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How Hardware Makers Come To Violate Free Software Licenses

Posted by timothy on from the they-were-hoping-to-ask-permission dept.

H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "Veteran violation chasers Shane Coughlan and Armijn Hemel have summarized how license violations are caused in the consumer electronics market under time-to-market pressure and thin profit margins: 'This problem is compounded when one board with a problem appears in devices supplied to a number of western companies. A host of violation reports spanning a dozen European and American businesses may eventually point towards a single mistake during development at an Asian supplier.' They also discuss the helpful organizations which have sprung up and the documents and procedures now available."

8 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. like those DVDs by Janek+Kozicki · · Score: 4, Interesting

    like those DVD players that used mplayer but didn't release mplayer's sourcecode?

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    1. Re:like those DVDs by langelgjm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hey. You weren't complaining when region free DVD players stopped honoring the "intellectual property" of the DVD content "owners".

      Region codes don't have anything to do with honoring or not honoring intellectual property of DVD content producers. They are technological measures designed to segment the market so that producers can price discriminate more easily. The only reason they would be related to copyright law is because they can also be construed as a copy protection measure, and circumventing that is a violation of the DMCA. As everyone around here should know, it's entirely possible to violate the DMCA without actually infringing copyrights.

      If region-free DVD players are illegal, it would only be because the manufacturers of such players signed on to the DVD spec and didn't abide by it, or because they never signed on to the spec in the first place and are perhaps infringing on patents that the DVD Forum allows its members to use. That's a problem for the DVD Forum and its rivals to sort out, and doesn't really have to do with the content on the DVD so much as the licensing agreement surrounding the DVD spec.

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      "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
    2. Re:like those DVDs by Enter+the+Shoggoth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hey. You weren't complaining when region free DVD players stopped honoring the "intellectual property" of the DVD content "owners".

      Region codes don't have anything to do with honoring or not honoring intellectual property of DVD content producers. They are technological measures designed to segment the market so that producers can price discriminate more easily. The only reason they would be related to copyright law is because they can also be construed as a copy protection measure, and circumventing that is a violation of the DMCA. As everyone around here should know, it's entirely possible to violate the DMCA without actually infringing copyrights.

      If region-free DVD players are illegal, it would only be because the manufacturers of such players signed on to the DVD spec and didn't abide by it, or because they never signed on to the spec in the first place and are perhaps infringing on patents that the DVD Forum allows its members to use. That's a problem for the DVD Forum and its rivals to sort out, and doesn't really have to do with the content on the DVD so much as the licensing agreement surrounding the DVD spec.

      The whole thing with region-coding is laughable anyway. Region coding was found to be illegal under Australian anti-competition laws yet every major electronics chain still stocks dozens of infringing units from Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, etc. al. And just about every DVD sold here is region encoded.

      The authorities have not brought a single case against any of the multinationals.

      Yet another data-point that shows so called "Intellectual Property" laws are about one thing and one thing alone: protecting the interests of large corporations over those of both the producers and the consumers of content.

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      Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
      Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
  2. Re:Free Software Licenses? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Funny

    That reminds me of this classic, hivemind confusing post

    http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=6823&cid=886346

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  3. Feed the troll time! by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Woohoo.. I love doing stuff that is bad for me, it's the best kind of stuff.

    Why is copyright bad in pro-piracy articles and good in free software articles?

    Uhhh.. because its being used for different purposes? Why are automatic weapons a good thing in armed resistance to tyranny but a bad thing in shopping mall shootings? Are you so seriously retarded that you can't tell the difference between a goal and the tools used to achieve that goal?

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    How we know is more important than what we know.
  4. Re:Free Software Licenses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Come on, bonch. You are either hopelessly confused or an intentional troll.

    Copyright infringement is that, copyright infringement and *not theft*. It is still an infringement -- whether it concerns a work put under the GPL or the newest song by the Spice Girls.

    No sensible person here is contending that. It's just this meme of "intellectual property" which we are contending. Copyright, trademark and patents are basically fine (although not as they are now. Especially: copyright terms are too long, patents shouldn't apply to software, maths or business methods, yadda, yadda).

    (I am able to imagine a society without copyrights, patents and even trademarks: we wouldn't need the GPL there. But that is open to lots of debate, I know).
    Clear now?

  5. Re:Free Software Licenses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not all open source fans are pro piracy.

    I'm in fact against piracy, if someone asks me a free copy of office he will get Openoffice.

    If he insists on getting Microsoft office I'll tell him to go buy it.

  6. Re:NO, this is NOT the reason by Nursie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ah, the BSD troll.

    There have been a lot of cases (the linksys modding scene for instance) in which the lack of GPL would have meant no release of source or tools. There are a variety of other examples.

    I also don't believe for a second that linux would have got where it is today, with multiple big-name companies supporting it and contributing to it if they had not been forced to reopen their changes.

    Thirdly, lots of people don't like the idea of contributing to a project which can then be swept up and used by commercial entities without them being made to have the courtesy to contribute back.

    At this point BSD is basically an also-ran. Great project, great OS I'm sure, but not on the same level as linux or supported in anything like the same way in terms of FOSS and commercial software. At least a some of this is down to the environment created by the differing licenses.