drm – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Good News: Canada Passes Major New ‘Right To Repair’ Reforms

from the fix-your-own-shit dept

The world might be going to hell, but at least activists’ efforts to protect consumers’ rights to affordable and easy tech repair continue to gain steam.

Most recently in Canada, where the country’s Copyright Act was amended by two different bills allowing the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) if done for the purposes of “maintaining or repairing a product, including any related diagnosing,” and “to make the program or a device in which it is embedded interoperable with any other computer program, device or component.”

These TPMs take on a variety of shapes, whether it’s just password protected access to administrative functions, or the need for a USB dongle to unlock access to copyrighted parts of software. Initially implemented to “fight piracy,” such restrictions were quickly expanded to be leveraged to help companies monopolize repair. Like in the U.S., Canadian copyright bars circumvention.

Overall, Canada’s legal updates should be a great boon to independent repair shops looking to provide affordable repair options to Canadian consumers, and to tinkerers wanting to repair devices and hardware they own. iFixit calls the amendments a “huge step forward” for right to repair:

“These bills are a huge step forward for the right to repair, giving Canadians more freedom to repair their own devices without breaking the law. They make Canada the first country to tackle copyright law’s digital locks at a federal level in favor of repair access.”

iFixit notes there’s still work left to be done, given that Canada’s latest legal updates do nothing to help improve access to the needed repair tools:

“While Canadians can now legally bypass TPMs to fix their own devices, they can’t legally sell or share tools designed for that purpose. This means Canadian consumers and repair pros still face technical and legal hurdles to access the necessary repair tools, much like in the US.”

Here in the States, any hopes for a federal right to repair law have been crushed by Trump’s electoral win. Activists have, however, had considerable luck passing numerous state right to repair laws.

Last March Oregon became the seventh state to pass “right to repair” legislation making it easier, cheaper, and more convenient to repair technology you own. The bill’s passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York (2023), Minnesota, Maine and California. All told, 30 states contemplated such bills in 2024.

The problem: I’ve yet to see any examples of these laws actually being enforced. And with Trumpism ushering in a whole bunch of new life and death legal struggles hinging at the state level (immigration, the dismantling of all federal consumer protection), I strongly suspect going toe to toe with major companies over right to repair won’t be a priority for state officials with limited resources.

Filed Under: canada, copyright, drm, hardware, locks, right to repair, software, tpms

FTC Investigating John Deere Over ‘Right To Repair’ Violations

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Tue, Oct 22nd 2024 05:12pm - Karl Bode

A few years ago agricultural equipment giant John Deere found itself on the receiving end of an antitrust lawsuit for its efforts to monopolize tractor repair. The lawsuits noted that the company consistently purchased competing repair centers in order to consolidate the sector and force customers into using the company’s own repair facilities, driving up costs and logistical hurdles dramatically for farmers.

John Deere executives have repeatedly promised to do better, then just ignored those promises.

Earlier this year John Deere found itself under fire once again, this time by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who sent a letter to the company noting that company is violating The Clean Air Act by failing to inform users in tractor manuals of cheaper repair options. Now comes word that the FTC is investigating whether the company’s efforts to monopolize repair have violated the FTC Act:

“The investigation, authorized on Sept. 2, 2021, focuses on repair restrictions manufacturers place on hardware or software, often referred to by regulators as impeding customers’ “right to repair” the goods they purchase. The probe was made public through a filing by data analytics company Hargrove & Associates Inc, which sought to quash an FTC subpoena seeking market data submitted to it by members of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.”

If the FTC takes action, hopefully it’s more comprehensive than some of the earlier antitrust busting efforts during Lina Khan’s tenure.

In addition to intentionally acquiring repair alternatives to monopolize repair and drive up consumer costs, John Deere also routinely makes repair difficult and costly through the act of software locks, obnoxious DRM, and “parts pairing” — which involves only allowing the installation of company-certified replacement parts — or mandatory collections of company-blessed components.

More recently, the company has been striking meaningless “memorandums of understanding” with key trade groups, pinky swearing to stop their bad behavior if the groups agree to not support state or federal right to repair legislation.

