
Toshiba laptop service manuals and the sorry state of copyright law - nkurz
http://www.tim.id.au/blog/2012/11/10/toshiba-laptop-service-manuals-and-the-sorry-state-of-copyright-law/
======
chmars
It's not about copyright law, it's about Toshiba:

Toshiba simply doesn't want its service manuals to be distributed by third
parties and it might not even want to distribute its service manuals via its
own channels. My lesson is to avoid Toshiba and companies with a similar
behavior – I take such behavior as a signal.

As a side note on copyright law: In some European countries at least, service
manuals don't reach the level of creativity and originality required by
copyright law, i.e., hosting the site in such a country could by an option.
Switzerland has a certain reputation for a relatively liberal copyright law
(although at the price of the world's highest copyright fees on hardware that
could be used to copy content).

~~~
aes256
I think Hanlon's razor should be applied in this instance.

This strikes me as the work of an overzealous legal team more so than a
symptom of a broader corporate strategy.

They see copyright infringement, they shut it down. As far as the legal team
are concerned, it's that simple. That's their policy, and the protestations of
someone who, in their eyes, is breaking the law and harming their business, is
not going to change that.

~~~
jwr
When I buy hardware, I don't buy it from a "team" or a "department". I buy it
from a company. It's the company that I deal with. So I don't really care if
it is an "overzealous legal team" — the letters were signed by "Toshiba", just
as the laptop I was about to buy.

~~~
aes256
Oh sure, the upshot is a punch in the face for the public relations
department, and perhaps a bunch of extra work for customer services, as well
as the cost of maintaining a legal department with nothing better to do.

If they conducted an audit of the policy taking into account its effects on
all areas of the business, they'd probably determine it was a waste of time
and money, and adopt a more laissez-faire attitude as Dell, HP, and even Apple
do.

It irks me when people see corporations as these cohesive entities that only
ever act with deliberate intent. In reality, if you conducted a survey of
Toshiba staff, I'm sure a sizeable number of them would disagree with this
policy.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> It irks me when people see corporations as these cohesive entities that only
> ever act with deliberate intent.

How else should we see it? Corporations are an abstraction layer, they're
supposed to hide their inner workings and present one face to the customers.
Hell, a corporation is a (legal) person. So I don't see a reason to not treat
it as an whole, abstract entity - it's the corporation's job to figure out
which internal part is causing them to have a bad name.

~~~
aes256
> How else should we see it?

I see it as it is; a constantly morphing organism, made up of thousands of
people with conflicting interests and ideas, trying but often failing to
present a cohesive image of itself to the public.

~~~
CamperBob2
What, in your opinion, is the whole point behind a brand name?

We see arguments similar to yours when the subject of the Sony rootkit fiasco
comes up. "It's not Sony's fault, it was just a rogue actor in a subsidiary."
Um, no. The CD says "Sony" on it. That means it's Sony's fault. They spend a
_lot_ of money on branding and advertising to make sure that no one ever
forgets that.

So let's not forget it.

~~~
aes256
I don't really buy into brand names, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask.

The way I see it, companies seek to use brands to exploit irrational consumer
behavior, to increase their revenue beyond the level that would prevail in the
absence of brands.

Yours appears to be the equal and opposite reaction to this; attacking brands
and urging boycotts so as to decrease their revenue below this ordinary level.

I am advocating the middle way. Don't pay over the odds for a brand name, but
equally don't boycott products or services just because you don't like the
brand.

------
jere
This reminds me of recently buying a Samsung dryer. We had to side-vent the
dryer, which is atypical, due to space constraints. However, Samsung and Best
Buy kept telling us it was no big deal: you can just buy a side venting kit
and do it yourself.

The kit's first step is "refer to your service manual" for disassembly.
Service manual? We don't have one of those. They don't offer them on Samsung's
website. I can't find anywhere to get them. Why are they telling me I can do
something myself when they won't give me the information to do it? I started
to read blog posts about people who would have to find DIY experts online who
would sell them out of date manuals for kind-of-similar dryers in an attempt
to fix it. Now _that_ seems like a safety issue.

