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> 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 th

> 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.

judgardner 11y ago
Agreed, this is pretty standard. One production run reduces cost and if you want the advanced features you pay more.
steve19 11y ago
It's abusive because by law we cannot modify our TIG welders to unlock these features/bypass restrictions.
- vvanders 11y ago
  No different than Agilent locking out features in their oscilloscopes. Software and R&D isn't free.
  - wycx 11y ago
    Agilent could choose to ship products without that functionality, but they make a business decision that it is cheaper to make many models with the same hardware, and differentiate them only by unlock codes/different firmware. If you believe that you should be able to do what you want with physical items you own, any functionality included in a product you own should be fair game. If Agilent want differentiated products, perhaps they should sell products that are actually different.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  So? By law you also can't grab the higher end tig welder next to it. Your argument seems to be essentially "if they want to do this, they should have to produce identical models with slightly different firmware and give them different skus and blah blah blah blah blah" That seems pretty silly. These are market segmentation restrictions, they would normally just do what i suggested, and produce models with identical insides except for the firmware rom. Why force them to do that, exactly? IE what grand purpose does it serve? This is, IMHO, very different from "you've made it illegal for me to play with my phone that i own", because you don't want to put your stuff on it or mess with the hardware using your software, you just want to not pay for the stuff they wrote. If you want to install your own firmware on the tig welder hardware, that isn't theirs, and you wrote, awesome, that sounds great. I'll support you to death.
  - jordanb 11y ago
    Miller is free to segment the market however it wants, but I don't agree that altering the welder that I own should be a federal crime. We're changing the very definition of property here to support some company's price discrimination scheme. > Why force them to do that, exactly? IE what grand purpose does it serve? Without the DMCA, Miller could decide that their DRM is sufficient allowing that they can't legally prevent people from bypassing it. Or they could decide to ship different programming in different products. The grand purpose, though, is upholding the notion that when I own a thing that means I am free to do I want with it.
    - DannyBee 11y ago
      " but I don't agree that altering the welder that I own should be a federal crime" Altering plenty of things is a federal crime. You can't file the serial number off a gun, for example. As a more apropos example, you can't make a sawed off shotgun. it is a federal crime to possess them, and this includes making them, without paying some tax and registering for a permit. If you want a less violent example, most medical devices can't be modified, etc. "We're changing the very definition of property here to support some company's price discrimination scheme." No, we really aren't. While completely controlling everything you can do with every physical device you own is a great theory, it's definitely not reality, nor has it been, for many many years. It's definitely not "the very definition of property". In fact, historically property law was worse. If you physically mutilated or damaged some things you owned (religious, etc), you could often get stoned/killed. "The grand purpose, though, is upholding the notion that when I own a thing that means I am free to do I want with it." You are working off the premise that this changes the state of the that. It does not. That is because this notion has never been upheld, and i can point to tons of examples of physical property you can own but are not free to do what you want with.
      - jordanb 11y ago
        Your examples of changing weapons to be untraceable or more lethal are not apropos because these are violations of legal restrictions passed by congress into law. You can not saw off a shotgun not because Browning doesn't want you to saw it off, but because sawed off shotguns are not legal. What the DMCA does is take a manufacturer's prerogative and elevate it to the status of federal crime as soon as the manufacturer decides to create a "digital rights management" scheme to enforce that prerogative.
asgard1024 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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.)
  - michaelt 11y ago
    In a perfectly competitive market, the market price is the marginal cost of production. If the market were working as it theoretically should, the upgrade would be free as the marginal cost of the upgrade is nothing.
joe_the_user 11y ago
"Abusive" might not convey the situation exactly. But if Homedepot and ever other hardware store suddenly developed a technology that let them sell wood that worked great for many standard construction practices but would suddenly demand more money for artists or anyone doing anything usual with that material, one would could easily feel that one's world had become truncated. I'd rather call that abuse than not-abuse. The ability to buy a thing, an object, that you can do whatever the heck you want with (by yourself, in the private of your home), is the antidote for being serf to pay-by-what-we-think-it's-worth-to-you services. Even you choose to purchase services instead of things, the existence of things keeps the service provider honest and oppositely the non-existence of things makes the serfdom more onerous.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I think the fact that it's purely in software now only serves to highlight how market segmentation is a shitty practice. It's like planed obsolescence - just because it's standard practice, doesn't mean it's ok.
alephnil 11y ago
It is a matter of perspective to some extent. If what they say is "if you add this extra functionality without our permission, we will sue you", it is not OK. This cripples peoples ability to innovate. If they on the other hand say "This is the basic functionality, and you can buy this add on package for $400 if you want extra functionality", I have less problems with it. The latter opens up for third party addons, possibly being more innovative than the original addon software. What I find abusive is the attempts to prevent people form innovate using the law.

