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EFF Warns TI Not To Harass Calculator Hobbyists
Ponca City, We love you writes "The EFF has warned Texas Instruments not to pursue legal threats against calculator hobbyists who perform modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators. TI's calculators perform a 'signature check' that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded, but researchers have reverse-engineered signing keys, allowing tinkerers to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators' hardware. In response, TI has unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act require the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys. 'This is not about copyright infringement. This is about running your own software on your own device — a calculator you legally bought,' says EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. 'Yet TI still issued empty legal threats in an attempt to shut down discussion of this legitimate tinkering. Hobbyists are taking their own tools and making them better, in the best tradition of American innovation.'"
Exactly. If the EFF decides to pursue this to the end, it will more than likely give others pause when trying to stop people from USING their PURCHASED electronic devices.
They aren't talking about "hacking IP". They are talking about using hardware, think linux on Intel hardware. If Intel required signed bootloaders, do you think the law would protect them too?
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The DMCA is totally ridiculous, but it's the only thing TI can grasp onto in this situation. TI graphing calculators are the de facto standard for many high school and university level math classes. It's easy to verify that one has had the memory erased when it's in an untampered state. Of course there are somewhat sneaky ways to make it look like it's been erased without close inspection, but performing the reset in front of someone made it almost a certainty. If the hack causes schools to move away from such an "untrustworthy" device, TI stands to lose many sales of those overpriced gadgets.
Which code, precisely, is being protected?
Breaking the checksum allows you to load alternate code on the calculator, so how exactly does it protect a copyrighted work?
I know you're kidding, but the sad thing is that this is probably just company lawyers trying to justify their jobs. Most TI engineers are likely to not care or love the hacks for the geek factor. TI ought to capitalize on this, not suppress it.