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Fight Woodworking Piracy: Add EULA Restrictions
An anonymous reader writes "Ed Foster's Gripelog discusses EULA restriction on a new woodworking tool.
A small woodworking tool manufacturer, Stots Corporation, includes a license agreement on its TemplateMaster jig tool. The tool is licensed, not sold, and customers cannot sell it or lend it to others. Nor can they sell or lend the jigs they make with it. "Shrinkwrap licenses are showing up everywhere," a reader recently wrote. "I just bought a jig for making dovetailing jigs -- this is woodworker talk if it's unfamiliar to you. The master jig contained a license that says I've licensed the master jig, not bought it. The license says I can't lend or sell the master, and furthermore I can't lend or sell the jigs I make with the master."
The reader was referring to Stots Corporation of Harrods Creek, KY, and the user agreement for its TemplateMaster product. Sure enough, the Stots license says TemplateMaster may be used "in only one shop by the original purchaser only" and that "you may not allow individuals that did not purchase the original Product (to) use the Product or any templates produced using the Product..."
A FAQ document on the Stots website explains that the license is necessary because "the purpose of the TemplateMaster is to clone itself. Therefore we are verifying your honesty that only you will use the tool and you will not be passing it around to others to use for free. It is exactly the same as the 'shrink wrap' agreement that comes with almost all computer software. Please help us fight 'tool piracy'."
Don't buy it if you don't like the conditions. Oh, and tell your friends not to as well.
That's "license" as in "tax", not "license" as in "purchase right to use".
Government != commercial entity.
Yet.
Posted with Mozilla
"But how does this affect insurance? If it's their stuff and you only license it, they should cover the costs for keeping the jig insured against theft, right?"
Right. And the bank I financed my car through should be responsible for my auto insurance.
License-mania is a phase. It's happened before, and it will happen again. Western Union used to lease their telegraph machines, AT&T leased it's phone equipment, IBM leased it's computers, and so on. It will change, because in the end, it's a business model that antagonizes customers.
How many joiners or carpenters are going to pay attention to these restrictions? They'll probably not even know about 'em. If they do, they'll think it couldn't possibly be meant to apply to their legitimate lending to their co-workers.
After a while, when almost every carpenter has tools under such a license, however, it gives company lawyers the opportunity to claim that the license is an accepted industry standard. At that point, they can start ENFORCING such rules, and building even more restrictive regimes on top of them.
This is a perfect example of why immoral licensing should be nipped in the bud by a rights watchdog organisation, regardless of what the consumers accept at the time.
Why should this surprise anyone? But it's illegal anyway. You buy something, you own it and you have the right to use it, abuse it, enjoy it and destroy it. It is yours, the receipt says so, and the person who sold it to you has given up all their rights in respect of it. A licence like that will never stand up in court. It would be a total and utter violation of the Sale of Goods Act. Just report these people to the police and Trading Standards - having someone else prosecuted for a criminal offence is cheaper than defending a civil case which will likely get put on hold anyway once it comes to light that the plaintiff has committed a criminal offence.
The reason you need a licence to operate a television or radio set, for example, is that the "airwaves" do not belong to you - you need permission to receive or transmit a signal. Transmitting equipment usually requires you also to submit to inspection to ensure that it is not causing interference to other people. {If you can prove the equipment is not being used - strictly, if they can't prove that it is being used, but They Are Bigger Than You - you don't need the licence; the authorities might insist that you do something a bit more than unplug it, but any modification that can't be undone without the use of a tool should be fine.}
Whether or not the purpose of the jig is to clone itself is irrelevant. I'm guessing it's a slab of some MDF-like material that you clamp hard against another piece of MDF, and follow the groove using a router*, with a special cutter that has a ball-bearing on the end, the same diameter as the cutting width. This way it produces an exact copy. Chippies have been making things like this ever since routers were invented, so I seriously doubt that a router jig would even be patentable with all that prior art. If you want to cut out kitchen worktops for hobs, sinks &c., you just make a template for each fixture {they are mostly standardised nowadays anyway}. Likewise for stair sides, radiator covers and so forth {if you have to make several identical pieces for one job but you know you'll never need that exact pattern again, you just leave the original on site}.