------
ludoo
That's why I've been buying Thinkpads for years and I will probably keep
buying them: IBM's (now Lenovo) service manuals are public, and incredibly
detailed.

Disassembling a Thinkpad is just a matter of following simple step-by-step
instructions on a PDF. Thinkpads are also very well designed, with less screws
and more accessible components than most other makers.

~~~
Zak
They're also made out of better stuff; most laptops are not built from
magnesium and carbon fiber.

I don't know about fewer screws though. I've disassembled quite a few laptops
and I'd say Thinkpads have above average screw counts. It's part of the reason
they don't come apart on their own.

~~~
sigkill
Although I wouldn't generally recommend to a normal person, this being
hackernews, I can confidently recommend a Clevo. These laptops come with
reference hardware which means that you don't need to wait for your
manufacturer to release their versions of the latest drivers. This becomes a
problem especially with display cards, with AMD/ATi and Nvidia releasing new
drivers quite aggressively while the large companies take their own sweet time
to customize the drivers to their hardware. Another thing I'd like to add is
that as far as my knowledge goes, these guys use copper heatsinks/heatpipe
system. Sure, you pay for it but good hardware makes for a longer lasting
laptop.

The service manuals for Clevo are incredibly detailed, possibly almost as much
as those Thinkpad ones. Reiterating again, the sheer joy of installing
reference drivers over the course of years definitely outshines any advantages
that I'd get by saving a few hundred bucks if I'd have gone with a popular
laptop brand.

~~~
barrkel
Most laptops can have vanilla OS installations with OEM drivers, unless
something changed with laptops in the past couple of years that I didn't
notice.

Generally the first thing I do with a new laptop is repave with fresh OS, etc.
Weird hardware is relatively rare.

~~~
sigkill
Most may. But there are some laptops which absolutely require the laptop
manufacturers drivers for the equipment to work. THAT is very annoying.

------
fierarul
Why would companies want you to service your laptop when you should either buy
another one ($$) or take it to their own blessed service company to fix ($)?

