Slashdot Mirror
Toner Cartridges new DMCA victim
anarkhos writes "Lexmark leads the curve by being the first to invoke the DMCA to prevent 3rd parties from making Lexmark-compatible toner cartridges." It's gonna get worse before it gets better. Update: 01/12 14:13 GMT by J : Yep, it's a
dupe;
see
here
and here
for more info; for more on the DMCA, see
our next story
;)
The next thing you know, you won't be able to use non-Ford and non-Toyota gas with Ford and Toyota cars respectively.
Now I can't legally print the memo on my Lexmark to warn employees to not use 3rd-party cartridges.
Micheal sues Taco under the dmca for dupilicating his stories.
I *assume* there are readers who don't check out Slashdot at least daily.
If so, it makes sense to repost stories of major significance.
Think of Slashdot like a soap opera. Major plot twists need to be repeated for the benefit of sporadic listeners.
Ford is offering up to two years worth of petrol (gas) when you buy a new car here. I think its 1200 maximum over 24 months.
The catch? They give you a card you can use like a credit card at only one type of gas stations (total-fina-elf associates), and each time you fill your car, you have to enter the odometer reading on the keypad. If you put another brand of petrol in, then you lose the remainder of your free petrol because they can detect you suddenly got a large increase in kilometrage between fillups.
Its the same as a rebate, but tied into making you a habitual customer of their partner gasoline company.
When you sign up for the free petrol offer, you agree they can share the data with their "business partners". They are approaching other companies offering detailed marketing data on buyers, on things like geographic usage (people who drove to the south of spain 3 times this year, etc). They can also track the consumption of petrol quite accurately over a large sampling of their vehicles, which probably gives their engineers more data on fuel efficiency as motors wear over the first two years.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
The real problems with the DMCA are the sections which prevent circumvention of devices (or methods, etc.) which control access to a work. This effectively gives copyright holders a new right, the right to restrict access. This is not among the rights granted by the copyright statute (right to copy, distribute, perform, etc.) These sections, in reality, mean that the copyright holder can prohibit you from accessing their works, even after you have purchased a legitimate copy, as exemplified by the DeCSS case. It is quite possible that being able to restrict access to a work contradicts the purpose of copyright as stated in the Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts." If access restrictions are contrary to this constitutional policy, they may very well be unconstitutional. And this is the perfect case to illustrate that.
Lexmark is claiming that these replacement cartridges allow access to some code which resides on boards within the printer and not on the cartridges themselves. This is the focus of their circumvention argument (they also argue that these cartridges contain actual copies of other code, but that is purely a traditional copyright problem). Thus, Lexmark is claiming that even though you bought their printer, you don't have the right to access their code unless you're using their cartridges. This is not a case where Lexmark is worried about copying or piracy. The 2600 case involved both access and copying (sort of) but the court was too stupid to look past the piracy rants of the MPAA and see the problems with the access restrictions. Here, we have a perfect case to illustrate why the entire access control section of the DMCA should be declared unconstitutional, without worrying about claims that piracy of digital works will cause the downfall of western civilization.
Of course, even if the access control sections were removed, copyright holders could still create hybrid control systems which prohibit both access and copying. These could then still be enforced under the anti-copying provisions. But, we can save that fight for after a court has noticed the distinction between access controls and copy controls. Then we might have a chance to win.
Thanks to Lexmark for bringing a perfect case for those of us who want to see the DMCA destroyed! (By the way, IANAL in the technical sense, but I do have a law degree in addition to a computer science degree.)
-Tim Watson