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Hardware Manufacturers Gouging Customers
rahlquist writes "An article over at infoworld discusses that buying that used router on ebay may not be a good deal if Cisco can find its way to screwing you. What's next, buy a used Ford and pay Ford to transfer the license for the onboard computer's OS or face piracy charges if you continue to drive?"
The bad news is that they are violating the gpl. :( I even submitted a /. article that is still pending after 2 days trying to deal with this. I need to recompile the kernel on one of the units I bought from them, but they won't release the kernel sources to me. *sigh*
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
At the rate that hardware becomes outdated, what benifit do they think they would have screwing their customers out of trying to recoup some of their costs?
Not to mention that every time I sell old hardware, it is for the express purpose of purchasing new hardware. Everyone wins.
So a NetApp storage system is two separate pieces, the hardware and the software. If I decide to sell my old NetApp, does this mean I can sell the hardware to someone, and the software to someone else? That doesn't sound like something that NetApp would like.
Vote for global prefs bug
"$15,000 is still a good deal... If the ownership of a system changes, our contract says the software has to be relicensed."
If I give up my ownership, do I get my $15K back? Something tells me no.
One thing they don't discuss in the article, but which I think would be legal, would be to permanently lease your equipment rather than sell it on eBay.
E.g. Used router for sale - $ 400
versus Used router for lease - $ 400 first month, $0 each additional month.
If you really need service contracts negotiated through me, then I do it for you at a reasonable hourly rate for my inconvenience.
If people can't be bothered to READ a contract before signing it I can't be bothered to care.
I do read that sort of thing and that is why I will only buy from scum like Cisco if I have no other choice. And I usually do.
You can buy sync serial cards on the open market you know.
As for non-transferability, BS. They can probably refuse to sell a service contract on the used equip, perhaps even deny you updates. But "going after" you for possessing/using a piece of used equip would never stand in court. Doctrine of first sale allows copyrighted works to be sold by their rightful owner and EULAs are only valid in Virgina. So unless you have an actual contract with a company that specifically says you can't bring in a used box you are clear, and any such clause probably wouldn't stand in court if you were willing to spend the money to fight it. (i.e. one unit from eBay isn't worth a fight, 1,000 from an acquisition probably is.)
Democrat delenda est
during the recent Big bug, I went around to all my routers, all of them used. I requested the top IOS with the best feature set for what we use each router, for each and every router, and know what? Cisco gave me .bin files for all of them. Since these came directly from Cisco, aren't these now arguably licensed?
But since you are required to pay for a support contract to get these updates, it is clear that the firmware is a separate product, even though it is delivered with the device, and the device will not operate without it. Note that many companies do not operate this way - these days you can download drivers for free for any PC you might purchase, via the internet. Even before the WWW became interesting for commercial purposes, you could generally call up their tech support, send them some money or make a credit card payment, and get the drivers shipped to you for a few bucks to cover a floppy (At the time, a not-inconsiderable amount of money when repeated frequently) and postage.
Therefore, since you must pay for updates to the software, a given update becomes almost an item of physical property. You have paid for it, and the right to use it. Hence, when transferring the device to the next owner, they should take ownership of that instance of that version of the code. It should not be considered simply "licensed" to them. After all, you paid for it, not just in some vague way by purchasing the device, but through the purchase of a support contract which is generally the only way to legally get access to these firmware images. Therefore, you should be able to transfer it, or your license to it, or whatever language you would like to use for the same thing here.
I should think it would be quite sufficient for the new owner to purchase a support contract and pick up. The answer to this "problem" is not relicensing fees, it's end-of-life. At EOL for a given product, current owners of the product should be able to purchase support for some given number of years, or commit to purchasing it, at a given price, and you will know how long you have to support the product. I think it's best to also commit to supporting the device at the current rate. As the device gets older, it will become less expensive to support, because more of the issues will be "known", and after end of life, you can refuse to add new features to the device without someone specifically paying you consulting fees for development.
This way, there is a finite lifetime to a product, you maintain your support costs, and let's face it; If someone has a support contract you will provide installation support to them as many times as they would like to move and reinstall it; This is really the only possible way to excuse charging anyone ANYTHING more than the recurring fees of the support contract when they purchase and employ a used device. If a company purchased an entire other company's assets, then necessarily their firmware licenses would come with it. Why, then, is it reasonable to charge a relicensing fee when someone purchases used hardware? It is not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Tague and others think the manufacturers' restrictions are just not right. "It's a flat out scam," he says. "Just because it's typical, just because the other guys are doing it too, doesn't mean it's OK."