Oh, well, there was a slim chance of buying Toshiba, but now I'll just have a
small mental note to purposefully avoid them.

~~~
vixen99
Precisely the point - we have a choice. Thank you for that reminder. I am
looking to buy a laptop and will do likewise.

------
happywolf
I evaluated Toshiba laptops during my shopping for personal laptop last year,
however the price was not impress (in Singapore) and the build seemed flimsy
compared to ThinkPad. So for more high-end options I would go for a ThinkPad
or MacBook(with VM), for cheaper alternatives I would go for Dell or Asus. I
still don't see much competitiveness for Toshiba laptops (and also Fujitsu,
just FYI).

After some considerations, I found myself couldn't be too happy without a
decent command line interface, ergo I bought a 15" MacBook Pro and upgraded it
to 16GB of memory. The office suite that I use once in a while is taken care
by Win7 running in a VM.

I report that I am a happy man now and have no regret. Every cent spent on MBP
is worth-while. This post is not meant to hard-sell Apple laptop, just sharing
my own shopping experience.

------
kwiens
I run iFixit [1]. We started writing our own repair manuals because of this
very issue way back in 2003. Apple has been very aggressively protecting their
copyright on service manuals pretty much since the dawn of the internet.
Here's an example of them going after Something Awful [2]. Many of the sites
they've gone after have ceased to exist.

Since then, with the help of tens of thousands of incredible repair
technicians around the world, we have built the largest free repair manual
[3]. Because we write them ourselves, the manufacturers can't shut us down.
The community has written over 6,000 manuals, and you can download and
reproduce any of them to your heart's content. We even post all of our manuals
on bittorrent [4] and the internet archive so they are guaranteed to be free
forever.

Here's our Toshiba laptop service manual:
<http://www.ifixit.com/Device/Toshiba_Laptop>

We've made progress on half a dozen laptops so far, with more on the way. Not
nearly as comprehensive as what Tim had, but it's a start.

Toshiba is not an outlier here—they represent the status quo. Many
manufacturers haven't gotten around to issuing these C&D letters, but it's
perfectly within their right. Any site hosting manufacturer service manuals
without permission is at risk of a shutdown like this at any time.

That's why what we do at iFixit is so important. The world needs to know how
to fix these products. Repair is critical for the environment [5]. Repair
helps bridge the digital divide by keeping the secondhand electronics market
alive. [6] And electronics repair represents hundreds of thousands of jobs in
the United States alone.

We cannot rely on the good will of manufacturers. Yes, many of them have
looked the other way and ignored sites like timix's, but that is unlikely to
continue. We have three options:

* Create a free and open alternative to the manufacturer's service manuals (that's what we're doing at iFixit).

* Pressure the manufacturers to waive copyright to their manuals so that we can reproduce them. Dell, HP, and Lenovo are the best targets for this because they already provide manuals online. (I am involved in discussions with some OEMs to make this happen. The more public support we have, the more success we'll have.)

* Legislate. The auto manufacturers refused to provide independent shops with the information they needed, so they banded together and just passed Right to Repair legislation in Massachusetts last week.

It's easy to say, "shame on Toshiba" and move on with your life. But this is
not unique to Toshiba. No cell phone manufacturer makes their service manuals
available. In fact, outside of the heavy equipment industry (where customers
demand it) and the automotive industry (where legislation requires it), it's
the rare manufacturer that does not use copyright to prevent publication of
their service manuals.

I wrote the Self Repair Manifesto:<http://ifixit.com/Manifesto>

It's time to make the voice of the consumer known. It's time for us to stand
up for ourselves. We have the right to repair our things, and to the
information required to do it.

We are making some progress. The forthcoming green cell phone standard, UL
110, gives manufacturers environmental points for providing open source
service manuals. That gain is tenuous and could be reversed at any time, but
it's a foothold.

I've dedicated my life to making this information available, and we can't do
it alone. We need to band together as a community and take a stand.

We would love help. Join us over at iFixit! Or, if you want to get involved
with advocacy work, email me at kyle at ifixit and I'll happily point you in
the right direction.

[1] <http://www.ifixit.com/>

[2]
[http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_Legal_Issues_Ce...](http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_Legal_Issues_Cease_Desist_Over_Service_Manual_Posting)

[3] <http://www.ifixit.com/Guide>

[4] [http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2010/12/20/what-if-you-had-a-
dvd-...](http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2010/12/20/what-if-you-had-a-dvd-with-
every-ifixit-guide/)

[5] <http://ifixit.com/Info/Environment>

[6] [http://ifixit.org/2562/computer-repair-is-the-new-
lemonade-s...](http://ifixit.org/2562/computer-repair-is-the-new-lemonade-
stand/)

~~~
larrys
I would like to point something out here.

Your site says this:

"We admit it — we have to pay the bills. Selling parts is how we do that. We
want to be able to afford to write new manuals, and the noncommercial
requirement allows us to do that. We frequently grant usage licenses to
commercial entities, so contact us with any inquiries."

On this page:

<http://www.ifixit.com/Info/Licensing>

Specifically "We admit it — we have to pay the bills."

I'm not saying in any way this contradicts anything you are saying in
particular. You do have to pay the bills. And Toshiba also has to pay the
bills as well, even as a billion dollar company.

