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Cell Phone Owners Allowed To Break Software Locks
An anonymous reader writes "The library of congress approved many copyright exemptions today. Among the exemptions were new rules about cell phones, DVDs, and electronic books." From the article: "Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday.
Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations and let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books.
All told, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. For the first time, the office exempted groups of users. The new rules will take effect Monday and expire in three years.
In granting the exemption for cell phone users, the Copyright Office determined that consumers aren't able to enjoy full legal use of their handsets because of software locks that wireless providers have been placing to control access to phones' underlying programs."
first place and reversing the DMCA? Especially with crap that I buy and should be used in a manner I see fit short of mass distributing it to other anonymous people.
These exemptions are nice and all, and I know the Library of Congress does not have the authority to do more (only Congress itself or the SoC can repeal the DMCA) - but I feel I'm got punched in the face and the LoC is passing by and helpfully giving me a tooth back. What about all the other missing teeth?
With copyright laws being so complicated and contradicting, people care less and less about them. Since it's virtually impossible not to break them, a general "I'm prolly guilty already anyway, who cares?" attitude is spreading.
The more laws you have, the more crime you create.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Namely, the precedent of whitelisting the allowed activity in terms of excercising the fair-use rights.
In a purely technical point of view, what's the difference between being allowed to break the lock on your cell phone to enjoy its use to the fullest extent, and say, breaking the lock on your music to use it to its fullest extent? After all, you still paid for both.
Disclaimer: Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors.
So now I can break software locks for cellphones?
Oh really?
I took this right for granted.
Once I bought something, it's mine and I can do whatever I want with it.
If the only limit is that you can not mass distribute it, then you limit the ability of companies to offer products with more flexible and personalized limits.
Your business model is not a government entitlement program. The rest of us are not bound to rewrite our laws to support it.
Why exactly can't, for example, you and I come to some agreement that, for example, you write some song and I am allowed to listen to it exactly once since this we came to a mutually agreed upon price for which I agreed to listen to it only once?
You should certainly be able to do that under private contract law, but because your business model represents the grossest-imaginable violation of the Constitution's language authorizing copyrights, you should not be able to leverage Federal copyright law to enforce your terms.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
From TFA:
"Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations"
In my day, we called this "fair use", and were allowed to do this as an exemption from general copyright rules.
From TFA:
"let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books."
In my day, we called this "use". It's why we buy the item in the first place - in order to use it. Not in order to sign a scarecrow EULA once the box is open.
Well done America - granting temporary rights to people that they should already have.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
Wow. What a load of crap. Here is the full extent of what the Constitution, which you cite, says about copyright:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Within this broad framework, it is the mandate of legislators to enact legislation and the judiciary to make ruilings that seek to best "promote the progress of science and useful arts" by balancing the needs for rightsholders to be motivated and the public's right to information. Some things, like national defense, are impractical or impossible to contract on a 1-v-1 basis. Likewise, it is impractical if not impossible to have a complete contract written every time any transfer or license of IP occurs. Therefore, much of what we think about IP is determined by judicious consideration of the balance. Now, you personally may not like where the balance was struck most recently. However, your statement of "grossest imaginable violation of the constitution's language" is hyperbole in the extreme, and, more to the point, absolute bollocks. Oh, I'm sorry, was I not actually supposed to cite the constitution and what it actually says? Was I supposed to take your bald assertion on faith?
Of course there is a difference between what would be theoretically possible, and what measures manufacturers are willing to take.
It would also be possible to make the IMEI (the hardware ID) of the phone really immutable, but in practice it seems to be easier for manufacturers to put it in flash memory where after shorter or longer time it becomes possible to change it via hacker tools.
There are different parties involved. Equipment manufacturers, service providers, service technicians, customers. Each has different requirements.
A customer may like a hardwired unique IMEI and would like to see a lockout list for stolen equipment, because that protects him from phone robbery. However, the service provider does not like to lockout stolen phones, because it means a lost potential customer.
A service technician may have to copy the IMEI from old to new phone when he replaces a board, but having this possibility often means that tools are available that allow the change of IMEI, making a lockout based on IMEI inpractical (and this fact is used as a convenient excuse by service providers).
