
DRM in TIG welders - ck2
http://boingboing.net/2015/11/17/drm-in-welders.html
======
quasse
To me this says "we make such huge margins on these welders that we can
intentionally cripple them and sell them at a lower price. Someone out there
could produce our top end model for the low end price." It logically follows
that maybe I should start looking into other manufacturers who sell at closer
to manufacturing cost, like Everlast.

I realize that big welding shops aren't going to drop the big two (Lincoln and
Miller) overnight, but I think practices like this are really going to hasten
the rise of Chinese upstarts making high quality IGBT welders. Once they (or a
third party) starts offering good support and warranty guarantees it's going
to be hard to compete with them when you employ sales practices like this.

For example, the Miller Syncrowave 210 shown in the video is $2,700, base
price. I use one weekly, and it's a decent welder. Alternatively, one could
get an Everlast PowerTig 250EX for $1,700 that comes with features missing
from the Miller at a price that's $1,000 less. The Chinese manufacturers know
their price point, and they're not going to leave out features supported by
their hardware because they're hungry for the business. I think the way Miller
is behaving is a sign of complacency, and it's going to come back to bite
them.

I already find myself using the cheaper IGBT welder day to day because we
don't have the SD card upgrade for the Miller and I like features like up-
slope and down-slope that have been left out for product segmentation reasons.

~~~
raverbashing
Can you explain why does a welder needs an SD card?

~~~
danielbarla
I'm guessing it's purely for DRM purposes. In that sense, it's a case of "We'd
like to price this physical item at two different price points, and control it
in a soft fashion".

Playing devil's advocate, I guess there are certain situations where you could
justify this type of thing. Let's say that a product has an additional
capability which 90% of the market doesn't need, but required significant
research to accomplish. It's a soft-capability, so there's nothing additional
that you need to manufacture to enable it. You have a couple of options - you
can make two different models (essentially identical underneath, except for
the cheaper one disabling the extra capability), but this is inefficient. You
can of course have one product, one price. But this is also less than perfect,
as you have everyone paying for a feature 10% want, and you can be outcompeted
at a cheaper price for the basic product. Another option would be to DRM the
product and soft-enable the feature for the 10% who want it, at a higher
price.

I mean, it's a bit of a stretch, but it's plausible in some situations.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The problem is you're not making the case for DRM, you're just making the case
for copyright.

Laws against circumventing DRM have a simple fatal flaw: If the DRM is strong
enough to prevent a given user from circumventing it then you don't need a law
to prohibit it, but if it isn't then it still isn't any easier to get the user
for circumventing the DRM than it is for the underlying copyright
infringement. The law is utterly useless for its stated purpose.

But it still causes all kinds of grief for innocent people when companies
abuse it for things other than its intended purpose.

~~~
danielbarla
I donno, I thought I made a (rather far fetched) case for when it's actually
physically cheaper / more efficient / beneficial to have DRM, for all parties
involved. I.e. a case where we'd actually want to have DRM, I'm not sure how
it relates to copyright by itself.

In the general case though, I'm also relatively strongly against DRM for
everyday consumer goods, but mainly from an experience and cost efficiency
perspective. Companies seem to spend large amounts of money on heavy DRM, and
it seems to cause products to be inferior (persistent connectivity, etc).

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> I donno, I thought I made a (rather far fetched) case for when it's actually
> physically cheaper / more efficient / beneficial to have DRM, for all
> parties involved. I.e. a case where we'd actually want to have DRM, I'm not
> sure how it relates to copyright by itself.

Your argument seems to be that the seller is only going to go to the effort of
designing the extra feature if they can charge a premium for it to the market
segment that wants it. That is the traditional argument in favor of copyright
(and patents). Those things do what you're asking for without a separate law
prohibiting circumvention of DRM. The seller can copyright the enabling
software or patent the feature (depending on whether the difficult part of
implementing the feature is part of the enabling software or the hardware).

------
oneJob
One of the most important issues raised by this article is that of
enforcement. That the US Government is employed to enforce DRM is non trivial.
Imagine you left a magnificent gold brick on your porch on the way out to
work. You reason, it'd be illegal for anyone to move or take the brick without
your permission, let alone enter your yard. You come home to find the brick
gone and hold the US Government responsible. You tell the the Gov't, "When you
leave a brick on your porch tomorrow, it better be there when you return home,
or else (no campaign funds and you'll move you're $27 bank account off shore
)."

The next day, there is a squad car and 4 cops sitting outside your gate. Not
only that, the Gov't ensures you laws are being drafted to stiffen the penalty
for anyone that might steal your brick _or even enter your yard without
permission_ , and Gov't prosecutors are standing by ready to prosecute with
the threat of jail time (, but don't worry they'll pick up the legal and
prison fees).

Without such Gov't activities you wouldn't be able to afford to continue
leaving gold bricks on your porch.

------
cnvogel
This practice is absolutely standard in oscilloscopes (which is what I'm right
now shopping for). Additional options will set you back between a few hundred
or maybe a thousand dollars/euros easily.

In the past "options" were actual PCBs to be installed, or swapping out of
pricey components/subassemblies.

But software options are typically "only" things like being able to decode
i2c/spi/canbus/... from acquired traces or calculating a fourier-transform.

Also on the lower end models (where it doesn't make sense to build additional
hardware, because even the relatively cheap amplifiers and ADCs will be able
to do a few 100MHz or few GS/s) scope bandwidth might be artificially limited
when not purchasing a software option. Some vendor also limiting the amount of
used sample memory intentionally.

