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Sony Uses DMCA To Shut Down Aibo Hack Site
Therlin writes: "Victor Matsuda, Vice President of Sony's Entertain Robot America (makers of AIBO), sent a letter to Aibopet.com citing the Digital
Mellennium Copyright Act. You can read the letter here. Aibopet is the website of an AIBO owner who enjoys researching AIBO. He also provides free software programs to improve and add features to the robots." I bet Sony won't increase their Aibo sales this way -- don't they like fanatical customers?
So can I take my Sony Aibo back since I can't use it for the hack value I got it for?
Now its useless as a Barbie Doll.
It asks him to remove that long list of zip files. He should just claim that Sony violated the DMCAA by circumventing his encryption when they unzipped those files. Otherwise, how would they know what the zip archives contain?
Keeping
In fact I think it is well within Sony's rights to express concern over the dangerous software this man is writing. Imagine all those little robots going mad and attacking cats and babies... How much money would they lose then?
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
Not too smart. If people can't do what they want to do with the products they buy, they might as well switch over to buying other products.
Sony's hurting a customer, and potential buyers and themselves. Say if someone creative takes a visit at the aibopet website, and finds its waay cool, they have a potential buyer... whoops it not there any more.
Too late Sony. DCMA is a virtual trap.
... demonstrate that damage was done? I mean, what you're talking about here is someone who's hacked an embeded device (basicly).
Does the DMCA ban reverse engineering as well? Is that technicaly constitutional? It seems that there's a lot of questions about this case that need answering. But the bottom line is that Sony isn't loosing any money from this site. None of these files are of any use if you don't HAVE an Abio right?
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
I know I'll get flamed for this, but Sony did have a right to respond to the fact that he was distributing backup copies of their software.
The DMCA bs was probably just because they were already pissed. I absolutely agree that the DMCA is wrong but this guy didn't help his cause by putting copyrighted software on his site.
You can't scream about unfair laws and then break the ones that are fair.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
I was expecting more of an automated form letter, so I was pleasantly surprised by the personalization of the complaint letter. Are we gun shy now and flinching whenever someone challenges their "property" rights? Obviously their attitude of "please don't be curious about things we own" backed by the DMCA smells like rotten fruit, but I'd rather see them hand pick their targets and send friendly "We're Out to Get You" letters rather than putting on the gorilla suit and squishing everything in sight. Until the world discovers a better way to handle "intellectual property" what more can we expect from large companies like Sony?
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
Unfortunately, Sony is within their rights under the DMCA (a bad law in our quickly maturing police state). But wouldn't they be a lot more successful by co-opting this hacker's work and selling it to Aibo lovers? Copyright law shouldn't need to be used to stifle innovation.
Quick, while you still can, program your Aibo to bite the hand that feeds it...
QWxsIHlvdXIgQmFzZTY0IGFyZSBiZWxvbmcgdG8gdXMh
You know, there are some things that will someday seem obvious to any reasonably person as completely wrong and nuts, that at the times seemed completely rational. Racism, slavery, and the inferior status of women were all once taken mostly for granted by all except a few, but now are considered generally indefensible, at least in theory.
Someday, the true may be said of this idea: that corporate ownership of intellectual property takes priority over folk and grassroots enthusiasms (particularly nonfraudulent and not-for-profit ones); that the owners of popular culture enjoy the benefits of the ubiquity of that culture, a culture which has in some sense colonized our subconscious (I have dreams with Bugs Bunny and the Enterprise in it - but if I depicted one of my own dreams publicly, I'd risk a lawsuit) but refuse to allow that ubiquity when it doesn't serve them.
Unfortunate, there is no indication that the increasingly global plutocracy is going to become reasonable any time in the near future. But I still hold out hope. What would it take for that to happen?
While slightly different I think, it's interesting to contrast this with Lego's attitude toward hacking MindStorms.
The site owner's logic seems to be, "OK, I'm violating Sony copyrights, but by doing so I'm helping them sell hardware, so it's in their own interest to overlook my violation." He's obviously ignorant of a basic fact of copyright law: if you own a copyright, you must enforce it, or risk losing it. This was true long before the DMCA came along.
Sony might seem to be less enlightened than hacker-friendly outfits like TiVO and Lego. But these companies have merely refrained from prosecuting people who reversed-engineered their systems without trying to rip off software or content. That's not a "prosecute or lose it" issue. If you started distributing modified TiVO or Lego Mindstorms software, they'd be on you in a flash.
While Sony's letter did invoke the DMCA in regards to instructions on circumventing copy protection, most of the files that were requested to be removed were due to standard copyright law. If the author performed edits on Sony's binaries, and redistributed them, then that is a pretty blatent copyright violation. (Not positive that's what he did, but it sounds that way from the letter.) If he published only binary patches, I think he'd be in the clear on copyright law, and probably be safe from the DMCA if he didn't say how to install the patches.
On the other hand, I don't blame him for saying "screw it." Sony ought to lighten up and figure out how to support fans like this while maintaining their intellectual property rights.
