restrictions – Techdirt (original) (raw)

HP Fails To Dodge Lawsuit Over Blocking Users From Using Their Printer Scanner If Ink Cartridges Aren’t Installed

from the down-with-drm dept

When it comes to obnoxious DRM and bizarre, greedy restrictions, nobody does it better than printer manufacturers. The industry has long waged a not-so-subtle war on its own customers, routinely rolling out firmware updates or DRM preventing them from using more affordable, competitor printer cartridges.

A few years ago, printer manufacturers took this tactic one step further, and began preventing users from being able to use a multifunction printer’s scanner if they didn’t have company sanctioned ink installed. Canon was hit with a $5 million lawsuit in 2021 for the practice, but was able to quietly settle it privately without facing much accountability, or having to change much of its behavior.

In 2022 HP was also hit with a lawsuit (pdf) for preventing scanners from working without sanctioned ink cartridges installed, and not being transparent about this with customers. HP has spent a few years trying to wiggle out of the suit, but hasn’t had much luck. Last week, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman ruled that the case could proceed.

HP lawyers had tried several tactics to have the case dismissed, including claiming that the court couldn’t trust the word of one of its own support reps when they stated at the company’s own website HP printers were specifically designed to include this error. They also tried to play some semantic patty cake, insisting that customers couldn’t prove they were being “actively” misleading:

HP in seeking a dismissal said the customers failed to allege such a duty or that it “actively” concealed any defect.

Classy.

Amusingly, other companies like Epson have tried to use HP and Canon’s troubles to their advantage. The Verge notes that Epson has an entire page in their FAQ dedicated to how they haven’t pulled this sort of trick since 2008 (though the company engages in other dodgy shit, like rolling out purported “security updates” that covertly prevent users from being able to use cheaper third-party cartridges).

I think HP and Canon are very fortunate that U.S. consumer protection regulators generally don’t have (courtesy of decades of lobbying) the time, staff, or resources to police the massive amount of this type of fraud that occurs in this country on a daily basis. Especially when it comes to the kind of ham-fisted restrictions on what consumers can do with technology they purportedly own.

Filed Under: consumers, drm, hardware, ink cartridge, printer, restrictions
Companies: hp

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves Signs Dumb New Restrictions On Electric Vehicles

from the not-so-free-market dept

Mon, Mar 20th 2023 01:26pm - Karl Bode

If you’re an automaker or oil giant keen on slowing the rise of electric vehicles, there’s no shortage of captured lawmakers ready and willing to implement your terrible ideas, however harmful or impractical.

In North Carolina, Republican leaders have pushed a bill demanding locals destroy any free electric vehicle stations on public land, if local authorities don’t build free gas and diesel pumps alongside them. In Wyoming, state Republican leaders tried to implement a ban on electric vehicles, though the ban itself is little more than performative, oil industry ass kissing.

In Mississippi, Republican Governor Tate Reeves signed a bill recently restricting electric car manufacturers from selling vehicles in person unless they open traditional, franchised dealerships. Reeves is pretending the move, clearly a futile bid to protect oil interests and automotive companies that have lagged on EVs, is all about protecting small businesses:

“Almost 200 small businesses in communities across our state are seeking assurances that big manufacturers can’t just destroy their businesses. That’s fair!” Reeves, a Republican, said in a statement posted to social media. “I also recognize that innovation in this industry is inevitable. And with innovation comes new companies with new business models. I am committed to find long-term solutions—in an ever changing market.”

That justification, of course, makes absolutely no fucking sense in context of what the bill actually does.

Republicans have spent decades pretending to be dedicated to free market innovation. Though their actual track record of coddling giants (see: telecom, banking, energy, airlines, insurance, health care) widely disproves the claim. More recently, they’ve pretended to be a party super interested in “antitrust reform,” though those efforts are also as hollow as a cheap Easter chocolate bunny.

In this case, Mississippi’s more “traditional” restrictions don’t ban the sale of electric cars, but if you’re oblivious or indifferent to Musk’s reputational implosion and in the market for a Tesla, they’ll force you to visit the state’s only sanctioned (via carve out) Tesla dealer in Brandon. EV makers in general are restricted from opening any new stores unless they adhere to the traditional, dated and convoluted franchise model people have been complaining about for decades.

Granted there are still some Republicans that realize this kind of mindless oil and traditional auto industry ass kissing is both harmful and idiotic:

Republican Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, had hoped Reeves would veto the legislation. Lawmakers were aiming to attract Tesla to Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, an area Wiggins called the state’s economic driver.

“In today’s world, if you don’t innovate, you lose out. We as a state cannot afford to lose out,” Wiggins told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “My vote against the bill was a vote for capitalism, competition and innovation rather than for a policy of protectionism.”

Yet the new restrictions still passed the state legislature 39-13, driving would be EV buyers to a neighboring state. You know, out of an undying love of small business innovation.

Filed Under: big oil, climate change, corruption, electric vehicles, ev, franchise dealership, mississippi, regulatory capture, republican, restrictions, tate reeves

The NFL’s New Streaming Offering… Kind Of Sucks Thanks To Legacy Broadcasting Rights

from the hike! dept

I’ve spilled many words on these pages talking about the outsized importance live sports has on the adoption of streaming as a primary entertainment platform compared with traditional cable. While cord-cutting is very much a thing, the vine that terrestrial cable is clinging to keeping it all from falling over the cliff remains live sports. Major sporting leagues in America have typically woven a complicated web of broadcasting rights, whether with local broadcast stations, cable channels, or even with some teams that own their own channels. That complicated web is what keeps blackout rules for MLB.TV in place, as well as what keeps the implementation of true streaming of everything impossible.

