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

What about software?

[satyap]

Can you replace Windows media Player with some 3rd-party (DVD) player?

Changes

[October_30th]

I can't believe how much the world has changed in such a short time.

Only a few years ago it was obvious that you can figure out how a piece of hardware works and tell your friends about it. Now every manufacturer is suing practically anybody who just dares to have a peek inside their product.

Re:Changes

[bigberk]

Now every manufacturer is suing practically anybody who just dares to have a peek inside their product.

In the United States they certainly are. Not so in other countries, especially around Asia. You had better believe that Asia is going to start kicking ass real soon. The US will never know what hit them (Those CEO's who do know will clutch their bags of money and escape)

Re:Changes

[WEFUNK]

Only a few years ago it was obvious that you can figure out how a piece of hardware works and tell your friends about it.

No it wasn't. We still had patent law. We still had copyright law...

Yeah, point taken, we still had jerks that abused the system, but the very point of patent law is supposed to be so you *can* tell your friends about it -- its public information, but you just can't implement it or sell it without permission. The point of copyright law is that you can't publish or republish a given work without permission, except under fair use provisions. And, the point of trade secrets is to protect against stealing undisclosed information (although with less protections so as to encourage disclosure through patents or copyright).

I agree with the original poster -- only a few years ago, the distinction between these things was pretty clear, even when the specifics were occasionally abused. Now with silly laws and the general strangeness of software (copyrighted works that provide real world functionality), suddenly patents are applying to discoveries, ideas, and mathematical algorithms, copyright is being used like unregistered ultra long term patents to gain an indefinite monopoly on the utility of a work and not just its expression, and the DMCA is being abused to protect public information as though it were stolen trade secrets and to further negate any encouragement for companies to add to the commons. Things have definitely changed for the worse.

More importantly, DeCSS type stuff

[MarkWPiper]

I think it would be important that a consumer can watch a DVD on a competing OS...

Depressing

[locarecords.com]

..

I think it is somewhat depressing that anyone with a lawyer and no conscience can try to force us into the most ridiculous legal situations purely for the hell (and profit) of it. What a complete waste of time, tax dollars and effort by all concerned to try to force consumers into an unfair position.

Why don't they just make their replacement either

1. Cheap enough so the competition isn't worth looking at

2. Of such high quality that ditto.

Re:Depressing

[bladernr]

I think it is somewhat depressing that anyone with a lawyer and no conscience can try to force us into the most ridiculous legal situations purely for the hell (and profit) of it. What a complete waste of time, tax dollars and effort by all concerned to try to force consumers into an unfair position.

I am an advocate of a law that says the loser in a tort must pay the winner's court costs. That would prevent fishing expiditions like SCO's because they are too expensive.

It also prevents all of the pain-and-suffering fishing expeditions. Right now, I can sue [insert-mega-corp-here] for $20k for nearly anything, and be almost sure they will settle because it is cheaper for them. However, if I had to pay all of their court costs, then they would be motivated to only settle if it was indeed their fault (because not only do they pay the 20k, they also pay my court costs). If I sue them frivilously, then I have to pony up their multiple hundred-thousands in court costs (including time, attorney fees, etc).

America is law-suit crazy because their is very little penalty. Could the RIAA take the shotgun/mass-sue approach if they had to cover the legal defense costs for everyone they wrongly sued? This law would make people much more honest in their claims I believe, and much more likely to defend themselves instead of rolling over an playing dead.

They would be more likely to defend themselves because, if they are right and win, they are not out a single cent. They can hire any high-priced attorney they feel like, because, when they were vindicated, the loser would pay up (the RIAA, for instance). Of course, you better be sure you are actually right, and not trying to win on a technicality or something :)

Re:Depressing

[ponxx]

> I am an advocate of a law that says the loser in a tort must pay the winner's court costs.
> That would prevent fishing expiditions like SCO's because they are too expensive.

At the very least you must set a limit as to what "reasonable" costs are. Otherwise MS come and sue you for $100, but you will also have to pay their $100,000 legal cost if they win!

Anyway, i think this sort of system exists elsewhere in the world, what is the status quo in the US? Does everyone just pay their own legal cost? So even if you win you're screwed?

Re:Depressing

[Simonetta]

I am an advocate of a law that says the loser in a tort must pay the winner's court costs.

I don't believe that I can agree with this statement. Giant law firms would randomly pick people breaking some stupid regulation and use their vast legal resources to sue them for large amounts of money. Since they had more lawyers, they would usually win and then force the randomly selected victim to pay the court costs. (RIAA anyone?) The law would become a vast automatic random extortion machine. Historically, when that happens people form criminal organizations that use violence and terrorism to protect themselves. Even when the legal environment changes, the criminal violence secret societies remain and become the extortionists that the state was previously.

