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StorageTek Blocks 3rd Party Maintenance with DMCA
bstone writes "According to LawGeek, a district court in Boston has used the DMCA to grant a preliminary injunction against a third party service vendor who tried to fix StorageTek tape library backup systems. The court found that third party service techs who used the 'Maintenance Key' without StorageTek's permission 'circumvented' to gain access to the copyrighted code in violation of the DMCA, even though they had the explicit permission of the purchasers to fix their machines."
If you don't have enough money to buy politicians, you can still stop buying from companies who attack via stupid laws. If you don't have that choice, you have to live with it.
I just found out today that Switzerland passed a law in 2002 forbidding manufacturers' garages from claiming that third-party repairs and service work would void automobile warranties, even though car owners could save up to half in parts and labor costs.
If I were a purchasing executive, and had just blown a large amount of money on an SL8500, I'd seriously reconsider buying from StorageTek in the future if they were going to lock me in to their own service plans with such an ability to set prices without any competition.
Remember kids, vote with your wallets and let them know it...
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
...until only the OEM will be allowed to open your box and repair / upgrade / modefy it?
I do hope this ruling is overturned. If it's left standing, it may lead to fewer and fewer computer (and other) related items that could be serviced / upgraded by everyone (and thus cheaper than if only the OEM could do so). If this is allowed to go on, how long will it be before we see the first car which only the OEM could change oil on?
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
this case seems to basicly to be about a password protected maintenance system .... wait 'till the car companies start putting passwords on their engine computers and claiming this as a precedent ....
Monopolies were illegal in America.
Isn't this abusing the DMCA to circumvent the anti monopoly laws.
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
So now, everyone is going to encode their products' internal software so that any attempt to access it in any way to service it can be construed as attempting to circumvent a protection system.
Nice.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Hit um where it hurts!
Open Source Sushi
So there's no chapter in DMCA about
- owner's rights ?
- rights to recover you own data ?
- create interoperability when needed ?
This law is certainly well thought out.
Very well balanced:
Producer has all rights and consumer has none.
- and in exchange for that -
Consumer has no rights and producer has all.
We, up here in the true north, tend to see the American governing bodies as just too damn big and requiring lobbists just to get a prefunctory hearing.
Perhaps one of the more telling differences between Canadian and American systems is the much more proactive stance of the judiciary in the American system. Presently there is some debate in Canada as to how proactive we want our judiciary. I see the American judiciary as being empowered and expected to mititgate against such Catch 22 situations as the one the story outlines. Perhaps it would make an interesting Poll to ask
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
What does this ruling mean? If it stands up on appeal, it means StorageTek has a monopoly on service for all of its machines. No independent vendor will be able to compete with them for service contracts because no independent vendor will be authorized to "access" the maintenance code necessary to debug the machine.
Reading between the lines, it also seems to imply that vendors would in the future have a free card to hold their customers hostage. Imagine if a company built in code to cause a range of various complaints. It would be breaking the DMCA to reverse engineer their code and pinpoint that the problems were built in. At the same time, the company would be able to turn a nice profit on charging for "maintenance" contracts to "fix" the "bugs".
Of course, if there were too many such problems it would damage the reputation of their products. But if there were few enough, it could provide just enough extra "free revenue" to provide a useful extra profit source.
Fun stuff huh?
A little planning goes a long way...
I'm frightened. The way things are regressing, we'll have an Orwellian world with a handful of companies controlling everything; simply because they've locked down everybody with their proprietary technologies. What these greed-stricken politicians and clueless judges don't realize is that they're destroying the very premise of capitalism in the name of protecting a few corporations. What's worrying me even more is that technology is evolving at such a rapid pace that i don't see judges even coming close to keeping abreast with it. we shall definitely see more clueless rulings like this one.
If I were a purchasing executive, and had just blown a large amount of money on an SL8500, I'd seriously reconsider buying from StorageTek in the future if they were going to lock me in to their own service plans with such an ability to set prices without any competition.
;)
Odd, EMC has been locking people into service contracts and putting the screws to them for decades
Unless your are in-crowd, meaning you have a "paper" to prove you know to service/use something, DMCA will keep you out.
