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Good. My wife is a speech therapist and uses a system that is designed to help people who have had strokes regain their voice. It comprises a piece of softwar
by DoubleGlazing 10y ago
Good.
My wife is a speech therapist and uses a system that is designed to help people who have had strokes regain their voice.
It comprises a piece of software that comes with a "specially calibrated USB microphone". The microphone is actually a Samson laptop USB mic that had the voice improvement systems logo stuck on it.
The system came with lots of legal warnings about not copying, not telling unqualified people about how it worked and not to use an unapproved microphone. The DMCA was specifically mentioned.
One day the mic failed (the program requires patients to shout aggressively at the mic) so my wife went off looking for a replacement. We had a few USB mics that we tried and and the application refused to acknowledge their existence even though they showed up in Windows. It became obvious that the software was checking the USB device ID. My wife went to the company that ran the system to get a replacement, but they said she had to buy a new copy of the software as well - total cost $659. So we took a chance and ordered a new Samson USB mic from Amazon for €30.00, but when it arrived it didn't work. It was the same model, but was a few generations ahead and therefore had a different USB device ID. My wife has some colleagues with the same package so I tested their mics and they had different USB device IDs and it became obvious that when Samson released a revision of the mic the company offering the system simply recompiled the code with he new device ID baked in and then re-branded the mic.
So, not wanting to shell out $659 for a whole new package I took the old and new mics apart desoldered the cartridges from both mics and put the new one in the body of the failed mic. It worked! Now technically this would be a violation of 1201 in the sense that the individual copy of the software they sold you was tied to the specific mic they sold you at the same time - they said so in the EULA. But lets be honest that's just nonsense. They were simply trying to sell more stuff - a tactic that seems fairly common in various fields of professional therapy.
This is the sort of problem caused by 1201. If we lived in the US we would have been in breach of the DMCA even though we copied nothing.
Also, the software is as ugly as sin.
- ProAm 10y agoHow much does your wife charge as a therapist? Everyone needs to make money. HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry. Everyone hates laws until its in their best interest to have said laws.
- coldpie 10y agoWhat? Why should the behavior the OP described be illegal?
- bluejekyll 10y agoThis is exactly the question. Is the dmca, specifically this section valid law.
- DoubleGlazing 10y agoShe barely takes home minimum wage and she is self-employed. Most of her peers are in a similar position. It is not a vocation you get in to for the money. Edit: A common problem in her sector, and other therapy sectors, is that all the recognised diagnosis and treatment systems get bought by the likes of Pearson and other big technical publishers who will demand recurring payments to use the system. For example Owls, a common speech therapy system requires her to use their pre-printed forms to take notes. The basic diagnosis pack costs over $700, but she has to keep buying the forms at $60 for 25 - even thought he system rarely changes.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoHow much do you think it'd cost to replicate the software as an open source tool? I've written grants before for funding open source projects, and this anecdote boils my blood.
- soperj 10y agoYeah, this is just plain thievery from people who can least afford it.
- japhyr 10y agoCan you say a bit more about the process of writing grants for open source projects? I have some long-term education related projects that I'm considering grant funding to support. I have some ideas how to go about it, but I'd love to hear what you've done.
- icefo 10y agoI think you should copy the USB device ID. If the software only rely on that and the mic fail again I'm pretty sure there is a way to make the software believe it's talking to the old mic with that.
- DoubleGlazing 10y agoI did consider that but I didn't want to take the risk of messing things up even further. I figured the cartridge exchange was a safer option. Incidentally when I called Samson support looking to buy a specific model revision I told them what the mic was used for. When I mentioned it was for people shouting mouth open wide at the top of their voice the support rep said "But that mic is for stuff like Skype and maybe recording a little bit of singing not for shouting at".
- ethbro 10y agoOh, first tier hardware support. The "Wait, our product does what?" crowd?
- ggambetta 10y agoWould be easier to do a hex search on the binaries, find the device id of the old mic, and patch in the device id of the new mic. I'd be surprised if they had bothered to obfuscate the id in any way.
- DoubleGlazing 10y agoNow you mention it I feel like I overlooked the obvious solution.
- roghummal 10y agoGood excuse to break out the soldering iron.
- ggambetta 10y agoHahaha :) To each his own, I guess. I would have never thought of anything involving a soldering iron!
- beachstartup 10y agopermanently modifying the hardware is the more portable solution. it will always work with unmodified software i.e. at a colleague's location. i presume your wife works with others that use the same platform.
- hueving 10y ago>permanently modifying the hardware is the more portable solution. it will always work with unmodified software i.e. at a colleague's location. No, as OP mentioned, the software was compiled to match the device ID of the mic it was shipped with. So it would only work with versions of the software that were the same as OP's.
- beachstartup 10y agookay.
- 10y ago
- asimuvPR 10y agoCould you email me with the name of the software? Thank you.
- nathancahill 10y agoNice try DMCA
- 2close4comfort 10y agoAnd this is WHY you should be able to do work like this because of crappy software. Fixing things that are broken should not be a crime (a microphone, a computer, a tractor) Glad to see you found a solution to someone else shortsighted software protection!
- ben_jones 10y agoEvery now and then I get a compliment on my speaking, my very Irish relatives call it "the gift of the gab". What they don't know is that I grew up with a small but not insignificant speech impediment that among other things prevented me from saying most words that included the letter 'r'. I remember having to consciously blacklist words from my vocabulary because I couldn't pronounce them. Anyways I was fortunate enough to belong to a school district that had a speech therapist who rotated through schools. After three years I had improved enough to 'graduate' and have been saying words with 'r' ever since. I haven't thought about it in years but the actions of that therapist, and of the district to provide her, have greatly effected my life. So tell your wife thank you for what she does, and please ask her if she is aware of any philanthropic organizations where people can donate time or money to the worthy cause of speech therapy. I can only imagine all the inner city schools in America without a speech therapist, and what that must do the the kids.
- DoubleGlazing 10y agoI'll let her know. We live in Dublin, I'm Irish but shes from New York - but got her degree in Dallas. She spent several years as a school district speechie in Texas so she probably knows exactly what you went through. I also grew up with a rhotacism which I forced out of myself due to bullying. I know what you went through.
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoYou repaired a broken analog component. Not a DMCA violation but I suppose it's no longer an FDA approved medical device.
- DanBC 10y agoYou don't think this was circumventing a technical measure?
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoThe technical measure (ID lock) was untouched.
- jackmott 10y agoYou can lawyer it in your head how you want, but meanwhile someone can still get sued over this and have to fight it.