The DCMA makes me embarassed to be a citizen of the UAS.
Anyone?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Here's a general strategy to deal with the overzealous "intellectual property"(more appropriately, idea enslavement) views that the government, corporations, and private "information owners" take.
1. Copy all such useful things to your hard drive -- the files, and the website.
2. Redistribute these files on Kazaa, LimeWire, Usenet, the Internet, etc etc.
3. Repost these files on to-the-point(no graphics) websites using servers in countries which do not respect copyrights.
4. Pursue any other viable means to liberate information and to better give consumers the RIGHT to obtain maximal utlity out of the products THEY own. Inform people about THEIR right to have access to backup copies, to modify/tweak their software, and to offer such modifications/tweaks to the public. Inform people that this right -- say, for example, to publish a texture "patch" for Quake -- which they take for granted, is something companies are trying to eliminate.
This is, in short, a non-traditional civil disobediance approach. No, we are not doing this in public, and letting the police come and arrest us and beat us down. For one thing, we should not have to be treated so horribly for simply exercising OUR rights; for another, that type of approach only works when you have an issue which is simple, and which the vast majority of the public can easily sympathize with(i.e., like segregation). If the issue is too complicated, such as is intellectual property, the general public will not be able to sympathize.
So our approach is use civil disobediance in an anonymous manner. No, we will not be wrongfully scapegoated for doing this. This form of civil disobediance will bring down the laws, ultimately, by making them infeasible and non-workable. If enough people disobey a law, it will go away. Prime example is the ill-informed "prohibition" law. Examples of laws that will eventually go away due to mssive disregard of them and disobediance of them include laws against sodomy, laws against prostitution, laws against stripping, laws against milder drugs such as pot, laws against abortion, laws against assisted-suicide, and laws which enslave information.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
1. zipping a file compresses it but it is not a technology primarily designed to protect copyright.
2. He is not disputing what is in the zipped files.
This is yet another reason not to buy Sony products...
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This just gives me one more reason to be glad that I stopped buying Sony products.
I used to buy their products religiously, everything the top of the line. My first fun experience was when I brought my $800 (at the time) Sony VCR to their repair center, which happens to be located near me. They wanted $240 just to look at it. Then they were charging $80/hr. plus parts to fix it. The person I talked to at the service center said he thought he knew the problem from the symptoms, and it was about $500 to repair it after the diagnosis, parts, and labor. It really rubbed me wrong when he reached over to a pile of Sony catalogs and handed me one and recommended a replacement model that I could order right then and there. Was this a regular occurance for them? All this when my VCR had about 8 hours of use, and it was just over a month outside of their warranty period.
I also had a similar experience with a camcorder I had spent over a grand on. That's when I decided to stop buying their products. They consider everything disposable, even after just a year of use (or no use for that matter). When I pay a premium for a product, I don't do it just to show other people the brand name. I do it because the company behind the name makes a good quality product and stands behind it. Sony used to make a good product, but they have never stood behind it for me.
Not that they care with their sales volume, but until their service practices change and their product quality returns to what it used to be, they lost me as a customer.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
I read the letter.
It seems very clear that sony is only trying to prevent this guy from
a) Distributing software that sony definately has the copyright on
and
b) Telling people how to break sony's copy protection mechanisms to get such software.
They have no problem with him writing his own aibo software... only with him stealing theirs.
Now.. their use of the anti-circumvention stuff might be a stretch.... but this is a lot less draconian than many things we've seen.
They also go into great detail to explain exactly what it is that bothers them, and exactly why (as opposed to some companies who simply make vague threats)
I might be not understanding this.. but when you think about it, in order to hack an Aibo you need to have one first.. so thats one sale, and when you think of all the things that can go wrong when you start messing around with software/hardware sony either gets another sale, or service charges. While the software may be the real problem here, its not like Sony's competitors don't already have it
:) but when people find out they can use their expensive toys in ways not imagined by the company that made them, it makes a better and happier fan/customer base.
. Think of how many people bought the I-Opener when they found it could run linux (the fact that the company went bankrupt is of no concern to us
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
You do not have to enforce patents, at all. Only trademarks. Patents remain in force.
It is the patent holder's right to enforce his patent or not.
There are probably some procedures regarding knowing someone is using your patent but not telling them, and then later trying to stiff them... but maybe not.
Close, but no cigar.
Patent law was originally intended to promote progress in the sciences, which in modern terms translates to technological innovation.
Copyright law was originally intended to promote progress in the arts, which in modern terms translates to good entertainment.
Copyright law's got nothing to do with innovation, never has. Why it got applied to binary numbers meant to express a simple technological function with no human-readable content whatever, I'll never understand...
(Before the twentieth century, every copyrightable item could be processed by an unaided normal human. We have moved well beyond that: why we stick with the antiquated notion of copyright, I'm not sure.)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
I was actually pleasantly surprised at the friendliness of the letter. Sony took the care to know pretty much research exactly what the situation is and went so far as provide the URLs of the files they find offensive. You would never see that much attention from M$ or FOX. But I agree that they should follow the LEGO model and even take an active part in the development of the AIBO community.