Last March, Oregon became the seventh U.S. state to pass “right to repair” legislation making it easier, cheaper, and more convenient to repair technology you own. The bill’s passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York (2023), Minnesota, Maine and California. All told, 30 states are considering such bills in 2024.

While the new laws are promising progress for right to repair activism, in most instances companies in those states are just ignoring the laws with no repercussions so far.

Filed Under: consumers, drm, ftc, hardware, independent repair, parts pairing, right to repair, tractors
Companies: john deere

John Deere Once Again Under Fire Again For Efforts To Monopolize Repair

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Fri, Oct 11th 2024 01:52pm - Karl Bode

The lawsuits also noted how the company routinely makes repair difficult and costly through the act of software locks, obnoxious DRM, and “parts pairing” — which involves only allowing the installation of company-certified replacement parts — or mandatory collections of company-blessed components.

Last week John Deere found itself under fire once again, this time by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who sent a letter to the company noting that it continues to fail to inform customers in manuals that they don’t have to use expensive John Deere dealership repair options. According to Warren, this could be violating The Clean Air Act:

“This exclusion of language informing customers of their rights not only undercuts farmers’ ability to repair their equipment, but may also be illegal. The Clean Air Act, which governs emissions from all mobile sources of air pollution, including tractors and other farm equipment, directs the Environmental Protection Agency to require manufacturers to provide “any and all information needed to make use of the emission control diagnostics system . . . and such other information including instructions for making emission related diagnosis and repairs.” The law specifies that “no such information may be withheld . . . by the manufacturer to franchised dealers or other persons engaged in the repair, diagnosing, or servicing of motor vehicles or motor vehicle engines.”

This is, of course, probably the least of John Deere’s sins. The company constantly exploits its carefully cultivated repair monopoly to jack up costs for parts and repairs for its captive customer base. As a result there’s no shortage of stories about John Deere tractor owners being forced to haul their tractors thousands of miles — or pay thousands of additional dollars — just to keep them functioning.

The problem is that the company has repeatedly promised to do better, then turned right around and continued engaging in anticompetitive and anti-consumer behavior.

Last year, Deere struck a “memorandum of understanding” with the American Farm Bureau Federation promising that the company will make sure farmers have the right to repair their own farm equipment or go to an independent technician. But the promise wound up being largely performative, and primarily aimed at stopping the group from supporting state or federal right to repair laws.

While the new laws are promising for right to repair activism, in most instances companies in those states are just ignoring the laws with no repercussions so far.

Filed Under: drm, elizabeth warren, hardware, john deere tractors, parts, parts pairing, reform, right to repair, software
Companies: john deere

Companies Are Simply Ignoring Many New State ‘Right To Repair’ Laws

from the fix-your-own-shit dept

Tue, Sep 3rd 2024 05:28am - Karl Bode

While the popular reforms are a nice example of U.S. consumer rights headed in the right direction, many of the bills (like New York’s) were watered down almost to the point of uselessness to appease larger tech companies. And in many states, companies simply aren’t complying because enforcement has been largely absent.

A recent report by PIRG examined 21 different mainstream tech devices subject to New York’s recently passed electronics Right to Repair law, then graded them “based on the quality and accessibility of repair manuals, spare parts, and other critical repair materials.” Most fared poorly in terms of easy access to parts and manuals, and New York’s done zero enforcement of its own law so far:

“_The New York Right to Repair Bill has had mixed success. It has gone a long way in pushing companies towards greater repair standards, but it has been surpassed by newer repair bills in other states like the recent passage in Oregon. In order for this bill to remain useful for the people of New York, it should be updated to bring it in line with newer repair standards, as well as provide greater enforcement to move companies towards full compliance in the future._“

NY’s lax enforcement is not particularly surprising, given that NY Governor Kathy Hochul went out of her way to make her state’s law as loophole-filled as possible.

