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.

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.

In a related story

[mabu]

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

"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 :)

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.