It shouldn&#x27;t make a difference. I don&#x27;t think there is a statue of limitations in challenging a law and sometimes it takes some time to understand the implications of a law anyway.

I may be reading the actual complaint incorrectly, but I believe it&#x27;s because in the 2015 update, the Library of Congress failed to adequately address previously protected exceptions of the DCMA:&gt;&quot;The Library of Congress failed in its October 28, 2015, rulemaking to grantexemptions from the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision, 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1), for speechusing clips of motion pictures, for the shifting of lawfully-acquired media to different formatsand devices, and for certain forms of security research.SeeLibrary of Congress, “Exemption toProhibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access ControlTechnologies,” 80 FR 65944 (Oct. 28, 2015) (“Final Rule”). The Librarian’s failure to grantthese exemptions violates the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”),5 U.S.C. § 702.Case 1:16-cv-01492&quot;As is such, the EFF needed time to compile a case, file it, and also find plantiffs.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;document&#x2F;1201-complaint" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;document&#x2F;1201-complaint</a>

So you&#x27;re telling me Andrew Huang&#x27;s business model is to make derivative content devices, for profit, without permission or compensation from the original creators and&#x2F;or rights holders?I don&#x27;t find this litigant to be sympathetic in the least (the second one, Green, is much more reasonable - though redundant to the John Deere case going on).My initial impression is that I might actually want Huang to lose, if the implications of what he wants are as stated. He&#x27;s trying to justify &quot;remixing&quot; for profit without compensation to the original rights holders. That&#x27;s hot garbage in my personal opinion as a content creator.

&gt; I am curious why, if they actually believe they have a good chance of success, this is only being filed now rather than in prior years? Has something changed?You need standing and money to sue. Based on the EFF release:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;press&#x2F;releases&#x2F;eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-section-1201-research-and-technology-restrictions-violate" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;press&#x2F;releases&#x2F;eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-se...</a>&gt; EFF is representing plaintiff Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a prominent computer scientist and inventor, and his company Alphamax LLC, where he is developing devices for editing digital video streams. Those products would enable people to make innovative uses of their paid video content, such as captioning a presidential debate with a running Twitter comment field or enabling remixes of high-definition video. But using or offering this technology could run afoul of Section 1201.&gt; EFF is also representing plaintiff Matthew Green, a computer security researcher at Johns Hopkins University who wants to make sure that we all can trust the devices that we count on to communicate, underpin our financial transactions, and secure our most private medical information. Despite this work being vital for all of our safety, Green had to seek an exemption from the Library of Congress last year for his security research.They have two people with reasonable reasons for wanting the regulation changed and are affected by it now would be my guess. Oh, and these people need the EFF to cover the legal costs.

I am curious why, if they actually believe they have a good chance of success, this is only being filed now rather than in prior years? Has something changed?

I think he could be supported by EFF since they have released a press release.

I wonder how much he budgeted for this series of lawsuits.

They need tools for remixing though, don&#x27;t they? Who will make the tools if it&#x27;s illegal?

Unfortunately the TPP is enshrining the US copyright approach in other countries.

Practically all of mankinds knowledge is a result of freely mix and match creation and ideas of others, be it in the domain of language, arts, science or technology.Copyright has gone out of control. Luckily not yet the whole planet bows to USA&#x27;s demands. Let&#x27;s hope that that will never be the case.

&quot;Our children deserve better.&quot; If you take children - they indeed mix and remix without worrying about any (copy)rights...

&quot;Just&quot; pass a law that makes these EULA&#x27;s null and void.

Someone determined enough to rework autopilot to work everywhere is not going to be stopped by the terms of a EULA.

&gt; What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice?We can&#x27;t let these hypothetical worst-case scenarios be an excuse to stifle innovation.What happens if we let people modify their microwaves and a terrorist uses his to give kids cancer!?!?What if we let people tinker with their toasters and somebody uses one to electrocute a pool full of kids!?!?Please, think of the children!

If a Maniac has made unauthorized modifications - Maniac gets sued and does jail time. Tesla is fault free.You shouldn&#x27;t be able to sue a tool manufacturer for misuse of a tool.If you cannot sue Mercedes for a case when a driver with after market tuning kills someone in a crash, why should Tesla be liable?

What happens if I tinker with a regular car and put a nitrous oxide engine? The safety issues, which are real, could allow someone to plow into minivan on its way to Little League practice. It could explode. It could cause a massive fire. It could go way faster than the speed limit, bypass the limits of the breaks, and go against any number of laws.So... does this mean I could sue Ford if someone modified a Ford car with a nitrous oxide booster? Could Ford sue the modifier for ruining the reputation of Ford when they crashed a modified Ford car? Will the state sue Ford for allowing such modifications, commonly used in street races? Can there be a civil suit against ford for anyone harmed by such modification?To me, all those questions has a clear answer, and that answer is No. It also has a historical proof, as there hasn&#x27;t been any lawsuits against Ford for failing to prevent such modifications. If the owner of a car modify their own car, then that person is fully responsible of any consequences of that action.

Safety policy should be enforced by safety laws. Not unrelated IP laws.

I can imagine tinkering with a Tesla could cause some heartburn for Elon. There are safety issues, which are real. What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice? Also interesting, recently heard about a guy who can reprogram some diesel trucks to get better performance (probably at the expense of NOX emissions, like what happened with VW). Still thought it was pretty cool that the truck was not locked down to prevent tinkering in this manner.NOTE: I am talking about what the company&#x27;s perspective may be, not my own view of the risks.

No. The First Amendment limits what the government can do to restrict your right to free speech. The DMCA, and Section 1201, is the Government limiting the power of freedom of speech, and so the First Amendment is applicable.By signing a EULA, you are accepting a limitation of your freedom of speech and (along with other factors - e.g. money) gaining some compromise instead (a car). That&#x27;s not First Amendment territory in the same way that moderation of an online forum isn&#x27;t.The First Amendment prevents laws being made, not contracts being signed. It means it&#x27;s not illegal, not that it isn&#x27;t a breach of contract.(IANAL - Obligatory XKCD <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1357&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1357&#x2F;</a>)

The First Amendment guarantees rights to citizens in the eyes of the US federal government.The EULA is an agreement between a citizen and a corporation, and thus the First Amendment does not apply.

Under American contract law you can sign away any of your constitutional rights.  Be careful what you put your magic squiggles on.

But if this suit is successful, it would mean that Section 1201 violates your First Amendment rights which in turn means that EULA also violates your First Amendment rights.

Unfortunately I believe that even if the suit was successful, we would just see more purchases become &#x27;perpetual licenses&#x27;, skirting the updated law. IIRC, Tesla was very heavily against letting anyone tinker and went to some extremes to stop it. It wouldn&#x27;t surprise me in the least to see them make buyers sign a EULA in the future when you go to &#x27;purchase&#x27; a vehicle.

Great to see the EFF on board: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;press&#x2F;releases&#x2F;eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-section-1201-research-and-technology-restrictions-violate" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;press&#x2F;releases&#x2F;eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-se...</a>

Okay, that&#x27;s a reasonable point. I recall that issue too, but forgot they used the DMCA as the lock-up point, re: copyright. I think the scope is extremely limited in that case though, which is an excellent point of contention (because I don&#x27;t agree with DMCA &gt; Fair Use in principle).

