Slashdot Mirror
Hack an Oscilloscope, Get a DMCA Take-Down Notice From Tektronix
An anonymous reader writes with the news that Hackaday published an article on the poor security of the add-on modules that Tektronix sells as expensive add-ons to unlock features in certain of its oscilloscopes. The reader writes: "It has come to attention of Tek's legal eagles and they now want the article to be taken down. Perhaps they can ask Google to forget that page?"
No need when HAD instantly back down and alter the content of the page.
Also, for it to be a DCMA, doesn't the requested takedown have to have something to do with DRM?
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
Sorry, DMCA. damn typo.
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
Corporations are not people
The car analogy:
"Owen says:
July 28, 2014 at 8:09 am
If you download the trial version of a piece of software you might also have to pay $500 to “de-cripple” features that are already present in the version you’ve got.
If you download a crack for it to unlock those features because the company didn’t make it difficult enough for people to get around their protection, that still doesn’t make it right.
I imagine Tektronix just rely on the fact that a lot of people that buy their expensive kit will be businesses and businesses generally have to do things by the book, so they won’t bother unlocking things they haven’t paid for, in the same way Adobe relies on business users to buy Photoshop and mostly overlooks all the home users not paying for it."
Since this is an abuse of the DMCA law Hack-a-day could have told Tektronics to go fuck themselves, but no ...
After receiving that DMCA notice Hack-a-day quickly changed the wording of the original article (without the permission of the original author, of course)
Using copyright to censor a hack which consist basically in explaining that the crippled features of the oscilloscope can be unlocked using the plain SKUs listed in the very own manufacturer page is a DCMA abuse.
No need when HAD instantly back down and alter the content of the page
Perhaps this is not intended, but a side benefit of DMCA is that the use of DMCA against a certain website will give indication of which site has backbone which site hasn't
HAD certain hasn't
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
the article is safely stored in the wayback machine, and i have made a backup away from the reaches of the stupid DMCA.
yet another project ripe for the application of the streisand effect
Fear not, the original article is still available http://web.archive.org/web/201...
Have never like tek scopes that much, or Agilent. In fact my fav. Scopes are Yokogawa DLM series.
All the manufacturers do the cripple thing though. If you want free I2C or LIN or CAN or USB or UART, buy a PC scope like a CleverScope.
46137
It's an acronym for Digital Control My Ass, so you were right the first time.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
oh, dear you're being assholes about releasing broken software - maybe I won't then.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The Google cache was taken down. The original author seems to have agreed to take down the information on his site as well, even without having been contacted him-self:
https://sites.google.com/site/...
However, they were too late. The web archive has already archived their pages. Here are the relevant links:
http://web.archive.org/web/201...
http://web.archive.org/web/201...
(not modified)
https://oshpark.com/profiles/m...
http://web.archive.org/web/201...
I'm not sure that the letter published qualifies as a DMCA takedown request, as it doesn't actually mention any part of the DMCA or any other copyright act that has been broken. I'm not sure that a short keyphrase constitutes copyright-protected matter, for one thing. And it's not like publishing the information violates the noncircumvention part of the Act, because they aren't circumventing an anticopying mechanism. They're circumventing a different mechanism entirely I suspect they're just trying their luck.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Tektronix is now owned by DANAHER corp. It is the same corp that bought Fluke and declared that nobody else can produce yellow DVMâ(TM)s. Remember the DVMs Sparkfun was importing but were seized at the border? Same company.
They gobble up good brands, and it seems the production is often sent overseas. Some folks say the quality of those great Amercian brands then suffers. Do a search and you'll see a long list of companies.
Because who bought their oscilloscopes is unlikely to have the expertise necessary to replicate this hack. It's not like they are people that work with digital electronics every day. I wonder what combination they use for their briefcase.
The DMCA doesn't mention DRM. It mentions somethign along the lines of mechanisms that prevent access to protected works (software can be a mechanism for the purposes of the act).
Personally I don't think this should qualify as infringement since it prevents use - which should not be a copyright violation - rather than duplication, but that's my opinion on what the law should be rather than what it would be when interpreted by the courts.