It's not quite as causal as you suggest. The damage may not be irreparable; if the word does not pass into common use, then it doesn't. Also, even if the trademark holder sues vociferously, irreparable damage may still be done. The classic example is Thermos, where the company sued like crazy to stop stores from labelling the sections where vaccuum bottles were sold anything but vaccuum bottles. Still, now, people call vaccuum bottles Thermos, regardless of who actually made them, and it's no longer a trademark.
Trademark lawyers still suggest that their clients should file suit to protect trademarks. It can help, but it's not a guarantee, either way.
You're completely right about copyright of course :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Meanwhile, there's the i-Cybie, which does almost as much as the Aibo, but costs $200. From the makers of the Furby(tm).
Still, it's pretty dumb to assume that the copyright owner will overlook an infraction just because you think it's in their interest to do so. It's like "borrowing" an item from a store -- no matter how sincerely you believe you meant to return it, your intentions will cut no ice if you're nabbed. Even if Sony were to decide to allow redistribution, they'd certainly expect you to ask first!
And, I repeat, this is just not a DMCA issue. True there's a DMCA citation in the letter, but that's just some lawyer covering all the bases. This is a basic copyright case.
If Sony were really serious about using the _DMCA_ against this guy, they would have had his ISP shut his sight down. The DMCA specifically grants Sony the ability to tell his ISP to shut him down - without notifying him directly. It's obvious to me that Sony's own lawyers don't think they have a real DMCA claim.
(The law firm I work for represents an ISP, and we had to advise our client that, yes when someone requests that you shut down a site under the provisions of the DMCA, you have to do it, otherwise the ISP will be held responsible. The DMCA is a big stick, and can be used to very quickly shut down a site. Sony was in no rush to get these files off the internet)
BZZZT. Not wrong.
It's not the same as with trademarks, but a copyright holder who does nothing to enforce it *will* lose the ability to enforce it under the doctrine of estoppel. This is all laid out clearly in, for example, 4 Nimmer and Nimmer, The Defense of Estoppel sec. 13.07: "...a holding out sufficient to raise an estoppel may be accomplished by silence and inaction."
Suing isn't the only way to avoid estoppel, but, then, in trademark law, it isn't the only way to prevent a mark from becoming generic. (Of course, estoppel claims are rarely successful.)
Yes, IAAL.
Lionel Hutts, J.D.
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Please tell me that you misspelled "Deus" and "Rogue" intentionally for humorous effect.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Traditional, open civil disobedience works well exactly because it is open. If even one in ten people who disobey copyright covertly (probably about 9.9% of the total population) did so obnoxiously publicly (say, going out on the the street and selling homemade VHS copies of Disney movies), they couldn't all be arrested. A few would, then everybody would just decide it's not worth it, charges would be dropped, and life would go on without copyright.
However, I don't think this would be effective. People want to disobey copyright a little, in private, and make other people pay. So they sneak around, and feel a bit guilty for breaking the law, and give lip service to the value of copyright. They don't want to get rid of it, because they think it will cut way down on new works, just break it themselves.
<digression>
Personally, I think it would be irresponsible to just drop copyright abruptly, which would cause whole industries to fall apart, and maybe take decades to recover from. It would be far better to move away from it gradually, by making public domain work profitable to the creators. Public domain works have major competitive advantages (all else being equal, do you buy the game for $60 or download the free one?), if only people would pay for them voluntarily, it would quickly become more profitable to not use copyright. Profit structure thus adapted and braced for the change, copyright could be abandoned.
So if you want to get rid of copyright, give money to people who give you free stuff.
</digression>
Fighting the DMCA with open civil disobedience might work, though. It's obscure, so it would be hard to get people to attack it, but it would also be easier to get the majority to decide it's not worth it. If you could get a large portion (say a quarter) of technical professionals to blatantly violate it, aside from the logistical problems of punishing them, it would no doubt convince people who didn't know and didn't care about the DMCA that it was a bad thing. The biggest problem is feeling out the support, and organizing it; you'd probably break lots of laws doing that. Really, the only way to do it is to lead by example. One person's open defiance and stoic acceptance of punishment could inspire a few emulators, who would encourage a few more fence-sitters to put themselves un, until joining the protest would just be jumping on the bandwagon.
Being such a momentary martyr could be profitable, if the support is there. He would become famous, and respected by everyone who followed his example. Unless, of course, nobody followed his example, then he'd just get the punishment. How much do people hate the DMCA? Big gamble, especially when it might be struck down without anyone disobeying it. The much wiser course might be a real paper petition; if people are really that opposed, collecting even a million signatures shouldn' t be a problem. It's not flashy, but it beats going to jail.
Almost anything is less ridiculous and more likely to succeed than an idealist slinking around like a criminal.
I'm probably going to get moded as a troll or flambait just for sharing, but here goes:
S.O.N.Y Suing Others Now You!
A.I.B.O...And It Becomes Opressive.