In California, the state legislature recently passed SB-244, the Right to Repair Act, which only just took effect last July. The bill requires that appliance and electronics companies make repair manuals, parts, and tools widely available to consumers, repair shops, and service dealers. But companies in California also seem in no particular rush to come into compliance with the new state law:

“Even though the law’s been in effect for nearly two months now, a couple repair shop owners tell KSBY some manufacturers are not following it…[local independent repair shop owner Eric] Vanderlip told KSBY he reached out to Bose and Polk Audio for schematic diagrams and manuals for certain products, but neither would provide them.

KSBY then reached out to both companies and has not heard back.”

Cool.

Laws are, of course, only worth something if they’re meaningfully enforced, and so far there have not been many indications that major companies are rushing to comply with these new consumer right to repair protections, or that state officials are in any particular rush to make them. Granted many of these laws are new, and it’s going to take a few shots over the bows of major offenders to spark compliance.

The problem is many of these bills already carved out many of the more problematic industries and hardware, including agricultural hardware and medical gear manufacturers. It’s been amazing to see the progress activists have made with these reforms, but it would be a shame if such reforms with widespread bipartisan support wound up being predominantly performative.

Filed Under: california, consumers, drm, hardware, manuals, new york, reform, right to repair, state law, tools
Companies: bose, polk audio

Appeals Court Rejects DMCA Constitutional Challenge, Because Apparently Fair Use Means Nothing Good Will Ever Be Published

from the first-amendment-takes-a-backseat-again dept

What began as an attempt to challenge the constitutionality of the DMCA’s terrible anticircumvention provision has now backfired. A court ruling will limit our rights to fair use and free expression in favor of Hollywood’s ability to lock stuff down with digital locks.

It’s not great.

I had thought we had gotten past the era when courts would deal with copyright cases by accepting the Hollywood copyright extremist position — that without copyright nothing at all would ever get published — as fact. But the DC Circuit appeals court has done exactly that, in a case that wasn’t even suggesting that copyright should go away, just that fair use should be applied to all of it.

The DC Circuit appeals court has now rejected a challenge to the DMCA’s Section 1201 (the anti-circumvention bit) based on how it suppresses First Amendment-protected speech.

This case goes back a ways. Eight years ago, the EFF filed a lawsuit challenging Section 1201. The lawsuit represented security professor Matthew Green and hardware hacker Bunnie Huang. It said that Section 1201 was chilling their speech in preventing them from doing the kind of work they wanted to do.

A big part of the argument was that even though the government has its ridiculous triennial review process, in which the Librarian of Congress gets to designate specific uses that are exempt from 1201, there is no fair use defense for 1201 violations. And, since the Supreme Court has long argued that fair use is the important “safety valve” that makes copyright law compatible with the First Amendment, the lack of fair use here suggests that 1201 might be unconstitutional.

There was more to the argument, but that was the crux of it. The case has bounced around the courts, with parts of it getting dismissed and parts of it being allowed to proceed.

And that brings us to the ruling last week. The panel from the DC Circuit readily admits that copyright law and the First Amendment are “in tension,” but says they’re mostly in alignment in promoting the creation of new works. It recognizes that fair use has been deemed to be an important safety valve here as well:

That said, to avoid impeding robust expression, courts have long recognized a common-law doctrine of “fair use” that implies an “author’s consent to a reasonable use of his copyrighted works” by other speakers

It also notes that because fair use is judged on a case-by-case basis, it’s often unclear to speakers whether or not they’re truly protected:

Fair use plays a key role in striking a balance between expression and prohibition in copyright law. But because the line between uses that are fair and those that are infringing eludes crisp definition, creators relying on fair use as a defense against claims of copyright infringement inevitably face some uncertainty. Courts determine case by case whether use of a copyrighted work constitutes fair use, sometimes based on subsidiary factual determinations made by juries. See Google LLC v. Oracle Am., Inc., 593 U.S. 1, 23-26 (2021). Indeed, the Supreme Court has described reliance on a “potential fair use defense” as a “roll [of] the dice,” subjecting the user of copyrighted material to a “notoriously fact sensitive” analysis that typically cannot be resolved “without a trial.” Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255, 275 (2020).