And here I was thinking it was Don't Copy My Ass...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
An anonymous reader writes with the news that Hackaday published an article on the poor security of the add-on modules that Tektronix sells as expensive add-ons to unlock features in certain of its oscilloscopes.
The add-on modules are expensive because you pay for the features they unlock, not for the components of the unlock device itself. It's a dongle.
This guy is essentially trying to cheat. It's like you could unlock some cool DLC content for a game, but instead just went cracking the encrypted data files and getting that content without paying the game company.
Hey, if you don't like a scope which has this kind of feature unlock capability, just don't buy it. But stop messing with other people's legitimate business. I can understand why Tektronix is upset about this.
I agree with you, but the law has more or less been written to allow corporations to maximize profits.
In truth, I think the DMCA is so broadly written that if they had a default password of "password", their level of incompetence at security is irrelevant. What matters is they had a pretense of security.
In this case, they've locked out functionality which is already there, and are charging for access to it -- or it sounds like that.
I agree that it's your device and you should be able to do anything with it, but apparently publishing it so allow other people to not pay for already there features is a bad thing -- because it interferes with a shitty business model and involves a digital lock.
I think in general, people should just start posting reviews of Techtronix saying they're greedy bastards who sell crippled hardware and then charge ransom to unlock it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
All of the manufacturers now ship devices fully kitted and use licenses to unlock/enable additional features. It's less expensive to manufacture one SKU, and then differentiate models by selectively enabling features.
At least one of the Chinese manufacturers has know about these hacks for quite a while and apparently isn't doing much about it. I expect that they are allowing this to obtain more market share from the hobbyists as I doubt most commercial operators would void warranties.
Tek is essentially selling a software package as a value add, and they'll charge what they can until Agilent/Keysight one ups them with less expansive software.
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
Then complain the modules are expensive? Get a Rigol. If you even still need a scope nowadays.
This scope worship is baffling to me. Sure, Tektronix was instrumental (ha ha) in creating the modern oscilloscope and built really good ones, but that was decades ago.
With today's very small features and gargantuan SoCs, what's the use of a scope? 99% of the time all you need is a DMM and a logic analyzer, the system can diagnose itself as long as the power is good!
And for hacker/hobby stuff, it's not the '60s anymore. I think scopes have become like a hardware fetish for some people.
"OOoohh gotta have one!"
"Um, what for?"
"CUZ YOU GOTTA HAVE ONE!!!!"
Yes. You may be able to guess the password, but based on the "reasonable man" test, I think most people would assume that you weren't meant to guess it. I don't have a problem with this in principle. I do have a problem that it seems to allow companies to extend the reach of copyright.
My way of seeing it is that anyone who buys the oscilloscope has a legally acquired copy of the software. They just can't access it. Actually accessing legally acquired software should not be illegal. It's not like there's a business model that would be unsustainable without the protection. If they don't want people to use the software, then don't give them the software. If they pay extra then provide the software.
I agree with your desscription of it being "crippled". This is essentially a law criminalising repair. In the physical world, if I were to sell off faulty stock (which is legitimate as long as I was honest about the fact that it was faulty), I would not be able to use the law to prevent them from repairing it, even if the buyer was competing with my repair business.
lexmark tried to use the DMCA to lockout 3rd party ink and lost in the courts.
Nobody ever does work with analog circuits...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Don't worry, I'm sure Tektronix will suffer the full penalties of abusing the DMCA. *doles out zero penalties* There, done.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Good choice. Buying from another vendor sends much better message than buying the Tektronix product ("hey, I like your artificially crippled products, please make more") and then going with the pirate modules.
Back in the day, a lot of manufacturers sold different types of VHS recorders, some with more "features" than others. It turned out that all the "buttons" were there behind the plastic faceplate, and it was just the faceplate itself that determined which were the cheap/feature-less models and which were the more expensive models.
And of course, simply prying off the plastic revealed the extra features.