(My sig was in error as I had *Opressed* insted of *Repressed*, but I was corrected. I wonder if Monty Pytho's creators would sue for getting their quotes wrong in sigs? (shudder) )
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I've seen this mentioned in only one post so far and I have not seen an adequate answer yet. It is my understanding that the copyright law allows for non-commercial copying. Sony can stop the distribution of the software only if it can show damages resulting from the distribution. In this case there are none. The distribution of said software does not cause Sony to lose sales (indeed, it actually stimulates sales), since you need to have this aibo thingy in order to use the software. So, techinically, Sony cannot just bust in swinging DMCA and force the software off the net: since there are no damages in this case, the copying is legal. IANAL and I would like a lawyer to comment on this (if there is one here). Now, I do realize that in practice it doesn't matter: he who has the deepest pockets always wins.
Secondly, what "copy-protection" is this guy talking about? What exactly does it "protect" and what does it have to do with aibo?
On a side note, it really irritates me when they refer to "copy-protection mechanism". Let's call it what it really is: copy-prevention mechanism. It does not "protect" anything; it prevents you from making copies. I guess "protection" puts a better spin on it...
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Maybe someone should send all the Sony execs copies of the Cluetrain Manefesto then, perhaps it could be done through the EFF or something, when I come across clueless execs I give them a copy and make sure they read it, they can change you know, it just takes a push in the right direction.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Copyright law was originally intended to promote progress in the arts, which in modern terms translates to good entertainment.
You think a novelist or an artist can't be innovative?
Anyway, this is a gross misrepresentation of the meaning of "the arts." If that was the case, they would have only applied it to works of fiction. In such formal speech, "the arts" is used in the root sense of productive skills, not merely entertainment, which is why you see a title like "The Art of Computer Programming."
Also, when it was settled that copyright could be applied to software, the justification was clearly to reward progress/innovation in software development.
The only way companies are going to stop doing stupid things like this is if they begin to understand that many people become less inclined to buy their products when they do so.
I'd have thought that the price tag (and all the other stuff on which you could have used the money instead) would have served that purpose admirably.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Try, for example, asking email questions to professional video about their products. The web site is to screwed up to reliably answer any questions (this holds for both the old and new web sites -- both of which fail any kind of reasonable American's with Disabilities Act tests). Also heaven forbid that Sony keep discontinued products on their site under some kind of 'discontinued label'. It really is too bad their web site sucks so horribly.
There will be other cool robots (sadly from Japan, since the USA can't fund things that are not going to be profitable this quarter). Some of them will have open architechtures and then is when the real fun will begin.
-- Multics
"Digital Convergence"
Remember the CueCat? Well the company that made them went after hackers who were interested in their products. Now they are out of business and in major debt.
You know this is the result of some jackass in the legal dept. or the board room. Usually, Sony is pretty cool about this stuff. But, if they wage war with their customers (especially the ones who encourage other people to buy products) then AIBO isn't goint to last long.
Who the hell needs a $1500 robot dog anyway?
Not D-C-M-A
Jeez, why does everybody parrot the guy's original error in his web page?
Is the DMCA so accepted that no one remebers what it stands for any more?
Infuriate left and right
Let me say that again. Even the site's maintainer admits that Sony was within their rights to ask the software be pulled.
The fellow freely admits that he is in violation of copyright by providing copies of someone else's files without permission.And this rates the big, nasty, ominous headline, "Sony Uses DMCA to Shut Down AIBO Hack Site"...why? It's a "Your Rights Online" issue? What about Sony's rights online?
Even if the DMCA did not exist, Sony would still be asking that the files be removed. For that matter, the DMCA itself is only incidental to this issue, and barely even mentioned in passing--even if it did not exist, those files still contain material that belongs to Sony, and Sony would still be asking that they be taken down!
Yes, you can boo and hiss and moan about how unfair it all is, and what a mean nasty company Sony is, and maybe even cry boycott for all the good it'll do. But in the end, Sony has the right to ask that these files be taken down.
I've got 50 Karma, do your worst.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Actually, it's the CLEA. Copyright Lawyers' Employment Act.
Dyolf Knip
"We must boycott Sony. We must refuse to buy their tasty electronic gadgets, however tempting. We must - Oh! They're releasing the PS2 Linux kit in the US? Gotta go; I'm going to camp outside Fry's."
Seriously, we need to remember what Sony is next time they wave their enticements in our face.
Yeah yeah, DMCA bad, etc., now the real question, where are the files so we can all spread them around even though most of us don't have Aibo's and couldn't care less otherwise.
When are these hacker folks going to get smart and put text-encoded versions of this stuff on HTML pages and then let Google cache them??
Though, I bet Sony will back down after a while, and this will all blow over, even though they are a EvilMediaCompany(tm) they are also a CoolHardwareCompany(R)..
My concern here is control: I should be able to do what I want with the things that I own. I do not believe that corporations should dictate the terms on which I use products I rightfully own.