Not yesterday's trend in USA, where it is more important to have sw/hw/... company controlled "certificates" than university diploma. Only it is sanctioned by law now, not only customer's will to work with you regardless of certificate set you keep on wall behind you.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
Only as long as people keep believing that. This whole "voting 3rd party is a wasted vote" thing is a just self-fulfilling prophecy.
Besides, whether you vote for Bush OR Kerry, you're also going to be "stuck with the government that brought you the DMCA and the Patriot Act in the first place." So you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by voting Libertarian.
-------
Vote Badnarik for President
www.badnarik.org
Maybe it went like this:
StorageTech execs: We were going to commit suicide this month, but we decided on an alternative method of self-destruction. We'll sue to prevent someone from testing our product to make sure it works.
And then we'll get our trademark on Slashdot! We'll be the leader in company deathcycle management.
It's important to realize that the DMCA is not the only corrupt aspect of the U.S. government: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
How does a court that does not understand technical things interpret a law that was written by people who didn't understand technical things? This way:
"... contrary to their assertions, defendants are not saved by 17 U.S.C. 117.3 That section was passed in 1998 as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to protect computer technicians who risked violating copyright law just by turning on the machines they were to service. Thus, the statute provides that it is not an infringement for the owner or lessee of a machine to authorize the making of a copy of a computer program if the program is copied solely by turning on the machine for the purpose only of maintenance and repair and 1) the copy "is used in no other manner and is destroyed immediately after the maintenance and repair is completed," and 2) any part of the computer program that is not necessary for the machine to be activated is not accessed or used. 17 U.S.C. 117(c). Defendants copy the Code by turning on the machine; however, they do so not just for repair, but also for the express purpose of circumventing plaintiff's security measures, modifying the Maintenance Level, and intercepting plaintiff's Event Messages."
"The evidence further shows that plaintiff requires its employees to sign confidentiality agreements and that it denies its customers any rights to the Maintenance Code and Event Messages."
Earlier in the injunction, the court said, "Plaintiff's storage systems are, at their most basic, a large number of tape libraries that plaintiff collectively calls Silo Systems. They have three components: 1) a Library Storage Module, 2) a Library Control Unit, and 3) a Library Management Unit. The first is a very large box-like structure (14' x14' x 8') and a piece of hardware with robotics that is operated by software in the Control and Management units. It typically contains thousands of tapes, tape drives and a robotic arm to store and retrieve tapes as directed."
The court says that it is entirely acceptable that you can buy the room-size hardware from StorageTek, but you can't test it to see if it works: "Plaintiff [StorageTek] also services the customers' installations by means of diagnostic software, the "Maintenance Code," which it uses to identify malfunctions and problems in the customers' storage system. Although the storage systems are programmed with the Maintenance Code along with the functional operations software, the Code is not sold, and only plaintiff has access to it."
It seems to me only fair that StorageTek be required to give the injunction to all prospective customers, so that customers can see the circumstances in which they would be backing up their important data.
In my opinion, a customer would be crazy to trust their data to a company that may go out of business at any time because of incredibly bad management decisions, and amazingly adversarial business practices.
A scene like this will be repeated wherever StorageTek systems are sold: Computer tech: "Oh, you say we're getting a StorageTek system? I'll just put a copy of the injunction on the CEO's desk, with a note saying that we may be sued if we test the system."
So does this mean that with my fancy new car...the one with the factory alarm system...that a locksmith would be breaking the DMCA if he helped me without the factory's permission? Seems about the same to me.
Just another day in Paradise
prevent anyone else from helping you
prevent anyone from learning how to help you
starve out any competition (even if you're allowed to recover your data years later - there will be no one left with the knowledge how to do it)
Good luck recovering your data then.
No, they wont, as it cost them millions of dollars to create. Let's not get blinded by our ideologies. It's not right or wrong to be open or closed source - it's personal preference. Having a go at companies for not releasing their intellectual property they spent millions on to the general public for free is incredibly naive.
Now I see people are talking about what if this was applied to cars but there is a more underlying point here. WHO OWNS THE ITEM IN QUESTION! If I buy a car then is it me or the car company that owns it. now this may sound like a silly question that even a kid could answer it is that I own the car not the company. So as such they have no right what so ever to stop you for doing what ever you like with your car. Any infringement on this is a infringement on your owner ship of the item and this is what we should put in there face. They should not be able to say you cannot open the bonnet on your own car it is your bonnet after all. So if the car needs maintenance then that person has the right to do ever he sees fit to do once given consent by the own me I. This may be a over simplification of the area but I dont understand way anyone what accept or allow any one to dictate more complex conditions that this. Remember it is your car you can do anything you like to it!