So, back in the day, would that be a DMCA violation? Would that be theft? Would the IP police be busting down my door and holding a gun to my head for removing a piece of plastic???
'Cause that's what we're headed towards, boys and girls.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Old tube scopes turned on faster than the shitty new ones from Techtronix
By now, most people interested in this, who might otherwise never heard about it, know about it. Good work, Tektronix lawyers. Welcome to the Streisand effect.
It's not like there's a business model that would be unsustainable without the protection
A free 30-day trial is a fairly common business model in software. And it involves giving access to software with full functionality.
back in my day, an Oscilloscope would be exempt from the DMCA, unless they passed an Analog version.
Funny. Yesterday we had a couple of modules come in for our MDO3K series scopes, and a co-worker and I were hypothesizing about what's in the modules. We concluded they were probably using smartcard IC's, because after all you're selling these things to engineers - people who would be smart enough to break the system if you did something cheap like a TWI EEPROM.
Ha!
Thanks to this DMCA takedown, and the attention it brought, we'll be breaking out the Bus Pirate. You won't need a smartcard connector or custom PCB - a half dozen pogo pins on protoboard will do the job just fine.
In my company, one of our products comes with a useful database. The license clearly stipulates that the database and its updates are only allowed to be used with the product. It is a kind of courtesy to make that product more user friendly. For integration into big central systems the database is available separately with different licensing schemes. Predictably, in the end we had to encrypt the database to enforce compliance, as too many customers (it must be said: less so in western countries) would not care to follow the license. Just because you technically can do something, doesn't make it right, esp. if it is not allowed according to the license.
So if Chrysler sold a car without working air-con and without a working stereo, but if you pay $3000 they will enable them, and then someone discovers that the technological measure is they don't put a fuse in the fuse box, and then you stick a fuse in there, is that a technological measure protected by the DMCA?
I don't think so, because it's not obvious that this is a mechanism to prevent access, but if they put a lock there (no matter how weak) to prevent you from adding the fuse then it possibly would be. At least that's the analogy. If we're talking about a real car then obviously it wouldn't be.
So if Chrysler sold a car without working air-con and without a working stereo, but if you pay $3000 they will enable them, and then someone discovers that the technological measure is they don't put a fuse in the fuse box, and then you stick a fuse in there, is that a technological measure protected by the DMCA?
I think it has to be something covered by copyright law like computer code. I don't think that particular use case would apply here since it involves nothing that is affected by copyright law.
This is unfortunately an old practice that has been going on for decades.
I bought a US made digital scope over a decade ago the TDS220. With it I bought the communications module providing serial RS232, Parallel centronics, and HPGIB interfaces. With it I could connect an HP Laser printer, or Epson Dot Matrix printer and produce hard copies with a limited library of printers. Ths goal was to print to my PC. Then I found out that capibility was bundled in an expensive software package which was extra. Due to my low volume, I could not justify the expense, so to post documentation online, I used an HP 1100 laser printer and a Cannon flatbed scanner.
Tecktronics did not offer a simple driver just to capture the image on a PC.
Needless to say, that was the last Tektronics scope I purchased. Any future purchases would include a built in USB interface, with nessarry software as part of the TCO when shopping. I won't be burned twice by the batteries not included sales games.
As a scope, the scope works fine as long as you don't want a screenshot directly transferred to a PC. For what I paid to obtain the communications module without any communicaitons software was a huge letdown. The printer module was only a little cheaper. Without the software, that is all this module can be used for. Let the buyer beware.
If you want to buy Made in America, the Americans need to knock off selling cripple ware. It is a bad model and is a huge customer turn off.
The truth shall set you free!
cars with an oil change light that needs a code to reset and they intend for that code to only be told to the dealers? and it's some thing that is really easy to do?
Can they sue jiffy lube and others who do there own oil change from resetting the light under the DMCA?
That's a marketing gimmick, not a business model.
My way of seeing it is that anyone who buys the oscilloscope has a legally acquired copy of the software. They just can't access it. Actually accessing legally acquired software should not be illegal. It's not like there's a business model that would be unsustainable without the protection. If they don't want people to use the software, then don't give them the software. If they pay extra then provide the software.