Is it my understanding that the OP _could_ use your materials since they
aren't "commercial"? And if so, what if they sold advertising and used your
materials? Where do you draw the line (serious question and not trying to be
snarky)?

~~~
kwiens
Good question. I'm pretty open on that. The primary reason we did it was that
people were taking our (free) manuals and reselling them on eBay. I felt bad
for the poor people who were paying money for something that we were giving
away. The non-commercial CC license lets us tell them to knock it off.

Tim is absolutely welcome to publish every single iFixit manual on his site.
Heck, I'll give him an archive file if he wants.

Bottom-line: We want the manuals to get used. Whatever we can do to help
people fix things, we'll get behind. That's why we do the bittorrent download
of all our manuals. (Speaking of which, it's a bit out of date. I'll see if we
can get updated ISOs pushed out in a few weeks.) We handle sites that run
advertising pretty generously—we're happy to share if they're adding value
(usually by translating the manuals).

By the way—the license only applies to distribution, not use. Hundreds of
thousands of techs use iFixit manuals to sell their repair services and make a
living. Many of them do pretty darn well for themselves. They are all awesome.

All of our manuals are available via our JSON API, by the way:
<http://www.ifixit.com/api/>

------
WalterBright
I find that sad. I've been able to extend the useful life of many of my older
appliances by finding the repair manuals online and doing some simple fixes.

I was even able to reconfigure my old video projector to throw HD video,
although the dealer who sold it to me told me it was impossible. The factory
service manual had instructions :-)

------
oelmekki
The website owner is also talking about it on reddit :
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/12ydou/for_three...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/12ydou/for_three_years_i_have_run_tims_laptop_manuals/)

------
hrktb
The last windows machine I owned was a Toshiba laptop, though it was years
ago. The machine had driver problems on OS updates, don't even think about
downgrading the OS, linux was a royal PITA as well because of the slightly odd
versions of the components, don't ever expect to have audio. The hardware was
pushed to it's limit on basic use, it would get hot as hell, and battery life
was about 2h.

Out of the box it was a so so machine, but every steps aside from the base
install was an additional risk of loosing some functionality.

That's not what I would consider careful engineering nor reliable software,
and I don't think they see any upside to people looking close at their
hardware and risking bricking it while trying to service it.

~~~
petepete
My current notebook is a Toshiba Tecra M11-17Z; the first boot and 'Toshiba
Setup' nonsense took an hour, it installed Toshiba utilities for just about
everything. I was left with a slightly sluggish Windows 7. For a machine with
such a high spec I can see why people might be disappointed.

I'm not a Windows guy, so I wiped it and installed Arch Linux. Everything
'just worked' (other than the fingerprint reader which required additional
firmware), and I'm thoroughly satisfied with it. I still use it daily and have
had no problems at all.

I just wish that hardware companies would stick to hardware.

------
m_eiman
_1\. “We are concerned that by providing the manuals to unqualified person
[sic] you may be endangering their well-being”.

[…] I have personally never been injured or visibly endangered by working on
any kind of computer system, much less a consumer notebook computer. I have
also never heard of anybody else being injured by working on one._

They do have a point here though; everyone's seen those laptop batteries on
fire. That shouldn't stop someone who knows what he's doing from being able to
fix things, but having some incompetent "I'm going to save a couple of bucks
and do it myself" DIY:er muck about is probably going to lead to disaster
sooner or later.

~~~
Zak
The repair manual probably doesn't cover disassembling the battery. In fact,
it likely says not to do so and warns about a risk of fire. There is probably
a similar warning printed on the outside of the battery.

~~~
m_eiman
Yes, and someone who knows what he's doing will pay attention to that. Then
there's the Darwin award candidate who thinks that those warnings are just
Toshiba's way of tricking you to pay a hundred bucks for a new battery when
all you have to do is… It's probably also possible to make mistakes in other
parts of the computer that will be hard for the battery to handle.

------
mindslight
The real problem is that HTTP is not an appropriate technology to distribute
service manuals or anything else one is likely to get hassled over. It works
fine in the short term, but as soon as anything gets a large enough following
that it could be feasible to take it for granted (ie becomes part of culture),
HTTP shows its fatal weakness. Bittorrent is much closer.

------
rplst8
I never bought a Toshiba product before, but this doesn't make me apt to look
at them in the future.

~~~
larrys
Why? Because of this? You would accept an inferior product to there laptops
possibly because they do not allow free repro of their manuals? Are you able
to investigate every manufacturer before you buy something to make sure they
are "open source" with respect to these things?

------
TeMPOraL
I'd love to see a company which doesn't copyright repair manuals, doesn't make
devices difficult to home-repair on purpose, doesn't do this "planned
obsolescence" things or any other assholy tricks to get a short term profit;
and then _market the shit out of this attitude_ \- explicitly show people the
things it _doesn't_ do. I'd be their life-time customer without second
thought.