Note the "rightfully own" part. Aibo hacks are (generally) only useful to Aibo owners. People who paid Sony money. We're not talking about hacks that allow people to steal from Sony by making illegal copies. We're talking about hacks that allow people to do something different with property they own. There are ways Sony can work this out gracefully. If Sony chooses not to, I will choose avoid buying their products.
This is the letter that will be going out on Monday morning:
To: Victor Matsuda
Vice President
SONY
Sony Electronics Inc.
Entertainment Robot America
6701 Center Drive West, Suite 640, Los Angeles, California 90045
From:
Re: Sony's response to www.aibopet.com
Greetings!
I am deeply saddened by Sony's predatory and short-sighted response to www.aibopet.com. As a professional programmer, I appreciate Sony's concern about its intellectual property. I am not an advocate of piracy or the theft of intellectual property. Your efforts to shutdown www.aibopet.com misunderstand the desires and interests of consumers. Aibo, as a robot dog, is something that, realistically, will only appeal to a small segment of the population -- a segment with both the means to purchase an Aibo, and an interest in gadgets. Here is (was) a site dedicated to enabling intrepid Aibo owners to try new out things, to play with their gadget. The software provided on the Aibo site was only useful for Aibo owners.
Sony's actions seem to be rooted in the notion that corporations should have the right to control how their products are used. As a consumer, I resent that notion. I have been very pleased with the Sony products I have bought, but actions like this make me wonder when Sony will be trying to control what I watch on my Sony WEGA television, which disks I play on my Sony 200 CD changer, or what programs I run on my Sony Vaio notebook. (I have at least $2000 of Sony equipment in my house.) I love gadgets. Before I buy a new gadget, I go online to how hackable it is. Hacking with the gadget is more than half the fun. Sony's response to www.aibopet.com guarantees that I - one of the rich geeks most likely to spring for your products - will not buy an Aibo. Sony's response will also make me consider very carefully whether to buy other Sony products in the future, including Sony's entertainment offerings.
Please reconsider your response to www.aibopet.com. Perhaps Sony could host the files, and thereby guarantee that only registered Aibo owners can download them. There are ways of working this out that do not necessitate restricting what the rightful owners of Sony products can do. Of course, this assumes that Sony wants to work things out. Perhaps Sony is only interested in shutting www.aibopet.com down, in which case, I will no longer be interest in buying Sony products.
Thank you for your time; I look forward to your response.
I'm not familiar with the software that Sony wanted removed. Sony seems to think that that some software was copied or modified Sony product, and the site owner doesn't contradict this. If that's true, than any DMCA issues are secondary.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act contained more than the Section 1201 anti-circumvention provisions. In this case, DMCA added a clear method called "takedown notice" for copyright owners to make ISPs remove infringing material. First step: cease-and-desist the webmaster. Second step: send a takedown notice to the whole chain of ISPs all the way up to the backbone. Third step: If the webmaster doesn't file a counterclaim, take him or her to court.
Will I retire or break 10K?
... they're afraid of Aibo learning how to guide nukes like the PlayStation 2.
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
This song is not based on "YCMA".
Young man,
there's no need to feel down
Because your plane
back home can't get off the ground
I said young man,
Get comfy in your new town
There's no need to be unhappy.
Young man,
There's no place you can go
I said young man,
Until you cough up some dough
You will stay here
until you've served all your time
For your insignificant crime.
It's fun to stay in the U S of A,
Because of that old grand D M C A
For cracking DVD's,
Or an e-book or three,
You'll get jailed for eterniteeeee...
It's fun to stay in the U S of A
Because of that old grand D M C A
For proving to the world
That our encryption's a toy
You'll get jailed with all the boyyyyyyys...
--
Will I retire or break 10K?
Fair use cannot be used as a defense for unauthorized _distribution_ of copyrighted material.
What is using video clips from a movie in a review except unauthorized distribution? The "fair use" exemption does include distribution under certain circumstances.
But I agree, no court in the USA would find this to be fair use. I don't think they'd ever support distribution in whole for works longer than a few lines. I still think that this fits the intended purpose of fair use, and this is unethical exploitation of a technicality, just as when certain governments and cults have used copyright to prevent secret documents from being distributed rather than to secure profit from the distribution.
Okay. Time to feed the trolls.
Let's face it: what damage has the DMCA really done? Why should anyone care about the DMCA?
This is just what I came up with off of the top of my head. I'm sure there are other cases that I didn't mention. So in answer to your question, start with the above list and go from there. If you still don't think that the DMCA has done any damage, then have a good slumber in the bed that you've made.
- Stealth Dave
Evil is as eval("does");
Stifling innovation is exactly what copyright and other intellectual property holders want: the legal wherewithal to stifle their competitor's innovation. When consumers, small business people, hackers, tinkerers, and artists show up at Congress with briefcases full of cash and limos full of interns, perhaps we can expect some change.
And I'm a little disappointed by the attitude that Sony should just be nice to its fans. Any law that relies on the kindness, or even the self interest, of the party that can enforce it to be a fair law, is one messed up law.
That's nuts. That's going too far. If I write a book, or a song, I am entitled to distribute it however I want, even I choose to use "artificial scarcity" to make profits.
