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Let's go reduction ad absurdum with this: Imagine that this also applies to medical equipment and that you do not own your own mechanical heart beating in your
by orbitingpluto 11y ago
Let's go reduction ad absurdum with this:
Imagine that this also applies to medical equipment and that you do not own your own mechanical heart beating in your chest. Furthermore, only franchised doctors will be allowed the encryption key to tweak your heart settings.
Will the company that provided you with your heart reserve the right to terminate the software license, and consequently your life, at will? Will they be allowed to stop tweaks of the software that could save your life? Will the unfranchised paramedic be legally forced to not save your life because to do otherwise would result in a DMCA violation?
Another point is that what if everything goes to hell? What if all of our tools are worthless as soon as communication infrastructure goes down? Imagine having the landscape littered with machines so productive as to easily end oncoming starvation while we pull plows with our bare hands.
Short term gain for long term misery.
- Confusion 11y agoNothing absurd about it: there have already been cases of closed source pacemakers that had security vulnerabilities that won't be fixed by the seller (arguing they can't replace the firmware) and can't be fixed by the buyer.
- koenigdavidmj 11y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo!_The_Genetic_Opera http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo!_The_Genetic_Opera is something you might find an interesting watch.