The SIM lock situation is similar. Service providers like it, but manufacturers, technicians and customers probably don't. So again there often are tools to work around it, and they invariably leak out.
He's just opened up some pretty tough definition questions. Who counts as a "security researcher"? Who counts as a "film professor"?
Sign up now to be a faculty member in the film department of my brand new internet university!
That's the way we'd do it if you were a wandering minstrel and I was a local lord of the manor, five hundred years ago. So am I supposed to phone Paul McCartney if I want to play Mull of Kintyre?
A few giant media companies control copyright on most of what we listen to or watch. They don't "come to agreements" with us. They use lobbyists to get laws made to legalsie the conditions they want. There is no negotiation, unless you count "take it or leave it".
Oh, I'm sorry, was I not actually supposed to cite the constitution and what it actually says? Was I supposed to take your bald assertion on faith?
No, you were supposed to actually read what you were cutting and pasting. Specifically, the part about a "limited time."
Does your DRM scheme contain an automatic sunset provision to ensure that you actually live up to your end of the copyright bargain... the part that says your work must revert to the public domain upon expiration? If it doesn't (and let me take a wild guess here: it doesn't), then you are not operating within the bounds of copyright law as envisioned by the framers.
That's not to say that the deal you're offering is necessarily a bad one for consumers, but in any reasonable world, the minute you take steps to ensure that your content can never enter the public domain, you should no longer be entitled to legal monopoly protection. You're just another looter looking for a free ride at public expense.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Because this is the domain of copyright - limiting the right to copy to the copyright holder, except in cases of fairuse.
Copyright is not meant to limit what I can do, like circumvent hardware to get at that copy to make a backup or to make the hardware do as I please (like say put linux on my macbook), in the privacy of my own home.
That's like saying I can't legally use music sheets to scribble notes on if I like it.
This is a blow to FOSS, anti-copyright and anti-paten movement. Implicit in this examption is that the other kind of activities are not exampt. (or maybe it's not all that implicit after all, but I am not a lawyer...) Also, if they are beginning to exampt this and that group of people for various reason, where they will stop? This area of law is relatively young and not all things has been sorted out yet, and introducing these sort of complication at this point in time seems not in the best interest of public.
This smells like the very first step in becoming like US tax law: an unfair system benefitting mostly rent seekers that cannot even be fixed due to too much entanglement of too many different special interest groups.
will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations
Which you can only do by bypassing the copy protection. Does this make DeCSS legal, and the "no breaking encryption" clause of the DMCA void?
DRM and the expiration of copyright are irrelevant to each other. When copyrights expire, there are any number of avenues for you to leave behind your DRMed file.
Really? How so? Are you aware that rightsholders are no longer required to deposit a copy of their work with the Library of Congress? That requirement was established precisely to ensure the eventual availability of protected works to the public domain, and it didn't actually go away until 1976, I believe. Without the requirement to deposit a copy in an accessible form, all of your suggested "avenues to leave the file behind" are entirely voluntary.
But I'm sure that almost everyone who takes advantage of the DMCA's anti-circumvention protection has deposited unprotected copies for release to the public domain at the appropriate time... right?
Most importantly, in 50 or 60 years when the copyrights actually expire, will you still even want your 128kbps mp3? Of course not. The public domain file will be provided in a superior format from a master recording.
Um. OK, I guess, if you say so.
Moreover, there's no fundamental reason why future DRM can't include a system which automatically disables DRM upon copyright expiration.
Then there's no fundamental reason why future laws can't be passed to take that into consideration.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Most importantly, in 50 or 60 years when the copyrights actually expire, will you still even want your 128kbps mp3? Of course not. The public domain file will be provided in a superior format from a master recording.And where, pray tell, would this recording come from? All would be fine and dandy if the original master recording is still around. But for all we know, the company having done such recording may long have gone bust, or they might still be around, but unwilling to provide it for whatever reason. So, the only way to keep companies honest would be to force them to deposit an DRM-unencumbered copy at the Library of Congress. But, AFAIK, there is no such law. And even if there were, who's gonna check that all those zillions of media deposited daily are indeed compliant? Moreover, there's no fundamental reason why future DRM can't include a system which automatically disables DRM upon copyright expiration. But of course, any system which checks the validity of DRM licenses would be attacked as an invasion of "privacy."Such a system would have to rely on an online server in order to be reliable. This would, as you rightfully point out, carry the potential of privacy invasion. But most importantly, who would operate such server once the copyright expires? Companies go under, you know, or they might simply claim that it is an unreasonable burden to operate such a server without economic benefit to them.