The real effect of DMCA extortion lawsuits is to transfer economic development to the underdeveloped world. In these places, the amount of wealth generated by reverse-engineering technology and putting it to alternative uses is greater than the amount of generated by lawsuits. Which is why the authorities in the developing world ignore first-world legalities that serve primarily to transfer wealth (to law firms) instead of creating wealth.
In the Congo, no one gives a fuck if you manage to figure out how a garage door opener works. But if you can rewire a surplus garage door opener to make it easier to load heavy sacks onto a river barge, then yeah, someone will be interested in working with you.

Re:Depressing

[SuperBanana]

I am an advocate of a law that says the loser in a tort must pay the winner's court costs. That would prevent fishing expiditions like SCO's because they are too expensive.

How so? The only thing this would accomplish is making it riskier for the little guy to stand up for himself. Not only does he have to risk his life's savings to pay for his own legal defense, but now, if he looses(and going up against a megacorporation, they'll drag it out until he's homeless on the street), he's got to pay their legal expenses as well?

The only thing your idea would do is make the legal system all that less accessible.

Could the RIAA take the shotgun/mass-sue approach if they had to cover the legal defense costs for everyone they wrongly sued?

Of course.... they've got more money than god. I would not doubt if there was enough money to pay 10x over.

A+ for good intention, D for implementation.

Re:Depressing

[evilWurst]

"I am an advocate of a law that says the loser in a tort must pay the winner's court costs. That would prevent fishing expiditions like SCO's because they are too expensive."

No, you're not being evil enough and thinking it through to the most abusive conclusions >=)

A loser-pays-all-court costs situation would squash any chance of getting justice if your a small guy who was wronged by a big guy. Use the SCO example again - say I'm a small kernel developer, and I sue them for stealing my code. I can only afford a modestly-priced lawyer, and they have a flock of lawyers. I will probably lose, right? And then they, with their flock of lawyers, will claim enormously huge court costs, just to punish me for daring to question them. Even a lawsuit between near-equals could be perverted this way, simply by drawing the case out.

Faced with such possibilities, the number of lawsuits would drop drastically, but the amount of lawbreaking would skyrocket - because the big fish would know they could get away with anything. In making legal defense possible, you've made legal attack impossible for all but the richest few.

Re:Depressing

[YrWrstNtmr]

I inferred dialup, due to the fact of them being in subsidised housing. An extra $45 for cable/DSL might be tough.

1000 files was supposedly the cutoff for being a target of the RIAA. Hell, there aren't 1000 songs that would appeal to the average 12 year old.

Her brother was 9.

Or maybe, just maybe, the RIAA screwed up.

This is not the last time

[eclectro]

that the DMCA is going to be used to squash a competing product. As long as it's on the books it's going to be used willy-nilly on anything remotely related to so-called IP rights.

Hmmm...

[JayBlalock]

IANAL, but couldn't this ruling be cited in defense of unauthorized DVD players / DeCSS? The basic principle is the same - I own a whole bunch of DVDs, if my current player breaks, I should be able to obtain a new player for them however I like. Even if it's for my Linux installation.

Mmmmm... Precedent

[softspokenrevolution]

I can't recall properly as to whether or not this kind of logic was applied to printer cartidges yet. But the same kind of idea would apply there.

I really don't care much for these people. I mean, you bring their product into your home for whatever your reason is (usually because it's the most financially prudent) and then they try to force you to pay out the nose forever and ever simply because you bought their product. It's just tantamount to someone coming into your house and telling you what you can and can't buy, these sort of strong arm tactics that are the byproduct of an overtly litigious society just show the ways that the free market eats itself up. You have huge corporations claiming that their patents need to be protected or else their innovation will be stifled, when they just use those patent laws to go off and further stifle innovation.

Seriously folks, I don't know where the people that pass these laws and run these companies were educated, but they were ripped off, because they surely didn't learn what the hell a free market was. It isn't that hard people, it's a market where you have a bunch of goods and people can buy whatever they want, that's all it is. Not a market where you can force people to only buy from you after they already bought something from you.

Ink cartridges applicable.

[TroyFoley]

"Consumers have a reasonable expectation that they can replace the original product with a competing universal product without violating federal law,"

IANAL, so I'm wondering how this statement is inapplicable to ink cartridges. It seems to me that a judge sitting on another bench would be unable to make a distinction between this precedent as it applies to one product over another.

Re:Could the tide be turning?

[yerricde]

Material that is copyrighted becomes public domain after a certain period of time.

No it doesn't. Material that was published before 1923 and is copyrighted becomes public domain after a certain period of time. Material first published on or after January 1, 1923, remains under the beginnings of a perpetual copyright on the installment plan. A 19-year extension in 1978 was followed by a 20-year extension in 1998. However, the Supreme Court of the United States, when upholding the second extension in Eldred v. Ashcroft, strongly hinted in its opinion that it wouldn't uphold further extensions that establish a clear installment-plan pattern.