You might think that a statement like this bodes well for the challenge to the law here, in which fair use isn’t even an option. Here, the court is already admitting to the chilling effects of unclear boundaries on fair use:

That uncertainty risks chilling some privileged speech

But, the court then shifts and basically presents Hollywood’s line about the importance of robust copyright protection against the plebes and their fair uses. It explains the history of 1201 (which was demanded by Hollywood in order to support the wider DMCA and its notice-and-takedown provisions). Unsurprisingly, the court leaves out the history, which is that Congress originally rejected the DMCA. This led the copyright maximalists to run to Geneva and get DMCA-like provisions included in an international treaty, so they could run back to Congress and tell them they had to pass the DMCA to “meet their international obligations.” But… details.

From there, we get a bunch of scary quotes from the court, arguing that fair use is not, in fact, protected by the First Amendment:

In plaintiffs’ view, a mismatch in protection for fair use under traditional copyright law and under the DMCA renders the latter unconstitutional. They assert that all fair use is protected by the First Amendment, so section 1201(a) cannot validly prohibit circumvention by individuals for the purpose of making fair use of copyrighted works. And they argue that Congress’s explicit attempt to build fair-use accommodations into section 1201(a) via the triennial rulemaking process merely compounded the First Amendment injury: In its effort to alleviate the Act’s burden on fair users, plaintiffs contend, Congress transformed the Librarian of Congress into a censor who wields broad discretion to grant exemptions to favored messages and speakers.

Key to plaintiffs’ theory is their view that fair use of copyrighted work is necessarily protected by the First Amendment. We later explain why that assumption is erroneous, but it is worth considering at the outset what it would mean for plaintiffs’ theory if true.

Saying that fair use is not protected by the First Amendment… seems problematic. The Supreme Court had made it clear in earlier cases, like Eldred, that other challenges to copyright failed almost entirely because of the existence of fair use. For the DC Circuit to now say that fair use isn’t really about the First Amendment seems to be taking a huge step backwards for free speech.

And to get there, the panel gets a lot of stuff backwards. It suggests that if it were true that such users were fair use, then the triennial review for exemptions would be “redundant” because why would anyone need the exemptions if they were protected by fair use. But that gets everything wrong. First, not all uses exempted under the triennial review would be considered fair use. And, second, the value of the triennial review is it makes it clearer which uses are exempted unlike fair use (as the court has already admitted) which involves having to go through an expensive trial to figure it out.

Bizarrely, the court takes this point to support the argument against fair use. They say that fair use is too risky, but the triennial review is clearer:

An irony of appellants’ challenge to the DMCA is that the triennial rulemaking exemption scheme—which identifies in advance and immunizes categories of likely fair uses—may be less chilling of the fair uses to which it applies than the after-the-fact operation of the fair use defense itself. Recall that the Supreme Court has referred to the use of copyrighted materials under the protection of a “potential fair use defense” as a “roll [of] the dice.”

But that gets it backwards again. The fact that the triennial reviews make some stuff clear, while leaving other uses to be fought out as fair use does not mean that fair use should not apply. Indeed, it seems like an even bigger reason as to why we need fair use.

The court seems wholly confused in suggesting that anyone is arguing that any use for violating 1201 is deemed fair use, which is not something anyone is arguing.

More fundamentally, if appellants were correct that the First Amendment protected circumvention undertaken for fair use ends, then section 1201(a)’s regulatory exemptions would simply serve as an additional layer of protection for fair users, providing up-front confirmation to those fair users who fall within the scope of the exemptions that their circumvention is permitted. What is more, even as to actions not covered by a DMCA statutory or regulatory exemption, under plaintiffs’ view, the filmmaker would have a First Amendment right to circumvent: She would be free to take her chances by circumventing and proving that her use of the clip is fair use and thus constitutionally protected. So it is hard to see how, under plaintiffs’ view of the law, section 1201(a) operates to chill speech.

This makes no sense and seems to fundamentally confuse nearly all of the issues at play here. This is one of the most confused decisions I’ve seen regarding the intersection of the First Amendment and copyright.

From there, the court drifts into copyright maximalist tropes, including the idea that copying is a form of theft:

The “heartland” conduct the anticircumvention and antitrafficking provisions criminalize is piracy of digital property—a modern form of theft.