And where, pray tell, would this recording come from? All would be fine and dandy if the original master recording is still around. But for all we know, the company having done such recording may long have gone bust, or they might still be around, but unwilling to provide it for whatever reason.
Heh... stick around, and someone will eventually trot out the tried-and-true, "B-b-but there's no such thing as unbreakable protection. A friendly hacker will eventually come along and deprotect the work!" argument, using lofty-sounding language worthy of Madison himself.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
What happens when your laptop gets stolen? What happens when someone implants a trojan on your computer that allows him free access to your data?
There are so many opportunities for (and cases of) data theft that being liable for the leaking could well be a can of worms you don't even want to think about opening.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I guess the cell phone companies didn't get their checks in to their congresscritters' campaigns in time.
[ home ]
In practice, works that lose their protection are in the public domain, but you'd be a fool to think that this was a primary consideration of the framers.
Let me point you back to the first clause in your sentence, specifically: "In practice, works that lose their protection are in the public domain". Then you go on to create a hypothetical argument to justify yourself, because apparently YOU know what the framers intended, and WE don't. Again - In practice, works that lose their protection are in the public domain. This wasn't any different back then. They knew that, otherwise an amendment would have been tacked on really quickly - when the first copyrights began to expire.
We're talking about DVD's and music and other DRM'd stuff here anyway. I doubt very much that everyone wearing a Jar-Jar T-shirt with an image illegally ripped from a Star Wars DVD is going to stop Hollywood from "innovating" and making movies, so the progress argument is mostly moot in this case. Still-
You think that copyright promotes progress - this is not true. Oh, it promotes progress for the author in terms of advancing the bank account. This does not guarantee, however, that this author is the best person to take a "next step" with that invention and create something else, however. The more information is shared (a great example being education, where knowledge is shared) the more likely you are to stimulate more individuals who have the potential to have their own stroke of genius.
Copyright law as it currently stands exists to protect revenue streams. Not "progress in science and the arts". It's logical that a copyright owner wants to maximize this revenue. But that doesn't mean it's a good thing for society. A lot of us would love to know how certain things are done - at a software level for example - out of curiosity. But if we know how to do 'X' efficiently, some of us might be able to come up with Y, Z, or even a whole different alphabet. We're called criminals now, however. How dare we 'reverse engineer' stuff...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Do not equate "free market" with "infinitely granular market".
A free market exists when producers can sell their wares whenever, however, and to whomever they wish, with a view towards maximizing profit. Maximum profit often means bundles, bargains, wheeling, dealing, coupons, loss-leaders, lock-ins, etc. etc. etc.
Everyone ultimately benefits because the incentives to produce are maximized. That would not be so in your infinitely granular market, which could not profitably support certain bundles, package deals, and loss leaders.
The ultimate freedom is, of course, still yours: you can sit at home, buy nothing, trade nothing. To ask for more is to ask to have a private right to unilaterally dictate terms to any who are guilty of the crime of production.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
But of course, any system which checks the validity of DRM licenses would be attacked as an invasion of "privacy."
If you have to validate the licence by contacting a remote server, not only is it an invasion of privacy, but if the remote server is inaccessible you lose the ability to use the content that you have licenced. So if the licensor goes out of business, you have ultimately lost access to everything you have paid for. I've brought up this comment with regards to DRM schemes like iTMS before, and invariably I get a comment like "There's no way a big company like Apple would go under" - what a naive claim. Big companies go under all the time, you only have to look at Enron for a recent example.
For me, this is the big deal - if my entire music library that I have *paid* for suddenly stops working, I'm going to be pretty pissed off.