&gt; Fair Use always trumps the DMCAThis is not necessarily the case.&gt; However, in a number of cases involving DVD decryption courts have held that there is no fair use defense in circumvention cases. In Universal City Studios v. Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d 294, 322 (S.D.N.Y. 2000), the court stated that &quot;[i]f Congress had meant the fair use defense to apply to such actions, it would have said so.&quot;[5]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Anti-circumvention#Fair_Use_and_Circumvention" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Anti-circumvention#Fair_Use_an...</a>

We&#x27;ll see about that. We can revisit this case when it goes further down the line, because I study copyright extensively and follow these cases often. It&#x27;s not that I don&#x27;t like the press release, it&#x27;s that it contains factual errors and if you want to believe them, then that&#x27;s not constructive.

This case is well-planned activism. Bunnie and EFF team certainly know more about free speech and copyright than you or I do. Perhaps you don&#x27;t likr the press release, but that necessarily simplifies and reduces the detailed arguments they will have to brief before the court.

i think it relates to this:[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;dmca-ownership-john-deere" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;dmca-ownership-john-deere</a>[2]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theamericangenius.com&#x2F;business-news&#x2F;farmers-cant-legally-fix-their-own-john-deere-tractors-due-to-copyright-laws&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theamericangenius.com&#x2F;business-news&#x2F;farmers-cant-leg...</a>it seems to concern the idea, as mentioned above, of ownership vs a permanent license of the goods purchased or in their minds.. leased?

The major objection to 1201 is that it legally precludes what would be fair use in an unprotected work. Breaking HDCP, for instance, is still illegal for a use that would pass a four factors test.Do you have a link on the John Deere suit(s) you mentioned? That&#x27;s one I&#x27;d be interested in following.

Let&#x27;s take a quick look at the understanding of Copyright law that this litigant seems to possess:&gt;Before Section 1201, the ownership of ideas was tempered by constitutional protections. Under this law, we had the right to tinker with gadgets that we bought, we had the right to record TV shows on our VCRs, and we had the right to remix songs.Wait, before the DMCA &quot;we&quot; had the right to remix songs? Okay so this case is going nowhere because the person filing really doesn&#x27;t quite understand the mechanics of basic Copyright. Just kind of throwing out the concept of &quot;remixes&quot; does a dis-service for the real nuances of how the rights&#x2F;permissions&#x2F;compensation system works, has been tested in court, etc.The subject of ownership and repair is extremely complex and this lawsuit is frivolous when the matter is being actively tested by John Deere and various farmers. Maybe this person could assist in funding that challenge to 1201. There are some glaring flaws in this whole approach, from what I understand about Copyright law and the DMCA.Also, I don&#x27;t know why the EFF continues to push erroneous information regarding how Copyright, the DMCA, and Fair Use actually work:&gt;This ban applies even where people want to make noninfringing fair uses of the materials they are accessing.Fair Use always trumps the DMCA; the nature of Fair Use, however, is subject to four factor tests, if an IP owner should feel compelled to assert the Fair Use was not in the spirit and letter of the law. Sometimes it seems like the EFF and TechDirt try to claim things that aren&#x27;t true just to make a point. It&#x27;s something that bothers me routinely in this subject in particular.

But if you circumvent copy protection for the purpose of sharing copyrighted works publicly then you were already doing something illegal before section 1201. All section 1201 does is also make it illegal to circumvent copy protection even if you don&#x27;t do anything else illegal under copyright law, like keep copies of movies you bought privately in a digital collection that you can back up, or using software that you payed for when you aren&#x27;t connected to the internet. If we think circumventing copy protection for the purposes of copyright infringement is extra bad, why not just add additional penalties to additional copyright infringement?

Well, sure, that is the intent.  Where people disagree is whether it&#x27;s reasonable to criminalize breaking copy protection, rather than the act of illegally copying and distributing copyrighted content.

Oh they very much do. Legislative intent is a major factor that many judges consider when enforcing legislation. Intent often has a very big impact on consequence.

I&#x27;m pretty sure everyone&#x27;s aware of the stated purpose of the section. It&#x27;s not like there were a bunch of execs and lobbyists sitting around going &quot;there&#x27;s too much creativity in the world.&quot;But the intentions of the legislation don&#x27;t change its consequences.

&quot;protect&quot; is a biased term. One person&#x27;s &quot;protect&quot; is another&#x27;s &quot;control&quot;. You mentioned &quot;access control&quot;; however, copyright has nothing to do with access control. Copyright is not an unlimited right to control all possible uses of a work; DMCA 1201 turns it into one, by enshrining whatever access control restrictions a piece of software implements into law.Ignoring fair use for a moment (which DMCA 1201 also breaks, so that&#x27;s another problem), copyright restricts copying. DMCA 1201 produces a restriction on usage, which copyright does not control.DMCA 1201 doesn&#x27;t actually prevent you from copying a DVD, for instance. DMCA 1201 prevents you from reading and playing a DVD using anything other than software approved by the author of the DVD.

Whether the purpose of legislation matters very much depends on a judge&#x27;s beliefs regarding statutory interpretation. Enforcement of a statute is often all about the purpose of it. That said, I see your point and its a valid one. I&#x27;m just not sure I believe getting rid of 1201 will do less harm than good. I guess we&#x27;ll see how the lawsuit turns out!

The purpose of legislation isn&#x27;t relevant, only the effect of the legislation. And the effects are the problem; potentially any debugger could be considered a &quot;circumvention tool&quot;. Just like scope creep has caused laboratory glassware to be considered illegal &quot;drug paraphernalia&quot; in places.1201 also has the effect of banning circumvention that does not infringe copyright. Which is supposedly addressed by the weird adhoc Library of Congress exemption system, but only in a very limited set of cases.

The DRM is not in products that the company own. They sold those products, knowingly, rather than renting them out as a service. Companies should have no right to &quot;protect&quot; lawfully-purchased products against usage by the person who legally bought it.If they want to sell something and still remain ownership rights, then do what every company in history did before software DRM: rent it out as a service. A car bought, and a car rented, has natural right differences which is being erased by DRM.

I do not think the author doesn&#x27;t know that section 1201 was designed to help companies create access control. The author of the blog post is talking about not just the purpose of the law, but also the effect, which he or she believes infringes on the First Amendment.I&#x27;m not a lawyer, but I think that laws with a constitutionally valid purpose are sometimes ruled unconstitutional by the courts when they have unconstitutional effects.I can&#x27;t comment on whether I think that will be the case here.

While your points are correct, I think the use of variables actually makes it harder to follow

&gt; As a result, the government stepped in and created 1201 to make it illegal for someone to &lt;A&gt; to &lt;B&gt;.Doing &lt;B&gt; was already illegal. Therefore, doing &lt;A&gt; in order to &lt;B&gt; was also already illegal.People are upset that &lt;A&gt; is now illegal, for all purposes, not just doing &lt;B&gt;.&gt; The purpose of the statute isn&#x27;t to &lt;X&gt; but is to &lt;Y&gt;. I don&#x27;t see anything wrong with that.What&#x27;s wrong with that is that it also does &lt;X&gt; (even if that isn&#x27;t the &quot;purpose&quot;).

