5 ms·

could it be construed as anti-competitive to block end-users or resellers from swapping RAM?

by DoctorOetker 7d ago

Aurornis 7d ago
No. Price discrimination and locking hardware are not illegal.
- smilespray 7d ago
  You'd be well advised to remember there is a world beyond your visible horizon.
  - Aurornis 7d ago
    I prefer to stay grounded in the reality of how the world works when responding to questions about legalities.
    - smilespray 7d ago
      What you said isn't true for quite a few countries.
      - iso1631 7d ago
        That's quite possible, but could you name a couple where locking a raspberry pi type of computer would be illegal?
        smilespray 7d ago
        EU Right to Repair Directive specifically prohibits manufacturers from using HW/SW locks or firmware limits to block part replacement.
        Aurornis 7d ago
        The part can be replaced with the same part to repair the item. This is not locked.
        smilespray 7d ago
        Part locking against unoriginal parts is prohibited in the EU.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 7d ago
        "Each chip is programmed with the timing settings and storage size settings of just the RAM we ship it with, and doesn't know how to boot with anything else." I don't know if you could call that "blocking." I mean you could call it that but I don't know if that's legally what it would be.
- DoctorOetker 7d ago
  lets try proof by exhaustion: in those jurisdictions where either price discrimination or locking hardware are not illegal, it is typically perfectly legal to reverse engineer for compatibility purposes. So nothing prevents such resellers from upping their game and learning a thing or two about link training and general SDRAM bringup. Once they have acquired the knowledge legally in such jurisdictions the product just flows in the other jurisdictions anyway. Courts upheld the monopolistic position of microsoft etc. for decades, but respect has no finality, "re" + "spect" to review, so later such companies were fined for their decades long transgressions. But during those decades it may appear legal to the average consumer. Inaction is not permission.
  - Grombobulous 7d ago
    All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective. Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult. There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players.
    - DoctorOetker 7d ago
      > All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective. > Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult. I'm not asking for help to figure this out, and of course RP is allowed to shoot themselves in any foot they like. Consider Europe where such reverse engineering is perfectly legal for compatibility purposes. Let's consider an idealized scenario, there were no security bugs or other issues with the product that would justify reverse engineering RP blobs in public. When they do something like this, they are GIVING CARTE BLANCHE to public reverse engineering efforts to attain compatibility with other RAM chips. Why would you provide legal cover in some jurisdictions for others in publicly reverse engineering your own products by introducing artificial incompatibility? Also from a consumer perspective, RP tries to place itself front and center in maker communties, emphasizing modularity, not just hobbyists, also companies build and design end products using RP units. All of these companies must now be wondering where RP Foundations exact red line resides: can we resell an RP board in a Kiosk we made? or only for as long as it doesn't compete with RP's future Kiosk modules? Today its the RAM upgrade, but tomorrow RP modules may refuse to boot some popular Kiosk hardware intentionally. What prevents RP Foundation from eventually "not copying" end-application hardware like a Kiosk design from their customers, and then enforcing compatibility only with RP Kiosks? So not only are they providing legal cover for public reverse engineering efforts, they are scaring part of their customer base. > There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players. That's a very shallow interpretation of law, looking only at what RP is or isn't allowed to do. There's generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like reverse engineering for compatibility or security applications illegal either.
- Hizonner 7d ago
  Lots of things aren't illegal... unless you do them for illegal purposes. I doubt antitrust would get anywhere on this RAM issue, but antitrust law is not defined in terms of either of those categories.
kmeisthax 7d ago
Probably not. Doing a RAM swap and then selling the resulting unit as if it were a Raspberry Pi of the higher RAM capacity might be construed as trademark infringement[0]. And in general it's fairly difficult to make arguments in antitrust cases that boil down to "yes, your honor, everything they're doing is within their rights but I don't like it". [0] At the same time, the scammers could probably get away with this by putting "Upgraded to 16GB!" in the title of their eBay listings or whatever, in the same way that fraudulent storage devices are labeled as "upgraded" (read: lying about their capacity). That doesn't impact the antitrust analysis though.
- DoctorOetker 7d ago
  I certainly agree that such a reseller should clearly state the modification, and not pretend its an authentic RPi 8GB unit. But if this is the real concern, they could just display the fact that "Unoriginal RAM detected" to inform the user its not a vanilla RPi Foundation product, so buyers understand the situation, but continue booting normally.
  - mannykannot 7d ago
    In practice, this would still leave the RPi Foundation with the warranty and support burden generated by the "reseller's" activity.
    - DoctorOetker 7d ago
      For every user asking questions and facing issues for such-or-such firmware or software support they need in their projects, that same user would have appeared regardless if their Pi came from RP directly or through a reseller. Every board sold would have been an extra user, the reseller isn't adding full users (although they may increase the indirect customer base!), so even gaining a user through a reseller increases the amortization divider for the support burden. Now lets consider RAM chip support burden, the original Pi RAM chips can have issues generating support burden, and so can the reseller RAM chips. Unless RP foundation refuses to upstream link training / RAM bringup patches from resellers, there is no real additional support burden. In fact if RP were a little more creative, they could have tried contacting the resellers to explain they can continue their modding business as long as they advertise it clearly as modified, and to inform them they will be receiving units that didn't pass the RAM tests from the automated lines, since they're going to desolder the chips anyway, this can save costs for RP foundation.

could it be construed as anti-competitive to block end-users or resellers from swapping RAM?