Also, the ability to use DRM'd content *now* is a big deal. If I have paid for some content, why must I also be required to pay a licence fee to the owner of the DRM technology? This is usually going to either tie me to specific hardware (e.g. I'd have to buy a commercial BluRay player and HDCP capable TV), cost me an infeasable amount of money (wanna try asking Microsoft for a licence to decode WMP's DRM in your personal project?) or tie me to a specific operating system (why should I be required to buy Windows - an operating system that is completely useless to me - and a new computer to run it on, just so I can play some Microsoft DRM protected content? Seems rather anticompetetive to me - what we effectively have is a cartel of corporations who are doing their level best to lock anyone else out of the market.
Here is a real world example: I use MythTV as my PVR with a DVB-S card. I cannot use this system to pick up much of the satellite programming here in the UK because it is broadcast using NDS-Videoguard encryption. The *only* way you can use such broadcasts with a PVR (without going through the analogue hole) is to buy Sky's own Sky+ PVR system. Sounds anticompetetive doesn't it? Sky have a monopoly on satellite enabled PVRs in the UK because noone else can legally produce a PVR system that can receive many of the satellite channels. This doesn't just apply to Sky's own channels either - many channels that are touted as "free" are still encrypted using this system and you still have to buy Sky licenced equipment to receive these channels. (And before anyone suggests that Sky own the satellite, they don't - SES own the Astra 2 constellation.)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
It's a sham. You can imagine that means all the "exemptions" are only allowed through non free tools. The big dumb companies are still able to change the law with their software at will, so the tools will soon make the exemption impossible without specific permission. No one in the US will be able to distribute DeCSS and you don't really have the ability to use your media as you please. The copyright warriors, on the other hand, will all point to it and claim that "legitimate" fair use exists and that content is being archived and all the other criticism of the DMCA are bogus.
Bottom line: only big dumb companies like those that vend cell phones may break the DMCA because their activity was not supposed to be restricted in the first place.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This story seems to indicate that a librarian has the power to write or alter laws. None of the Americans posting seem to think this is in any way odd or inappropriate, but I'm sitting here in Britain thinking 'wtf?'
I'm used to the US governing system being a bit impenetrable (Gore getting more votes than Bush but still losing, for example) but this one really is rather perplexing to an outsider, could anyone explain what's going on here?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Not quite. We have had a law in the UK, that as I understand it, means that carriers must have made their money back within the first year, and then the phone can be legally unlocked.
Funnily enough, they sell phones in the same way. Most phone unlocking is done by a guy at a street stall, for £10, and most people probably assume it isn't quite legal. The carriers aren't stopping subsidies pf phones, because they know if they don't the other carriers will.
What they do dictate however is the features that go into phones. How would you like a wifi enabled phone, that connected to your home LAN and made VOIP calls when you were in range. Out of range, and you get charged for a normal mobile call. The technology is there, but no carrier is going to commit to a phone that will essentially lose them revenue. Guess who the mobile phone manufacturers biggest customers are...? The carriers. Screw them. You ought not to be defending another business model that is holding back innovation, and giving customers what they really want.
Incorrect. Your quotation is out of context - it is not a mandate, it is part the enumeration of powers of Congress.
Congress has the authority to create copyrights and patents. It is not constitutionally required to exercise that power, any more than it is required to borrow money or declare war.
Note also that said power is to create artifical rights only for authors and inventors - not to their employers, heirs, assignees, or anyone else. Modern copyright law bears little relation to the actual legal power of Congress.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
For some reason the same people spouting their "free market" religion are the same people seeking subsidies and advantage. My ultimate point -- is that the real problem isn't DRM but the system that allows it to happen. If there wasn't collusion and anti-competitive behavior, it wouldn't be allowed to exist. We have to attack the root cause, not the symptom.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
By that logic, basejumpers, bungee jumpers, etc, would be dead before impact. No, it *IS* the impact that kills you. When you're falling at such speeds, your blood has problems flowing - sudden impact starts everything inside you into violent motion, causing very severe stress upon your internals and potentially causing shutdown - this is why we have airbags, parachutes, etc., to stop that impact.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.