Serial Cables Illegal Due to DMCA?

Colin McMillen writes "I've recently had an interesting run-in with the DMCA... apparently, US Customs has rejected entry of a PC<->Sega Dreamcast serial cable into the US, supposedly due to copyright violations. This cable was to be used for Dreamcast programming for the Real-Time Systems class offered at my university. This seems to be a clear case of the DMCA abridging a perfectly valid educational use of a perfectly legal piece of hardware."

Comments

DMCA is slow...

[powerlinekid]

I mean come on, this is so 2 years ago. They used to use these cables to get dumps of information off the dreamcast so they could copy the games. The current way is to pop the dreamcast g-cd (yamaho propetary format that holds 1 gig a disk, with 35 meg (approx) being readable in a cdrom and the rest unreadable for laser issues) into a dvd drive and download a program/driver that changes the way your dvd drive uses its laser to read the disk. From what I understand the new way, while very dangerous for your drive is a hell of alot faster than the 20+ hours that it used to take to make a dreamcast iso, especially when you're worried about it melting.

Re:Publish the pinouts! :)

[Psx29]

http://mc.pp.se/dc/serifc.html

damages

[www.sorehands.com]

I am going to disgree here. Besides pissing and moaning to congress, there is little to be done until there is a harm.

Look at the Felton suit, the court ruled that there was no harm, so they dismissed the case. Now, that someone has been harmed (not just threatened with harm), now he can get a lawyer involved and go after Sega.

Maybe he can get the school to talk the lawyer that handled the Felton case.

If I remember correctly, items of soley functional design (as opposed to artistic) cannot be copyrighted. So, the pinout or shape should not be copyrightable. Remember the Apple ][ clones? Some shipped them in without eproms to get around that.

Make your own coders cable!!

[radd0]

This is complete and utter hogwash. You may not be able to walk in to BestBuy and "hoarde them all" but you can definitely make your own. Marcus Comstedt has a very resourceful Dreamcast Programming site, which also documents how to build the DC to PC serial adapter ("DC coders cable") at: http://mc.pp.se/dc/serifc.html As the victim of this so-called upholding of the DMCA has acknowledged on his own site, the DC broadband adapter would be the way to go, but is a much more expensive route. Happy coding... -r

Lik Sang

[alech]

From what I've read on the dcdev mailinglist, this rather seems to be a problem with Lik Sang, then with the cable itself.

Lik Sang stopped selling modchips to the US, Canada, Mexico and "other Latin american countries" as well...

So, for me it seems it is rather a problem of customs vs. Lik-Sang then a DMCA problem...

Quoting a mail from John Goggan which just arrived on the dcdev mailinglist:

Just so people know, here is the situation with Lik-Sang... Customs recently started checking ALL of Lik-Sang's shipments to the US (under the guise of trying to stop any NEO4s from coming in -- even though Lik-Sang immediately stopped shipping them when they were announced as being against the DMCA). They were denying coder's cables, gameboy wormlights, everything. Basically, it looks like they were too lazy to hand-check the packages and just refused almost all of them going from Lik-Sang into the US via UPS. They also did not inform Lik-Sang of this until 3 days after they started denying them -- so a bunch were refused without Lik-Sang's knowledge. They heard from an engineer in the US that was waiting for a USB connector sample from Lik-Sang that tried to call customs and explain that they parcel they had stopped had nothing to do with the DMCA. They told him that they are "CERTAIN that they know what kinds of goods that Lik-Sang are shipping." Bah. Idiots. Note that Lik-Sang has STILL not received their packages BACK yet. In any case, Lik-Sang has now worked out their issues with UPS and will begin shipping with them again very soon. Basically, it looks like UPS is doing all they can to help Lik-Sang get around custom's evil tactics now. heh. They have changed to EMS Speedpost temporarily for shipments to the USA, but said that UPS will be back as their primary shipping method for the USA by the end of the month (note that some of that delay is due to Lik-Sang moving to a new warehouse in HK -- not just the customs issues). Just wanted to clear that up. Some guys at Lik-Sang are friends of mine, so I asked them what was up -- and passed it along to you all.

Re:Privacy of the Mail?

[nagora]

All international mail in and out of the US has been opened for at least thirty years. All international calls have been monitored for at least 15 years, probably more.

Most countries reserve the right to open international mail as a matter of routine to check for duty-payable goods such as artwork etc.

TWW

Don't be deliberately obtuse- Patented _Connector_

[Nonesuch]

dattaway wrote:

hmmmm... a patent covering the serial transfer of data over a twisted pair of wires accompanied by control lines limiting bandwidth in a controlled
fashion.

I assume you are being deliberately obtuse. Clearly the patent is on the connector, that is to say, the physical interface.

Sega can legitimately hold a patent on an 'innovative and non-obvious' mechanism for the physical contacts and plug configuration for their custom serial port. This can be a valid use of patents, even though we find it repulsive that they use their patent to restrict who can interface hardware to their system...

