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Economist: US Congress Should Hack Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-bought-it-you-rebuild-it dept.

retroworks writes This week's print edition of The Economist has an essay on the Right to Tinker with hardware. From the story: "Exactly why copyright law should be involved in something that ought to be a simple matter of consumer rights is hard to fathom. Any rational interpretation would suggest that when people buy or pay off the loan on a piece of equipment—whether a car, a refrigerator or a mobile phone—they own it, and should be free to do what they want with it. Least of all should they have to seek permission from the manufacturer or the government."

23 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Hack it? by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They should repeal it completely. But that will not happen as every one of those congress-critters are bought and paid for.

    Congress wants a more strict DMCA. Hell I bet some of those on capitol hill would support a death penalty for copyright violations.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Hack it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Remember when Senator Orrin Hatch said copyright holders should get to destroy infringers' PCs?

    2. Re:Hack it? by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 2

      They should repeal it completely. But that will not happen as every one of those congress-critters are bought and paid for.

      Congress wants a more strict DMCA. Hell I bet some of those on capitol hill would support a death penalty for copyright violations.

      I don't think all of it should be abolished it completely, for example as a freenet node opporator appreciate the safe harbor clause.

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    3. Re:Hack it? by SJHillman · · Score: 2

      I believe you're thinking of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, not the DMCA

    4. Re:Hack it? by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 2

      This is a case where someone like the EFF needs to get behind any individual who is hacking in a way clearly is NOT in violation of the intent of copyright/patent protection, let someone sue the doer and get the whole thing undone. I'd gladly throw money at them for a "DMCA kill opportunity fund". Congress will never get behind removing the DMCA, both parties have been bought and paid for.

      What will likely happen is any such case will be dropped, hacking will continue to be legal as long as you watch your ass, and you can't ever be sure. "Land of the free" my ass.

  2. DMCA was always flawed ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Informative

    The DMCA was so badly written as to more or less entrench rent-seeking and remove property ownership from consumers.

    Instead of saying "yes, you bought this product, it's yours", they've entrenched the "oh, you've only licensed it and we will tell you how you're allowed to use it".

    Sorry, but if I bought it, I retain right of first sale. Which means I should be able to do anything I want with it, because it's my property.

    This absurd notion that they still own it and define what I can do with it is stupid. If I don't own it, why should I pay you for it?

    But, of course, the law was written to hastily ensure corporate rent seeking, because it was paid for by lobbyists.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:DMCA was always flawed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The DMCA was so badly written as to more or less entrench rent-seeking and remove property ownership from consumers.

      This is true with one exception - the DMCA was not badly written, it was exceptionally well written. This was the INTENDED effect.

      They would have you believe that the DMCA is to stop people from downloading copyrighted songs/videos/etc, but the true purpose was to provide them a legal means of market control. If no one can make (DVD/Blue ray players/that one tool required to fix your car) EXCEPT them, then they have a strangle hold on the market and can do as they please.

      The greatest scam politicians pull (And do so often) is convincing the public that a law is for something completely different then it actually is.

    2. Re:DMCA was always flawed ... by Pikoro · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is also why acoustic couplers were invented. Since anything plugged directly into the phone line was "against the law", hackers worked around it. You plugged your phone into the line, and the acoustic coupler into your computer/device, and you placed the telephone handset on the acoustic coupler. You were not actually plugging your device into the phone line, thereby bypassing the "law".

      --
      "Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
    3. Re:DMCA was always flawed ... by Voyager529 · · Score: 2

      The DMCA was so badly written as to more or less entrench rent-seeking and remove property ownership from consumers.

      Instead of saying "yes, you bought this product, it's yours", they've entrenched the "oh, you've only licensed it and we will tell you how you're allowed to use it".

      Sorry, but if I bought it, I retain right of first sale. Which means I should be able to do anything I want with it, because it's my property.