But, it’s not. Not even remotely. Anticircumvention is just getting around a digital barrier which is not equivalent to “theft” in any sense. It does not lead to anyone “losing” anything they own at all. All it does is allow someone who does possess the work to make use of it.

There are also other oddities:

The First Amendment protects a right to read, but it does not grant unimpeded access to every reading material a reader might wish for. Similarly, the First Amendment does not guarantee potential fair users unfettered or privileged access to copyrighted works they seek to use in their own expression. To hold otherwise would defy the First Amendment’s solicitude of speakers’ control over their own speech. See Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 559 (noting that copyright serves the First Amendment value of the “right not to speak”).

Yes, the First Amendment includes the right not to speak, but that is not even remotely implicated by saying that fair use is allowed. Fair use does not force someone to speak who doesn’t wish to speak. So this seems wholly unrelated to the issue at hand. Indeed, I’m confused as to how the panel could possibly think that fair use is the equivalent of forcing someone to speak. That shows an extremely problematic understanding of “speaking.”

And then we get into the even more ridiculous and long-disproved tropes: that without strict copyright protection, nothing new would be published.

If every work that the public might wish to access “could be pirated away” via circumvention, soon nothing worth reading would be published electronically.

Someone alert Shakespeare that his works were impossible since they were created in the days before copyright law. There are many non-copyright law business models for which they did not need copyright to produce them. Everything I write here is released into the public domain, yet this court seems to think that’s impossible, and that copyright is the only possible incentive to create something “worth reading.”

But, even more directly, nothing in what this case is arguing says that all access is fair use. I am perplexed at how the court interprets the argument this way. Indeed, much of what the DC Circuit is saying here is an argument against the entire existence of any fair use:

Plaintiffs’ premise that fair users are entitled to make unauthorized use of copyrighted works assumes away the very entitlements copyright law validly protects. Consumers’ access to copyrighted work routinely requires consent from the copyright owner—typically obtained by paying for access subject to certain limitations on use.

This is just not what’s being argued at all. The argument is that if they meet the qualifications for fair use (i.e., that are adjudicated to be fair use under the four factors test) then they do not need to be licensed. So why is the court treating it like the argument is that everything must automatically be fair use?

The fact that some copyright-covered works are licensed is wholly unrelated to the actual question at play here. The fact that the court doesn’t seem to understand that is scary.

As the EFF notes in their writeup about this ruling, it seems to stem from the faulty belief that copyright is there solely to serve Hollywood’s profit motive.

The upshot of this ruling is that fair use is diminished and put at risk. I imagine we will begin to see more citations to this ruling by copyright maximalists arguing against fair use. The opinion has many quotes that basically pretend that fair use is simply the stripping away of all copyright and leads to the vast destruction of content-producing industries.

It’s a ridiculous ruling that will continue to have a negative impact on speech.

Filed Under: anti-circumvention, bunnie huang, copyright, dc circuit, digital locks, dmca, dmca 1201, drm, fair use, matthew green

A Rare Copyright Win For The Public; But A Small One, Only In Canada, And Possibly Temporary

from the sometimes-the-public-actually-wins dept

It is extraordinary that within the copyright world it is accepted dogma that legal protections for this intellectual monopoly should always get stronger – creating a kind of copyright ratchet. One of the manifestations of this belief was the WIPO Copyright Treaty, signed in 1996, which extended copyright in important ways. A key element was the prohibition of any circumvention of copyright protection systems for any reason – even if it were for a legal purpose. This meant, for example, that if a work’s copyright had expired, it would be nonetheless illegal to access this public domain work if doing so required circumvention of any protection that had been applied. In effect, copyright term would become infinite.

In the US, the WIPO copyright treaty was implemented in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The EU followed a few years later with the 2001 Information Society Directive. In Canada, it was not until 2012 that the relevant law was passed, the 2012 Copyright Modernization Act. As the Canadian copyright expert Michael Geist explains, the law was controversial, not least because of fears that it might restrict perfectly legal activities:

The classic example was that a user might be entitled to copy a portion of a chapter in a book, but if the book became an e-book with a digital lock, the publisher could use technology to stop copying that was otherwise permitted under the law. If the user sought to circumvent or by-pass the technology to assert their rights, that act of circumvention would itself become an infringement even if the underlying copying itself was permitted.