* router: in this context, not a device for sending ethernet packets to the correct recipient {which would be pronounced "router" rather than "router" anyway}, but a power tool consisting of a powerful series-wound electric motor spinning a sharp-bladed cutter at up to 30000 rpm, and mainly used for creating large quantities of sawdust.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
You were right the first time. They are extremely stupid. Listen up everyone, THIS IS ILLEGAL. With one caveat, if the company actually owns a patent for this device, than you must pay a royalty(with permission) to recreate one. However, it doesn't seem this is incredibly inventive or creative, so I don't think they'd qualify for a patent on this.
The 'First Sale Doctrine' means you can do whatever you want with something after you buy it. Strangely enough, software seems to be excluded(kind of. But I don't understand why). This is a right, no one can take it away from you(except yourself, by contract). I don't think, if challenged, their EULA would prevent anyone from exercising their right to sell something they've purchased.
Hell, without the First Sale Doctrine, the RIAA would have shut down used CD stores years ago.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
EULA restriction on a new woodworking tool
If there had been a patent for this type of tool, it would have been enough (and ok) to say, in a notice that the customer could see before purchase, that 'purchase of this tool does not carry with it any licence to make tools according to the patent'.
But if there is no patent, then there is no right to restrict public use of the unpatented but pubicly-known technology.
Copyright law doesn't restrict use of technology, e.g. reproducing a 3-d object which is a physical tool. The original tool (presumably no artistic work involved in the tool itself) was not one of the statutory 'works of authorship' in US copyright law.
Half a caveat. If they have a patent you can't duplicate the design. A patent doesn't mean you can't create template machines *at all*, only that you can't create one to that particular design. Dyson's patent on vortices didn't put Hoover out of business; it only meant they had to pay him a royalty for creating vortex-driven vacuum cleaners; their previous designs were not affected.
Routers work with a steel or carbide tipped cutter spinning at roughly 30K RPM. Think Dremel on roids, mounted in a sturdy base with adjustable height.
Through the use of hollow rub collars (more difficult, fractions, mmph) or router bits with a top or bottom-mounted ball bearing the same size as the cutting path of the bit (easy, no math), it is relatively easy to make exact copies of any pattern with very little to no wear.
Of course there's a little vibration, and even carbide wears down (albeit slowly), but you can still expect 1/64" accuracy for awhile.
So it's not as accurate or repeatable as a large CNC router. But it's a handy tool that can be pretty precise. And it's pretty cheap for that precision. But it's just a precisely machined guide for a less precise operation accomplished with hand power tools.
The license? Ludicrous.
This is coming from a former custom cabinetmaker of 10 years.
We are living in a genuinely historic time, the age of legal technology. Now that I've said that, I better do some really fancy footwork.
The law and the individual's rights and privileges under it are among the most ancient artifacts of civilization. It is also something which evolves as a society evolves with tending towards egalitarianism in properous western democracies (the heavenly light shines from above on America...), that is, laws that take away freedom of action or that provide one person or group with advantages over others tend to be struck down or superceded by laws that create balance and that protect rights.
In a sense, you could say that some of the most far-reaching and most beautiful laws are the solutions to arguments that arise from logical problems. For example, once we had slavery, the preamble to the constitution cannot have meaning in a country that practices slavery. The argument arose and it was solved by an amendment to the constitution which clarified the argument completely: if all men are created equal, no man can be another's property. Human rights trump property rights. Slavery is illegal and slave-owners are S.O.L with regard to their property rights pertaining to their slaves. That makes sense.
At least that is how it worked in the old days.
Now, in the post-industrial age of television and the megacorporation, lobbying money and a just a smidgen of public stupidity create an opportunity for organizations to create agreements which function as devices to generate a planned result in much the same way that the parts of a transistor radio work together to produce access to the airwaves.
Laws like the ones that make the EULA possible are a technology--not one for establishing socially useful principles, but for circumventing and mutating contract law so that instead of providing a level playing field between buyer and producer, the law provides for the end-user signing away all his rights to legal rememdies by buying a thing and using it.
EULAs do nothing to protect the consumer. Nothing whatsoever. They are the legal equivalent of a booby-trap: you open the box, you open the envelope, you install the software, click on the box and BANG! according to the law, you've agreed to conditions that would have to be insane to agree to under any other circumstances.
If you don't believe this, consider the enormous tire recall of the last year or two and imagine what things would be like if the tire companies involved had had a EULA at their disposal:
'by breaking or cutting the ribbon on these tires, you agree that their purpose is purely decorative and that they have no function and no warranty, explicit or implied for any use but decoration of your vehicle...'