This reminds me of SLAPP suits.[1]Of course not every violation of 1201 will be prosecuted, but the laws are there to intimidate people if their tinkering becomes commerciall bothersome.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Strategic_lawsuit_against_pu...</a>

&gt;The purpose of the statute isn&#x27;t to destroy &lt;insert Internet activist claimed right&gt;What difference does the intended purpose make if it does indeed destroy &lt;insert Internet activist claimed right&gt;?If that was indeed the purpose of 1201, the the law as written has unintended consequences.But my feeling is that they knew damn well that they were going to sweep up non commercial tinkerers as well.These days the line between commercial and non commercial is blurred. With the internet a hacker can publish some circumvention method and software with the same reach as a large company.[1][1] I personally see no problem with that. BTW. The law is being used here to prop up outdated, often monopolistic, business models. That&#x27;s the company&#x27;s problem, and shouldn&#x27;t be externalized onto all of society.

You&#x27;re missing things like (e.g.):- Tractors that have technical measures to prevent 3rd party repairs or replacement parts. Circumventing those measures is a DMCA violation, even if all you&#x27;re trying to do is repair a tractor that you own without paying an arm and a leg to the manufacturer for a repair person.- Printer makers that use technical measures to prevent their printers from using 3rd party inkjet cartridges. It&#x27;s not my fault that they want to use the &quot;give away the razor, sell the blades&quot; business model.- Basically any company that wants everything relating to their product to go through them, and to prevent 3rd party companies from creating replacement parts or performing repairs.The government shouldn&#x27;t be making laws just to make certain business models viable (that are otherwise not viable). (e.g.) If you can&#x27;t sell cheap printers without gouging people by selling expensive ink, then charge more for your printers. If printers are too expensive for everyone to have one at home, then so be it. They will do their printing at Kinko&#x27;s (or the local equivalent).This works in other industries. Car manufacturers have had a 3rd party parts market for a long time (though they are definitely suckling at the teat of the DMCA and trying to make newer cars as locked down as possible).Do you really think that the US government should be making laws to shut down the 3rd party inkjet cartridge industry in order to protect HP&#x27;s consumer printer business? Should the US government pass laws to make it illegal for a farmer to install a non-John Deere part on his John Deere tractor? Is this the kind of thing that the government needs to be doing?

The first amendment of the US Constitution states that Congress (later interpreted as the entire federal government) cannot restrict free speech. Congress passed the DMCA, part of which said that you can&#x27;t tell anyone about how to bypass DRM. Therefore, Congress restricted free speech, which is contrary to established law.Do you see the problem?Of course, the question is does this invalidate the entire DMCA or only that specific part?

The purpose of me setting this bush alight is not to start a forest fire; it&#x27;s to cook some marshmallows. I don&#x27;t see anything wrong with that [even if it does actually start a forest fire].If a law has unintended consequences of the magnitude that exceeds the supposed beneficial intent of the law, it&#x27;s a bad law.If there&#x27;s no way to write a law without such unintended consequences, it shouldn&#x27;t exist.In this case, there&#x27;s also the additional orthogonal argument that the law violates the First Amendment by prohibiting speech. Even if the law didn&#x27;t have unintended consequences, this alone is sufficient to justify getting rid of it - if we allow unconstitutional laws because they serve a good purpose, all constitutional protections go out of the window.

Thanks for giving some context, and sorry to see you blanked out for providing a viable and nuanced rebuttal to what the EFF is doing. They are engaging in FUD on this one. It&#x27;s got questionable merit. Thankfully, the legal system will sort this out and I presume in a fashion I find agreeable, because the EFF&#x27;s position is extreme and untenable.

I studied section 1201 thoroughly during law school and I think this post doesn&#x27;t give a fair characterization of it. The reason this statute exists is because companies were unable to devise protection for copyrighted works that hackers were not able to immediately circumvent. As a result, the government stepped in and created 1201 to make it illegal for someone to circumvent some form of access control that a company used to protect their copyrighted works. The purpose of the statute isn&#x27;t to destroy &lt;insert Internet activist claimed right&gt; but is to make it much less expensive for a company to protect its products. I don&#x27;t see anything wrong with that.

Yes and that should worry people, that so often laws are taking into effect that nobody wants and you have to sue to get it undone, correcting HOPE you can get it undone, which i don&#x27;t remember many cases of that it actually worked out the way people wanted it.Don&#x27;t get me wrong, great that a person can, but that shouldn&#x27;t even be needed... in my opinion, utopia

Suing the government to stop enforcement of some law is a pretty well established procedure at this point.

If only they were the bully on the school playground perhaps you could fight him. But they are the playground, i wish you the best of luck.

...and if he wants to offer that product he can license the stream and not hijack another company&#x27;s product, right? If not, why not? Details please.

I don&#x27;t think Bunnie is looking to develop products that redistribute video.If you&#x27;ve seen his previous NeTV project[1] he&#x27;s looking to inject video overlays into the HDCP stream and let you do things like he described in his letter. His method of getting into the HDCP stream[2] via a MITM attack is probably what&#x27;s running afoul of the government.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adafruit.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;609" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adafruit.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;609</a>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bunniestudios.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=2117" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bunniestudios.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=2117</a>

If I&#x27;m reading the OP correctly, the video isn&#x27;t being distributed. Just an alternative media stream with some form of captioning that could paired up with the video  at the user end.

Invalidating 1201 wouldn&#x27;t get rid of all copyright law. Distributing a such a video would remain a copyright violation regardless of 1201.

Twitter isn&#x27;t profiting off their users, or at all for that matter.

Twitter exists as a platform that allows politicians, entertainers, businesses and more communicate more quickly and cheaply with people interested in them than ever before. The profit a user gets out of Twitter depends on what is put into it.

Some people seem to be downvoting you because they disagree with your view point.I&#x27;m not sure I agree with you but your views are valid and a positive contribution to this thread. Just want to call out that I&#x27;m a bit disappointed with the rest of the community for targeting you.

The real problem, of course, is that the Internet today consists almost exclusively of private companies profiting from other people&#x27;s content. Twitter doesn&#x27;t pay its users, it makes money off their tweets AND by having them look at ads (yes, this is work). Similarly with Facebook, or with any review aggregator (Yelp, Amazon, Google+), monetizing the free labor of others.The DMCA protects certain forms of property very jealously, but other forms (e.g. a review) aren&#x27;t even recognized as property, and the idea of users being appropriately compensated (as we&#x27;d expect each nickel to be accounted for a song owned by EMI) is practically absurd. (Note that I do not want the world where we monetize everything)At the end of the day, which forms of digital property we create and enforce are going to be what determines who can amass wealth - the existing regime was obviously set in place to benefit corporations, billionaires, not joe user.

Another example of a simple consumer service that could take advantage of this and already exists: RiffTrax. Right now they have to use the &quot;the customer has to use two different players, figure out the audio settings, and get the timings right themselves&quot; method.

