5 ms·

Sounds like an opportunity...

by swampthinker 10y ago

pavement 10y ago
...for famine.
pjc50 10y ago
.. to get sued for patent infringement. Or DMCA violation.
- keyme 10y ago
  This is interoperability. At the very least this is a gray area.
  - acdha 10y ago
    Those are potentially why the lawsuit would fail if you're lucky. You'd still have to fight it at ruinous cost for a small business – and expect customers to disappear if there's any chance they'd be included.
  - criddell 10y ago
    This seems exactly like the type of situation for which the Librarian of Congress would carve out a DMCA exemption.
    - mwexler 10y ago
      Perhaps better with the word "should" instead of "would"...
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
      Huh, I did not know that Librarian of Congress was actually a title/position.
      - stevenbedrick 10y ago
        It is! And our current Librarian, Carla Hayden, is really incredible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarian_of_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarian_of_Congress If I may go into fanboy mode for a moment, I'd like to say that in my opinion the Library itself is one of the crown jewels of the federal government. It is also definitely worth a visit if you're ever in DC. They give free tours of the Jefferson building, and besides the beautiful architecture of the building itself, there are some very interesting exhibits on display. There's a surprising amount to see, and the staff are great- very knowledgable and friendly. Besides its main missions of supporting congressional research and acting as the central repository library, the LoC also does a ton of great research on media preservation and archival practices... I got to tour one of their labs once- in one room I talked with an expert in the chemistry of inks used in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the next room heard from other people who specialized in CD and audiotape manufacturing, who could talk about how specific manufacturing plants in Japan changed processes from year to year and how that affected the archival lifetime of their products. Just amazing stuff, and that wasn't even scratching the surface.
  - ska 10y ago
    "Gray area" here means: budget an awful lot of money for lawyers. Doesn't mean it's not a good idea, but being naive about it won't get you anywhere useful.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      And to be clear, don't expect to win after that awful lot of money is spent. The law makes it really hard to succeed on these types of issues, and judges generally have very stringent/impractical interpretations (such as the interpretation that RAM copies are sufficiently fixed to infringe copyright).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
rebeccaskinner 10y ago
I co-founded a company in this space a few years ago. We ultimately pivoted out of the space because for all of the user buy-in that we got, the legal encumbrances were way too high to be able to successfully operate without raising a lot of money just to pay lawyers. If we'd decided to go the VC route instead of bootstrapping we might have been able to make a go of it, but raising VC money for a startup in the midwest working on something as mundane as farming was looking pretty untenable.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  > the legal encumbrances were way too high to be able to successfully operate without raising a lot of money just to pay lawyers. Were these standard encumbrances that hardware and software makers put to try and lockdown their products, or was there something special about farming?
  - rebeccaskinner 10y ago
    It was, for the most part, regular DRM and proprietary data/hardware format stuff that is common across industries. The very high cost of the equipment if it were bricked for license violation, and the very narrow windows for being able to use the equipment (if you need to call John Deere and have them re-enable your tractor you've just potentially lost out on an entire seasons revenue) were also big factors. Many of the farmers that we talked to were fed up enough that they would have risked it, but between our own direct legal risks, and the risk to our reputation if our customers equipment started getting bricked, was enough to stop us from moving forward.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      Thank you for the really interesting comments!
- burfog 10y ago
  Couldn't you make a full electronics replacement kit? It's a bit more involved, but DMCA and other DRM issues just go away. All the original electronics just get removed, to be boxed up and maybe discarded. You run your own software on your own computer with your own sensors.

Sounds like an opportunity...

pavement 10y ago

...for famine.

pjc50 10y ago

.. to get sued for patent infringement. Or DMCA violation.

keyme 10y ago
This is interoperability. At the very least this is a gray area.
- acdha 10y ago
  Those are potentially why the lawsuit would fail if you're lucky. You'd still have to fight it at ruinous cost for a small business – and expect customers to disappear if there's any chance they'd be included.
- criddell 10y ago
  This seems exactly like the type of situation for which the Librarian of Congress would carve out a DMCA exemption.
  - mwexler 10y ago
    Perhaps better with the word "should" instead of "would"...
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    Huh, I did not know that Librarian of Congress was actually a title/position.
    - stevenbedrick 10y ago
      It is! And our current Librarian, Carla Hayden, is really incredible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarian_of_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarian_of_Congress If I may go into fanboy mode for a moment, I'd like to say that in my opinion the Library itself is one of the crown jewels of the federal government. It is also definitely worth a visit if you're ever in DC. They give free tours of the Jefferson building, and besides the beautiful architecture of the building itself, there are some very interesting exhibits on display. There's a surprising amount to see, and the staff are great- very knowledgable and friendly. Besides its main missions of supporting congressional research and acting as the central repository library, the LoC also does a ton of great research on media preservation and archival practices... I got to tour one of their labs once- in one room I talked with an expert in the chemistry of inks used in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the next room heard from other people who specialized in CD and audiotape manufacturing, who could talk about how specific manufacturing plants in Japan changed processes from year to year and how that affected the archival lifetime of their products. Just amazing stuff, and that wasn't even scratching the surface.
- ska 10y ago
  "Gray area" here means: budget an awful lot of money for lawyers. Doesn't mean it's not a good idea, but being naive about it won't get you anywhere useful.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    And to be clear, don't expect to win after that awful lot of money is spent. The law makes it really hard to succeed on these types of issues, and judges generally have very stringent/impractical interpretations (such as the interpretation that RAM copies are sufficiently fixed to infringe copyright).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

rebeccaskinner 10y ago

I co-founded a company in this space a few years ago. We ultimately pivoted out of the space because for all of the user buy-in that we got, the legal encumbrances were way too high to be able to successfully operate without raising a lot of money just to pay lawyers. If we'd decided to go the VC route instead of bootstrapping we might have been able to make a go of it, but raising VC money for a startup in the midwest working on something as mundane as farming was looking pretty untenable.

jessriedel 10y ago
> the legal encumbrances were way too high to be able to successfully operate without raising a lot of money just to pay lawyers. Were these standard encumbrances that hardware and software makers put to try and lockdown their products, or was there something special about farming?
- rebeccaskinner 10y ago
  It was, for the most part, regular DRM and proprietary data/hardware format stuff that is common across industries. The very high cost of the equipment if it were bricked for license violation, and the very narrow windows for being able to use the equipment (if you need to call John Deere and have them re-enable your tractor you've just potentially lost out on an entire seasons revenue) were also big factors. Many of the farmers that we talked to were fed up enough that they would have risked it, but between our own direct legal risks, and the risk to our reputation if our customers equipment started getting bricked, was enough to stop us from moving forward.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    Thank you for the really interesting comments!
burfog 10y ago
Couldn't you make a full electronics replacement kit? It's a bit more involved, but DMCA and other DRM issues just go away. All the original electronics just get removed, to be boxed up and maybe discarded. You run your own software on your own computer with your own sensors.