This issue has been at the heart of a case that has been heard in multiple Canadian courts during the last eight years. The Federal Court in Canada has recently issued what Geist calls a “landmark decision” on copyright’s anti-circumvention rules, which concludes that digital locks should not “trump” fair dealing:

Rather, the two must co-exist in harmony, leading to an interpretation that users can still rely on fair dealing even in cases involving those digital locks. The decision could have enormous implications for libraries, education, and users more broadly as it seeks to restore the copyright balance in the digital world. The decision also importantly concludes that merely requiring a password does not meet the standard needed to qualify for copyright rules involving technological protection measures.

Geist’s post explains the background to the decision in more detail, and notes that the case could still be appealed. He points out that “for now the court has restored a critical aspect of the copyright balance after more than a decade of uncertainty and concern”. It is extraordinary that it has taken so long merely to achieve something as mild as “balance”. What’s even more ridiculous is that this rare win for the public only applies in Canada. In most other countries, and in general, it is still illegal to circumvent digital locks to carry out perfectly legal activities with copyright material.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally posted to Walled Culture.

Filed Under: canada, copyright, digital locks, drm, fair dealing

HP Tries Desperately To Make ‘Printer As A Subscription’ A Thing

from the behold-our-self-immolation dept

Thu, Mar 7th 2024 05:22am - Karl Bode

When last we checked in with Hewlett Packard (HP), the company had just been sued (for the second time) for crippling customer printers if owners attempt to use cheaper, third-party printer cartridges. It was just the latest in a long saga where printer manufacturers use DRM or dodgy software updates to wage all out war on consumer choice.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of introspection going on at the company since. Shortly after the lawsuit HP CEO Enrique Lores went on CNBC to double down on the company’s position. First by making up claims that HP has to be obnoxious about cartridges to protect consumer security (false), then by basically stating that any consumer who intelligently shops for cartridges is a “bad investment.”

This week HP unveiled its latest plan on this track: printing as a service. The company’s new “All-In Plan” requires that you pay anywhere from 7amonthto7 a month to 7amonthto36 a month to rent a printer with a set printable page limit. During your rental, HP sends you, of course, their ink cartridges.

As Ars Technica notes, the printer must remain connected to the internet for monitoring. And the company’s privacy policy effectively gives HP full control over, well, everything:

“Subject to the terms of this Agreement, You hereby grant to HP a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, copy, store, transmit, modify, create derivative works of and display Your non-personal data for its business purposes..”

And of course the subscription comes with long term contracts and early termination fees should you not subscribe for the full two-year term. All told, the tone-deafness is fairly stunning.

Paying for the same several-hundred dollar printer for all eternity is precisely the sort of concept Lores has been pushing for a while. The problem is it’s not clear that anybody actually wants this. It’s also not really clear that paying up to $36 for a printer you never really own makes much value sense. Printers inherently aren’t that expensive. And ink isn’t either, if companies aren’t being restrictive tyrants.

For HP, none of that matters. Lores isn’t thinking about building quality products or building solid relationships. He’s thinking exclusively of finding creative ways to goose profits and deliver Wall Street improved quarterly returns at any cost. You can’t do that by simply providing users a quality, affordable product people like; you inevitably have to start cutting corners and nickel-and-diming users.

Once they’ve established renting a printer as a norm, they’ll just steadily jack the rental price skyward as they make the underlying value proposition steadily worse. Ultimately the business becomes less and less about making popular quality products, and more and more about making unnecessarily convoluted subscriptions with creative restrictions and ever-skyrocketing monthly prices.

