Universal Garage Door Opener OK under DMCA

Dave Walker writes "According to the EFF's Deep Links page, the Federal Circuit yesterday affirmed that the DMCA does not 'divest the public of the property rights that the Copyright Act has long granted to the public.' The ruling goes on to state 'Consumers who purchase a product containing a copy of embedded software have the inherent legal right to use that copy of the software. What the law authorizes, Chamberlain cannot revoke.' EFF's archives of the case can be found here. Another small victory for the good guys. I think I need a new garage door opener anyhow."

Comments

How far reaching is this?

[bay43270]

'Consumers who purchase a product containing a copy of embedded software have the inherent legal right to use that copy of the software. What the law authorizes, Chamberlain cannot revoke.'

How is this different from making a copy of my nintendo game to use on my computer? Or accessing my fairplay encoded music from another music player?

Re:How far reaching is this?

[black mariah]

Not the same thing. We're talking about embedded software. Think more along the lines of universal remote controllers (wait, that's what this is about...). Making a copy of a Nintendo game isn't using that copy, it's using another copy (pedantic semantics, but hey that's law), although I can see where this ruling could be used as precedent. What most people fail to understand is that the RIAA, MPAA, Nintendo, your mom, and the King of Spain don't give a fuck about you making a copy of a CD to put in your car. What they DO care about is you copying that CD and distributing it wholesale to anyone and everyone.

Re:How far reaching is this?

[chromaphobic]

the RIAA, MPAA, Nintendo, your mom, and the King of Spain don't give a fuck about you making a copy of a CD to put in your car

Nor do they give a fuck about my legal right to do so. One which the have, on occasion, infringed upon. One which they, I suspect, would happily get permanently revoked if given the choice.

Small?

[lynx_user_abroad]

Another small victory for the good guys.

I'd question the use of "small" here. To me, this looks like the whole DMCA house of cards collapsing.

How long will it be before the Courts recognise a CSS-protected DVD as nothing more than a computer program we run to produce the video?

Re:Small?

[BillyBlaze]

Suffice it to say that "Consumers who purchase a product containing a copy of embedded software have the inherent legal right to use that copy of the software." is a wonderful precedent, and if it still holds with "a movie" in place of "embedded software," then we'd finally be allowed to use play the movies we purchase however the fuck we want.

Re:Small?

[lynx_user_abroad]

Please explain your train of thought on this one, because I just don't get it.

Yes, perhaps I was a tad bit opaque...

Let's review:
Chamberlain sells a garage door opener with a proprietary remote. Skylink built a "universal" garage door opener which was able to operate a Chamberlain garage door by triggering the execution of Chamberlain software within the garage door opener unit. This undercut Chamberlain's ability to charge monopoly rents for replacement garage door openers, and pretty much shot holes through thair claim of added security of requiring a Chamberlain garage door opener in order to open a Chamberlain garage door. Since Chamberlain owns the copyright to their software within the garage door opener, and claiming Skylink was not "authorized" to copy/run their software, they charged Skylink with a DMCA violation.

The court ruled that, because the owner of the garage door opener was authorized to run that software when triggered by the Chamberlain remote, there was no infringment when the access control mechanism (the official remote) was circumvented by a competing remote.

The analogy to CSS-encrypted DVD's should be clear: If you have purchased a legitimate CSS-encrypted DVD, you have the right to access the copyrighted content on the DVD in whatever fashion you choose.

Now this ruling doesn't appear to do anything to affect the access controls portion of the DMCA. From that I'd infer, for example, that DeCSS would be clearly legal, provided it offers the same access controls as every other DVD player (won't allow direct copying of digital content, etc.) I'd also presume an X-box mod chip would be okay, provided it didn't include the to ability to play pirated games, i.e. was only usable to run linux on the hardware, not non-legit X-box games.

Re:Small?

[lynx_user_abroad]

Analogies don't work when it comes to legal matters.

Well certainly analogies are neither findings nor rulings, if that's what you mean, but they are sometimes the best tool available when speaking to an audiesnce of non-lawyers.

...wibbly lines don't hold up in court.

If we've decided to make no attempt to interpret this ruling (gots to avoid those "wibbly lines" at all costs) then all it really means is that Skylink has a ruling in it's favor to strengthen it's arguments. Not much disputing that, for sure. But not really much fun in that, either. So we gather at Slashdot (where all the important stuff of the world happens anyway) to interpret this ruling.

All it means is that you can use the software embedded in your DVD player.

This ruling can be read to strengthen the argument that the DMCA was not intended to take away the rights a purchaser of copyrighted work has always been presumed to have. This was made clear from the Court's conclusions:

The DMCA does not create a new property right for copyright owners. Nor, for that matter, does it divest the public of the property rights that the Copyright Act has long granted to the public. The anticircumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the DMCA create new grounds of liability. A copyright owner seeking to impose liability on an accused circumventor must demonstrate a reasonable relationship between the circumvention at issue and a use relating to a property right for which the Copyright Act permits the copyright owner to withhold authorization as well as notice that authorization was withheld. A copyright owner seeking to impose liability on an accused trafficker must demonstrate that the trafficker's device enables either copyright infringement or a prohibited circumvention. Here, the District Court correctly ruled that Chamberlain pled no connection between unauthorized use of its copyrighted software and Skylink's accused transmitter. This connection is critical to sustaining a cause of action under the DMCA. We therefore affirm the District Court s summary judgment in favor of Skylink.

This ruling does not give you the right to go batshit crazy with your DVD's.

Perhaps you meant affirm instead of give? Rights are not "granted" by the courts (or even by the legislature, for that matter.) but Courts are often called upon to affirm those rights posessed by all. The ruling does clearly state that no new property rights were created by the DMCA. And if a "property right" is "the right to deny others the use of a property" then it appears no rights in this resepct were either created or destroyed.
It doesn't say I have the right to, for example, make a copy of a DVD (which Copyright law prohibits) but it does say the copyright owner who wants to charge me with circumventing his access controls has the burden to show that the circumvention has allowed me to access copyright materials which I was not previously authorized to access, and show that I was put on notice that such access is prohibited.

What that has to do with "batshit" I can't say.

DVD's are not hardware. There is no embedded software. Files are not software, ergo the precedent of this ruling means nothing.

DVD's are not protected by copyright law; it's the copyrighted content which the law protects, and protects similarly in the form of a string of bits on a DVD, software embedded in a hardware device, a file on a floppy, or whatever. Form is relevant, but media is not.

All this ruling does is ensure that you can use a universal remote with your DVD player.

Re:So does this mean...

[black mariah]

No. You are entitled to use the software, not distribute it at will. You may argue that distribution is use, but try telling that to the GPL defenders around here.

Message to marketing folks and CEOs

[SpaceLifeForm]

Don't try to protect your junk by hiding behind the DMCA. You waste your money on lawyers too.

Reading through the courts document, it appears that Skylink does not circumvent anything. Chamberlain built a GDO (Garage Door Opener) system that also has a 'feature' to help prevent someone from 'stealing' the code to open the door. However, the system also has a 'feature' that allows the system to be reset. The Skylink transmitter (Model 39) takes avantage of the second of these 'features'. Using the Skylink transmitter with the Chamberlain GDO allows the door to be controlled, but you lose the first feature.