7 ms·

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

by steve19 11y ago

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.
- bigiain 11y ago
  Yeah, but if they want to "sell" me a widget, I should be able to behave in the assumption that I then own it and can do whatever I like with it. If I buy an IKEA table, and choose to take it apart and assemble it differently, I'm not going to expect the police to come knocking at my door saying "IKEA says you can't do that." If they want to retain ownership and control over "their" widget, that's fine - I'm happy enough to pay Apple something less than half of what I used to pay for a physical CD - but if you put a "thing" on a shelf in a store, and I can pick it up and hand over some cash and walk out with it, there's no assumption that the manufacturer has any more legal right to tell me what I can and can't do with it when I get it home (there may be _other_ interested parties, if I turned a TIG welder into a homebuilt Taser, the police might come after me themselves, but not on behalf of the manufacturer.) I'm not saying they can't fo it. But I am saying they shouldn't be allowed to call that "selling a TIG welder". Because it's not what people usually think it means.
  - nsajko 11y ago
    The public should be educated about this. Maybe printing and distributing some flyers would be beneficial. (Does the EFF maybe already do something like this?)
  - pjc50 11y ago
    IKEA says you can't do that If you run a website telling people how to modify their IKEA furniture, you may have it confiscated by the trademark "police": http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/ikea-waits-8-years-then-shuts-down-ikeahackers-site-with-trademark-claim/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/ikea-waits-8-year... http://www.ikeahackers.net/2014/06/big-changes-coming-to-ikeahackers.html http://www.ikeahackers.net/2014/06/big-changes-coming-to-ike...
    - Vendan 11y ago
      lol, hilarious how the site is still up and using the exact same name and everything. Doesn't seem like they actually "confiscated it". Also, using a trademark however you want and using a physical object that you own however you want are radically different concepts.
- nullc 11y ago
  > So? By law you also can't grab the higher end tig welder next to it. False comparison. If you bought the cheap welder and opened it up and twiddled it to make it as good as the more expensive one then that is fine and totally lawful. (And there have been a fair number of products intentionally differentiated that way: someone willing to move a jumper gets the premium product, but lots of buyers will just pay) The complaint about the DMCA is that it gives a trivial distinction which many users could presumably self-upgrade otherwise the force of law.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    " False comparison. If you bought the cheap welder and opened it up and twiddled it to make it as good as the more expensive one then that is fine and totally lawful. " The DMCA does not prevent you from doing anything to this welder except trying to work around their firmware to get something you didn't pay for. You are, in fact, free to take it, twiddle the inside bits, write your own firmware, from scratch, and use the hardware in it. You just can't take their software and hack it to do it "The complaint about the DMCA is that it gives a trivial distinction which many users could presumably self-upgrade otherwise the force of law. " You have not actually shown this, because of what i said - you are free to upgrade it as you see fit. You just have to not use someone else's IP to do it. You have to use your own.

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

by 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.
bigiain 11y ago
Yeah, but if they want to "sell" me a widget, I should be able to behave in the assumption that I then own it and can do whatever I like with it. If I buy an IKEA table, and choose to take it apart and assemble it differently, I'm not going to expect the police to come knocking at my door saying "IKEA says you can't do that." If they want to retain ownership and control over "their" widget, that's fine - I'm happy enough to pay Apple something less than half of what I used to pay for a physical CD - but if you put a "thing" on a shelf in a store, and I can pick it up and hand over some cash and walk out with it, there's no assumption that the manufacturer has any more legal right to tell me what I can and can't do with it when I get it home (there may be _other_ interested parties, if I turned a TIG welder into a homebuilt Taser, the police might come after me themselves, but not on behalf of the manufacturer.) I'm not saying they can't fo it. But I am saying they shouldn't be allowed to call that "selling a TIG welder". Because it's not what people usually think it means.
- nsajko 11y ago
  The public should be educated about this. Maybe printing and distributing some flyers would be beneficial. (Does the EFF maybe already do something like this?)
- pjc50 11y ago
  IKEA says you can't do that If you run a website telling people how to modify their IKEA furniture, you may have it confiscated by the trademark "police": http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/ikea-waits-8-years-then-shuts-down-ikeahackers-site-with-trademark-claim/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/ikea-waits-8-year... http://www.ikeahackers.net/2014/06/big-changes-coming-to-ikeahackers.html http://www.ikeahackers.net/2014/06/big-changes-coming-to-ike...
  - Vendan 11y ago
    lol, hilarious how the site is still up and using the exact same name and everything. Doesn't seem like they actually "confiscated it". Also, using a trademark however you want and using a physical object that you own however you want are radically different concepts.
nullc 11y ago
> So? By law you also can't grab the higher end tig welder next to it. False comparison. If you bought the cheap welder and opened it up and twiddled it to make it as good as the more expensive one then that is fine and totally lawful. (And there have been a fair number of products intentionally differentiated that way: someone willing to move a jumper gets the premium product, but lots of buyers will just pay) The complaint about the DMCA is that it gives a trivial distinction which many users could presumably self-upgrade otherwise the force of law.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  " False comparison. If you bought the cheap welder and opened it up and twiddled it to make it as good as the more expensive one then that is fine and totally lawful. " The DMCA does not prevent you from doing anything to this welder except trying to work around their firmware to get something you didn't pay for. You are, in fact, free to take it, twiddle the inside bits, write your own firmware, from scratch, and use the hardware in it. You just can't take their software and hack it to do it "The complaint about the DMCA is that it gives a trivial distinction which many users could presumably self-upgrade otherwise the force of law. " You have not actually shown this, because of what i said - you are free to upgrade it as you see fit. You just have to not use someone else's IP to do it. You have to use your own.