~~~
Gravityloss
So how is this different to selling a computer and then selling software for
it? Obviously the computer would be capable of running the software already
pre-installed...

~~~
IshKebab
There are two differences:

1\. These are generally hardware drivers rather than generic software. If your
computer comes without a text editor, anyone can provide your with one for
whatever price they decide. If your oscilloscope comes without an I2C decoder,
no-one else can add it.

2\. Usually the software is used to cripple the device and then you pay to
_remove_ it. For example on oscilloscopes they use a software low-pass filter
to limit its maximum frequency. You can pay to have it removed.

------
monochromatic
> abusive business practices

How is this abusive? It's market segmentation, and if they didn't do it this
way, they'd do it some other way. This just allows them to have one standard
set of hardware, and differentiate in software.

~~~
asgard1024
I do find market segmentation to be morally wrong (at least, it's against free
market principles, even though I don't agree with those always).

Why shouldn't everyone deserve access to the best tools, and by extension,
best things? (Taking the production costs into account.) Best tools save time
and make everybody more productive, which should be in everybody's interest.

Imagine you would say something like that in education - that some children do
not deserve the best education, simply because they may never use it. How do
you know they will not find some use for it?

Yet, when it comes to tools (and stuff in general), it is readily accepted as
a principle (that it is OK to intentionally cripple someone else's
productivity). Neither the fact that there are business models around market
segmentation doesn't make it a good choice.

You will probably now follow with the standard argument about how they need to
make profit and recoup their investments and so on. Guess what - the
investment was already made, and it can't be undone! And frankly, I am sick of
this lazy ass market god which requires investors to get return on profit so
they would do something at all. (It's kinda like you're probably not a very
good human if you need threat of hell and promise of heaven to make you not
bad!) Just like everybody else, an "investor" should get a good salary (for
the work done in decision-making) and that's it.

Also, the argument "if they didn't do it this way, they'd do it some other
way" is interesting. In this nebulous form, it's often used to justify
something morally fishy. Note that you can also use it other way around: Why
should there be laws to protect DRM, if people who want to break will find
some other way? The correct answer is, of course, the laws and regulations
(legal system) are the correct resolution of this argument - we have them to
steer people away from "other ways".

~~~
nullc
> it's against free market principles,

What principle is it against? A buyer and a seller make a mutual agreement or
they don't.

Due to one time expenses, some kinds of goods cannot exist without
discriminatory pricing. (Where the total income from both low volume high
price and high volume low price is required to make the good worth producing.)

~~~
nhaehnle
I find your exchange of comments very nice because it so perfectly illustrates
a pet peeve of mine.

