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"...once we buy an object — any object — we should own it." Sure, but a purchase often comes with restrictions that you agree to before deciding on the purchas

"...once we buy an object — any object — we should own it." Sure, but a purchase often comes with restrictions that you agree to before deciding on the purchase. If you don't agree to the restrictions you can avoid the purchase altogether. I can buy a six hundred thousand dollar house and still not have the right to put a garden gnome on my lawn if I bought in a community with by-laws that prohibit that. "Because manufacturers have copyrighted the service manuals, local mechanics can’t fix modern equipment. And today’s equipment — packed with sensors and electronics — is too complex to repair without them. That’s a problem for farmers, who can’t afford to pay the dealer’s high maintenance fees for fickle equipment." So farmers are buying "fickle" equipment that is expensive to repair and the blame is put on copyright abuse? Copyright is just the mechanism used to enforce the business model. The equipment manufacturer made a business decision and this is part of their business model by choice. Any other manufacturer is free to supply equipment and compete on a different business model. If the issue is really that significant to the market then farmers will flock to the competition that provides manuals with their equipment.

unwind 14y ago
Yeah, the article was over-simplifying a bit. I doubt that Wired thinks I can buy a copy of their (print) magazine and then, since I own it, I can do whatever I want with it (like scanning it and putting it online).
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Well of course! That's different. /petulantchild
- MetallicCloud 14y ago
  That is different though. Buying a phone doesn't allow you to make an exact copy and then sell it, but buying a copy of wired does allow you to use it to prop up your monitor, use it as insulation for your house, or anything else you decide to do with the paper.
- sinak 14y ago
  But Wired may think that you should be able to use what you've bought in a non-copyright-infringing manner. For example, you might scan the magazine so you can read it on your tablet. That's what's at stake here. Btw, it's a Wired opinion piece, so it doesn't necessarily reflect Wired's own thoughts on the matter.
baddox 14y ago
You're talking about contract law. That's not what the DMCA is.
mjn 14y ago
The traditional U.S. philosophy on property tends to be skeptical of these kinds of restrictions, and a number of them aren't enforceable, though it's gotten less skeptical lately (hence the emergence of things like homeowners' associations). European property law was full of encumbrances on property: you could own all sorts of sub-holds and fiefdoms and whatnot. Much of that was thrown out in early U.S. law, in favor of a principle that each plot of land has one owner, who owns it fully in the clear, subject only to the superior sovereignty of the governments with jurisdiction. And then that person can sell the land fully, or rent it, but can't sell the complex kinds of partial ownership and sub-ownerships that were common in the UK. That persisted for a while, until contract law reinvented some of them a century or two later.
nitrogen 14y ago
Any other manufacturer is free to supply equipment and compete on a different business model. I think we should call this the "Just-market Fallacy" (I just Googled it and I'm not the first person to use the phrase), analogous to the Just-world Fallacy.
- grannyg00se 14y ago
  How is this analogous to the just world fallacy? In that case the belief is that people get what they deserve. If bad things keep happening to you it must be because you're doing something wrong. Because the world is overall just. In this case people are willfully encouraging a certain business practice by giving those businesses their money. Then they complain about the business practice they just supported and look to the government to force the businesses to behave differently. They're not being victimized by a harsh world and being told it's their fault. They're willfully victimizing themselves. This is different if there is some kind of government enforced monopoly interfering in the market. But the end result is the same in that case. The business isn't the problem.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    >They're not being victimized by a harsh world and being told it's their fault. They're willfully victimizing themselves. You're ignoring the collective action problem. Suppose that long-term contracts reduce competitiveness, because if people can't switch providers at the drop of a hat then companies don't compete as aggressively and in consequence their profits go up while the value for money on cellular service goes down. The providers know this and charge a premium for off-contract service (or, equivalently, offer a phone subsidy for on-contract service which add less to the monthly fee than paying full price for the phone would). So for each individual customer, it's better to take the subsidy, even though doing so at scale is bad for customers in general. Solving collective action problems like that is one of the few things that governments are good at, assuming they haven't been captured by industry lobbyists.
    - grannyg00se 14y ago

unwind 14y ago

Yeah, the article was over-simplifying a bit. I doubt that Wired thinks I can buy a copy of their (print) magazine and then, since I own it, I can do whatever I want with it (like scanning it and putting it online).

sliverstorm 14y ago
Well of course! That's different. /petulantchild
MetallicCloud 14y ago
That is different though. Buying a phone doesn't allow you to make an exact copy and then sell it, but buying a copy of wired does allow you to use it to prop up your monitor, use it as insulation for your house, or anything else you decide to do with the paper.
sinak 14y ago
But Wired may think that you should be able to use what you've bought in a non-copyright-infringing manner. For example, you might scan the magazine so you can read it on your tablet. That's what's at stake here. Btw, it's a Wired opinion piece, so it doesn't necessarily reflect Wired's own thoughts on the matter.

baddox 14y ago

You're talking about contract law. That's not what the DMCA is.

mjn 14y ago

The traditional U.S. philosophy on property tends to be skeptical of these kinds of restrictions, and a number of them aren't enforceable, though it's gotten less skeptical lately (hence the emergence of things like homeowners' associations). European property law was full of encumbrances on property: you could own all sorts of sub-holds and fiefdoms and whatnot. Much of that was thrown out in early U.S. law, in favor of a principle that each plot of land has one owner, who owns it fully in the clear, subject only to the superior sovereignty of the governments with jurisdiction. And then that person can sell the land fully, or rent it, but can't sell the complex kinds of partial ownership and sub-ownerships that were common in the UK. That persisted for a while, until contract law reinvented some of them a century or two later.

nitrogen 14y ago

Any other manufacturer is free to supply equipment and compete on a different business model. I think we should call this the "Just-market Fallacy" (I just Googled it and I'm not the first person to use the phrase), analogous to the Just-world Fallacy.

grannyg00se 14y ago
How is this analogous to the just world fallacy? In that case the belief is that people get what they deserve. If bad things keep happening to you it must be because you're doing something wrong. Because the world is overall just. In this case people are willfully encouraging a certain business practice by giving those businesses their money. Then they complain about the business practice they just supported and look to the government to force the businesses to behave differently. They're not being victimized by a harsh world and being told it's their fault. They're willfully victimizing themselves. This is different if there is some kind of government enforced monopoly interfering in the market. But the end result is the same in that case. The business isn't the problem.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >They're not being victimized by a harsh world and being told it's their fault. They're willfully victimizing themselves. You're ignoring the collective action problem. Suppose that long-term contracts reduce competitiveness, because if people can't switch providers at the drop of a hat then companies don't compete as aggressively and in consequence their profits go up while the value for money on cellular service goes down. The providers know this and charge a premium for off-contract service (or, equivalently, offer a phone subsidy for on-contract service which add less to the monthly fee than paying full price for the phone would). So for each individual customer, it's better to take the subsidy, even though doing so at scale is bad for customers in general. Solving collective action problems like that is one of the few things that governments are good at, assuming they haven't been captured by industry lobbyists.
  - grannyg00se 14y ago