Exactly this!
I have personally used the MSO series of 'scopes. And I am certain that there wasn't a EULA that I had to click-through when the scope first powered-up. I'm sure there is one along with the Warranty and other info; but, I am pretty certain that, under the "Shrink Wrap" Licensing precedents, I would have not "signed" anything simply by using the 'scope, anymore than I agree to licensing of the applications that are embedded in my TV set, simply by turning it on.
So long as you are not creating a "Derivative Work", nor "Reselling" that firmware, there simply is no Copyright issue here. Tek is DEFINITELY abusing the DMCA here, as well as simply trying to cover-up for a sloppy attempt at what is nothing more than a cost-saving measure.
In fact, they would have had a much more defensible position if they took Hackaday to court for "circumventing security measures of a computing device" (or however that bit is worded in 18 USC...?). But DMCA "Takedown Notices" are hardly EVER challenged, and take only a lawyer-letter with scary language.
Technically, one could see the various software modules as "works protected etc.". The module is effectively a "key" granting access to the work. By creating this device, you are circumventing a technological measure.
It's a bit of a stretch, but you can probably sell this to a judge.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
marketing...gimmick...Nope. It's an effective business plan. It's the forerunner to the Freemium business model (which I hate by comparison).
I think in general, people should just start posting reviews of Techtronix saying they're greedy bastards who sell crippled hardware and then charge ransom to unlock it.
Selling crippled test equipment and charging to unlock features seems to be standard operating procedure in the industry. Some use dongles, some use codes that are coupled to the serial number of your instrument but afaict all the major vendors of such equipment do it one way or the other.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Copyright doesn't give them control over a fact. "The SKU for feature X isyyyyyyyy" is a fact, and therefore not protectable. If hackaday had copied and pasted paragraphs of prose from the manual, that would have been copyright infringement because copyright protects a unique expression.
If the manual had a table of SKU numbers and the article had a list, there's no copyright infringement because it's a different, unique expression.
On one hand, some people might say they paid a huge amount of money for a product that had this (locked) functionality built in, and they have the right to hack it. On another, it's not a trivial amount of effort to write the software that does the analysis, so I could see why a company wants to protect its intellectual property. Otherwise, why would they bother? They would have to ship the device at a higher price to cover the cost of developing the features.
I think the solution here is for the companies to implement reasonable security. Cisco is famous (at least lately) for shipping crippled hardware that is fully capable of performing the functions that are unlocked by various licenses. They implement it as a soft key that ties in with the device serial number (i.e. pay your money, go online to Cisco, give them the license code and your serial number, and they give back another code to enter into the device. And presto, instant feature. Another example I have right here at work is an IBM DS3500 disk array. There are feature keys for everything -- volume snapshots, remote copy, SSD support, increased number of hosts, and a very mysterious, strangely named "Turbo Performance" option [1]. So this is nothing new -- my disk array is running the base configuration and I'm fully aware the controllers in it are shipped with these capabilities. It's weird having to buy $10K pieces of paper, but I see why they do it.
It seems like Tektronix was relying on security through obscurity and they assumed no one would try to build hardware keys to work around their feature protection. HP recently did something similar with the ProLiant and Integrity server line that Oracle/Sun did a while back -- they simply stated that no firmware upgrades would be available on their machines without a warranty or service contract. As someone why buys old hardware for fun, it makes it difficult to get it to the last firmware that HP released for it. But, fixing firmware isn't free, so there's that angle as well. I think the HP/Sun/Oracle stuff is aimed more at forcing you to buy service from them, so it's a little different.
[1] Side note - even the reseller who sold us the device couldn't tell us what Turbo Performance did. After a lot of digging, I figured out that this option is used when you add tons of disk shelves to the array, and it lifts an artificial performance cap on the controllers.
What if I didn't like the software running on my scope hardware and I decided to erase all of it, wrote my own software and firmware to load onto the EEPROMS, etc, and then released my software as free and open source, along with installation and usage manuals. Seems like DMCA could be used against me in such as a case as well, or am I wrong?
