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This isn't unprecedented, Sony used to encrypt most of their phones image processing stack with a key which was deleted forever if you unlocked the bootloader,

This isn't unprecedented, Sony used to encrypt most of their phones image processing stack with a key which was deleted forever if you unlocked the bootloader, making the camera permanently perform much worse even if you re-locked the bootloader later. Likewise with Winevine DRM, unlocking the bootloader will break L1 playback, either forever or until you re-lock depending on the device. I'm guessing this is Google similarly trying to stop people extracting their local models by not letting unlocked devices access them. I wonder if they'll also crack down on porting the Pixel Camera app to non-Pixel devices, people have been doing that forever because the processing is better than many devices native camera apps.

treyd 2y ago
That this is legal is crazy to me. Such a strong reason to split up the hardware and software sides of the businesses.
- alphabettsy 2y ago
  Why would it be illegal? I’m not saying it’s right, but what would the law look like making it illegal and what would the impact be positive and negative?
  - bakugo 2y ago
    > Why would it be illegal for a manufacturer to retain full control of what you do on your device after they've supposedly sold it to you? The fact that this question even needs to be asked at all shows just how dire the state of consumer rights in tech is.
    - alphabettsy 2y ago
      Who’s asking that question?
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        It's a rephrasing of your question, isn't it? If there's a difference in this context, please clarify.
        alphabettsy 2y ago
        It’s not. It’s an uncharitable interpretation of my question, aka straw man. I was hoping for a discussion about exactly what I said. The basis for such a law and its impacts.
        Dylan16807 2y ago
        It's not a strawman. They were specifically answering your question of "Why would it be illegal?" and not delving into the specifics of what the law would look like. And the answer they gave is that it's bad for a manufacturer to retain control like that of a device you own. Also that it's a consumer rights issue, basic enough that nobody should need to ask why. I guess the shouldn't have used the word "full" but that's pretty picky. It looks like a pretty reasonable argument to me. They didn't discuss the basis but "consumer protection" seems to me to be sufficient basis. For impacts, I'm not sure what you're looking for; without being an expert it's hard to go beyond "companies stop doing that". But either way, replies don't have to answer every question you asked.
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    > what would the law look like making it illegal How about "you can't sell a tool that actively works against the interests of the customer"?
    - fsflover 2y ago
      Or "you have to advertise it as such".
      - krick 2y ago
        This is much better than GPs attempt, because, tobacco. Or, well, anything, really. I'm sure some more targeted path could be taken. Like outlawing selling non-OSS. That sure would be nice...
  - hedora 2y ago
    This sort of crap was banned under the first sale doctrine (which basically said that if you sell a thing, then the buyer owns the thing, including the right to use and resell it, and even the patented parts of it). The impact was overwhelmingly positive. One could argue that using copyright and eulas to bypass first sale is a misuse of copyright (the standard penalty for that is “you lose your copyright”, which seems completely reasonable and proportional to me).
    - Dracophoenix 2y ago
      There's no right of first sale for copyrighted code. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Franklin_Computer_Corp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Fran.... > The district court found in favor of Franklin. However, Apple appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit which, in a separate case decided three days after Franklin won at the lower level, had determined that both a program existing only in a written form unreadable to humans (e.g. object code) and one embedded on a ROM were protected by copyright. (See Williams Elec., Inc., v. Artic Int'l, Inc., 685 F.2d 870 (1982)). The Court of Appeals overturned the district court's ruling in Franklin by applying its holdings in Williams and going further to hold that operating systems were also copyrightable.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        > There's no right of first sale for copyrighted code. Yes, that was the premise of the complaint. > Citation I don't see anything here that resembles first sale, just a ruling that copyright applies to compiled code. The concept of first sale doctrine is that despite the presence of the seller's ip the seller loses control over most uses. Nobody is arguing against the existence of the copyright.
      - _aavaa_ 2y ago
        Why would object code be such an important difference? Are we glossing over the fact that this is how computers were programmed and that people very much did read and write this format?
flutas 2y ago
> I'm guessing this is Google similarly trying to stop people extracting their local models by not letting unlocked devices access them. It seems like it's not even that thought out. Google allows the devices to fully download the models...just not run them? If you want the models, here ya go: https://pastebin.com/jh4YG5jX https://pastebin.com/jh4YG5jX That's every file the app downloads on launch. EDIT: Seemingly I'm wrong. Someone below in another comment stated that they are not allowing the device to download the Gemini Nano model and that's what the failure is from.
- gruez 2y ago
  But are they encrypted?
  - flutas 2y ago
    I'm not super well versed in TF, so I have no real clue. But the files seemingly all have headers. Maybe TF offers an encrypted "inside the file" while having the headers not encrypted, but unless they do it doesn't look like it.
- DownrightNifty 2y ago
  Oh wow, that's interesting, thanks for sharing. I was experimenting with the Pixel Recorder app, which calls into the AICore system service, which calls into the Protected Download API to download its models. Based on the URLs ("pixelai-models" vs "aicore-models") it looks like Pixel Screenshots is doing its own thing and not using AICore.
  - flutas 2y ago
    It does the same thing re: hooking, but downloads most (if not all?) of the models, only at the end does it fail with "precondition check failed" from the server which aicore just repeats. I haven't gotten further in it to figure out what it's bailing out on, aside from the request going to google using the trusted dl service and failing. It could be the same model call and they are being oddly protective over gemini nano.
- 2y ago

treyd 2y ago

That this is legal is crazy to me. Such a strong reason to split up the hardware and software sides of the businesses.