Filed Under: consumers, drm, Enrique Lores, ink cartridges, printers, rentals, subscription, tone-deaf
Companies: hp

Capcom Appears To Break Monster Hunter For The Steam Deck After DRM Swap

from the ready-fire-aim dept

Here we go again. In the long and vaunted history of DRM in software, and especially in video games, there is one general truism: DRM tends to effect only legitimate buyers while so-called “pirates” route around it completely. There are all kinds of anecdotal stories as to the annoyances at best, and game-crippling outcomes at worst, that are said to be caused by DRM that either shipped with the game or, more annoyingly, were added after the game was bought. The DRM companies typically will tell you that any performance issues experienced with these games can’t possibly have anything to do with their DRM, a claim that flies in the face of thousands and thousands of instances of witness testimony on social media and the wider internet, while also stating that any inconveniences legit buyers experience due to DRM mishaps are outweighed by all the piracy the DRM kinda-maybe stopped for a while, possibly.

Capcom has a bunch of titles out there that were bought many years ago that paying customers still play. And that’s great! Less great is that the company appears to keep updating these older titles with new DRM which breaks those games to one degree or another. For instance, I can’t explain why Capcom decided to update Resident Evil Revelations earlier this month with Enigma Protector DRM, given that the game came out over a decade ago. Speculation appears to be that it might have something to do with protecting the game from cheat software, which is how Capcom refers to game mods generally. But doing so broke the game so badly that on January 13th, Capcom rolled the update back entirely after an enormous amount of backlash.

Due to an issue observed with the latest update released, we have reverted the corresponding update. We apologise for the inconvenience caused, and once the issue is resolved, we will re-release the update. Thank you very much for your patience and cooperation.

-CAPCOM

Well, Capcom must have thought it had everything ironed out, because it then turned its sights on Monster Hunter Rise, a game that was released 3 or so years ago. That game originally shipped with Denuvo DRM, which, well, R.I.P. On January 22nd, just shy of ten whole days from when it rolled back Enigma from Resident Evil Revelations, the company updated Monster Hunter Rise by removing Denuvo and replacing it with Enigma.

Which appears to have broken the game for the Steam Deck handheld console for some sizable chunk of players.

Monster Hunter Rise no longer works on Steam Deck hardware, after its latest update added new DRM software. The game previously used Denuvo anti-tamper technology, but the latest version 16.0.2.0 update reportedly removes it and, as noted by modder FluffyQuack, replaces it with the controversial Enigma Protector DRM.

The game’s Steam page has been hit with a number of negative reviews, with its usual ‘Very Positive’ review summary reduced to ‘Mixed’. Many of these reviews note that the game will now no longer run on Steam Deck, with players blaming the addition of Enigma (though there’s no definitive proof this is the exact reason, as opposed to another issue with the same update).

On the one hand, it’s true that it can’t be stated with 100% certainty that Enigma is what broke the game for the Steam Deck. This is mostly true with every other historical complaint about DRM fucking up an otherwise working game. It goes this way every single time. And part of the reason this claim is allowed to fester has to do with the opaque nature of the patch announcement. Here is literally everything in the patch notes announced for the Steam version of the game for this update.

How could that be any more clear?

The overall point here is quite simple: pissing customers off twice now with updates including new DRM software over some misguided anxiety about game mods is beyond silly. Two games, two times being broken, and the common denominator looks to be Enigma. How is any of this worth the trouble?

Filed Under: drm, enigma protector, monster hunter rise, resident evil revelations, steam deck
Companies: capcom

HP CEO Makes Up A Whole Lot Of Bullshit To Defend Crippling Printers That Use Cheaper Ink

from the smart-consumers-are-bad-for-us dept

Mon, Jan 29th 2024 05:34am - Karl Bode

The company could have taken the opportunity for self reflection, acknowledge their error, and attempt to shore up a fraying relationship with customers. Instead, HP CEO Enrique Lores went on CNBC to not only double down, but to make up a whole bunch of new nonsense to justify their unpopular actions.

On the segment, Lores claims that HP is crippling the use of cheaper ink and toner cartridges because they’re simply worried they will infect consumers with viruses:

“Last Thursday, HP CEO Enrique Lores addressed the company’s controversial practice of bricking printers when users load them with third-party ink. Speaking to CNBC Television, he said, “We have seen that you can embed viruses in the cartridges. Through the cartridge, [the virus can] go to the printer, [and then] from the printer, go to the network.”

Ars Technica talked to numerous security researchers who laughed at the claim, noting that it’s never been meaningfully documented in the wild, and isn’t something consumers should be worried about.