Aurornis 7d ago

No. Price discrimination and locking hardware are not illegal.

smilespray 7d ago
You'd be well advised to remember there is a world beyond your visible horizon.
- Aurornis 7d ago
  I prefer to stay grounded in the reality of how the world works when responding to questions about legalities.
  - smilespray 7d ago
    What you said isn't true for quite a few countries.
    - iso1631 7d ago
      That's quite possible, but could you name a couple where locking a raspberry pi type of computer would be illegal?
      - smilespray 7d ago
        EU Right to Repair Directive specifically prohibits manufacturers from using HW/SW locks or firmware limits to block part replacement.
        Aurornis 7d ago
        The part can be replaced with the same part to repair the item. This is not locked.
        smilespray 7d ago
        Part locking against unoriginal parts is prohibited in the EU.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 7d ago
        "Each chip is programmed with the timing settings and storage size settings of just the RAM we ship it with, and doesn't know how to boot with anything else." I don't know if you could call that "blocking." I mean you could call it that but I don't know if that's legally what it would be.
DoctorOetker 7d ago
lets try proof by exhaustion: in those jurisdictions where either price discrimination or locking hardware are not illegal, it is typically perfectly legal to reverse engineer for compatibility purposes. So nothing prevents such resellers from upping their game and learning a thing or two about link training and general SDRAM bringup. Once they have acquired the knowledge legally in such jurisdictions the product just flows in the other jurisdictions anyway. Courts upheld the monopolistic position of microsoft etc. for decades, but respect has no finality, "re" + "spect" to review, so later such companies were fined for their decades long transgressions. But during those decades it may appear legal to the average consumer. Inaction is not permission.
- Grombobulous 7d ago
  All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective. Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult. There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players.
  - DoctorOetker 7d ago
    > All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective. > Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult. I'm not asking for help to figure this out, and of course RP is allowed to shoot themselves in any foot they like. Consider Europe where such reverse engineering is perfectly legal for compatibility purposes. Let's consider an idealized scenario, there were no security bugs or other issues with the product that would justify reverse engineering RP blobs in public. When they do something like this, they are GIVING CARTE BLANCHE to public reverse engineering efforts to attain compatibility with other RAM chips. Why would you provide legal cover in some jurisdictions for others in publicly reverse engineering your own products by introducing artificial incompatibility? Also from a consumer perspective, RP tries to place itself front and center in maker communties, emphasizing modularity, not just hobbyists, also companies build and design end products using RP units. All of these companies must now be wondering where RP Foundations exact red line resides: can we resell an RP board in a Kiosk we made? or only for as long as it doesn't compete with RP's future Kiosk modules? Today its the RAM upgrade, but tomorrow RP modules may refuse to boot some popular Kiosk hardware intentionally. What prevents RP Foundation from eventually "not copying" end-application hardware like a Kiosk design from their customers, and then enforcing compatibility only with RP Kiosks? So not only are they providing legal cover for public reverse engineering efforts, they are scaring part of their customer base. > There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players. That's a very shallow interpretation of law, looking only at what RP is or isn't allowed to do. There's generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like reverse engineering for compatibility or security applications illegal either.
Hizonner 7d ago
Lots of things aren't illegal... unless you do them for illegal purposes. I doubt antitrust would get anywhere on this RAM issue, but antitrust law is not defined in terms of either of those categories.

kmeisthax 7d ago

Probably not. Doing a RAM swap and then selling the resulting unit as if it were a Raspberry Pi of the higher RAM capacity might be construed as trademark infringement[0]. And in general it's fairly difficult to make arguments in antitrust cases that boil down to "yes, your honor, everything they're doing is within their rights but I don't like it". [0] At the same time, the scammers could probably get away with this by putting "Upgraded to 16GB!" in the title of their eBay listings or whatever, in the same way that fraudulent storage devices are labeled as "upgraded" (read: lying about their capacity). That doesn't impact the antitrust analysis though.

DoctorOetker 7d ago
I certainly agree that such a reseller should clearly state the modification, and not pretend its an authentic RPi 8GB unit. But if this is the real concern, they could just display the fact that "Unoriginal RAM detected" to inform the user its not a vanilla RPi Foundation product, so buyers understand the situation, but continue booting normally.
- mannykannot 7d ago
  In practice, this would still leave the RPi Foundation with the warranty and support burden generated by the "reseller's" activity.
  - DoctorOetker 7d ago
    For every user asking questions and facing issues for such-or-such firmware or software support they need in their projects, that same user would have appeared regardless if their Pi came from RP directly or through a reseller. Every board sold would have been an extra user, the reseller isn't adding full users (although they may increase the indirect customer base!), so even gaining a user through a reseller increases the amortization divider for the support burden. Now lets consider RAM chip support burden, the original Pi RAM chips can have issues generating support burden, and so can the reseller RAM chips. Unless RP foundation refuses to upstream link training / RAM bringup patches from resellers, there is no real additional support burden. In fact if RP were a little more creative, they could have tried contacting the resellers to explain they can continue their modding business as long as they advertise it clearly as modified, and to inform them they will be receiving units that didn't pass the RAM tests from the automated lines, since they're going to desolder the chips anyway, this can save costs for RP foundation.