judgardner 11y ago

Agreed, this is pretty standard. One production run reduces cost and if you want the advanced features you pay more.

steve19 11y ago

It's abusive because by law we cannot modify our TIG welders to unlock these features/bypass restrictions.

vvanders 11y ago
No different than Agilent locking out features in their oscilloscopes. Software and R&D isn't free.
- wycx 11y ago
  Agilent could choose to ship products without that functionality, but they make a business decision that it is cheaper to make many models with the same hardware, and differentiate them only by unlock codes/different firmware. If you believe that you should be able to do what you want with physical items you own, any functionality included in a product you own should be fair game. If Agilent want differentiated products, perhaps they should sell products that are actually different.
DannyBee 11y ago
So? By law you also can't grab the higher end tig welder next to it. Your argument seems to be essentially "if they want to do this, they should have to produce identical models with slightly different firmware and give them different skus and blah blah blah blah blah" That seems pretty silly. These are market segmentation restrictions, they would normally just do what i suggested, and produce models with identical insides except for the firmware rom. Why force them to do that, exactly? IE what grand purpose does it serve? This is, IMHO, very different from "you've made it illegal for me to play with my phone that i own", because you don't want to put your stuff on it or mess with the hardware using your software, you just want to not pay for the stuff they wrote. If you want to install your own firmware on the tig welder hardware, that isn't theirs, and you wrote, awesome, that sounds great. I'll support you to death.
- jordanb 11y ago
  Miller is free to segment the market however it wants, but I don't agree that altering the welder that I own should be a federal crime. We're changing the very definition of property here to support some company's price discrimination scheme. > Why force them to do that, exactly? IE what grand purpose does it serve? Without the DMCA, Miller could decide that their DRM is sufficient allowing that they can't legally prevent people from bypassing it. Or they could decide to ship different programming in different products. The grand purpose, though, is upholding the notion that when I own a thing that means I am free to do I want with it.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    " but I don't agree that altering the welder that I own should be a federal crime" Altering plenty of things is a federal crime. You can't file the serial number off a gun, for example. As a more apropos example, you can't make a sawed off shotgun. it is a federal crime to possess them, and this includes making them, without paying some tax and registering for a permit. If you want a less violent example, most medical devices can't be modified, etc. "We're changing the very definition of property here to support some company's price discrimination scheme." No, we really aren't. While completely controlling everything you can do with every physical device you own is a great theory, it's definitely not reality, nor has it been, for many many years. It's definitely not "the very definition of property". In fact, historically property law was worse. If you physically mutilated or damaged some things you owned (religious, etc), you could often get stoned/killed. "The grand purpose, though, is upholding the notion that when I own a thing that means I am free to do I want with it." You are working off the premise that this changes the state of the that. It does not. That is because this notion has never been upheld, and i can point to tons of examples of physical property you can own but are not free to do what you want with.
    - jordanb 11y ago
      Your examples of changing weapons to be untraceable or more lethal are not apropos because these are violations of legal restrictions passed by congress into law. You can not saw off a shotgun not because Browning doesn't want you to saw it off, but because sawed off shotguns are not legal. What the DMCA does is take a manufacturer's prerogative and elevate it to the status of federal crime as soon as the manufacturer decides to create a "digital rights management" scheme to enforce that prerogative.

asgard1024 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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.)
- michaelt 11y ago
  In a perfectly competitive market, the market price is the marginal cost of production. If the market were working as it theoretically should, the upgrade would be free as the marginal cost of the upgrade is nothing.

joe_the_user 11y ago

"Abusive" might not convey the situation exactly. But if Homedepot and ever other hardware store suddenly developed a technology that let them sell wood that worked great for many standard construction practices but would suddenly demand more money for artists or anyone doing anything usual with that material, one would could easily feel that one's world had become truncated. I'd rather call that abuse than not-abuse. The ability to buy a thing, an object, that you can do whatever the heck you want with (by yourself, in the private of your home), is the antidote for being serf to pay-by-what-we-think-it's-worth-to-you services. Even you choose to purchase services instead of things, the existence of things keeps the service provider honest and oppositely the non-existence of things makes the serfdom more onerous.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I think the fact that it's purely in software now only serves to highlight how market segmentation is a shitty practice. It's like planed obsolescence - just because it's standard practice, doesn't mean it's ok.

alephnil 11y ago

It is a matter of perspective to some extent. If what they say is "if you add this extra functionality without our permission, we will sue you", it is not OK. This cripples peoples ability to innovate. If they on the other hand say "This is the basic functionality, and you can buy this add on package for $400 if you want extra functionality", I have less problems with it. The latter opens up for third party addons, possibly being more innovative than the original addon software. What I find abusive is the attempts to prevent people form innovate using the law.