
Catalog of Missing Devices: Gadgets that could exist if not for copyright laws - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/catalog-missing-devices-illustrates-gadgets-could-and-should-exist
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dogma1138
I usually like EFF content but this is pure bullshit.

None of these seem to be limited by any copyright laws or patent laws.

A Physicist doll: what exactly stops anyone from making one? The fact that you
can’t call it Barbie? I can name at least 3 Barbie like dolls which directly
compete with the Barbie brand and I’m pretty sure that Mattel made a scientist
Barbie before they made a few doctor ones for sure.

Meme-making DVR: Why can’t this exist?

Rain and Train: what???

Ad free YouTube: why not?

Machine translation: no problem other than technical challenges

Text To Speech for Ebooks: again not a problem there are even a few products
that target that directly:

Fonts on Ereaders: kindle can’t a few others have no problem with custom
fonts.

The soundtrack thing: there are a few products that match music to the video
content and theme preset for quick editing so again what is the problem.

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mschuster91
> Meme-making DVR: Why can’t this exist?

Mandatory copy protection on HDMI output controlled by TV station, analog
signal distorters on the crappy analog outs, and to top it off if you're using
material under "fair use" that does not stop rightholders from lawsuiting you
jnto bankruptcy. In addition the DVR may not be legal to sell as it may be
used to strip DRM.

> Ad free YouTube: why not?

EULA violations at the very least, and if you're saying "x supports YouTube"
without licensing the trademark, you're at risk of being sued.

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bborud
This was somewhat underwhelming as an information effort both when you take
into account the attention span of the average reader and the kind of stuff
shown. It is easy to come away thinking "meh".

If they really wanted to get the message across they could have focused on two
things people tend to care about: youtube and music. There's tons of nonsense
in that area that may be more relatable.

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UncleEntity
I'd like to add this to the list: a Catalog of Missing Devices that can be
easily read from a cellphone.

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pronoiac
Here are some rough summaries:

* Physics Barbie, a toy that talks physics

* Meme-Making DVR, which would let you edit and remix video

* Rein N Train, letting you selectively block private data, like loyalty cards or GPS for auto insurance

* Ad-Free YouTube Kids

* Machine Translation, for translating video based on subtitles or automated speech-to-text then translation

* Text-to-speech, for ebooks

* Third party consumables for 3D printers

* Fonts on e-readers, just being able to choose and change them

* Arielle, which chooses the appropriate soundtrack for whatever you're reading or watching

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jstanley
> Third party consumables for 3D printers

FYI, this is already the norm in 3d printing. The companies that make filament
are (almost?) all entirely separate from companies that make printers.

~~~
18pfsmt
12 years ago, one of my biggest customers for RFID tags was 3D Systems. They
put them on their consumables exactly for this purpose. I don't follow that
industry, so I have no idea what goes on at this point. And, for anyone
interested they were ISO 15693 tags operating at 13.56MHz made by Texas
Instruments.

~~~
jstanley
> I don't follow that industry, so I have no idea what goes on at this point

I do. If what you describe was ever more than an aberration, it is at least no
longer the norm.

I don't even know of any printers that have the capability of checking an RFID
tag, let alone any company that sells filament with RFID tags in it.

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TaylorAlexander
I’m a hobby 3D printer user with four printers, and none use chipped filament.
But then at work they don’t consider machines below $5000, and many of them
use proprietary feedstocks.

We recently got the new HP Jet Fusion printer [1] which produces wonderful
functional parts from nylon and while I don’t operate that machine, I can only
assume HP has made it rely heavily on proprietary software and consumables.

[1] [https://youtu.be/XeTdo-w6Qx8](https://youtu.be/XeTdo-w6Qx8)

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dogma1138
You don’t buy cartridges from HP (these are user refillable) you do need to
buy their agents or authorized agents you can’t just dump any PA12 powder in
it and hope for the best.

High end printers especially powder deposition ones use pretty complex
chemistry and the consumables have to be up to spec.

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abetusk
I find it disconcerting to see Cory Doctorow talk about restrictive copyright
issues while he hasn't, to my knowledge, released anything substantial into
the commons. The work that he does put a "creative commons" license under is
always with a restrictive "non-commercial" license.

I'm glad that he advocates for freedom and liberty and it's not like hypocrisy
makes these arguments any less valid but it does leave me feeling a bit weird.

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slavik81
Is it actually hypocritical? There's a lot of room to make copyright less
restrictive without entirely abolishing it.

For example, by only granting copyright protections to DRM-free works. Or
requiring renewal every so often, so that abandoned works can still be used.

We don't need to make the world CC BY-SA to fix copyright. It helps where we
do, but it's not the only way.

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Giorgi
what? China does not give a shit about US copyright. If any of these ideas
worth anything they would do it. But physics talking doll? What?

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jcranmer
This is the sort of evangelizing that is more counterproductive than is
helpful, because it's arguing a fairly extreme version that distorts the
truth. To wit:

* Physics Barbie: The complaint here is that a doll that gets its spoken facts from the cloud can't be overwritten by parents to have STEM-friendly phrases. Of all of the things, this is truly a stretch because... just buy a different doll if you really care?

* Meme-making DVR: It would be more accurate to say "you can't get HDCP content in a form you can composite for clip-making."

* Rein-and-Train: This is basically a complaint of "the manufacturer won't let me edit the code on my hardware devices." This has nothing to do with DRM or DMCA or even copyright law.

* Ad-free YouTube: Ad-blockers do exist. And they're not illegal, not even under stretchy definitions of DMCA. If you had the ads more or less burned into a HDCP stream, then building an ad-blocker for that might have legal repercussions, but the ad servers aren't going to want to do that for other reasons.

* Machine translation: the complaint here is effectively that the audio-extraction tools could run afoul of the DMCA's anti-copyright-circumvention provision. This is a bit of a legal stretch, but any tool but that one step would definitely be in the clear. It's worth noting that the fansubbing tools actually turned out to push the edges of video editing and distribution technology, and fansubbing is the sort of thing that is almost certainly illegal.

* Text-to-speech: Assistive technologies are, I believe, fully exempt from the copyright laws (particularly if solely for personal use). I don't know if the exemptions are only limited to Braille book production or other technologies, but you could probably get in a ADA lawsuit if you were so inclined.

* 3D printer ink: no idea what's preventing the thing here, especially because the recent Lexmark v Impression case more or less holds that you can legally do some creative things to get around the RFID DRM stuff here.

* E-Reader fonts: Again no legal issue here other than "the manufacturer won't let me do something."

* Adaptive music for mood of books: Similar issue with machine translation. Of course, given the granularity of data, the e-book metadata (which isn't encrypted in the DRM formats) is probably sufficient to drive what you'd want anyways.

Nothing in that list is persuasive that anything in copyright law is wrong,
especially because half of the list doesn't actually correspond to copyright
issues.

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Rjevski
All of that nonsense for what is essentially a dig against DRM, while in
reality most DRM gets cracked in no time as soon as there's a compelling
reason to crack it, so those devices would've been created anyway if there was
actual demand for it.

Don't take it wrong, I hate DRM as well, but was a stupid and laughable way to
make their point.

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Iv
What I miss is the P2P revolution that never was. Internet was not supposed to
be about centralized "cloud-based" solutions. YouTube is a bad solution to a
problem we should not have.

And I also miss the paywall-free science and the Wikipedia of music we would
have without copyrights.

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mmcconnell1618
This is a list of devices that the EFF suggests would/could exist if not for
bad copyright laws. It is not a comprehensive catalog of ideas for devices
that should exist.

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dang
Ok we'll change the title above to use your phrasing. Thanks!