And I do write books, by the way, and sell them, and it would NOT BE POSSIBLE TO DO THIS if people could legally sell photocopies of my books at 1/2 the price, or distribute copies online. My business would not be viable, I'd get a cubicle job, and there would be less books on the market. That would be bad for the economy and bad for the consumer.
In the scenario you propose, only slackers or the independently wealthly would be making content. And I am sure they could make some great stuff, but would it be enough stuff? Or good enough for everyone's tastes?
Many would propose a system of voluntary donations. And I think that is good as a way to support the people who do choose to make free stuff. It's a nice gesture. But I doubt that such a system will ever work well enough to support whole entertainment industries.
I think it is far more reasonable to simply roll back the copyright laws to the point where copyrights weren't granted seemingly forever, so that stuff would eventually enter the public domain. That way the content people can make their money and keep making content, and we aren't all held hostage to the IP companies forever.
The only moral course of action is to boycott content that isn't open.
I doubt you would be saying that if you had to try and pay the rent by creating content, as I do.
Can you look a guy like me in the eye and say with a straight face "you are an amoral bastard for selling that book you wrote?"
+ He programed Aibo to copy dance moves from some crapy boy-band, which sony own thus violating copyrights. Also, Aibo did it so well, that their jobs where at risk
..cough.. plugs itself in and uploads video, audio, and GPS data to Sony HQ.
+ He was getting to close to discovering that after dark and when knowone is looking, Aibo finds the nearest phone line, sticks it's
+ The encryption method they use is actually the same system that will be adopted for the SSSCA, and Sony were just future proofing.
+ He managed to disable the "Aibo kill owner" command that activates when Aibo detects someone pirating Sony material and tries to kill them using a hidden array of deadly weapons.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The problem is that you have to have the original to modify. This guy not only distributed the original+modification, which is dodgy under conventional copyright law, but he also distributed the tools for patching, which is dodgy under the DMCA.
In fact the second approch of distributing patches plus patching tools would still be allowed in the EU. This is where the DMCA sucks big time!!!
See my journal, I write things there
... that without Aibopet my Aibo's would be just cute little robots that wandered about my living room and changed occasionally. With Aibopet's tools they are fascinating machines that I can watch from the inside, change, and interact with in a meaningful and interesting manner.
I have an ERS 111 and an ERS 210 and I must say that the software that was supplied with them (outside of their personality software) was limited and poor. Had I only had that to rely on I would have lost interest two days after receiving my ERS 111 and I would never had bought the 210.
Aibopet and the previous VP of Sony were able to come to an agreement that was a win win for all parties, why can't a similar thing happen with the new VP - is this some kind of power trip he is on to stamp his mark on the job! If it is he has pissed a whole heap of Aibo owners in the process.
People like Aibopet should be encouraged, he is the embodiment of what lies at the heart of the hacker ethic - he works for the good of the Aibo community, he works for free, he shares without expecting anything, and he has done his best to play within the rules. He deserves the support and the recognition of the hacker community for his efforts.
....Be careful of dueling with dragons - you are crunchy and taste good with tomato sauce....
You are missing the fact that the DMCA specifically protects them. The device they sold you had a copy protection mechanism.
I agree, in principle, that the anti-circumvention clauses in the DMCA are wrong.. but they are currently law. That is my point. My point is that Sony is NOT 'stretching' the meaning of the DMCA in order to enforce this. IT's within their rights.
Sony is interfering with reverse engineering, but not directly. It is a right, in that it's not a crime.. that doesn't mean you can break laws in order to achieve it (even if they are bad laws)
Yes.. interoperability. The problem is, taht doesn't mean you can disclose how to do this to people.
I firmly believe that if the DeCSS guys had, instead of releasing the DeCSS code, released a working DVD player (or had the player ready already, then added the DeCSS code), they would have had much better success, as it would have been plainly obvious they were developing a DVD player, and needed to reverse-engineer it for interoperability.
Freenet.
I'll bet the designers of Freenet never thought the US would be one of the biggest content contributors due to sites being eradicated from the net. I long for the day when FP's are Freesite mirrors of the eradicated content.
Intelligent Life on Earth
I think a novelist or an artist can't be innovative in the sense that we normally hear the word bandied about by venture capitalists and that kind of creature.
That's right. However, there was a huge debate at the time about copyright being applied to binary code.
There was really no debate about copyright applying to source. Source is easily human-readable with minimal technological support, much like an audio CD is human-readable.
The debate was: should copyright apply to binary code? The software industry wanted the answer to be yes, because iff it was, then computer programmers would be able to both conceal their techniques and profit from copyright. Having your cake and eating it too.
When a novelist is innovative, you can easily see the technique that is being used. For an example, look at Tolkien. Many other authors have used his techniques, and in fact we have a genre of fiction largely based on his work. They didn't have to reverse engineer his writing technique, they just read it.