We hear a lot about this case on slashdot, appropriately given its dire implications. But you're being unfair. In a properly functioning system, judges don't make the law; they interpret it. The wiretap law targets intercepted transmissions. Email sitting on a server isn't being transmitted.
A bizarre loophole? Yes. Clearly outside the general conception of surveilliance? Sure. But a bad ruling? No. The ruling is correct -- the law is broken. And judges don't make law.
The people who dropped the ball -- as has so often been the case in high tech -- are the people's representatives. You want your email to be safe? Get Congress to pass an updated "wiretap" law.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Yes. But if you reverse-engineer the specs, you can open up a BMW-servicing shop. Under the DMCA, if they encode any bit of the info, you could be sued. That's the issue here: Not that the company has to help you figure out what to do; it's that you're not allowed to discover it on your own.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Perpetual state of war, government controlling the flow of the "free press," re-writing the language (e.g. patriot act), government can review your reading habits without a warrant, there are cameras at every major intersection, cameras located on every isle of meijer, government can listen to your phone conversations with little oversight,,, Did you know you need a permit to protest in public?
At what point do you step back and say... OK, now is it orwellian?
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
What quailifies as circumvention these days?
Holding down the "shift" key.
Sad, isn't it?
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
2. Consider it part of doing business, and raise prices since your profits used to be based mostly on product repairs. Again, makes customers angry.
If repairs were a major source of income of the manufacturer of just about anything, it's time to change suppliers anyway.
Or better, they are trying to monopolize the said market.
The goal of every capitalist is to dominate the market. The lesson here is that our laws and court system are so incredibly broken to allow trivial monopolies to occur without some sort of corresponding public good to outweigh the inefficiencies that come with monopolies. Patents and copyrights are monopolies. That they can be handed out like candy, and retained almost indefinitely (in the case of copyrights), or for obvious or pre-existing inventions, clearly undermines any possible public benefit to granting such a monopoly.
The real tragedy is that YOUR money (in the form of tax dollars) will inevitably go toward enforcing such monopolies under the current law, in the form of court time, paperwork, and legal actions (both civil and criminal if certain lawmakers have their way). Yes, you got that right - you're paying money so that the government can sue you on behalf of monopolists who are ripping you off (in most cases.) That you've already paid for your congresscritters to pass such stupid legislation, and will eventually pay again for the court time and challenges required to overturn such legislation should also be factored into the equation.
Copyrights and patents were meant to reward sharing material and ideas reduced to practice with the public, by protecting your ability to profit from that information even after making the info public. In many cases, I'd argue copyrights really don't apply because there are so many restrictions (ie, copy protection in the form of DRM, shrinkwrap agreements, etc), you're really dealing with something more akin to trade secrets rather than copyright. In the same vein, the companies aren't really sharing the information with the public in exchange for monopoly protection. For example, a publisher issues a DVD which degrades in 5 years, but forbids anyone from making any copies, which means that 20 years down the line, there are no readable copies left. Sounds crazy? Many old films fall into this sort of trap - the only surviving copies exist because somebody violated the "law" by hanging onto something they weren't supposed to, or by making a bootleg duplicate. The irony? Studios doing restorations of films to release onto DVD have relied on such copies (because they didn't take care of their own masters), which have surfaced from time to time, from certain "private" collections.
Theoretically it is supposed to be that every copyrighted work is filed with the Library of Congress, but since they're not getting enough money to store, cateogorize, and preserve such materials, they've long since dropped that requirement. So much for preserving creative works until such time that they lapse into the public domain...
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I have a suggestion for all the purchasing managers/planners/engineers/designers who rely on purchased assemblies - do your back-end homework. This scheme of selling cheap on the front end and screwing you in the back-end has been going on for years. The standard manufacturing mantra has been to sell cheap to get the customer hooked then suck them dry maintaining it. Now the DMCA is being used to secure this business model. Nothing new. If you are going to purchase something, do your homework. How fast does a company obsolete equipment? What is the cost of non-warranty replacement parts? Factory-only service or third-party independents or both? If you want to make a dent, don't buy products from manufacturers that perform back-end gouging. The word will get out, but then the US Congress is the best government that special interests can buy and somehow the special interests will whine that free choice is ruining their business and congress will ban that too to keep the money coming in and their jobs preserved. "A little revolution now and then is a good thing..."