No. DMCA is a "big" law with several parts. Part of it is to outlaw DRM compatibility and another part is about takedown notices. There's even a part specific to boat hull designs, though I don't know if it's as controversial as the crazier stuff.
The reason it's so confusing is that when someone makes something that works with DRM, whoever's interests are negatively impacted by people buying the DRMed item (e.g. Disney fears that if you have a way to play "The Little Mermaid" DVD then you might buy one instead of just downloading the mp4), they'll have their lawyer write a nastygram. People sometimes confuse this nastygram with a DMCA takedown notice, but it's a different thing. Same named laws being referenced, possibly even the same lawyer, but a totally different part of the law.
DMCA is about balance. The anti-circumvention part was written with a pro-piracy agenda and the notice part was written with anti-piracy agenda. The idea is that unless you just completely abstain, they'll have you breaking some law, so most people should be extortable.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Copyright doesn't give them control over a fact. "The SKU for feature X isyyyyyyyy" is a fact, and therefore not protectable. If hackaday had copied and pasted paragraphs of prose from the manual, that would have been copyright infringement because copyright protects a unique expression.
If the manual had a table of SKU numbers and the article had a list, there's no copyright infringement because it's a different, unique expression.
IANAL, but based on what I have read elsewhere, I believe you are incorrect.
I used Tek scopes for over 40 years - until I got my hands on a LeCroy. ... and LeCroy has never issued a DMCA take-down notice.
Wow! My only regret is the time I wasted attempting to get Tek scopes to perform.
If you've never used LeCroy, you are in for a pleasant surprise.
Maybe people can start putting hex dumps of the EEPROM data to unlock tek scope features in their Slashdot signatures?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Also, for it to be a DCMA, doesn't the requested takedown have to have something to do with DRM?
It looks like it has. It seems that you pay different prices for oscilloscopes with different feature sets (which is common sense). And it seems that these oscilloscopes have different feature sets because features are produced by software, and access to the software is locked. That's what's called DRM - you didn't pay for the feature, you don't have access to it. And a hack that gives you access to the feature without paying is circumventing the DRM to give you access to the software, exactly what the DMCA is about.
I think you'll find that the "software features turned on by an option" is widespread, not just with Tektronix. It isn't "defective", it's how engineering is done these days.
Mostly random stuff.
Unfortunately locking out features and charging for unlocking them seems to be the industry standard. I can't think of any scope vendors that DON'T do it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Thankfully the Internet Archive crawled the page before HAD redacted it.
Here's the original:
And Jm's post:
And the board design
Tek has had period-great products for half a century and more, and many are still usable from that period. I have a used dual-trace with digital that is probably 20 years old, and works great on a ham testbench.
so whether the rumors floating around that portions of the line are rebadged Anritsu scopes are true or not, there should be enough intelligence at the company(-ies) to do a proper init check with a little math involved, not just a string match, of feature modules.
next time around, perhaps they could even forget the freakin' magic, and just use software keys to enable already-loaded features? that's worked for telco companies since the second digital voice switch.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There would have to be a "work under this title" (something copyrightable) which becomes accessible by putting in the fuse. If plugging in the fuse causes their copyrighted AC-available icon show up on the dashboard, for example, then it'd be a DMCA violation to plug in the fuse without their authorization. Also, it might become illegal to manufacture or traffick or sell fuses without Chrysler's authorization, but that's subjective and subject to judges' whims (how they decide to interpret your fuse's primary purpose, commercially significant uses, Chrysler's marketing, etc).
But if all it does is enable the air conditioner (if there's no copyrighted work protected by it), then it's not a DMCA violation.