~~~
Zak
I'm not sure about Lenovo as a whole company, but the Thinkpad line has the
characteristics you're asking for. The only characteristic I've encountered
that really goes against this is a hardware whitelist for things like wireless
cards.

~~~
donatzsky
Wonder why they have such a white-list.

At any rate, at least for some models, you can just flash a hacked BIOS with
those restrictions removed.

~~~
Cypher_Aod
The Wireless card Whitelisting is due to FCC regulation, which states that
certain classes of devices must be Certified by the FCC themselves in the
"End-Use Configuration" to be legal to sell, use, take on Airplanes etc...

IBM (Now Lenovo) Whitelist Wireless cards to ensure that the device will
always conform to the FCC approval that the device was evaluated for.

To be fair, if you buy a Lenovo/IBM Laptop (I've had four in the past twelve
years) and ensure that the Wireless card you get it with is the top-spec model
at the time, you should never have an issue. My current Laptop, an X200, has
an Intel 5300 which is still one of the best wireless adapters I've ever used
:)

~~~
Zak
_The Wireless card Whitelisting is due to FCC regulation_

Does the regulation require that steps be taken to make it difficult for the
end-user to modify the device in to a non-certified configuration? If not, I
find this answer inadequate.

The whitelist affects other components as well, such as displays. It seems a
little nannyish.

------
swombat
Interesting to note that this blog has plenty of Apple repair manuals, so
Apple is clearly not so precious, despite their renowned secrecy.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Although Apple Computers make products that are purposefully harder to repair.
It's possible Apple haven't sued simply because this site is not (was not) yet
on their radar.

Your conclusion doesn't follow soundly from the available facts here.

~~~
lloeki
> _Although Apple Computers make products that are purposefully harder to
> repair_

I don't know how to take your statement. They don't purposefully make products
harder to repair for the sake of it, or just to annoy people, or for some
grand strategy of "they'll buy more of it if they can't repair it"[0], they
make products harder to repair as a compromise for other features: weight,
external dimensions, battery life, appearance, reliability, robustness. So in
a sense it's purposeful, but as an unavoidable consequence. You may not need
one or more of those features and favor repairability, but others than you
may.

[0] People owning Apple products already buy new Apple products even if (and
dare I say precisely because) their current device is _not_ broken and has not
fallen apart in the meantime. My current machine is a mid-'09 MBP and is going
strong, and I bought it after a '07 15" MBP that I sold (for a good price
precisely because it looked like new by any measure) to go more mobile and
even more robust (this unibody really is strong). Both of them proved easily
upgradeable, the newer one even more than the old one. I suspect Thinkpad
owners could tell similar stories, whereas I have only horror stories to share
about the five other PC laptops I owned before during the three years before I
went Apple (FWIW IBM/Lenovo was on my shopping list along with Apple, and I
had to choose one)

~~~
Zak
I don't agree. Pentalobe and tri-wing screws have no practical advantages over
torx. The only possible reason I can see for Apple using those is that they're
not common, and would discourage users from attempting to open the device.

It's obvious that most of Apple's decisions that make their devices less
repairable come with aesthetic and practical gains, but the use of uncommon
screws is not in that category. The most favorable explanation I can think of
is that it was intended to signal to a certain class of users who were used to
being able to partially disassemble laptops to make certain kinds of repairs
and upgrades that it was no longer practical to do so.

~~~
lloeki
> _Pentalobe and tri-wing screws have no practical advantages over torx. The
> only possible reason I can see for Apple using those is that they're not
> common, and would discourage users from attempting to open the device._

I only partly agree on that one either. Torx is easy to manufacture at big
sizes but its thin-winged star shape is brittle and harder to produce at
smaller sizes. Comparatively, pentalobe screws are trivial to machine. Also,
it's quite easy with a little tooling to create your own pentalobe (some Torx
actually just work) or tri-wing screwdriver, and I bet Apple had no doubt
someone would come up with a manufactured one in a very short timespan. That
was exactly the case with Torx some years ago, then TorxSec then TorxPlus.