Which is why I said circumventing copy protection shouldn&#x27;t be illegal. You should be able to make that video and use it for your own purposes. My problem is with Step 2 of the article&#x27;s hypothetical: instead of feeding the video into a speech-to-text machine for your own use, you put it on Twitter where Twitter makes a bunch of money off something that was mostly CNN&#x27;s work.

Um, if I am a content consumer that has legitimate access to content streams from two different sources, why am I not allowed to multiplex those streams in a way that is useful to me?This is not about Twitter, or CNN, but the users ability to consume content that they have legitimate access to in the way that they choose.Replace twitter in this example with the ability to feed an audio stream into a speech recognition and translation service to translate audio streams on the fly and suddenly no one can argue the value to the consumer, but both cases are legitimate uses to different users.

I fail to see how your quoted text has anything to do with twitter making a buck. The target here is the end user being able to do more with their paid content, including overlaying other content. Substitute a wikipedia entry as the example if twitter is causing a hangup. There are already limits on fair use when profit is involved... this is more about letting users use content in ways that are not prescribed by the big content producers, and being able to develop the devices to do so without breaking the law.

Why should CNN profit from captioning their video with Twitter users&#x27; commentary? It goes both ways.

Why should CNN profit from words they didn&#x27;t create?

&gt; But why should Twitter profit from a user captioning a video CNN created?It appears that you are saying you can create something that incorporates fair use of a protected work, but you can&#x27;t disseminate it, except maybe by some non-profit internet samizdat. That makes fair use a nullity.Twitter isn&#x27;t profiting from a work CNN created. They are, indirectly, profiting from user-created content, some of which is based on fair use, by creating a communications medium.

That was the notion that I was operating under as well, as a content creator, and got torn to shreds so I backed out of this thread mostly.I went ahead and wrote an article that might be of interest to you, and seeing as you&#x27;re an astute and recognized authority, I&#x27;d appreciate criticism as well.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12143770" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12143770</a>

Circumvention by itself definitely shouldn&#x27;t be illegal, and it&#x27;s probably unconstitutional to make building and researching circumvention mechanisms illegal. But I don&#x27;t buy Step 2.&gt; EFF is representing plaintiff Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a prominent computer scientist and inventor, and his company Alphamax LLC, where he is developing devices for editing digital video streams. Those products would enable people to make innovative uses of their paid video content, such as captioning a presidential debate with a running Twitter comment field or enabling remixes of high-definition video. But using or offering this technology could run afoul of Section 1201.It definitely should be legal to build those products. Maybe it should be legal to distribute that captioned video as fair use. But why should Twitter profit from a user captioning a video CNN created?That&#x27;s the part I have trouble with here. Fair use is fine and good, but there is a large universe of very profitable companies that don&#x27;t make content of their own, but profit from other peoples&#x27; content. Of course they have a huge interest in weakening copyright protections under the guise of promoting fair use.

A quick summary for those who don&#x27;t want to click through without knowing what the lawsuit challenges:Section 1201 contains the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions. These infringe upon fair use activities like format conversion, repairs, and security research.

Got me thinking: As an argument, 1201 is an ecological threat and single point of failure. Most copyright media is a petroleum byproduct...

CSS encryption on DVDs doesn&#x27;t &quot;effectively control access to a work&quot; because it is easy to crack. That doesn&#x27;t stop copyright holders and the DMCA from deeming that DeCSS is illegal.

I&#x27;m not a lawyer either, but I doubt that clause has much effect, if any. The DMCA defines &quot;effective technological measure&quot; as follows:&gt; [A] technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.This seems like an objective metric, not something the copyright holder can arbitrarily &quot;deem&quot;.However, in the usual case people worry about, where a user is &quot;circumventing&quot; by modifying software on their own device, one could argue that given the &quot;Installation Information&quot; clauses and the other parts of the GPLv3 aimed at ensuring the user has the ability to modify the software, it does not &quot;in the ordinary course of its operation&quot; require permission from the copyright holder. The &quot;no covered work shall be deemed&quot; clause could be seen to clarify intent.There are other cases, like if the GPL software was, say, a web server that someone had configured to password protect files they had copyright over, and a hacker bypassed the password protection. This would normally be covered by the CFAA and other hacking statutes, but the DMCA could apply too. In this case, the GPL&#x27;s &quot;waive any legal power to forbid circumvention&quot; clause wouldn&#x27;t apply because the hacking wouldn&#x27;t be &quot;effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work&quot;. But if the &quot;no covered work shall be deemed&quot; clause is effective, it would close off using 1201 against the hacker anyway...

This post about the damage inflicted by 1201 reminded me of another 1201: Halon 1201, banned because it depletes the ozone layer. A serendipitous coincidence, with this post talking about 1201 like an ecological threat.More seriously, the GPLv3 contains an interesting provision. Search for &quot;Anti-Circumvention&quot; in this to find the section: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;licenses&#x2F;gpl-3.0-standalone.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;licenses&#x2F;gpl-3.0-standalone.html</a>The second paragraph is probably enforceable, but I&#x27;d be interested to hear from someone suitably informed whether the first paragraph has any basis. How far can it be taken?For example, one of the most insidious things about the Blu-ray format is that unlike DVD and HD-DVD, commercially pressed video Blu-rays are obliged to use AACS. Theoretically non-AACS discs could be pressed and work, but the replication plants aren&#x27;t _allowed_ to print non-AACS video Blu-rays. This has caused some consternation where people want to distribute Creative Commons&#x2F;etc. video on optical media, more than can fit on a DVD. I think I recall Archive Team talking about just having to resort to putting video files on a data Blu-ray instead.If someone made a film, put &quot;Neither this work nor any derived work can constitute an effective technological measure for the purposes of the WIPO copyright treaty or any corresponding legislation&quot; in the credits, and then someone else got AACS&#x27;d Blu-rays made of it, would 1201 thereby not prohibit breaking AACS specifically in the context of that Blu-ray? It seems rather dubious.

Not necessarily. It can influence the change in legislation or enforcement thereof. Case in point: DJB vs. United States<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bernstein_v._United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bernstein_v._United_States</a>

You skipped the part where you form a lobby group with deep pockets before petitioning congress. I&#x27;m skeptical that petitioning will be any more effective than a lawsuit without that step.

I think this is an important topic that needs to be addressed, but suing the government is doomed to fail. The federal government has sovereign immunity, and you can&#x27;t sue them unless they decide that you can. They usually decide that you can&#x27;t. Most laws aren&#x27;t changed in the court unless someone is criminally prosecuted. Then your appeal case can move through the higher levels of the court until it reaches a level that the law can be struck down completely, or what usually happens is a legal precedent is set regarding a specific portion of the law.So unless Bunnie has been prosecuted for breaking the DMCA, this is likely going to be an ineffective move.If you want to change a law without breaking it first, the right way to go about it is petitioning Congress, the lawmaking part of the government.

Great. DMCA-1201 was always unconstitutional and was in practice used to stifle free speech. Good to see EFF actually bringing it to legal fight. It should be repealed completely.