Don't give them ideas! (was Re:Cable vs. knife)

[Nonesuch]

BlowCat writes:

Banning cables is even worse - it creates a notion of "pirates' tool", something tangible that can be used as a "weapon" by "bad guys" and should be kept out of the country.

Actually, in the UK, knives are something that can be banned from import -- they even restrict printed magazines that promote 'combat knives' on the basis that they are a tool only for the "bad guys".

References:

• The Criminal Justice Act 1988
• http://law.rainertech.co.uk/justice.htm
• Offensive Weapons Act 1996

The one good reference I had on the advertising restrictions was an AOL homepage that has since vanished... you'll have to do the research yourself if you won't take my word on the laws.

Re:Publish the pinouts! :)

[Jandor14]

I ordered one of these cables from lik-sang recently and had it shipped via Fed Ex into the U.S. with no problems.

The pre-fab cable is nice and most of the first home built ones used a dc to neo geo link cable. The neo geo link cable is hard to find anymore but Sega does/did sell a serial cable to connect two dreamcasts together. Using this cable and the link already provided by Psx29 to Marcus Comstedt's site you could make two dc coder cables! There should be no DMCA problems with that! The official sega cables are hard to find but there are third parties who make dc accessories that also offer a clone of the official sega cable.

Of course if you don't mind a little more permanent solution just attach the wires directly to the pins on the dc's serial port :-)

Re:College course work on a game system?

[ethereal]

Heck, you can even circumvent encryption too as long as it's not encryption intended as part of a copy protection scheme.

Re:Hrrm...

[donutello]

I'll bite.

Yes, research is allowed. You are free to research any of your own creations. Feel free to investigate the laws of nature. Feel free to experiment to come up with different ways to travel. Feel free to write software, create art in original ways. None of that is illegal.

Patents have a limited lifetime. Feel free to improve on the methodology employed in the patent or to invent a totally new thing.

Trying to break into and reverse engineer someone elses invention is not research. Being able to copy and record songs someone else composed and performed is not art or creation.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what the article is about or whether the serial cable does indeed have a valid legal use or not. I just get annoyed by all the whiners on Slashdot who bitch and moan about their "rights" to other peoples creations.

What I would do

[MrResistor]

First order of business is to file complaints with as many government agencies as possible. Basically, make yourself a huge pain in the ass. File complaints with the FTC against UPS and US Customs, as they are clearly obstructing your 5th Amendment right to Due Process by refusing to provide information necessary to appeal the decision. While you are not being accused of a crime directly, you are certainly being deprived of property (and perhaps liberty, depending on the legal definition) without the opportunity to contest that decision (due process). Be sure to file a complaint against UPS with your local BBB alo, as well as any other agency with any power to regulate trade and business practices. Like I said, make yourself as bigg of a pain in the ass as you can. The squeeky wheel gets the grease.

Next, talk to a Lawyer about forcing UPS to provide that information, and perhaps persuing other avenues of compensation for their negligence. Also, discuss the possibility of bringing suit against US Customs contesting their misapplication of the DMCA. Obviously, you want to start by talking to folks with deeper pockets than your own who might take an interest in the matter, such as the EFF and your schools legal department. (I did see the EFF mentioned, but not UMNs stance. UMN is probably more likely to get directly involved than the EFF, since this directly effects the quality of education they are able to offer their students and the research they are able to do.)

Anyway, that's what I would do.

Buy them in the US then

[Anonymous Coward]

Zophar's Domain sells them:
http://www.zophar.net/store/items.phtml?dc-acc#d c- cocab

Note that it says "Software not included" meaning what you do with it is your own business.

UPDATE

[Falkkin]

I don't have time to individually respond to any of the posts here, but I'll be posting periodic updates on my web page. There are a couple up now (I have more info on why my package was stopped from HK; apparently *all* packages from lik-sang.com shipped in the last week or so have been detained...) and I'll be adding more as I get more info -- I've been rather inundated with e-mails in the last couple hours. :) Thanks to everyone here for your support; I'm hoping we can get this issue resolved soon.

Colin McMillen

update: Sega Responds (poorly)

[Night Eagle]

I lobbied a friend in Sega's Marketing/PR arena to 'do the right thing' and have Sega declare this a non-piracy issue.

No dice. Sega is a big Media company like all the others and is, sadly, towing the party line. Here's their official repsonse:

"The Dreamcast Coder Cable is not a Sega licensed product. It is an unauthorized, black-market peripheral for Sega Dreamcast hardware and we do not condone its use or sale. Sega gives our full and complete support to U.S. customs in their efforts to stop piracy under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Sega stands by our position that piracy is a serious crime and must be stopped. Sega supports a creative team of developers and we aim to protect their intellectual and creative properties in order to deliver the best possible gaming experience to our consumers."

Just for fun, substitute "terrorism" or 'drug use" for "piracy" and the above statement makes equally good propaganda.

I guess Sega doesn't consider BSD developers to be "creative". Sorry guys.