> _it was intended to signal to a certain class of users who were used to
> being able to partially disassemble laptops to make certain kinds of repairs
> and upgrades that it was no longer practical to do so._

The class of users that routinely open devices to upgrade them knows to use
appropriate tooling, and that if different, they will be available shortly for
a ridiculously low price. If anything, it signals Joe Random that he's not to
open this with the point of a knife (especially near a LiPo battery).

From iFixIt, re MBA 11" [0]:

> _Once you manage to take off the bottom cover, all the parts are pretty
> easily replaceable._ (i.e for a laptop that's RAM and mass storage, plus
> soldered CPU, but I did not hear about someone swapping CPUs in any laptop
> lately)

They rated it 4 because the parts are non-standard, and because of pentalobe
on the case. They even laud some design choices specifically for repairability
like the heat sink.

Again iFixIt, from the MBP r15" display teardown[1], regarding hinge+cable
assembly:

> _Don't think that the guys (and gals) who designed this machine are just out
> to get you. Routing the cables through the hinge is a way to save space and
> weight in the laptop._

If you want a real point of concern, the strongly glued batteries over the
trackpad cable thing[2] is absolutely bewildering (while the whole device is
supposed to last forever, batteries are not, so how are Geniuses supposed to
fix those?) and really does not fit in the picture. I loathe glue.

[0]:
[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+11-Inch+Late+2010...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+11-Inch+Late+2010+Teardown/3745/3#s17843)

[1]:
[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+Retina+Display+Te...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+Retina+Display+Teardown/9493/1#s36245)

[2]:
[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Di...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Mid+2012+Teardown/9462/3#s36209)

~~~
Zak
_Comparatively, pentalobe screws are trivial to machine_

I'll have to take your word for that, because I don't know enough about screw
and driver manufacturing to comment. Tri-wing looks less likely to have any
advantage other than discouraging disassembly.

I'm sure Apple knew this wouldn't stop anybody very determined from working on
a Mac, but it still causes a problem for someone like me. I don't fix hardware
professionally, but I'm the person my friends usually come to when they have
issues. I don't have a pentalobe or tri-wing screwdriver; I'd have to order
them, and I would, but it would be a significant inconvenience.

It's the _attitude_ that bothers me. It feels as if Apple is trying to retain
control over the device after the customer buys it. I'm your Joe Random, and
I'm offended.

 _I did not hear about someone swapping CPUs in any laptop lately_

The Thinkpad T530, to give an example still uses a ZIF socket. CPU replacement
is on page 93 of the Hardware Maintenance Manual, which Lenovo makes freely
available on its website. This should be a shining example to all.

~~~
lloeki
> _I did not hear about someone swapping CPUs in any laptop lately_

To be clear I didn't mean that non-soldered CPU, ZIF equipped laptops don't
exist anymore, but that people actually upgrading/fixing their CPU is by and
large an extremely rare occurrence, while RAM and mass storage are much, much
more prone to upgrade/fixing. I would personally not consider a soldered CPU a
problem, especially given that most of the time if anything goes wrong in such
areas, it's a blown capacitor or a bad plug assembly/soldering on the
motherboard that gives in.

------
conradfr
Years ago finding the service manual of my Toshiba laptop helped me
disassembled it to fix the broken power socket (it was non-standard and I
ultimately had to find a workaround, but still).

I'm sad to see on OP's site that ASUS is not cooperative either, as I
currently have one.

------
sauce71
Then Toshiba will not be bought by me for myself or my customers. Happy to
reduce the selection process with another brand. Actually I by Mac for myself
and Fujitsu Siemens for customers.

------
raverbashing
There are better options in the laptop market than Toshiba

Even crappy OEM vendors have their manuals online, why would I go for Toshiba?

------
drcube
Apparently Toshiba thinks ignorance = safety.

------
aes256
Do Toshiba stil make laptops?

~~~
bafer
Sadly, yes.

