4 ms·

One of the charges is "trafficking in circumvention devices" that's a huge concern! If they are successfully charged as such it's going to set a horrible preced

by anfilt 6y ago

One of the charges is "trafficking in circumvention devices" that's a huge concern! If they are successfully charged as such it's going to set a horrible precedent!

bitwize 6y ago
People have been convicted under the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA before. The law explicitly says it's a crime.
- monocasa 6y ago
  They live in France and Shenzhen. Are circumvention devices illegal there?
  - bitwize 6y ago
    In France, almost certainly. The DMCA was implemented under the auspices of a WIPO treaty which mandates anticircumvention legislation.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      I don't think DADVSI's anti circumvention provisions have been tested in court.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    I remember VLC reading many years ago that VLC could do what it did, playing region-locked DVDs, because the French author could legally implement circumvention methods into VLC. However, America's focus in free trade negotiations over the past decade and perhaps longer have been protecting their intellectual property. For example, due to America's pressure and as a part of the New NAFTA negotiations, Canada agreed to increase its copyright term from life + 50 to life + 70 years. I wouldn't be surprised if what was once legal in France has become illegal since. Decades ago, US decided it wanted banks everywhere to follow American regulations. It was a resounding success. That's why US can now block Iran from trading with the rest of the world through national legislation rather than international sanctions, or make Canada hand over a Chinese national to be prosecuted in the US for alleged crimes done in Hong Kong. Now that banking is done, the new frontier is intellectual property. I expect national laws everywhere to one by one become like US laws.
    - marcan_42 6y ago
      There's a difference between circumvention for region-free playback (which is not necessary any more, as this generation of consoles is region free) and format-shifting (which makes sense for audiovisual media, but not games, at least not until emulators catch up, since you need to play games on the original hardware) and circumvention for piracy, or, as it is most commonly euphemized, "backups". While backing up your games is a legitimate use case, it's not terribly useful with cartridge-based consoles like the Switch (cartridges don't get scratched), and it's much harder to argue for that usage. The reality is that the vast, vast majority of people claiming they're "backing up games" are just pirating games. I've seen this first hand as a major public face in the Wii homebrew community, trying to steer the community away from piracy. Game modding is often brought up as another use case, but straight piracy often requires additional effort over just modding games for technical reasons (you need to bypass game authentication and/or redirect all file access, not just the modded bits), so I don't buy that argument. Typical piracy tools are very obviously targeted at such, not at modding, and legitimate modding teams who do not support piracy have in the past developed approaches that are a lot less intrusive to doing so (see: Project M). So it's going to be a lot harder to argue before a court for mechanisms that allow you to copy games, because legitimate uses are much fewer and far in between, and the tools are all, realistically, aimed at piracy, whether they drape a thin veil over it or not. The courts are not stupid, they can see through thin veils.
      - aranelsurion 6y ago
        > Game modding is often brought up as another use case, but straight piracy often requires additional effort over just modding games for technical reasons (you need to bypass game authentication and/or redirect all file access, not just the modded bits), so I don't buy that argument. Yet once you disable signature checks in your OS, it could be used by the user for any purpose, no? Isn't that the main point of rooting your device, having ability to do whatever. Then it comes to where you draw a line. If you allow me to run any program w/o checks, I can install RetroArch for emulation, or a save manager to save me from NSO tax, so I can backup my saves without paying a monthly fee. If you allow me to run kernel extensions, I can do stuff like overclocking or use my xbox gamepad with nintendo console, and if you unlock the bootloader, I can boot into Android. Once you unlock all those capabilities to a point where I can boot any OS, you'd essentially turn a purpose-built device to a general-purpose computer, and building general purpose computers is not a crime (yet? :). I don't see PC makers or Microsoft being accused of enabling piracy, yet their platforms have the same freedoms.

by anfilt 6y ago

One of the charges is "trafficking in circumvention devices" that's a huge concern! If they are successfully charged as such it's going to set a horrible precedent!

bitwize 6y ago

People have been convicted under the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA before. The law explicitly says it's a crime.

monocasa 6y ago
They live in France and Shenzhen. Are circumvention devices illegal there?
- bitwize 6y ago
  In France, almost certainly. The DMCA was implemented under the auspices of a WIPO treaty which mandates anticircumvention legislation.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    I don't think DADVSI's anti circumvention provisions have been tested in court.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  I remember VLC reading many years ago that VLC could do what it did, playing region-locked DVDs, because the French author could legally implement circumvention methods into VLC. However, America's focus in free trade negotiations over the past decade and perhaps longer have been protecting their intellectual property. For example, due to America's pressure and as a part of the New NAFTA negotiations, Canada agreed to increase its copyright term from life + 50 to life + 70 years. I wouldn't be surprised if what was once legal in France has become illegal since. Decades ago, US decided it wanted banks everywhere to follow American regulations. It was a resounding success. That's why US can now block Iran from trading with the rest of the world through national legislation rather than international sanctions, or make Canada hand over a Chinese national to be prosecuted in the US for alleged crimes done in Hong Kong. Now that banking is done, the new frontier is intellectual property. I expect national laws everywhere to one by one become like US laws.
  - marcan_42 6y ago
    There's a difference between circumvention for region-free playback (which is not necessary any more, as this generation of consoles is region free) and format-shifting (which makes sense for audiovisual media, but not games, at least not until emulators catch up, since you need to play games on the original hardware) and circumvention for piracy, or, as it is most commonly euphemized, "backups". While backing up your games is a legitimate use case, it's not terribly useful with cartridge-based consoles like the Switch (cartridges don't get scratched), and it's much harder to argue for that usage. The reality is that the vast, vast majority of people claiming they're "backing up games" are just pirating games. I've seen this first hand as a major public face in the Wii homebrew community, trying to steer the community away from piracy. Game modding is often brought up as another use case, but straight piracy often requires additional effort over just modding games for technical reasons (you need to bypass game authentication and/or redirect all file access, not just the modded bits), so I don't buy that argument. Typical piracy tools are very obviously targeted at such, not at modding, and legitimate modding teams who do not support piracy have in the past developed approaches that are a lot less intrusive to doing so (see: Project M). So it's going to be a lot harder to argue before a court for mechanisms that allow you to copy games, because legitimate uses are much fewer and far in between, and the tools are all, realistically, aimed at piracy, whether they drape a thin veil over it or not. The courts are not stupid, they can see through thin veils.
    - aranelsurion 6y ago
      > Game modding is often brought up as another use case, but straight piracy often requires additional effort over just modding games for technical reasons (you need to bypass game authentication and/or redirect all file access, not just the modded bits), so I don't buy that argument. Yet once you disable signature checks in your OS, it could be used by the user for any purpose, no? Isn't that the main point of rooting your device, having ability to do whatever. Then it comes to where you draw a line. If you allow me to run any program w/o checks, I can install RetroArch for emulation, or a save manager to save me from NSO tax, so I can backup my saves without paying a monthly fee. If you allow me to run kernel extensions, I can do stuff like overclocking or use my xbox gamepad with nintendo console, and if you unlock the bootloader, I can boot into Android. Once you unlock all those capabilities to a point where I can boot any OS, you'd essentially turn a purpose-built device to a general-purpose computer, and building general purpose computers is not a crime (yet? :). I don't see PC makers or Microsoft being accused of enabling piracy, yet their platforms have the same freedoms.