4 ms·

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?

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?