This wouldn't ever happen, though. Suppose you made your own copyrighted work and also had it become accessible only by plugging in the exact same sort of fuse. If you became "commercially significant" enough, then Chrysler's own fuse sales to their own customers would become illegal (devices that circumvent your DRM). It's for this reason that all DRM schemes need to be trade secrets or patented, to keep different copyright holders from using each other's schemes (or at least keep 'em from doing it without a contract to cooperate). That's why no one would really use fuse as DRM. It's not that they'd worry about their customers "hacking," but because they'd need to worry about someone (anyone!) coming and suddenly making their own business illegal.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Apples to oranges. This all comes back to property rights and what you're actually buying. In your example I don't own the race track so I have no rights to it without the express permission of the owner, a fee may be involved. In this case, however, the discussion revolves around what one can do with property they own. Sharing information about that property is neither immoral nor unlawful. It would seem it is illegal under the DMCA but that seems rather ridiculous to most with rational heads on their shoulders. If the manufacturer wanted to sell added capacity they shouldn't sell the unit in a crippled state but make the add-on features available by way of additional/replacement hardware. A good example of this is the Roland synthesizer expansion cards that provide additional instrument patches. They're a little PCB that you pop in to a slot under an easily accessible panel. I don't really know a great deal about oscilloscopes but I suspect it's not beyond reason to expect that a company producing complex electronic devices do something similar. This is especially true given how technical the consumer base is for such products and the idea they're surprised by it is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
so, Motorola's e-fuses, then?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The problem with your analogy is that you didn't buy the race track and the rec track wasn't extra crap that was included with your car; further, there is only one track, which all users must share. The features being unlocked here did, however, come with the oscilloscope, which you bought, and of which there are many; you unlocking yours doesn't deprive someone else of theirs.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The whole thing is: That would never happen. Electric windows require motors and switches which cost money. Heated seats require coils and thermistors which cost money. Radios require receivers that cost money. There is no way a car manufacturer (especially in this day and age) would spend the money on those things for EVERY car and not expect to get paid for them!
Now with the scopes, the DAC required for FFT is already in the scope doing its job. It just requires the SOFTWARE in order to activate the menu item, and handle the analysis. No extra hardware is needed.
So this comes down to: How do you reasonably add software features? If you just sent the user a USB stick with the code on it, then how would you prevent the user from installing that code on 100 scopes instead of the one that was paid for? The scopes are not (normally) internet connected devices, so a scheme like Windows Activation is out of the question.
> IANAL
If you were a lawyer, you might start by reading the law (statute). ... ... extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery
102 . Subject matter of copyright: In general
b) In no case does copyright protection
from http://www.copyright.gov/title...
Also 499 U.S. 340, 345 "[n]o author may copyright his ideas or the facts he narrates."
If the wording of the statutes are unclear, you would look at how the court has interpreted it. Feist v Rural was a Supreme Court case in which someone made an unauthorized copy of somebody else's phone directory. A list of phone numbers is simply facts, not a work of original authorship, the defendant claimed, and the court agreed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
The court ruled "In no event may copyright extend to the facts themselves".
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/...
It's also worth noting that "accessible", in the context of the DMCA means, roughly, "made available in an unencrypted and copyable form". After this hack, the only copies that exist are the copies made by Tektronix, at their factory, and those remain just as encrypted or unencrypted as they were when Tektronix made them. Simply causing already-existing code to become executable does not meet that definition.
That said, this is covered by a completely different section of the DMCA, so, still an issue for those involved.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Actually... upon further reading, it looks like the "security" is just a list of SKUs written to an EEPROM. In other words, it's a feature list, not a security measure, and, it would appear, is not protected by the DMCA.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Used to be, many car companies did this with Remote Unlock fobs. The hardware would be installed but wouldn't be enabled.
Even if it did, that information is publicly and freely available on their own website, and will remain there as it is necessary in order to facilitate people ordering the modules in question. That the contents of the module are an EEPROM, with one or two unencrypted SKUs (from their website) written to it, and a SIM slot, is entirely their own doing, and there's nothing illegal about telling someone how to write raw data to an EEPROM or wire said EEPROM up to a SIM card slot.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
"I agree that it's your device and you should be able to do anything with it,"
Has anyone considered reading the licensing and/or EULA? Claiming it's 'your device' is all well and good, but legally licensing decides this.