...he would be held liable if he didn't fix it, and the manufacturer is protected from all liability for defective heart stimulators anyway.
so everyone loses except the manufacturer.
Don't believe that, there are still many stupid laws that have yet to be overturned.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Is your company leaving its business critical data at the mercy of a single vendor? Maybe it's time to switch to a sensible alternative.
Back in the '80s Digital Equipment (remember them?) implemented a proprietary bus for their mass storage devices to effectively lock out 3rd party disk drive manufacturers. There was a lot of legal wrangling when the 3rd party vendors removed the proprietary chips from Digital's hardware to use in their own hardware. This was the only way the 3rd party vendors could survive in the Digital market.
So where is Digital Equipment Corporation today? Do you suppose if they were more open in those days we would still find them as a leading manufacturer of computer equipment? What's the liklihood that Storagetek will follow that same path? Because of these events I would never recommend that my company purchase anything from Storagetek. If everyone felt that way, where would that leave Storagetek?
Unless Joe Average has massive amounts of money to pay the lawyers to push that kind of offensive through, no he can't.
If he DOES have that kind of money, he's not Joe Average.
I don't own any EMC kit either! *-8)
Seriously though; a purchasing department should (ideally, har har) consider TCO of a new piece of equipment. In a large corporation, it's a hefty factor in making a decision to go with vendor x or vendor y--"how well can this be fixed? How fast can they service this? How much will it cost me?"
Remember that for a lot of hardware, the initial acquisition cost is only a small portion of its overall lifetime cost.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Guess again. The more stupid DMCA lawsuits that are upheld, the more precedence is set.
Overturn a law? When the yahoos on Capitol Hill can't agree on what truth is, and corporations pour money into their pockets?
I still can't get over how phrases like "Free Speech Zone" and "The Homeland" have entered the language with such little fanfare. Anyone refering to the protection of The Homeland and wearing a little lapel flag 24/7 would have been looked at a little funny in Ye Olden Dayes.
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Hmm... preview ;) Here's what it was supposed to be:
;-)
I plead guilty to posting under influence of not enough sleep and too much coffee, you honour
So whatever you do, you always generate that overhead. Which would probably mean that it's considered normal and is already budgeted.
Yes and no. They certainly plan for some overhead. On the other hand they will only plan for a certain percentage of invalid transactions, if you manage to get over this rate considerably it should cause some trouble. Also there are much more people in countries like the US and Germany and I presume that maybe also the Finnish government is perhaps a little more automated than most German agencies currently are (extrapolating to my perception of Finland vs. Germany). However, the other poster is right that this only works if you manage to get a huge amount of people to contribute, else it will only be a minor annoyance. And it certainly has to go hand in hand with appropriate PR campaigns.
Very simple: I will not permit any vendor to lock me in to their products, so StorageTek will not be eligible to bid on any RFPs that I'm a party to. I vote with my wallet!
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
Isn't there already like 3 precedents that have been set that basically shot down using the DMCA to protect your business model? We have the garage door opener thing, the ink cartridge thing, and....I think there was one other.
I mean, if all that is required for locking people into buying service from you is adding some brain dead authentication scheme, thats just lame.
I think StorageTek will loose.
Which of these is true:
- Your population is underinformed, living in fear and being exploited by corporations
- Everything is hunky-dory, just these troublesome terrorists to deal with (but not the causes, obviously) and they only hate us because we're free or something.
Really, something is wrong with America. The diminishing of personal "liberties" (why didn't you say rights?) you're happy to tolerate is just one symptom, and without treatment of the causal disease (and I'm not pretending to know what it is) there's only one inevitability; the death of America. At best, I think you're looking at civil war within 30 years. Insane? Maybe, but did you argue when Reagan funded the Mujaheddin?The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Except:
1) They sold you the device. What right do thay have to prevent you from modifying your own property to take advantage of capabilities they built into it then proceeded to disable? This is like Intel suing someone for overclocking a processor!
2) Good for StorageTek. If they want to cut their margins in anticipation of future business, that's their problem.