      This becomes much more interesting in 2014 than it was when the DMCA was first passed. Back in those days, "mobile software" was typically shipped on a CD, and installed on a mobile device by way of a docking station. This is far less common now than it was at that time. Moreover, the "this product is yours" logic becomes murky with tablets and other similar tech. I ran into this recently myself. A friend of mine gave me a tablet. He got it in a BOGO sale last year at Verizon Wireless; said BOGO sale only required a one year contract. The contract was fulfilled, and he gave it to me as a gift. As a T-Mobile subscriber, I was hoping to put my SIM card into it and use my data plan. Despite Verizon having no further claim to ownership on the device, the tablet was SIM unlocked, but had the ability to manually add APNs disabled. Thus, they can legally claim "SIM unlocked", but without rooting and manually editing the build.prop file, I can't add an APN to actually use another carrier.

      Even beyond that oddly specific example, many tablets are largely dependent on other services. Samsung phones, if wiped without some sort of 'blessing' from Samsung, go into a locked state that require either reflashing or login. This is all well and good, but is removing that restriction technically a DMCA violation? Is the existence of a technological barrier the correct means to determine ownership of a device? On the other hand, if one were to modify a phone's baseband in such a way that has it working on the wrong frequencies, or configured in order to make a mess of the cell tower, does the "it's my phone" argument still hold? If a device is symbiotically linked to online services (it's quite a pain to use an Android device without a Google account, or an iPhone without iCloud, in their default states), how does the use of those services come into play with regards to the expectations of functionality?

      Meh, this is why I'm still a Windows Mobile fan at heart - for all its faults, it ACTED like the device belonged to the owner, not Microsoft.

    4. Re:DMCA was always flawed ... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      To be fair, you couldn't do "anything you want" with a dead tree book either, at least not if it involved putting it a photocopier and share with a million friends.

      That not fair because that's not remotely what we're talking about. That's not doing anything you want with it, that's making more of it. The thing itself is not changed. That's why we have a whole separate body of law for IP, because it's fundamentally different from physical items. If you buy a book, you're free to rip out chapters and then sell it as the expurgated version, or make notes in the margins and sell it as the annotated version, so long as you don't misrepresent it — but that's not even violation of copyright, that's misuse of trademark.

      Psystar's case proved that you're not free to do the same thing to digital works. Sure, they were fudging slightly, they didn't use the actual disc, but they used the equivalent which in the case of IP should be good enough. If you can't prove after the fact which disc was used, it's irrelevant.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:DMCA was always flawed ... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If no one can make (DVD/Blue ray players/that one tool required to fix your car) EXCEPT them, then they have a strangle hold on the market and can do as they please.

      Exactly. It is in no way in my interests as a consumer to have, say, a region-locked DVD player, or a Blu-ray player that won't let me skip to the contents I want to watch instead of sitting through legal notices that don't even apply in my jurisdiction, or a PVR where I can't transfer my HD recordings to a different PVR if the first player is defective and needs to be returned. There is literally no-one who gains from these restrictions, not even the content creators or the manufacturers.

      However, the current state of intellectual property laws prevents anyone from (lawfully) competing in that market with a better offering, because patents and anti-circumvention rules make for very good ways to be anti-competitive without actually breaking any laws. And that is in the interests of the organisations that control those rights.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  3. Already lost the "complete freedom" argument... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    >> Any rational interpretation would suggest that when people buy or pay off the loan on a piece of equipment—whether a car, a refrigerator or a mobile phone—they own it, and should be free to do what they want with it.

    This argument has already lost in the public square WHEN IT HARMS OTHER PEOPLE. For example:
    * If you own a refrigerator, it's already illegal to just discharge the coolant into the environment
    * If you own a car, it's already illegal to just set it on fire, and in many places you can't store it certain places (like your front lawn)

    If you narrow it down a bit (e.g., "root your phone = legal but proceed at your own risk") I could get behind this guy, but when we're starting to talk about hacking automobile electronics that other drivers and pedestrians depend upon for their own safety...you can probably see where we're developing a slippery slope.

    1. Re:Already lost the "complete freedom" argument... by iggymanz · · Score: 2

      people have been modding car engines for over a century, get over it. If someone kills a person with their car, existing law covers that situation.

    2. Re:Already lost the "complete freedom" argument... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Straw man -- go f* yourself. You are the problem with American society today and I hope that you are just trolling versus truly believing what you just wrote. The gist of the argument isn't people should be allowed to use things they own or rent to hurt others, the argument is: when someone purchases a product, they should be entitled to own it.

