
Copyright Law Shouldn't Punish Research and Repair - lelf
https://act.eff.org/action/copyright-law-shouldn-t-punish-research-and-repair
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nialv7
I'm happy that we have EFF fighting on our side. But this looks like a war us
consumers are losing...

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M_Grey
How could we not? Tons of consumers buy whatever they feel like based on
effective marketing... they're not worried about consumer backlash from less
than 5% of the population, which by the way, was always the hardest to market
to anyway.

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nitrogen
That's why the future, sadly, probably won't happen in the US:
[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?s=gongkai](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?s=gongkai)

~~~
digi_owl
The irony being that US industry bootstrapped in much the same way. Because it
basically gave the middle finger to UK patents and copyright.

Looking across history the pattern seems to be that the nation rise the
fastest when they ignore copyright and patents, and then stagnates as those
concepts take hold and choke the economy with legalese.

For example Germany (thought not the nation we know it today) introduced the
concept later than its neighbors in Europe, and this may have helped in their
industrialization as science and engineering texts etc were cheap and easy to
acquire.

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egh5oon
Intellectual "property" is a form of turf war, and the same pattern applies.

First the "pioneering" phase, aka land grabbing, then the walled gardens.

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acd
Imagine Samsung note 7 without a built in battery. Instead of having to trash
phones for 2 Billion USD Samsung could have had the battery replaced by their
end users. Imagine this pile of useless cell phones in trash piles instead of
being used.

That is if we design things to be repaired the future is bright.

Signed the petition

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viggity
Imagine that Samsung shipped the Note 7 and the battery worked just fine but
charged more slowly than people would like. If Samsung wasn't able to lock
down the firmware (via DRM) on the charging chip and people were able to
"repair" the charging firmware. What happens liability wise if someone's
"repair" of the firmware caused batteries to explode? It puts companies in a
really shitty spot. Same thing with a John Deere combine. A user "fix" could
potentially destroy a million dollar piece of equipment or otherwise
malfunction and kill someone.

I'm certainly sympathetic to wanting to be able to modify my devices as I see
fit, but I can't help understand how much legal liability that puts on the
manufacturer.

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chopin
I think you put it in a much darker light than necessary. Many of these
problems can be solved by making hardware for which it is impossible for
software to cause these problems. Finally that's what we did in the era when
not everything was software controlled: design the stuff in a way that it
doesn't explode in your hand.

Of course, for electonical stuff this would require firmware which can't and
doesn't need to replaced. Therefore it'd need to be tested rigorously and the
manufacturer can't control devices out there retroactively.

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mastazi
Could someone please explain (perhaps using a practical example) what does the
word "repair" mean in this context?

Someone in this thread made an example which involves repairing a mobile
phone, but I am struggling to find a meaningful connection between repairing a
peace of hardware and copyright laws.

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belorn
Its about DRM and the anti-circumvention section in the DMCA part of US
copyright. Owners, like those who have bought a car, a computer, a mobile
phone, a espresso machine (and so on) want to be able to repair their property
without being labeled a criminal for it. The problem is, the car won't start
if it detects an unauthorized part that is made by a third-party, and some
server manufacturer has started to use DRM so that owners can't just buy
replacement hard drives from third-party onces a drive fails, but is instead
forced to buy it from dell.

Its a basic scheme by the seller to restrict use of third-party parts in order
to create a monopoly, increase price and guarantee future revenue after
product has been sold. In the extreme end they can even tap into the
aftermarket, demanding a cut each time the car or what ever is resold. Most of
this is enabled because of current copyright law, through consumer protection
laws are also lagging behind current technology.

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digi_owl
I find myself reminded of an tv ad Volvo ran back in the day.

They had stacked a bunch of boxes with a Volvo logo on in the rough shape of
their sedan. Then the presenter, after giving a spiel about non-brand parts,
replaced one box with another that held a different logo, whereby the whole
stack collapsed.

BTW, i think there was a recent dustup about HP printers and third party
cartridges, where said cartridges stopped working after a certain date.

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Mathnerd314
I guess this is a follow-up to the lawsuit:
[https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-
se...](https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-
section-1201-research-and-technology-restrictions-violate)

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jwatte
This will change as soon as researchers and repairers have more political
money than media producers!

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nerdponx
Would be nice to have a more detailed explanation of what exactly they're
opposing here, and some data to back up their claims about it.

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ktRolster
The DMCA outlaws reverse-engineering. As usual, Wikipedia has some info:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
circumvention#United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
circumvention#United_States)

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ktRolster
I signed it.