alphabettsy 2y ago
Why would it be illegal? I’m not saying it’s right, but what would the law look like making it illegal and what would the impact be positive and negative?
- bakugo 2y ago
  > Why would it be illegal for a manufacturer to retain full control of what you do on your device after they've supposedly sold it to you? The fact that this question even needs to be asked at all shows just how dire the state of consumer rights in tech is.
  - alphabettsy 2y ago
    Who’s asking that question?
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      It's a rephrasing of your question, isn't it? If there's a difference in this context, please clarify.
      - alphabettsy 2y ago
        It’s not. It’s an uncharitable interpretation of my question, aka straw man. I was hoping for a discussion about exactly what I said. The basis for such a law and its impacts.
        Dylan16807 2y ago
        It's not a strawman. They were specifically answering your question of "Why would it be illegal?" and not delving into the specifics of what the law would look like. And the answer they gave is that it's bad for a manufacturer to retain control like that of a device you own. Also that it's a consumer rights issue, basic enough that nobody should need to ask why. I guess the shouldn't have used the word "full" but that's pretty picky. It looks like a pretty reasonable argument to me. They didn't discuss the basis but "consumer protection" seems to me to be sufficient basis. For impacts, I'm not sure what you're looking for; without being an expert it's hard to go beyond "companies stop doing that". But either way, replies don't have to answer every question you asked.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  > what would the law look like making it illegal How about "you can't sell a tool that actively works against the interests of the customer"?
  - fsflover 2y ago
    Or "you have to advertise it as such".
    - krick 2y ago
      This is much better than GPs attempt, because, tobacco. Or, well, anything, really. I'm sure some more targeted path could be taken. Like outlawing selling non-OSS. That sure would be nice...
- hedora 2y ago
  This sort of crap was banned under the first sale doctrine (which basically said that if you sell a thing, then the buyer owns the thing, including the right to use and resell it, and even the patented parts of it). The impact was overwhelmingly positive. One could argue that using copyright and eulas to bypass first sale is a misuse of copyright (the standard penalty for that is “you lose your copyright”, which seems completely reasonable and proportional to me).
  - Dracophoenix 2y ago
    There's no right of first sale for copyrighted code. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Franklin_Computer_Corp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Fran.... > The district court found in favor of Franklin. However, Apple appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit which, in a separate case decided three days after Franklin won at the lower level, had determined that both a program existing only in a written form unreadable to humans (e.g. object code) and one embedded on a ROM were protected by copyright. (See Williams Elec., Inc., v. Artic Int'l, Inc., 685 F.2d 870 (1982)). The Court of Appeals overturned the district court's ruling in Franklin by applying its holdings in Williams and going further to hold that operating systems were also copyrightable.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      > There's no right of first sale for copyrighted code. Yes, that was the premise of the complaint. > Citation I don't see anything here that resembles first sale, just a ruling that copyright applies to compiled code. The concept of first sale doctrine is that despite the presence of the seller's ip the seller loses control over most uses. Nobody is arguing against the existence of the copyright.
    - _aavaa_ 2y ago
      Why would object code be such an important difference? Are we glossing over the fact that this is how computers were programmed and that people very much did read and write this format?

flutas 2y ago

> I'm guessing this is Google similarly trying to stop people extracting their local models by not letting unlocked devices access them. It seems like it's not even that thought out. Google allows the devices to fully download the models...just not run them? If you want the models, here ya go: https://pastebin.com/jh4YG5jX https://pastebin.com/jh4YG5jX That's every file the app downloads on launch. EDIT: Seemingly I'm wrong. Someone below in another comment stated that they are not allowing the device to download the Gemini Nano model and that's what the failure is from.

gruez 2y ago
But are they encrypted?
- flutas 2y ago
  I'm not super well versed in TF, so I have no real clue. But the files seemingly all have headers. Maybe TF offers an encrypted "inside the file" while having the headers not encrypted, but unless they do it doesn't look like it.
DownrightNifty 2y ago
Oh wow, that's interesting, thanks for sharing. I was experimenting with the Pixel Recorder app, which calls into the AICore system service, which calls into the Protected Download API to download its models. Based on the URLs ("pixelai-models" vs "aicore-models") it looks like Pixel Screenshots is doing its own thing and not using AICore.
- flutas 2y ago
  It does the same thing re: hooking, but downloads most (if not all?) of the models, only at the end does it fail with "precondition check failed" from the server which aicore just repeats. I haven't gotten further in it to figure out what it's bailing out on, aside from the request going to google using the trusted dl service and failing. It could be the same model call and they are being oddly protective over gemini nano.
2y ago