      The real problem here is that various forms of intellectual property have been combined to squeeze consumers into a corner. [X] device makes life easier, has become a social norm, is required for work, or whatever other justification for its purchase. Company [Y] has a patent on [X] so that for the next 21 years the control it's distribution. They apply a firmware that restricts the usage of [X] device relying upon the DMCA and copyright law to prevent you, or others, from making the device more useful or extending it's life beyond the artificial limitations imposed by Company [Y].

      Despite that fact that you've paid the device off, Company [Y] has stopped supporting that version of the device, and you have physical possession and the ability to modify it, doing so is now a criminal offense (despite not causing harm to anyone) because the government says so. It's completely ridiculous--at least to me. I do not put corporate profits above all things, which is probably the failing here. The fact that we purchase and accept these artificial and economically driven limitations is a sad state of affairs.

      I have a 7 year old laptop that is perfectly usable, except for the fact that the manufacture has locked it down specifically to create an artificial limitation on it's usefulness in order to maximize their profits. I no longer purchase any products from that company and encourage everyone I know to move away. The US needs a return to quality, not an headlong dash into planned obsolescence backed by governmental protectionism.

      It's pitiful. Completely pitiful. And argument that it "could" harm the children should, similarly, be thrown away.

      God damn it; I'm mad as hell...but I'll keep taking it because I have bills to pay and a family to feed. Motherf*ers.

    3. Re:Already lost the "complete freedom" argument... by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      You are at fault for the condition of your car regardless. This is true whether you maintain your own brakes, you let someone else do it, or you just ignore it. This is why you don't need "extra special anti-hacking laws". The laws from 3000 years ago already adequately address the "new" problems people are worried about.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  4. Bought and paid for? by danaris · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Any rational interpretation would suggest that when people buy or pay off the loan on a piece of equipment—whether a car, a refrigerator or a mobile phone—they own it, and should be free to do what they want with it. Least of all should they have to seek permission from the manufacturer or the government.

    Any rational interpretation would suggest that when rich people and large corporations buy or pay off the loan on a congressperson, they own it, and should be free to get whatever legislation out of it they see fit. Least of all should they have to deal with interference from busybody economists trying to tell them what's "rational."

    Dan Aris

    --
    Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
  5. shouldn't this apply to software too? by jsepeta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If I buy software, shouldn't I have the right to modify it? But I bet most software LICENSES have wording that says I cannot.

    --
    Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
    1. Re:shouldn't this apply to software too? by blueshift_1 · · Score: 2

      Typically, you're buying the license to use it, not the actual software itself. Buying an entire piece of software is a much more costly proposition.

  6. Don't repeal the entire DMCA by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A complete repeal of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act would also repeal the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA). Such a repeal would make it much easier to find online service providers liable for their subscribers' actions. Remember that YouTube's successful defense against Viacom was that it qualified for the OCILLA safe harbor.

  7. Re:Please can we try to use the English language? by Himmy32 · · Score: 2

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

    MATLAB, C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Perl (numerical comparison only), PHP, Python, Ruby, and R

    It's pretty common shorthand for not equal to.

  8. Suits without merit by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    there's fuck all that stops anyone, individual or manufacturer from suing for any, or no, reason.

    There exist rules against suits without merit, which can cause the plaintiff to have to pay the defendant's reasonable attorney's fees, sometimes with punitive damages tacked on for wasting the defendant's time. If plaintiff's counsel repeatedly fails to diligently investigate the merit of each case, counsel might end up fined or even disbarred.

    1. Re:Suits without merit by Jawnn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      there's fuck all that stops anyone, individual or manufacturer from suing for any, or no, reason.

      There exist rules against suits without merit, which can cause the plaintiff to have to pay the defendant's reasonable attorney's fees, sometimes with punitive damages tacked on for wasting the defendant's time. If plaintiff's counsel repeatedly fails to diligently investigate the merit of each case, counsel might end up fined or even disbarred.

      Yes, but that does not prevent assholes from bringing worthless lawsuits. It might discourage even marginally circumspect lawyers from doing so, but the burden to challenge the merit of an action, once initiated, rests with the respondent.

  9. Re:Selection of notable titles by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And the correct market response to that would have been to call their bluff, and then enjoy the movies from those that survived. The idea that all the studios would have stopped releasing their content anywhere but in theatres is utterly implausible and was never a serious threat.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.