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.

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.