The assumption "free market = good" is so widely spread and deeply rooted that
anything which is identified as "bad" is then assumed to be against "the free
market", when really, it is often perfectly aligned with "the free market",
and the truth is that "free market = good" is naive. Free markets have good
and bad sides; the good tends to significantly outweigh the bad, but unless
you recognize that there is some bad in there as well, you're not going to end
up with a very good policy mix.

One can try to excuse the naive way of thinking by pretending that one is
merely using a shorthand, but really, I'm doubtful that that's anything more
than an excuse.

~~~
monochromatic
Free market = non-compulsory, voluntary choice. As things go, it's not a bad
place to start. Also, what does your comment have to do with the specifics of
this discussion?

------
smilekzs
From my speculation, rather than the memory card carrying a binary (e.g.
control code) that provides extra functionality, it's far more likely that the
welding machine is inherently capable of working at a large range of
frequencies, but the control software deliberately disallows these options
without the SD card, which likely carries some serial# or decryption key.

A more suitable analogy would be a console game with so-called DLC that is
already present on the disc. Or classic Casio fx-82ES => fx-991ES hack (OT: My
copy of 82ES happens to be rev. A which is trivially hackable; Casio responded
by producing a rev. B that is harder to hack).

I personally believe that at least modification of this sort for own use (i.e.
not offering it as a service) should not be prosecuted. That is, if I own this
awesome welding machine, it should be totally fine for me to reprogram it,
regardless whether I changed only one bit or page in the Flash, or completely
wrote code for it from scratch.

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viraptor
Unless it's connected to the internet and does some online verification of
single use, it seems kind of pointless protection. I expect a dumped mmc card
is already available on torrent trackers...

Edit: of course depends on which model it applies to. If it's for the $15k
range, then I don't think anyone would care about extra $400. If it's for the
$1k range however, it's going to be a lot of skilled, money saving
individuals.

~~~
rdtsc
It could work like license keys for software before the internet. In this case
it could be made a bit better if tied to a hardware identifier and
verification could be done in hardware based on some unique id thing.

The problem then of course is that how much of the actual functionality goes
through that "protection module"? They can put some hardened super secure
module but if it just connects into the main functionality via a 1/0 wire,
then the bypass will just be to cut that wire and install a fix there. (I've
seen that in software as well, fancy shamncy public key license check followed
by a simple "if not verified, then disable feature" check in main code).

I think the important part here is the legal protection. Sure they know people
will bypass it. But they also know that they can no go after some (larger
companies) if they need to and sue them because now the law is in their side.

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Asbostos
Don't forget Tesla did this with some of their earlier Model S's. Preventing
use of the full battery capacity on cheaper versions. It's obviously standard
practice in all commercial software too. The whole idea of selling software
depends on restricting how people use it - at the very least - not allowing
them to copy it and give it away. The marginal cost of producing software is
zero so you can't make money only charging for that. Probably the marginal
cost of producing a welder is lower than they total cost too, so they need to
recover it somehow.

Of course when you buy a Miller welder, you're paying for the brand name so
you're not too concerned about price. Get any cheap Chinese one instead and
you'll get the features are a "fair" price but without feeling so good about
yourself.

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6d0debc071
I wonder what the price of entry is to that market. If they're doing something
so obviously flawed and if the price of entry is low, it strikes me it'd be
relatively easy to make something decent that isn't crippled and sell it with
all the bells and whistles.

~~~
dfox
It's not too complex or expensive to manufacture or even design welders. But
the problem is that the market is mostly B2B and thus dominated by "nobody got
fired for buying XYZ" mentality of practically price-insensitive customers.

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tareqak
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIG_Welder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIG_Welder)
for those who don't know what these things are.

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geggam
you know... once i own something i own it... if you want to tell me what to do
with it after i own it... buy it back from me

property rights are a fundamental tenet of this nation

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silon7
I don't think this type of DRM (you get what you pay for, it's an appliance)
can be fully compared to DRM in a computer which is designed to limit the use
of a computer.

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compactmani
I'm not sure how this is really a debate in a place like HN. We have a pretty
clear picture of where we stand wrt proprietary DRM software. This doesn't
appear any different to me.

why the downvote? Do we not all agree that DRM proprietary software is
unethical? Did I miss something here?