I&#x27;ve made an account just to wish you good luck! You&#x27;re a great man for doing this and I&#x27;m glad EFF is on board.

What? Why should the behavior the OP described be illegal?

She barely takes home minimum wage and she is self-employed. Most of her peers are in a similar position. It is not a vocation you get in to for the money.Edit: A common problem in her sector, and other therapy sectors, is that all the recognised diagnosis and treatment systems get bought by the likes of Pearson and other big technical publishers who will demand recurring payments to use the system. For example Owls, a common speech therapy system requires her to use their pre-printed forms to take notes. The basic diagnosis pack costs over $700, but she has to keep buying the forms at $60 for 25 - even thought he system rarely changes.

If you want to sell software that expires after two years, just do that.  Sell a two year license.  Don&#x27;t gouge people in dishonest ways.

HN is hardly an active supporter of unicorn style VC pump and dump. We poke fun of it all the time.This is a common criticism of HN I hear on Twitter by people who clearly don&#x27;t spend much time here.

I usually feel for people getting downvoted because they speak their mind, but... No people don&#x27;t have to make money this way. There are plenty of ways to make money and it is not important that she doesn&#x27;t happen to make a lot, even if she made a lot, I don&#x27;t think this makes any difference.

People aren&#x27;t complaining about the price, they&#x27;re complaining about the fucking stupid way that price is enforced and the gouging that happens when the inadequate hardware fails.

Though I don&#x27;t necessarily agree with you, I&#x27;ll upvote you as I think you bring up a good counterpoint that&#x27;s not being discussed.It&#x27;s possible that this company&#x27;s business plan assumed the replacement by obsolescence model - instead of a high upfront cost to recoup their R&amp;D, they expected users to replace it every few years at full cost.This is no different than the vast majority of the bait &amp; switch type schemes the tech industry and every other market uses. If one is acceptable, I don&#x27;t see why the other is not, just because a small percentage of the population on HN understands how to replace the electronic components of said hardware.Should a chemist be able to manufacture patented pharmaceuticals in his garage simply because he&#x2F;she knows the procedure? What if the drugs cost $10K a month because the company spent billions developing and marketing them? Now what if the chemist decides to make the expensive drugs for his family? And his friends. And their friends. Where does it stop?The DMCA has been abused, but it isn&#x27;t so cut and dry.

I wish I had enough rep to downvote you. For shame.

How much does your wife charge as a therapist?  Everyone needs to make money.  HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry.  Everyone hates laws until its in their best interest to have said laws.

I did consider that but I didn&#x27;t want to take the risk of messing things up even further. I figured the cartridge exchange was a safer option.Incidentally when I called Samson support looking to buy a specific model revision I told them what the mic was used for. When I mentioned it was for people shouting mouth open wide at the top of their voice the support rep said &quot;But that mic is for stuff like Skype and maybe recording a little bit of singing not for shouting at&quot;.

I think you should copy the USB device ID. If the software only rely on that and the mic fail again I&#x27;m pretty sure there is a way to make the software believe it&#x27;s talking to the old mic with that.

Now you mention it I feel like I overlooked the obvious solution.

Won&#x27;t be so easy if they obfuscate&#x2F;encrypt the binaries.

I thought that was what he was going to do. Hopefully they didn&#x27;t add too many protections on the software side.

I don&#x27;t know whether it still works in Windows 10, but you may be able to tweak an .inf file to map the driver to the vendor ID&#x2F;product ID combination (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;msdn.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;library&#x2F;windows&#x2F;hardware&#x2F;ff537109(v=vs.85).aspx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;msdn.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;library&#x2F;windows&#x2F;hardware&#x2F;ff...</a>)That also may require playing with settings that require drivers to be signed (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alphr.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;2012&#x2F;08&#x2F;06&#x2F;getting-older-drivers-to-work-in-windows-8" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alphr.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;2012&#x2F;08&#x2F;06&#x2F;getting-older-drivers-...</a>)

Alternatively, would be fun to get the OS to lie about the USB device ID. This would definitely be possible on Linux (probably with a kernel module, but perhaps you&#x27;d have to modify the USB core) but no idea how flexible Windows is on this kind of thing..

The same way we used to crack old games. That is how Mech Warrior on the PC fell.

I&#x27;m wondering if that&#x27;s &quot;more illegal&quot; than fixing the hardware component (which is silly because changing the ID can be simpler). In hardware you can just say you&#x27;ve replaced a broken part even if it&#x27;s 99% of the hardware, right?

would you simply change the part of the hex in the binary that references the mic id? I was not aware i could modify the hex directly .

They&#x27;re only 16 bits though so you will get a lot of false positives.

Would be easier to do a hex search on the binaries, find the device id of the old mic, and patch in the device id of the new mic. I&#x27;d be surprised if they had bothered to obfuscate the id in any way.

Could you email me with the name of the software? Thank you.

And this is WHY you should be able to do work like this because of crappy software.  Fixing things that are broken should not be a crime (a microphone, a computer, a tractor) Glad to see you found a solution to someone else shortsighted software protection!

I&#x27;ll let her know. We live in Dublin, I&#x27;m Irish but shes from New York - but got her degree in Dallas.She spent several years as a school district speechie in Texas so she probably knows exactly what you went through.I also grew up with a rhotacism which I forced out of myself due to bullying. I know what you went through.

Every now and then I get a compliment on my speaking, my very Irish relatives call it &quot;the gift of the gab&quot;. What they don&#x27;t know is that I grew up with a small but not insignificant speech impediment that among other things prevented me from saying most words that included the letter &#x27;r&#x27;. I remember having to consciously blacklist words from my vocabulary because I couldn&#x27;t pronounce them.Anyways I was fortunate enough to belong to a school district that had a speech therapist who rotated through schools. After three years I had improved enough to &#x27;graduate&#x27; and have been saying words with &#x27;r&#x27; ever since. I haven&#x27;t thought about it in years but the actions of that therapist, and of the district to provide her, have greatly effected my life.So tell your wife thank you for what she does, and please ask her if she is aware of any philanthropic organizations where people can donate time or money to the worthy cause of speech therapy. I can only imagine all the inner city schools in America without a speech therapist, and what that must do the the kids.

You don&#x27;t think this was circumventing a technical measure?

You repaired a broken analog component. Not a DMCA violation but I suppose it&#x27;s no longer an FDA approved medical device.

Good.My wife is a speech therapist and uses a system that is designed to help people who have had strokes regain their voice.It comprises a piece of software that comes with a &quot;specially calibrated USB microphone&quot;. The microphone is actually a Samson laptop USB mic that had the voice improvement systems logo stuck on it.The system came with lots of legal warnings about not copying, not telling unqualified people about how it worked and not to use an unapproved microphone. The DMCA was specifically mentioned.One day the mic failed (the program requires patients to shout aggressively at the mic) so my wife went off looking for a replacement. We had a few USB mics that we tried and and the application refused to acknowledge their existence even though they showed up in Windows. It became obvious that the software was checking the USB device ID. My wife went to the company that ran the system to get a replacement, but they said she had to buy a new copy of the software as well - total cost $659. So we took a chance and ordered a new Samson USB mic from Amazon for €30.00, but when it arrived it didn&#x27;t work. It was the same model, but was a few generations ahead and therefore had a different USB device ID. My wife has some colleagues with the same package so I tested their mics and they had different USB device IDs and it became obvious that when Samson released a revision of the mic the company offering the system simply recompiled the code with he new device ID baked in and then re-branded the mic.So, not wanting to shell out $659 for a whole new package I took the old and new mics apart desoldered the cartridges from both mics and put the new one in the body of the failed mic. It worked! Now technically this would be a violation of 1201 in the sense that the individual copy of the software they sold you was tied to the specific mic they sold you at the same time - they said so in the EULA. But lets be honest that&#x27;s just nonsense. They were simply trying to sell more stuff - a tactic that seems fairly common in various fields of professional therapy.This is the sort of problem caused by 1201. If we lived in the US we would have been in breach of the DMCA even though we copied nothing.Also, the software is as ugly as sin.

If only my precious American vote had any power over this whatsoever. (My foreign colleagues seem to think it does.)

I fully support your cause.I&#x27;m not an American and do not live in America but the problems with American (copyright) laws unfortunately affect the world on a global scale. I sincerely wish you all the best in your efforts and hope that other organisations as well as the (fantastic) EFF back you.I stand behind you.

Exactly re: influence. Laws like this are de-facto evidence of the power of the will of the people vs. the power of the will of financial interests by other people who deem that more important (in terms of their bank accounts and short-sighted profit motives).

Really, if you&#x27;re a farmer who wants to fix his own damn tractor, you&#x27;re probably a hacker (in the traditional sense of the word). You don&#x27;t have to work with computers in order to be a hacker.

No, farmers have very little power. Agri-corps, big business which collects the majority of those subsidies, have power. These laws keep little guys down.

Just as a point of fact, farmers have huge political power. Look at farm subsidies, look at Ethanol mandates.To be more accurate, I would say the number of farmers that want to work with code&#x2F;electronics to fix tractors is a small subset of &quot;farmers.&quot; Try cutting a farming subsidy and you&#x27;ll quickly see how powerful farmers really are.Ted Cruz was the only candidate who dared challenge Ethanol mandates -- while campaigning in Iowa. Most political pundits considered that suicide. He won Iowa despite that, but it does show that farmers actually have disproportional power in national politics. However, the &quot;hack my tractor&quot; crowd is not necessarily exercising that power. Perhaps in the 2020 election, this will become a marquee issue (as ethanol has been in elections past.)

Good luck!What&#x27;s kind of cool about this issue is that it attracts support from citizens of all political stripes - whether you&#x27;re a farmer who just wants to be able to fix his own damn tractor, or a hacker who wants to futz with proprietary hardware, the law is patently bogus.Unfortunately, farmers and hackers have far less political influence than corporations. Hopefully by pursuing this through the courts and with adequate resources from the EFF some progress can be made that couldn&#x27;t be in congress.

A related article by Matthew Green is at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12137437" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12137437</a>, and by the EFF at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12136682" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12136682</a>.

IME many US people do not resonate with the creativity arguments, but do with the freedoms. The land of the free lately doesnt feel like it and I think many US people are feeling it too. It may help to phrase your arguments in the wording that the constitution is meant to protect -- in terms of freedom.

The whole DMCA is a steaming pile, but I guess I&#x27;m ok with piecewise dismantling.

Doesn&#x27;t the US dismiss most lawsuits filed against it out-of-hand? Wasn&#x27;t that why that class-action on behalf of the Japanese concentration camp survivors was such a landmark case?

You can also set them as your designated recipient for Amazon Smile and use a browser extension to put all applicable purchases through that program:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;smile-always&#x2F;jgpmhnmjbhgkhpbgelalfpplebgfjmbf?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;smile-always&#x2F;jgpmh...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;addons.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;addon&#x2F;amazonsmileredirector&#x2F;?src=search" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;addons.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;addon&#x2F;amazonsmilere...</a>

Also be sure to click their Amazon affiliate link before buying stuff, it&#x27;s an easy way to give for free.

As linked at the end of the blog post:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;press&#x2F;releases&#x2F;eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-section-1201-research-and-technology-restrictions-violate" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;press&#x2F;releases&#x2F;eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-se...</a>

What&#x27;s the EFF stance on this particular lawsuit?

If you&#x27;re in this thread to support this EFF-backed action, I would strongly consider donating to a cause you support:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;supporters.eff.org&#x2F;donate&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;supporters.eff.org&#x2F;donate&#x2F;</a>

I did not intend for it to be insulting.  I often see posters complain about laws that prevent them from shoehorning them into and industry start making money, and defending similar laws when it&#x27;s in their best interests.  My original comment was a merely to argue the other side of the argument because HN has a tendency to be two-faced when it comes to topics like this.

his &quot;above statement&quot; is not at all absurd, it reflects the thinking of somebody who is drawing a parallel because they are clearly educated in the Nobel prize attracting (i.e. hardly obscure) field of microeconomics; if you can&#x27;t see that, am I right in guessing you have not studied micro? Cuz if you did, you missed a chunk of it.| HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industryHN is a place where many seek unicorn valuations which are only achievable from monopoly rents. Monopoly rents are what the headphone USB trick is attempting to collect (see bundling). That&#x27;s what makes it pertinent to state &quot;weird place to take this side&quot; especially so vociferously... well, weird side to take unless you are not educated about econ and are unable to decode what&#x27;s actually happening.If the software producer did not try to enforce copy protection through the USB scheme, they would presumably face the problem of people copying the software and buying aftermarket headphones. In a large scale industry like operating systems (Microsoft Windows) such rent seeking behavior is to be deplored because prices of individual copies of the software should approach their very-inexpensive marginal cost. But the marginal cost of a niche piece of software such as this ADA software is complicated by the difficulty in earning back the development costs. This is the justification for patents, etc. whether you believe in it strongly or less strongly or not. I am less strongly a believer, but I&#x27;m not a pussy who downvotes people who disagree with me.

&gt; HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry.I think the insulting tone towards those that disagree with him might have something to do with it. And the above statement is just plain absurd.

We detached this subthread from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12137853" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12137853</a> and marked it off-topic.

yes I agree, and also, what? why should PP&#x27;s question be downvoted-to-hell?: He&#x27;s entitled to defend the other side here.Not saying you did it, but I had to comment someplace.

&gt; You know, if this happens in schoolyards, we probably call it &quot;bullying.&quot; But if a bunch of libertarians do it, it&#x27;s &quot;principles.&quot;When a bunch of civil rights activists do it, is it still &quot;bullying&quot;?Similar lawsuits are why Texas and other US states can&#x27;t enforce their anti-homosexual sodomy laws anymore.

The organizations who benefit from these laws have significantly more lobbying power and popular influence than anyone else can hope to gain. Ostensibly one reason courts exist is to allow harms to smaller players to be addressed.I could make a bulleted list of why a republic doesn&#x27;t work very well to tame media oligarchs, but it boils down to control of the media and decades of experience with framing the public conversation.