Printer manufacturers have a long and proud history of hiding their anti-competitive price gouging under the pretense of user safety and security. In this case, HP cripples printer functionality using its “Dynamic Security System,” which stops HP printers from functioning if an ink cartridge without an HP chip or HP electronic circuitry is installed.

It’s clear to everybody that HP is simply being obnoxious and anti-competitive to goose quarterly revenues. But you really get a good sense of Lores’ distorted thinking later on in the CNBC article, where he calls savvy, cost-conscious consumers a “bad investment”:

“This is something we announced a few years ago that our goal was to reduce the number of what we call unprofitable customers. Because every time a customer buys a printer, it’s an investment for us. We’re investing [in] that customer, and if this customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment.”

That kind of thinking teeters toward the psychotic. HP is being obnoxiously anti-competitive, hiding it behind claims of user security, then declaring consumers the enemy if they’re smart enough to see through the company’s bullshit and shop for cartridges intelligently.

Of course for publicly traded companies, it’s simply not enough to sell a quality product that people like. Wall Street’s unrelenting need for improved quarterly returns at any cost routinely turns big companies and their execs into self-sabotaging, anti-competitive jackasses sooner or later. Companies start to nickel-and-dime users, skimp on customer service, or cannibalize product quality to hit quarterly revenue goals.

It’s not clear if a handful of class action lawsuits will be enough to shift the company’s thinking back to reality, but being so obnoxious that you permanently pollute the HP brand reputation in the mind of an entire generation of future shoppers might just do the trick.

Filed Under: drm, Enrique Lores, ink cartridges, printers, security, third party, virus
Companies: hp

Google Supports Oregon ‘Right To Repair’ Reform

from the watch-what-I-do,-not-what-I-say dept

Wed, Jan 17th 2024 03:37pm - Karl Bode

Big tech companies have long attempted to monopolize repair options to boost their profits, whether we’re talking about tractors, phones, or game consoles.

But in recent years companies like Apple and Microsoft appear to have realized that with state and federal lawmakers and regulators cracking down on this behavior, and right to repair seeing widespread, bipartisan consumer support, it might be smart to stop swimming upstream when it comes to “right to repair.”

Both Microsoft and Apple have slowly and begrudgingly started making their hardware easier to fix, and have even at times come out in support of certain state and federal right to repair legislation. Now Google has also somewhat pivoted on the issue, coming out in support of Oregon’s looming right to repair legislation, which aims to make tools, parts, and manuals easier to access.

Said Google in a new white paper:

“Repair must be easy enough for anyone to do, whether they are technicians or do-it-yourselfers. This requires that as manufacturers we design products in a manner that enables simple, safe, and correct repairs wherever and by whomever they are done. This is what we call design for serviceability.”

Keep in mind this “support” isn’t always consistent, and many of these companies only support reform as-so-far as their lawyers are writing the laws, ensuring they’re filled with ample loopholes.

Apple, for example, got widespread press praise for “doing a 180 on right to repair” after it supported California’s right to repair law. But upon closer inspection many of the company’s initiatives were somewhat hollow. It still actively supports anti-consumer behaviors like software locks and “parts pairing” (forcing customers to buy interconnected assemblages of parts), and it opposed Oregon’s reform law.

Three states have now passed right to repair laws (New York, Minnesota, California), with Oregon on deck next month. But while many of these laws have been significant improvements (Minnesota), others (New York) were watered down by tech lobbyists after passage, almost to the point of uselessness.

New York’s law, for example, was boiled down to exclude coverage of the automotive, medical equipment, or agricultural gear sectors, where most of the worst, ham-fisted efforts to monopolize repair are ongoing (consolidation of repair options, monopolization of parts, obnoxious and punitive DRM, or actively making tools and manuals hard to come by to discourage independent repair).

So while it’s great to see these companies at least begin to make an effort when it comes to right to repair reforms, it’s still a mistake to take them exclusively at their word.

Filed Under: auto, consumer rights, consumers, drm, hardware, independent repair, oregon, phones, right to repair
Companies: google