3) If they don't want people to be examining it, they should lock it away in a secure room. Trade secrets have no legal protection as long as they're not leaked in violation of contract - so if I get a StorageTek device and reverse-engineer the trade secrets out... They can't do anything. If they want legal protection and truly have an innovative invention, they can do what everyone else does: patent it.
"2) StorageTek rely upon support contracts to make their libraries profitable. If they allow other companies to support their hardware they will have to charge more for the hardware in the first place."
The same argument can be made for printer cartridges. We know they make a proffit on the cartridges, not the printer. There is the potential for the same thing to happen to anything we replacement/consumable parts.
Blank media, fuel (not going to happen, but it could). Want a new roll of toilet paper for your fancy new automatic toilet paper dispenser? Sorry, that uses a proprietary intelligent roll mechanism. Our brand only.
So I should pay more than I need to for storage in order to keep StorageTek in business?
Err.. no.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
1) a License violation is still a license violation. The DMCA isn't required to
2) Loss leaders aren't the only business model.
3) Trade secrets, keep them secret then, where is the NDA?
Just like the SCO lawsuits, this one was not filed for the purpose of winning in court, but to intimidate and spread FUD. Once PHBs hear that it is "illegal" for them to service equipment in any way without a vendor contract, they will make sure to keep all of their maintenance contracts current.
1) If you tamper with a StorageTek library you can enable unlicensed slots (cells) and enable it to store more tapes than you have paid for. StorageTek are very good in that they allow you to expand your library as you require, rather than making you get a new fully expanded one because you may need the storage space in the future.
/renew the contract). If they don't make money on their machines they are a loss-leader, which is not only dumb but also illegal in several western countries (IIRC Belgium for one, where I had the pleasure of seeing one of these machines up close at a summer job I had whilst at university).
Then that is a fundamental flaw in the way these products are designed. Now, if the machine was delivered with only the slots ordered but room for more (which could be added as a bolt-on) and some kind of hardware dongle to stop the robot arm from accessing these unless they are licensed, problem solved.
2) StorageTek rely upon support contracts to make their libraries profitable. If they allow other companies to support their hardware they will have to charge more for the hardware in the first place.
Any business model that relies on monies brought in from a service contract is fatally flawed from the outset. Let's say for a minute that they build good machines that work 100% of the time, they make no money on support (people wouldn't buy
3) These bits of kit are seriously advanced robotics, there are a lot of trade secrets etc that STK don't really want people to be examining.
So do many production cars, but they don't stop you opening the bonnet and tinkering with them, do they? If you ship a product out, that someone has purchased (not licensed) then you should have no right to stop people opening it up and having a look inside.
I am NaN
The Maintenance Code is copyrighted material and protected intellectual property of StorageTek.
Yeah, OK.
The use of the event messages generated by the maintenance code by the 3rd party maintenance vendor is thus copyright infringement.
Do you have a reference to statute or a precedent that backs that statement up?
It isn't usually the case that data generated by a copyrighted program is automatically assumed to be held under the copyright of the owners of the program. For instance, Microsoft doesn't hold copyright to IP packets that are transmitted by windows machines, even though it is their code that assembles those packets.
Furthermore I believe that, in general, copyright cannot be applied to the result of an automated process. From www.copyright.gov:
Copyright protects "original works of authorship"
There is no authorship here. The article continues:
Copyrightable works include the following categories:
1. literary works;
2. musical works, including any accompanying words
3. dramatic works, including any accompanying music
4. pantomimes and choreographic works
5. pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
6. motion pictures and other audiovisual works
7. sound recordings
8. architectural works
These categories should be viewed broadly. For example, computer programs and most "compilations" may be registered as "literary works"; maps and architectural plans may be registered as "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works."
I don't believe the "event messages" involved fall into any of these categories, however broadly you interpret them.
1) Check to make sure you are allowed 3party services and products 2) If not, Don't buy their products
Something is wrong if the death of a child is required to get a stupid law changed/removed.
Decode these
The problem with this logic of turning all men into criminals is that once one becomes a criminal, one tends to act like one. When to get the bread you need you must break a law that puts you in the same catigory as the thief, why not steal the bread. When Stealing bread has a penalty like killing someone why not kill when you steal as dead men tell no tales. and when men become lawless the govement can no longer rule them.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared