DMCA. And as computers are integral parts of all modern cars since the mid to late 1980s, the DMCA applies as much to cars as to computers and software. The Clinton/Gore administration has applauded the move citing studies that show that of the 9 out of 10 CHILDREN injured or killed in automobile accidents, at least one of the vehicles has been modified by its owner in some way. Backed by the radical right wing AAA and the NHRA, Presidential candidate George W Bush has irresponsibly asserted that gov't ought to stay out of people's garages. We will bring you more details as this case unfolds.
I am glad that Slashdot is covering this matter closely.
Volunteer software developers are personally vulnerable to legal assault in a way that corporate developers never are. Most of us routinely rely on the contributions of such individuals, even if not for something as esoteric as barcode scanners in particular. I believe that there is a reciprocal community responsibility not to let Michael Rothwell and others who work without compensation for the public benefit be mugged in the dark by lawyers and forgotten.
I'm glad Slashdot is keeping a bright light shining on the matter.
The truly disturbing part of this ongoing circus is the effect it has on the general population. It is easy for us to defend the actions of people interested in determining what CueCat is reporting about us. However, it is bothersome that the American public is beginning to believe they cannot control their environment and worse they cannot withstand the cost of the legal hassles involved in defending themselves.
While many here are of the opinion "we cannot be stopped". The marketing media are not trying too stop us. They are trying to stop Johnny from growing up and playing with the toaster. So when the "ViewCat" can begin taking photos, we do not concern ourselves with the fact the EULA says ViewCat Inc. owns them and may sell them as marketing information. Or, as we have seen with recent carnivore events, we find the government would like the ISPs to release those photos to them as part of an ongoing investigation.
It is very subtle, the approach was missed by many because the laws were changed before most people were anywhere near the Internet. They are being fed the lines they need to hear to support the positions of the few in status quo. We end up dismissed as "hackers," who are breaking the law (EULA), or radical conspiracy theorist.
Sadly, it is going to take some marketing site releasing information about a major player in the government before we see any type of real action. However, to do that would require that more than a few know how to traverse the Internet or have an experience with shopping on-line. Not a real optimistic prospect.
If common sense applied here, this is how I see the Cue-cat deal (in the mail, not Ratshack).
My sister asked for me to look after her dog recently while she went on vacation. Nice dog, but I took this dog into my house and looked after it, with the understanding that I would have to give it back. I had to be responsible for this animal. It was a favor, and I had the right to say no. With DC sending you this in the mail they are saying "here, take care of this thing for us. You're responsible for returning it eventually."
This company is asking for you to do them a favor (enter into a contract to take care of and return their private property) without asking you if you are willing to participate. If I was never given the chance to say "NO", why should I be obligated? DC is abandoning this equipment in my mailbox.
So, let's say my sister had been a further pain it the butt by saying "Checkers (her dog) likes to play the game fetch with a stick, and only with a stick. Not a frisbee. And she only eats Alpo." If my sister had said this, I'd tell her to find someone else to take care of her dog. I'm doing her a favor, so she can cut me some slack. Well, in the case of DC, I didn't ask for this responsibility, so I'll do what I damn well please. Don't like it, DC? Include some return postage.
The other aspect of this is the personal information being collected. Where does it tell me in the EULA that I can't use the Cue-cat to collect personal information about myself for myself? Why can't I use this thing to index my stuff and keep the info in MY DB instead of theirs?
I'm not an enemy of this company. I have no problem with someone trying to make a buck. But if I receive one of these in the mail without my consent, it's mine, and I bet the laws governing the US mail would take priority over DC's EULA.
I do not think that Digital Convergence has any intention of following through on their threats of litigation. The reverse engineering of the CueCat has put their entire business model in jeopardy in the same way that the hacking of the I-opener challenged Netpliance's.
.com business model I have ever seen (except selling pet food online--that was classic). However, I don't think DC's investors are willing to give up and close shop.
Both companies gave away/sold loss-leaders in the hope of having customers sign up for a service. In Netpliance's case, the service was charged to the consumer while DC requires the customer to use the service so it can sell info to advertisers, but the net effect is the same: if the consumers obtain the loss-leader but do not sign up for the service, they are screwed.
Unless Digital Convergence challenges the manufacturers of alternative drivers, they will have absolutely no source of revenue to show potential second/third round investors and they may as well close their doors today. Personally, I think giving away thousands of CueCats in the hope of having people sign up for a service and scan ads is about the *stupidest*
That being said, they will not devote some of their rapidly depleting cash supply to fight a legal battle they cannot possibly win. Their goal was to get people to remove the drivers in the same way that the MPAA got people to remove DeCSS--by telling their *service providers* that their customer is engaged in illegal activity. Since DC has no legal basis for their claims (the DMCA does not cover hardware), people are not complying with their cease and desist letters. With the failure of this strategy, their company should not last more than another few months.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
I think this whole thing is worth it just to see the word flyingbuttmonkeys appear 8 separate times under the Kenyon & Kenyon official letterhead.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
"Although we appreciate your apparent curiosity and interest in determining how Digital Convergence's proprietary :CueCat and :Cue technology operates, you must appreciate that Digital Convergence will enforce its rights against those unlawfully using its proprietary technology."
Since they gave :CueCat away, what makes them think we can't take it apart? I got a :CueCat in the mail, unsolicited. I did not install the software as I have no use for the thing, and therefore I saw no license or agreement of any kind. I got something in the mail without asking for it, and if I want to take it apart I can.
Two analogies come to mind:
1. Receiving 'something for nothing' in the mail in order to encourage you to buy a product or perform a service (such as getting a dollar bill attached to a survey they would like you to take). The law says that I am under no obligation to perform the service, and I am welcome to the dollar.
2. When you own a physical object, such as an alarm clock, you are welcome to throw it against the wall, or smash it with a hammer, or take it apart into little pieces, or disconnect the alarm, or whatever you feel like. It's your clock.
With :CueCat, they sent it to me in the mail, unsolicited. Therefore it is now legally mine, and item 1 has legal precedence. Then, as item 2 follows, if I own this thing, I can take it apart if I want.
So when DC says we are "unlawfully using its proprietary technology," I'm curious to know which laws they are pretending apply in this case?
________________
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Private Essayist