DMCA Doesn't Protect Garage Door Remotes

bgood writes "A federal judge in Illinois has ruled that a univeral remote garage door opener does not violate the DMCA. "Consumers have a reasonable expectation that they can replace the original product with a competing universal product without violating federal law," Judge Rebecca M. Pallmeyer said. "This was an attempt to expand the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to where it had never gone before," said Andrea B. Greene, attorney for privately held Skylink, the manufacture of the garage door opener in question. "[This is] very good news for consumers." Additional coverage at Wired and Security Focus."

Comments

I'm not sure I understand the complaint.

[roystgnr]

Is some company storing their copyrighted material in my garage now?

Re:I'm not sure I understand the complaint.

[drfireman]

"Is some company storing their copyrighted material in my garage now?"

If so, that makes your garage door a copy protection technology, and your garage door opener a device for circumventing it. Every time you park you violate the DMCA.

Re:What about software?

[October_30th]

Why would you want to do such a thing? You would only end up with a substandard version of Windows...

But can your neighbor sue you?

[whitefox]

My best friend used to live across town. One day, I discovered our remote operated his garage door too. So for about a month, whenever I drove by his house, I opened his door. Only when somebody was obvisously home of course. My friend laughed his butt off when he found out but thank god he never told his parents.

Re:But can your neighbor sue you?

[Timesprout]

A radio DJ in Ireland a couple of years ago had a segment on his show where he would phone people and play tricks on them. One day he made a fool out of a woman who lived near Baldonnel Airforce Base by calling her, telling her he was from the airforce and that the remote for her newly installed garage door was lowering the landing gear of planes flying near the airfield when she used it. He had her standing in the middle of her garden clicking the remote and looking skywards to see if any plane's landing gear came down.

DMCA Limits

[Space cowboy]

Well, we've just found the boundaries of the DMCA. It covers everything in the house, the garage, but not, repeat not, the garage door :-)

This presumably means that automated sprinkler systems for the lawn also lie outside the DMCA, but IANAL.

Simon.

Supreme Court Enterprise?

[Ianoo]

Pallmeyer's quote instantly brought something like this to mind:

The Internet. The Final Free Frontier. This is the the 5 year mission of US Enterprises, their continuing mission to seek out new copyright abuses and new violations, to boldly extend the DMCA where it has never been extended before!
[Queue 64kps mp3 of Star Trek music]

Alas, if only the DMCA were badly written science fiction...

In a related story

[mabu]

I'm announcing my new combo garage door opener and Linux-based DVD player!

This is a bad decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree with this decision, and the courts got this one wrong. There's a few reasons why I say this, and why it's different than the traditional abuses of the DMCA.

First of all, there's really no legitimate reason why you can't use the usual garage door remote. One of the guidelines when making an important decision like this is "do consumers somehow lose functionality of the product or the ability to use it" by enforcing the DMCA? The garage door opener remote provided by the company is in no way crippled. The consumer does not lose by not being able to purchase universal garage door remotes. In fact, the universal remotes for household devices such as TVs are often crippled and have significant less functionality.

And second, I've had someone break into my garage by using one of these things. Nothing of any value was stolen, thankfully, but it leads me to believe the only added benefits of these devices are to theives. I, for one, would like to see these devices outlawed.

It's too bad the courts got this wrong. There's no legitimate uses for reverse engineering these devices. Also, my experience with the companies that make garage door openers is they're more than happy to provide replacement remotes at a very low cost. This is a case when the DMCA is right on.

Re:This is a bad decision.

[91degrees]

Get a cryptographically secure garade door opener then.

Thank God.

[RevSmiley]

Yhis is great news. Now if I only had a garage.

"reasonable expectation"...

[Gorimek]

I love how multi million dollar issues that set precedent possibly influencing the course of civilization can be decided on the stringent legal criteria equivalent to "that seems kinda fair to me"...

Universal door opener..

[fliptout]

Replace the dip switch inside the door opener with a 555 timer/counter circuit. Good times :)

Yeeehah!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to build a universal remote then cruise the 'hood at 3am openning everyone's garage door and you can't do a DMCA thing to stop me!

A good new law we should put into effect.

[rice_burners_suck]

I think there should be a federal law that nobody can make, buy, sell, or traffic in anything that competes with anything else. Violators of this law would receive a mandatory sentence greater than or equal to that of murderers and rapists, because such a crime is definitely worse than those.

Thus, if a component of a product you own, like a car or something, breaks down, it is illegal for you to get a replacement part from any source, however derived, other than the original copyright holder of that part, even if said original copyright holder has gone out of business and/or no longer exists. It would even be illegal for you to obtain a replacement that was made by that source but sold or given to you by someone else (in other words, you could not go to a junk yard and disassemble the part from another car, because that is piracy). This would be good for consumers because it directly coincides with the noble, good, and correct line of thinking that led to that fine law known as the DMCA.

Oh yeah, and people should be put into prison upon being born, because that is human genome piracy.

Re:A good new law we should put into effect.

[TheLoneDanger]

Oh yeah, and people should be put into prison upon being born, because that is human genome piracy.

It's at least two counts of human genome piracy. One half from your mother and one half from your father, as well as whatever claims their fathers, mothers and further ancestors have on it.

If you're cloned, then you would be a lesser pirate, but all pirates of course deserve the same fate. Maybe you could argue that you are the same person as the person you were cloned from and pin some of the blame on them.

Oh the irony

[doormat]

From the wired article, the headline, "Opening Doors With the DMCA" sits right next to a Best Buy ad.

What's next: Turing sued for violating DCMA!!

[1iar_parad0x]

That Turing guy reverse engineered products we haven't even invented yet! Oh, the courts already screwed him... Nevermind.

Re:Depressing

[grammaticaster]

I am not a lawyer (and to those who get annoyed when they see IANAL lines, you can get into quite a bit of trouble representing or even implying you're one when you're not), but: ...

How would you know whether you can get in trouble for pretending to be a lawyer? Are you some kind of lawyer?

I'm intrigued by this new type of troll.

[Ayanami Rei]

Trolls who assume some air of authority with respect to the article. They post quickly, making wild, non-trivially verifiable claims.

Of course, it's all a crock of shit.

Moderators: Don't moderate up anyone informative if they don't offer any proof or make a claim and they have a shoddy posting record. Otherwise YOU WILL be slaughtered in M2.