Not so with programmers: and it was this particular decision in the law that the GPL was designed to fight. The GPL seeks to prevent programmers from concealing the source, while our copyright law is designed to encourage programmers to conceal the source.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Without copyrighted binary code, the GPL would be unnecessary (and EULAs would be irrelevant). The argument made by Pamela Samuelson and many of her friends was that only source code should get copyright protection.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
This sounds oh so familiar to the case against bleem! software, and especially bleem!cast. These products in effect replaced the console that sony sells at a loss and encourages endusers to buy more software which causes a profit for sony. They didn't care about this, they just wanted control of the market, which may seem strange to many of us, but is a common japanese mindset from what i understand.
just my two sense.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
it is packing and not designed to encrypt things so the DMCA does not apply. I suppose if YOU DID use the zip password protection then you might have a point...hmmmm but how would the end users know what the password is, and if it was publically available then Sony could legally get it and legally by-pass the security...catch 22 here.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Is anyone doing a good job of tracking these DMCA violations and the protests associated with them? It would be nice if a professionally maintained site could be presented to lawmakers to show them the number of actual persons were affected by these legal decisions.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
That is what I say - if you want it done right, and you want it done Free, build it yourself. Many hobbiests have built many walking and rolling robots - it isn't that hard to build a robot platform, and code it yourself.
The hardware to do this is almost literally lying around - both used and surplus parts, gearmotors, batteries, acrylic sheet - all of it is cheap, cheap, CHEAP!
Hell, I am on a budget right now saving for a house, and I am still able to find enough money to buy cheapo parts for a bot I am building. Those with more cashflow can go further, much further. Don't want to get "dirty"? Buy a Mindstorm kit or two!
Need a computer to control it all? A Basic Stamp is cheap enough, or you can get to the metal with a 16F84 PIC (hell, buy several - they are cheap enough, and a parallel port programmer is easy to build, plus code to convert BASIC to PIC opcodes is freely available on the net). Or, use an old 486 or pentium board - interface to an ISA slot, or hook an 8255A to the parallel port (or, if you don't need more than 20 or so bits of I/O, hook straight to the parallel port - but use hex buffers if you value the port). This stuff is cheap, often free! Want more "hack" value - use a C=64 or Apple IIe motherboard!!
Come on! We don't need Sony - THEY NEED US! Let them and the people that work for them suffer and starve for their corporate short-sightedness. That is the free market (like the market is really free anymore, but I doubt laws could be made to force us to buy from them).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Saying that we as a group violate IP laws doesn't create significant risk for any members, as it refers to no specific act.
There is a risk for prosecution under the RICO Act. That is serious, you can be sentenced to decades in prison for that.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
As others have mentioned, Sony is, even DMCA notwithstanding, within its rights to tell this guy to pull down their software. It is copyrighted software.
However, this is still yet another case of a company doing more harm than good in their zealous over-protection of intellectual property laws. Though the software involved was largely copyrighted by Sony, with small tweaks by the people running the site, the software was only of use to people who owned Aibo's in the first place. Sony should realize what part of the Aibo it is that actually makes them money (hint: its the Aibo hardware, without which the software is useless) and focus on that. Having people enthusastically modifying the software to do cool things can only help their market share.
They must have forgotten that the Aibo is NOT a mainstream product, its a product for geeks with a lot of money. This sort of action is exactly the type that will erode that market fast. Lego realized this early on, and that's why they've mostly been OK (with the exception of the LegOS name, which I totally understand for trademark reasons) with people hacking their product.
This is really a small incident that is part of a MUCH larger problem that involves things such as specs for video cards and other add-in devices, the future of fair-use when it comes to media, etc. I wonder how long its going to take the US government to realize that, while they may gain (in the form of lobby money) in the short-term, these laws (like DMCA) they are passing are going to have a disasterous effect on America in the long-term..If its illegal for kids to hack, where are the top-flight engineers going to come from 10 years from now? Not the USA, that's for sure.
And, lastly, screw Sony anyway. I used to be a loyal Sony customer until about 4-5 years ago. They used to sell great products at reasonable prices and weren't known for their legal transgressions... These days it's impossible for me to support a company whose quality of products has fallen, who have been trying to create a Microsoft-like monopoly in the console gaming industry, who is a major player in both the MPAA and RIAA, etc. Fuck you, Sony. You won't ever get a dime of my money in the future.
Consider another kind of copyrighted material, song lyrics. As with the Aibo software, you really would think that the people who own the songs would be glad for the free PR. But as everybody knows, all unauthorized lyric servers have been shut down. Media companies just don't like anybody redistributing their IP.
And yet you can find the lyrics to almost any song online. But they're all on personal sites where somebody has posted the lyrics to a dozen or so favorite songs. If the media companies don't like lyric servers, how the lyrics are still available? Because going after personal sites is like trying to kill ants with a hammer.
OK, I say something stupid, I get ten replies. One is a simple correction, another is an informative comment on the DMCA issue. The other 8 are just redundant. Get a life, people!