How is it, in a nation where it is the will of the people that is to be represented and reflected in our laws and statues, our laws and statues reflect not the will of the people, but the will of an elite minority?
What more evidence do we need than this that ours is not a government by the people, for the people, but instead a government by those who have power, for those who already have it?
These businesses and corporations exist, and may operate only as we permit them to; they are by our permission.
We must revoke their permission. We must revoke their permission to buy laws which ensure their profit margins. We must revoke their permission to buy laws which mandate revenue where there ought not to be any.
What was it that the Justice Department lawyers told us, and the technology lobyist told us in their interviews; that it is naive, uninformed, and probably just childish of us to suggest that our government is in the pockets of corporations, and that corporations can "buy laws"?
What I say to them is that it is they who are naive. The corporate interests of today do not need to buy a single new law to oppress us, to wrong us, and to devestate us.
They do not, because our laws, our resources, our nation, were bought and sold to corporate interests long before any one of us were even born.
We are born into chains and we die under their weight.
If you struggle, it only drives those in power to bind us all the tighter. And they grin in delight. And they swim in their gold. And they build the flames higher.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
caveat emptor is one thing, but this is really taking the piss. a netapp is not bespoke software, even though it might be expensive. I don't mind a company getting paid a fair price for their product but this kind of lark puts me off them in the first place.
it's this kind of shit that got the doctorine of first sale pass for books
dave
Every time you purchase such restricted hardware, spin off a new Corporation.
Cisco Router Model X SN#12039okaj0123iasj Inc.
When you sell off the equipment, sell off the company. The software is licensed to that corporation. No need to relicense.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
>If you sell your used hardware to someone, then
>from the corporate viewpoint, YOU are depriving
>them of their right to sell NEW hardware to that
>person
Ehh, yes, that is what RIAA and other "content providers" call theft isn't it (and all others that think copyrigth infringement equals theft). That is, you deprive them of a possible income, hence they lose something and it is theft. SO I guess soon they will argue second hand shops are actuall big illegal thievery shops. Sigh.
The vast majority of corporations out there have only one myopic goal in mind: Make More Money. They will pollute any river, strip any forest, injure or kill any worker or customer to further their mission. Basicly corporations are thinking "Fuck everyone and the magic hand of Adam Smith will save us". Unless better laws are created to protect the individual's rights in contracts, corporations will continue to screw any one they want.
I know,"Don't like the contact? Don't sign it." What happens when every new car dealer starts this or all the supermarkets require you use their "customer card" to buy from them. The RIAA would like to ban used CD sales. An EULA on all CDs would fix their problem nicely. The Magnuson-Moss Act needs to be revised to allow owner's rights to be transferred to subsequent owners and new laws are needed to heavily restrict conditions manufacturers place on goods during the sale. Of course this will never happen with all the money whores in Congress.
Can some say when the erosion of our rights will stop? I can't.
Welcome to Amerika.
pherris
(Oops, almost forgot: "Screw Flanders, screw Flanders, screw Flanders.")
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Go ask your company accountant about what an asset is worth if it can't be resold for its intended purpose. What this means is that expensive cisco grear that is being deprecated over 5 years is fraud (the kind your CEO can get thrown in jail for). The device only has scrap value once you open the box so it must be deprecated in one tax year. What does this make MCI worth seeing how much cisco gear they own and no one in their right mind would buy all of them.
A friend of mine had some dealings with a sleazy company in Montreal that tried to screw him by attempting to steal his work and then telling the police that he stole their work, leading to his arrest. They tried to complete the project using their IBM AS/400 computer. He knew that the OS on their computer was pirated, so he snitched to IBM.
These guys were in the business of buying and selling used IBM equipment. So IBM investigated, and discovered that a lot of the computers they sold had copies of the pirated OS. Seems they were buying the hardware without OS licenses. I don't know if that's because the original sellers had restrictions on selling the licenses, or just that they had transferred the licenses to other machines that they owned. But the upshot was that IBM started contacting the customers of this company, then started demanding license fees. Naturally, the companies were pissed at the sleazy sellers, since they assumed they were buying legit systems.
Ultimately, my friend was acquitted, and the sleazeballs went belly-up.