I'm not taking sides, just pointing out the legalities. YMMV.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In Massachusetts, the State (IIRC) took Toyota to court to require them to release the codes to independent mechanics so they could fix the cars and do warranty work. I think the State won, but I'm not sure, and it was tied pretty closely to existing MA law.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
So it is your contention that Techtronix sells ransomeware. I will agree that ransomware sounds like a reasonable description of this Techtronix featue. Ransomeware is usually implemented in a different manner, but this feature makes Ransomware seem as if it is and intentional Techtronix feature.
I wouldn't want to blatantly claim that "Techtronix is Ransomware" without a clearer understanding. But I also wouldn't want to deny that Techtronix is Ransomware.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
How about computer code that sends an encrypted "able to turn on" signal to the affected systems?
However, the information is itself a DMCA violation, in that it explains how to circumvent a technical protection scheme. This doesn't look like a DMCA takedown notice to me, but an invocation of what I consider one of the really bad parts of the DMCA. The DMCA takedown system is not well understood, and is controversial, but it's by far the best part of the act.
Note: I'm not a lawyer. Anybody relying on what I say without consulting a real lawyer is a doo-doo head, and deserves what he or she gets.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Under DMCA, trading in circumventing protection measures is unlawful.
The scope has some mechanism that controls access to the copyright protected software on the scope. Circumventing that is a DMCA violation, absent an exclusion.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with the copyright of the owner's manual. The circumvention is unlawful because DMCA says circumvention is unlawful, period. It's not that it is unlawful because it uses a number that is also mentioned in the owner's manual. The owner's manual doesn't matter - circumvention is unlawful because DMCA says so.
DMCA isn't that long of a law, if you care to simply read it and see what it says. You seem to be perfectly capable of reading and thinking about what you read.
Yeah, this is basically the same deal from the early 2000's where people could use a pencil to allow overclocking on a few AMD chips. I don't recall AMD issuing take-downs, or suing anyone for distributing said trick.
If you decide as a company to intentionally gimp products to create price differentiation, expect people to find workarounds. You are creating 'value' out of thin air at the expense of the customer. They are simply taking it back.
In short; whine less, figure out better ways to increase revenue, and don't be a dick to your customers.
Unless the firmware is copied to RAM at boot time and executes from RAM, and the dongle allows the added functionality to now be copied, maybe in that case it would be a circumvention of copyright protection.
My scope didn't come with a licence agreement.
No one has any privacy thanks to the government and corporations who both profit from our lack of ability to control who gets to see what data. THAT is the new norm. Tek is going to complain when someone cracks their "security" on hardware and software built into the scope? Why should they be any different from the rest of us?
Ah my young padawan, you are wrong about the license. It is a binding contract that is accepted when placing the order. In our case, the database costs a lot of effort to keep up to date. It is a small part of an affordable tool for manual use. It is perfectly inline with normal practice that an integration license of this database is separate and more expensive. If everyone would simply buy the cheap product and reuse the database elsewhere, then quite simply we would bot be able to continue updating the database. Also, in professional organisations it would next to normal compliance with terms of use, be more expensive to put the man effort to try to decrypt these files.
Oracle v. Google was about a nine-line range checking routine, written by the same guy at different jobs. The jury found it copyrightable, I seem to remember. (WAT)
Fair Use still exists, but so too does everything short of barratry.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Those of us who actually make boards are quite happy to have scopes. Or those of us who work with analog circuits (YES! you CAN still buy REAL OP-AMPS in SO-8 packages OMGWTFBBQ!) or, say, power supplies, or any sort of signal processing. A scope is quite a bit more than a nice-to-have. You may as well tell a machinist a Bridgeport is a "nice thing to have".
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
So now even Pigdog DeCSS is a circumvention device. I've seen everything.
So how is a ROM chip programmed with a publicly available SKU number any different?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
A friend of mine had the sensor for automatic lights in his Intrepid, but the switch wouldn't go to the left because of a little plastic pin. Remove switch, break the pin, and it worked.
many higher-end cameras can also have features reenabled by flashing the firmware from a more expensive model.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.