> Not only do SONY want people to add functionality to AIBO, they sponsor a competition for it - the Sony Legged Robot Soccer league in Robocup. Go to http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~robocup2001 or http://www.robocup.org for an description.
g ed.html for 2002 rules (previous competitions had different rules, and most expensive entry costs)
> You just have to buy licences to use their SDK. True, it's not open source, but you can't say that Sony aren't letting people hack AIBO.
That's a stretch.
-=-=-=-=-
Entrance to the competition is based on whether Sony will let you participate or not.
Applicants, typically universities, must apply. If they are selected, they need to pay $10,000 (+travel+most replacement parts)
Check out: http://www.robocup.org/games/02Fukuoka/cfa2002leg
-=-=-=-=-
They are not supporting "hacking" of their product (the commercial AIBO). The RoboCup dogs are different (mostly in software)
From the 2002 rules "Please note that consumer model ERS-210 cannot be used for RoboCup. "
-=-=-=-=-
If you are part of the competition, and you are under a heavy NDA not to discuss or publish details of the AIBO platform.
From the 2002 rules:
"Each team has to agree with NDA. The main point of the NDA is that each team has to agree with non-disclosure agreement about a specification of the robots, provided software, and development environment, including APIs
I can't find the 2002 NDA, but if it is like past ones, it is very restrictive.
-=-=-=-=-
FWIW: this year's RoboCup was a cake-walk for UNSW (previous winner) - they have superior and proprietary software.
-=-=-=-=-
You may have your definition of "hacking".
Robocup participants:
Are under the control of Sony (and are only permitted to participate)
Work within set guidelines.
Work under a heavy NDA.
Are not able to freely share their knowledge or code.
Did I mention that any Intellectual Property created is more or less owned by Sony.
That situation, I do not consider "hacking".
--AiboPet
>...they couldn't all be arrested. A few would,
>then everybody would just decide it's not worth
>it, charges would be dropped...
In a society where there is a profit motive for building and populating prisons, it is not inconceivable that they *could* all be arrested.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The same shoe will also fit on the other foot. Maybe one day people will think it criminal to leave an idea languishing with a poverty stricken individual instead of realising its full potential with a cashed up development fund.
For the record, I find the idea that a notional entity should enjoy more privileges than a flesh & blood person to be a worrysome development.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I am arguing that participation in a corrupt system is immoral.
I can agree with that, but you still haven't explained how I am "immoral" for selling a book. I'm slow; spell it out for me.
The software is Cacheman a proper memory manager for Windows from Outer Technologies.
Anyways, the thing is very usefull software, and saved me lots of headaches by keeping my Windows 95 running without mandatory twice a day reboots.
You know what? - It's free for private used!!! Anybody wanting support can pay 10$ to get it.
So? I just paid those 10$, not because i want/need support, but because i want to support good software.
After all this self congratulation where am i trying to get???
In this day and age of crapy commercial software, with periodic crashes, lousy support, EULAs, lock-in features (like non-standart data formats), DMCA, and in which decieving, coercing and denying costumer rights has become the standart way of working of most of the industry (and not only IT), i believe each one of us should make and extra effort to reward quality (yes, even non-Open Source quality - people need money in order to eat) and shun the typical stuff that is poured down our throats every day by faceless, emotionless, greedy companies.
Corporations are like economic animals (in more ways than one), and as such, their behaviours and even their survival depends on their environment. Let's do a bit of artificial selection and create an environment where companies that rely on quality products and quality costumer service survive and prosper, while the one that do not starve and die!!!
But despite Paramount's intolerance, there are a lot of unauthorized usages. Even fan movies!
Fair enough. You've got it right that there are two points points here not one: (1) whether selling a book is per se immoral because "information wants to be free" and (2) whether we are participating in a corrupt system--and I haven't address (1) properly.
In my post, I'm not arguing that selling the book is per se immoral. I'm arguing that in the present context participating in buying and selling with a corrupt intermediary is unpatriotic. This leaves open the possibility that you could use an ecologically-sound publisher. Since (2) is an assertion about what we should do, I'll just let it stand. My main purpose was to point out that it is inconsistent to rail against the DMCA or whatever and then give the lobbiests for it money by buying their stuff. We need to learn to do without the stuff, find alternates, or whatever. I don't recommend a boycott, but a complete change in lifestyle for people who feel strongly about this. Just say "no" to pay-for-content.
A moderate version of this position is that we should do this only until the RIAA lays off the lobbying, because there is nothing wrong with selling content.
I go further: we need to reform our lifestyle to do without that kind of content in the first place. You've asked me to address this aspect of what I'm saying specifically.
Let me give an analogy. Suppose I am a toll collector in France in the days when "free trade" did not yet include the right to ship goods from one part of the country to another without crossing a hundred such toll booths and paying internal duties. Our toll collector might argue that he has a right to a living, that legally I should pay the toll and so forth.
Now here I come along and say free trade ("free information") is the wave of the future and how things should be and that he is a part of a corrupt system. We change the system and now he needs a new job.
This thread is getting stale, but if you want to continue the discussion, we can continue off line.
=john= (Googol)
jegoodwin3@earthlink.net