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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At the rate that hardware becomes outdated, what benifit do they think they would have screwing their customers out of trying to recoup some of their costs?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
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? don't give them any ideas
Someone owns a whole bunch of Cisco routers or other miscellaneous equipment. Once the equipment is no longer needed, they retain the license to the software while selling the hardware to someone else. Cisco rep complains, new hardware owner says "talk to the software licensee". When purchasing maintenance agreements and such, the hardware owner pays off the software licensee the cost of the maintenance agreement plus a small surcharge, and the software licensee pays Cisco the amount on Cisco's price list for the maintenance agreement.
The terms of the license agreement are fulfilled - it's just that the on-site location is changed.
"$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.
When companies get greedy like this, it's all I can do to keep my calm. I'm not sure I agree that all information wants to be free, but used sofware licenses that are bound to hardware that is changing hands sure do.
The CB App. What's your 20?
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.
I bought an 831 new (so I have the license for it) back in June. After reading about the recent vulnerablility I contacted Cisco to get an updated IOS version. I thought it would be a simple process, considering some of the comments I read here. I recieved an email back from them telling me if I wanted it fixed, I would have to purchase a SmartNet contract. That was July 18, and I am still running a vulnerable version using the ACL workaround.
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
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, hence you are infringing on the rights of a corporation !?! Lordie this country is hosed in the head....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
This makes perfect sense for the hardware companies, when you buy a high end router, you aren't paying just for the box, the metal, and the wires, but also for the IOS
,the wheels and the engine,but also for the software which controls the engine.
When you buy a Ford you don't just pay for the doors, the roof
So that does also make pefect sense to you?
For me not being allowed to transfer a software license still doesn't make sense.
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
I was looking for a used SOHO series router on eBay, but I think I'm better off building a small Linux router and using something like Freesco instead.
I know I'm small potatoes in context to the article, but I wonder how many other large organizations, after having a experience simimlar to Mr. Tague's, will take a long hard look at a Linux based solution?
Their practices appear to violate the doctrine of first sale, which the Supreme Court has been found to heavily favor in the past. The parts of the agreement that govern the non-transferablility of the license could be invalidated if this were ever challenged in court. I think it would only take one lawsuit from a large corporation like a bank to take care of these prohibitive licensing terms. In the past, portions of contracts and complete contracts have even been invalidated because of terms that were not binding due to laws forbidding them. This could just be one of many of those.
Double taxation.
Not so. The car is not taxed, the sale of the car is taxed. When you bought the car, you paid a tax based on the value of the transaction. When you sold the car, the purchaser paid a tax based on the value of that transaction. Two separate transactions, two separate tax payments.
You are taxed on your paycheck and then when you invest your money and it generates income it is taxed again.
double taxation.
Wildly not so. You are taxed on your paycheck, then you are taxed on the income that your investment earned. The same money is not taxed twice. In fact, to a certain extent, if your investment results in a loss, you can exclude the amount of that loss from your taxable income.
I think that you would be hard pressed to find a situation where you paid the same tax twice for the same thing. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist...just fleetingly rare.
-h-
I am not a lawyer. I am not an accountant. I am not an economist. I am an engineer.
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
I purchased a 1601 off ebay, two days before the IOS vulnerability. I called them that day, told the rep I'd purchased the router from ebay and had no service contract. He asked me what version of IOS I needed, and I had a new patch that day. He even helped me install it, and got me a different version when that one didn't work. He never once tried to shake me down.
This isn't like Gamer PCs, where you _need_ a 4.77 GHz machine to keep up, or a Microsoft Office machine, where MS keeps making Office bigger and using the newer features of Windows, so you need to upgrade Windows, but you can't upgrade to Windows 2006 without upgrading to at least a 2GHz machine with 6.40GB of RAM. This is much more like the 486 Linux machine sitting in the corner acting as a DNS and DHCP server, or the Pentium 133 you're using as an X terminal.
But there are two popular reasons to sell a used router. One is that you're upgrading to a bigger router, and as you say, everyone wins including the router vendor. The other reason is that your dot-com died (or was bought by somebody who already had enough bandwidth in their offices) and you're selling the routers, the PCs, the chairs, the cubicle walls, and the t-shirts, and nobody's buying any new router except your happy E-Bay customer, and the router vendor loses a sale they might have gotten.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The OS in your car is embedded Linux, so you owe SCO $699 even if you bought the car new.
They have to play by US law. Now they could, of course, just stop selling stuff here and there'd be little anyone could do about it. However a US court can exert control over them so long as they have a US arm of operations. This is how the EU can exert control over Microsoft, despite it being a US company. They do bussiness in the EU and hence are subject to the laws of member nations if the wish to continue to to bussiness there.
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
Did you read the article? This isn't a router from Best Buy we're talking about here. It's resales (most likely from bankruptcy settlements) of high end networking equipment - the list price of one of the items is 60 grand. The guy got it for 4.
Godspeed to the developers of alternative OSes for this hardware.
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.
Once again the Slashdot reaction is totally off base. No wonder SCO and Microsoft have so much trouble taking this crowd seriously.
From the article:
"...when he contacted NetApp to purchase a maintenance agreement for the used system."
Two key words there: maintenance agreement.
First you have to remember that nobody is REQUIRED to provide that service. If you come to me and ask me to provide a service then I'm going to tell you what I will do and how much I want for it. If you don't like it then you can look elsewhere.
Anything else would be the same as you holding a gun to my head and forcing me to provide the service on your terms. That certainly isn't a fair business deal.
So you want to compare this to a Ford. Fine. Go get yourself a 96 Ford Contour with 100,000 miles on it from someone advertising in the local classifieds. Then drive or tow the thing down to your local Ford dealer and demand that they sell you a maintenance agreement for the same price as a current production model.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Oh, you're back? Where's the car? Lemme guess, the guys at the dealership ended up pissing themselves from laughing so hard.
Maybe you should try again. Got that old Compaq 386 laptop out in the garage? Give Compaq/HP a call right now and tell them you want a 5 year maintenance agreement on the damn thing and you're not paying a penny more than $500 for it.
It must be because these are all corporations, right? We all know that anyone trying to do business and make a living is evil.
How about you? Would you want to operate the way Michael Tague expects?
Somehow I don't think that Mr. Tague would do business this way either if he were on the other side.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.