This is how the checks and balances of American government work, or are supposed to, at least.Legislation is inert. The Executive exists to execute the will of the people expressed through the Legislature. The Judiciary interprets legislation, particularly the interactions and priorities of various laws, ranging from the Constitution, to legislation, to case law. This in turn informs the Executive as to how to execute the legislation.Therefore, if a citizen is of the opinion that the Executive is doing a bad job of balancing concerns in enforcement (in this particular case asserting that 1201 is unconstitutional due to the 1st Amendment), they sue the Executive. Again, this is entirely in keeping with the structure of checks and balances American government is founded on. When it works, it works well.

&gt; That can be radically difficult because of gerrymandering.Duverger&#x27;s Law also complicates things:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Duverger%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Duverger%27s_law</a>

&gt; &quot;Oh wait, why sue Congress when you can simply vote them out of office?&quot;That can be radically difficult because of gerrymandering.That aside, launching a public campaign, garnering votes, and voting on a _single issue_ is often the wrong way to elect a representative.For instance, I think the 2nd amendment is actually a good idea to prevent invasion of a foreign force (an armed population is very hard to rule over). However, I pretty much never vote for candidates that support the 2nd amendment because they often also deny climate change, vote for private prison control, etc. I can&#x27;t go with their whole platform. I don&#x27;t want them representing me.So in those cases, when you have one issue - especially when it&#x27;s just part of a whole (e.g. just section 1201) - it seems like the right approach, especially when you think there&#x27;s a piece of legislation (like the Constitution) that supersedes and invalidates the legislation you&#x27;re looking at.

The interests of the lawmakers are more aligned with corporations with deep pockets than with the general population (at least regarding copyright laws).Fixing this issue via the legislative process would therefor require realigning lawmakers with their constituents, which could be done possibly by enacting laws which prevent contributions from corporations (which is itself something that lawmakers may disagree with their constituents about) or by a grassroots campaign to basically replace the entire legislative branch with non corrupt law makers.Both of these paths are slow and difficult, if possible at all. Meanwhile, there is an argument that the law is unconstitutional which means that it could be repealed immediately. We are still completely within the realm of being a citizen. This is the whole point of the checks and balances system.

&gt; Who is &quot;the Government&quot;? Wait, ain&#x27;t them the very candidates that you the people vote into offices?Yes, the very candidates we vote into offices chosen from a menu prepared by the 0.1% of the wealthiest people in the country.Please see Lessig&#x27;s TED talk on U.S. Democratic process.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...</a>

&gt; Why not educate your fellow citizens on the danger of the laws? Why not change minds? Why not raise money for candidates who will change the laws appropriately?Because that&#x27;s incredibly inefficient when compared to taking someone to court. Most people don&#x27;t care about the things you care about, and they shouldn&#x27;t have to -- that&#x27;s what the courts are for. Democracy is a great last resort, but it should only be used when all other options have been exhausted.

I think you might have some misconceptions about the structure of the American legal system and about American politics.&gt; One thing always bugs me about Americans: despite the liberties that they enjoy, despite the very real capacity to impact change in their government and laws, they all hate &quot;the Government.&quot; Who is &quot;the Government&quot;? Wait, ain&#x27;t them the very candidates that you the people vote into offices?Fear of government is essentially a founding value of the United States, but I agree that people often go too far with it.&gt; Like this idea of &quot;suing the US government.&quot; Who are you suing? The executive branch? Why are you suing them? This is over a law. It&#x27;s a piece of legislation. The executive branch merely, you know, execute the laws.Because that&#x27;s how American constitutional law works. If you believe a federal law to be unconstitutional, you sue &quot;the United States&quot; so the courts can rule on the matter. The Justice Department, part of the executive branch, which for all intents and purposes is the government&#x27;s legal team, is then tasked with defending the law.Also, in constitutional law cases it&#x27;s common for the plaintiffs to not seek monetary damages of any kind, just for the courts to affirm the rights they&#x27;re asserting and remedy the specific situation that led to the lawsuit.&gt; Why not sue Congress?The only time you would really have standing to sue Congress is if it did something to you directly, like you walked into Capitol Hill and one of the security guards roughed you up for no reason. Otherwise, Congress is acting on behalf of the government, and if you don&#x27;t like acts of Congress you sue the government as a whole.&gt; Oh wait, why sue Congress when you can simply vote them out of office? Oh wait, why &quot;stop enforcing&quot; the laws when you can, you know, CHANGE the laws?A couple reasons.One, as an American citizen, there are at most three members of Congress you vote for: your Representative, and your two Senators. That&#x27;s three out of 535 members. If you don&#x27;t live in a state, you have no representation at all. So even if you can energize your neighbors to agree with and vote like you, it&#x27;s still hard to sway the tide of national lawmaking.Another reason is that it simply might not be politically possible to seek relief in Congress, because you&#x27;re suing for a right that&#x27;s politically unpopular, or for the rights of an unpopular group. Think of all the lawsuits involving flag burning, sodomy, the KKK, and the Westboro Baptist Church.

I do appreciate the effort to protect everyone&#x27;s constitutional right. I wish best of luck to the pursuit.However, I feel like there is something very very wrong about method and intention of this type of actions&#x2F;complains.One thing always bugs me about Americans: despite the liberties that they enjoy, despite the very real capacity to impact change in their government and laws, they all hate &quot;the Government.&quot; Who is &quot;the Government&quot;? Wait, ain&#x27;t them the very candidates that you the people vote into offices?Like this idea of &quot;suing the US government.&quot; Who are you suing? The executive branch? Why are you suing them? This is over a law. It&#x27;s a piece of legislation. The executive branch merely, you know, execute the laws. Why not sue Congress? Oh wait, why sue Congress when you can simply vote them out of office? Oh wait, why &quot;stop enforcing&quot; the laws when you can, you know, CHANGE the laws?This kinda reminds me of the libertarians&#x27; ideas of obstruction of legislation so that &quot;the government does not spend more.&quot; If not spending is the right thing to do, why not educate people that. Even if one believes that 47% of the population is &quot;takers,&quot; 53% is still a majority. So teach, advocate, change minds. But no, they prefer to obstruct their country, risk the centuries of their national reputation, put t heir fellow citizens to starvation. You know, if this happens in schoolyards, we probably call it &quot;bullying.&quot; But if a bunch of libertarians do it, it&#x27;s &quot;principles.&quot;Obviously, I agree with the plaintiff here. However, the method is still wrong. And different from above, there are very few &quot;takers&quot; here. Mostly, it&#x27;s faceless businesses that (let&#x27;s be frank here) few people like. So why not take the high road? Why not educate your fellow citizens on the danger of the laws? Why not change minds? Why not raise money for candidates who will change the laws appropriately?In short: why not be a citizen rather than a rebel? Why not change the system for the better rather than obstruct it? Why not make your society&#x2F;country a better place rather than simply fight it?

DJ Drama, the mixtape guy, was raided under the same law. It&#x27;s an interesting story, google &quot;dj drama raid&quot;

This reminds me of a new patent Apple filed to disable video recording on iphones. Would winning this suit prevent that from being enforceable?