You can't sign away your personal freedom. You can't read a document, sign it, and become an indentured servant with no rights, but you can sign a EULA and let a company do whatever it likes to you with its neglicence.
The EULA is a device to give software makers the ability to treat software buyers like cattle. It is a prime example of how people make laws when they don't give a damn about the society that rises from them.
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"Yeah. It smells, too..."
If they want to rent or lease out the item fine.. let them do so and call it a rental or a lease. And let them try to "rent" stuff to their customers. But if they are selling a tangible physical item for a one-time fee they are SOL as far as enforcing that EULA goes.
Hell, courts have even overturned some software EULA restrictions on reselling or giving away software which was originally bundled with a PC. So don't think a judge will be all too keen on enforcing these restrictions. The guy paid for it and if he wants to give it away or sell it I don't think there is a heck of a lot the company can do to stop him.
If he had been dumb enough to sign a rental agreement or lease when he got his jig master.. THEN they would have some say. They know they wouldn't sell any jigs if they required the buyers to sign a rental agreement. This EULA is just an attempt to get the benefits of renting to customers without the damage it would do to their sales.
A lease is a fixed term contact that requires the return of the goods in question at the termination of the contract. This case is clearly not a lease. There is no contact or agreement made before the sale is finalised - it's a shrinkwrap "license". They are selling the good and then claiming that the buyer has fewer rights than is customary. It's dodgy at best.
>You can't redistribute copyrighted works without
>the author's permission.
You *can* infact re-sell used books.
You *can* infact re-sell used CD's.
and you sure as hell, can resell a real-world tool, like a hammer, or whatever this gettin'jiggy-with-it thing is.
you can not reproduce copyrighted works, and sell those derivatives.
this manufacturer doesnt have a legal leg to stand on.
... hi bingo
Obviously you don't know what a contract is.
In order to form a contract, there are several necessary elements that are lacking here. There must be an agreement. From reading the link, and the links beyond that, there seems to be no agreement, only a unilateral statement from the company posing as one. Also consideration - this means that there has to be an exchange of goods or services, both parties must receive something or it is not a contract. In this case, there is no consideration. The person supposedly accepting the contract has already bought the jig, and the contract gives him nothing new - it only takes away things he already had.
To make a contract of this, at minimum the customer would have to indicate assent in some way, after having read the terms of the 'agreement' (and no, keeping and using the item he already paid for does not suffice to show assent) and also to receive some consideration for such assent. They could, for instance, offer a rebate to those who signed the contract and returned it, and then they would have a contract (and also be open to a deceptive advertising charge if they were not clear on the terms upfront.) But this? This is nothing but a piece of paper which makes a lot of unsupported claims. Use it as toiletpaper.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
With old compilers, you could make...a compiler. This results in recursion, which points out the flaw in the system (how many generations do I have to be removed before I can use the tool wherever I like?). This is totally different here, since recursion is not present - the tool you make doesn't perform the same functions as the tool you licensed.
RTFA
The tool is specifically described as a "jig for making jigs", and their FAQ specifically states that the reason for the EULA is that the purpose of the tool is to clone itself. That sure sounds like recursion to me.
Also, since you seem to be unfamiliar with the term, a jig is the closest thing there is to a compiler in woodworking..
Sorry, but the analogy is quite solid, it is your understanding of the situation which is completely flawed.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Why shouldn't companies be able to charge different amounts for different licensing terms?
They are, but this product is not licensed, it is sold.
I would like to create a price structure that matches the price to the product's value for each customer.
Yes you would - this would optimize your revenue. However, you have no right to expect the governemnt to exert special effort to help you do this.
I may not like that some products come with restrictions, but I understand why companies do this and how it maximizes the number of people that can afford to buy the product.
This is only a secondary effect - the main reason for a price structure is to maximise profit.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Hypothetical querstion...
Soybeans exist as the seed itself. To grow soybeans, you plany soybeans, correct?
So, what stops me from buying "food" and simply planting it? Yeah, you mentioned that they make the seeds infertile, but that will have some fallout rate, such that the second gen might only get a few plants, but most of the third gen seeds will remain viable.
In that situation, I have not signed a contract with you, with Monsanto, not even with the farmer (I'll starve to death before I sign a contract for a package of edamame).
So, as the end user, with no contract to restrict my use of the "food" I buy, what stops me from simply using these seeds to grow crops? The way I see it, Monsanto can enforce their terms only because of contracts throughout the entire chain of production. What closes this seemingly trivial loophole?