This is just one scenario, but you can imagine a system where the person who profits over any IP would pay IP tax, which would then get distributed upstream to previous registered contributors. IP producers would need to be tracked, but this is something that systems such as github already do extremely well, and credit card companies already run systems that process fees for every single transaction.Producers will announce themselves anyway, in hopes that their content will generate as much value as possible. Contributors would announce themselves in exchange for the right to use any IP.So say DJ Foo remixes a Michael Jackson song and uploads it to YouTube. YouTube will withhold the IP tax from the ad revenue paid out, and hand it over to the IP revenue service with the copyright profile. Michael Jackson will get paid for DJ Foo&#x27;s remix automatically.Say DJ Foo does an original song and uploads it to YouTube. The same thing will happen, but DJ Foo will get paid from the IP revenue service since the IP is tied to DJ Foo as the originator.And imagine if all this information was open and public. We could lookup any product or work and see all of its activity and history as if it were open source code on github.In exchange for everyone paying an IP tax, anyone creating anything or adding something will be guaranteed to get paid for their contributions based on the maximum value society can generate from it. Violators will be shamed just by manipulating the system because they&#x27;d be doing it in public, and it would be in the IP creators best interest to police their work and report violations. Violations don&#x27;t even need to be criminal. They just need to be fines that disincentivise those actions enough, much like parking tickets. An example violation would be uploading someone else&#x27;s song without changing it or false claims regarding ownership.

who pays this tax? the person that forks the github repo?

&gt; the legal right to fork any IPNot really useful without any public source code.

What we need is the legal right to fork any IP. An open licensing model where no one needs permission. They just need to maybe pay an IP tax that trickles up to the previous contributors that helped produce what was forked.IP is completely flawed because it grants a monopoly on the fruits of specific knowledge or a work as if they are static end products, whereas in reality anything that is not evolving is dying. So the law restricts progress to the owners of the IP even when we could all contribute. And when there is incompetence or negligence by the owners, we have a situation where something good is ruined or withheld, with anyone fixing it being illegal.Removing IP is impossible because it&#x27;s about profit, which is also a right. What we need is a new revenue system based on new principles of an expectation of progress and open contribution. Open source software and hardware is this, but just without any standard profit model backed by law.

I&#x27;m familiar with DRM and the related DMCA criticism. I just don&#x27;t get what&#x27;s so special about this case. It&#x27;s like when you see a really boring scene in a movie and everyone is laughing at references and subtext you&#x27;re not getting, or on the edge in suspense.Like, if the scene is some dinner party, but right before you started watching someone had set a bomb under the table or something. What&#x27;s the bomb here?

DRM. I assume you know of it, and that it&#x27;s massively hated. It&#x27;s &quot;copy protection&quot; software mechanisms that is meant to control how you use and copy media that you have. It&#x27;s a pain. Nominally, it&#x27;s there to prevent you from copying the media in illegal ways, but it often also prevents you from doing perfectly legal things with it.However, it&#x27;s not just a pain to be worked around. In the US, since the DMCA section 1201 became effective in 1998, it is illegal to try to work around DRM. Mostly.Every couple of years, the Library of Congress gets to make a list of exceptions to 1201, of specific situations where you can work around DRM without it being illegal. Most recently was October 28, 2015.Many people still objected to section 1201 on principal that it prevents tinkering, but the Library of Congress&#x27; list of exceptions has generally kept people placated.As for context of their specific case: I&#x27;m not totally sure. User csydas suggested that this case became possible because of certain exceptions being removed from the latest version of the list (then some time for the EFF to compile the case). This seams reasonable to me, but to know for sure would involve legal details about the case that we don&#x27;t have yet.

Can someone do a tl;dr? This is upvoted very highly but it&#x27;s assuming a ton of context I don&#x27;t have. All I get is that someone wants to be able to tinker, but today that necessitates breaking some legally-enforced protections on the product.That&#x27;s a valid point but I don&#x27;t see how it&#x27;s gotten to 1000 points, so I think I&#x27;m missing something. What&#x27;s the lawsuit? What&#x27;s the egregious use case?

I cackled at the former, homeless vegan (or thereabouts) who started a shitstorm in the comments.

The UK government is trying to push for OSS as the default for all government software. As a default for all &quot;societally beneficial&quot;&#x27;software is a better goal and one highlighted here.Now my attempts so far are stymied by this weird half world. Most government contracts basically want either bums on seats contractors or to fundamentally hire &quot;someone who has done it before&quot; (effectively the same as wanting to buy off the shelf)So there is almost no way to seed fund the initial OSS development.Down thread people talk about a fund for starting OSS projects to provide things like this. Plover is an example of people trying it on their own - but a funded system that basically follows current gov work seems better.

If something isn&#x27;t done about this very soon, people will never remember or know what used to be. Most (many?) of us here have used VCRs, tape recorders and CD burners, etc, and understand what he is talking about when we remember the days when we had freedom to own information.Today&#x27;s kids have been well trained by Apple, Google and Netflix and hardly even understand what we are talking about.&quot;Oh, you don&#x27;t have an iPhone anymore? Just buy it on Google Play and you will have it again on your Galaxy.&quot; is a quote I have heard more than once...

This entire cause is a sham, beyond belief, a cause that seeks to degrade the value of creative thought and intellectual property.Before we get into socioeconomic barrier discussions I am a former disabled homeless person who is how the founder of one of the most powerful environmental activism groups in the country. I started out with nothing and worked myself to where I am, using original and creative thought and at no time have I ever needed anyone’s intellectual property to build myself to where I am.The Electronic Frontier Foundation, that supports this complete bullshit erosion of the rights of content creators everywhere, does nothing in this world but fight for causes that continually reduce the market value of original ideas.They claim to fight for things like “free speech” but what they really fight for is the rights of anonymous hate groups to steal your photos and write nasty messages on them. They fight for the rights of the meek to inherit the Earth so they can then destroy it with their abject failures.Look to the recent lawsuit Google v Oracle, where Oracle sued Google over the use of their software in Android. Google avoided billions in liability and it was all thanks to the work of the EFF, who suck off the teat of Silicon Valley and protect their billionaire buddies from financial liability, and then they support “little guys” like this so they can continue their 1% supporting ruse.I look forward to watching this mad grab at free intellectual property get slapped down by Washington DC. This is not about fighting the government, this guy is a puppet being used by the power that be in Silicon Valley in order to allow companies like Google to continue to rob, loot, and pillage other people’s intellectual property without financial liability.

The problem is this new business model where they don&#x27;t just sell you things&#x2F;stuff, rather they also sell you &quot;specific rights&quot; along with the stuff. The usual things like you cannot do this or that with the stuff that you bought from us. The sole purpose is to keep earning money even after the one time deal of buying the stuff.

You know, no one asked you tech people from getting involved in law making. Nowadays, a law maker can&#x27;t seem to do anything at all without some techie crying foul. Their argument always is some nonsensical technobabble, which the courts can&#x27;t really understand anyway, often giving in to their demands just to get them to go away.And it&#x27;s such a shame, too, since those laws were bought and paid for by lobbyists, and what does it say about the rest of the country if one can&#x27;t expect to get what one pays for when lobbying at the highest level of government?

Why I’m Suing the US Government