Still, even with some problems that exist, MLB.TV remains the gold standard for sports streaming. Especially when compared to what the NFL is doing. Here, not only do the legacy broadcasting rights get in the way, but so too does the fragmented streaming rights the league is working up. Thursday Night Football will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime. The implosion of the AT&T and DirecTV merger put NFL Sunday Ticket in play for all kinds of tech giants. And now the NFL has launched a new streaming service to replace NFL Game Pass, called NFL+. The good news is that the new service is cheaper than the old one. The bad news is that it’s still such a limited, complicated mess due to legacy rights deals that it gets headlines such as Ars Technica’s: NFL+ Is Here, But It’s Probably Not What You’re Looking For.

NFL+ replaces NFL Game Pass, which offered more utility but was 99.99annually.NFL+costs99.99 annually. NFL+ costs 99.99annually.NFL+costs4.99 monthly or $39.99 per year. TechCrunch reports that NFL Game Pass subscribers will be automatically moved to NFL+. The new service “offers access to live out-of-market preseason games, live local and primetime regular season and postseason games (phone and tablet only), live local and national audio for every game, NFL Network shows on-demand, NFL Films archives and more,” according to the NFL’s press release.

That “phone and tablet only” bit is the problem here. So you can stream games, but not on your smart TV directly. Instead, you have to watch games on your phone or tablet… unless you go the extra step of casting them to your smart TV. Which, if you can, what’s the point of the TV blackout? Why is streaming the game to an Android phone/tablet cool, but streaming to an Android TV naughty?

Well, because the NFL wants to sell you something entirely different to do that.

The “phone and tablet only” note for live local and primetime regular season and postseason games is the big limitation here. It means it’s not a replacement for the regular broadcasts if you want to watch on your TV. To watch those games on your game console, smart TV, or streaming box, you’ll need something totally different: an NFL Sunday Ticket subscription.

This is as good a time as any to remind everyone that monetary concerns aren’t the only aspect of a transaction cost when it comes to how willing someone is to buy a thing. There is a mental transaction that occurs as well, which essentially resolves to the ease and convenience of making the purchase. The NFL sure appears to be making the mental transaction as costly as possible, even as it reduces the monetary cost of that transaction.

Whether I can stream an individual NFL game will depend on what I’m subscribed to, what device I want to watch it on, live or on-demand, which game it is so I know if I have the streaming service for it, from where I want to watch it, what individual blackout rules are for that game, and on and on.

Or the public can go find an illicit streaming service that carries with it none of the costs, monetary or mental. If streaming adoption is what the NFL wants, this sure seems like a horrible way to go about it.

Filed Under: live sports, restrictions, sports, streaming
Companies: nfl

China's New Youth Online Gaming Restrictions Birth Underground Workaround Industry To Defeat It

from the oops dept

It will not be controversial to say that China has always been one of the leaders in the war on the internet and culture alike. Between the Great Firewall of China at the macro level, the almost hilariously Orwellian tactics like forbidding certain karaoke songs, and the full destruction of democracy in Hong Kong, it’s clear that Beijing values control over everything else.

But control isn’t always so easy to implement. Take China’s restrictive new regulation on online gaming among youths, for instance. These rules, implemented in order to combat “video game addiction” for minors, limit online gaming Friday through Sunday and on national holidays to 1 hour a day, 8pm to 9pm. This is achieved by forcing the gaming companies to implement a “real name” account policy. Gamers have to create an account utilizing their real names, which are checked for user age, in order to get into the online games.

Well, you probably already know where this is going. The new rule has given rise to an underground industry for renting gaming accounts that are registered to adults. Adults can also just let their children use their accounts, also defeating the check. In other words, this has all become somewhat pointless.

‘Complying with the new rule isn’t technically difficult because it’s just a matter of writing new [Software Development Kit] codes,’ Zhu told Kotaku. ‘[SDKs are] integrated as part of the login process. What happens is that when new players log in, they are asked to enter their ID number which then verifies their age. Every gamer needs to log in with their real names…[and] every [domestic] game that legally operates in China is required to have that function.’

According to Niko Partners’ [Daniel] Ahmad, parents aren’t barred from giving their unrestricted adult accounts to their children, and there’s a large gray market for adult gaming accounts. If an underage player wanted to, they could circumvent the new restrictions

And they are! Nobody can say for sure how much of this is occurring, but if the lawsuits are flying about you can bet that it is some significant number. And, considering that one of the methods for defeating the restriction is for parents to simply let their kids use parental accounts, this all seems really silly. After all, it should be obvious that the main thrust for China putting these rules in place is some version of Beijing wanting to parent children, only to have those rules defeated by parents and children.

So, does China admit defeat and rescind or rework the new rules? Of course not!

This summer, Tencent rolled out a time-sensitive facial recognition system for sixty games, including Honor of Kings. Dubbed “Midnight Patrol,” it aims to prevent tricksy youngsters from posing as grown-ups between 10pm and 8am. “We will conduct a face screening for accounts registered with real names and that have played for a certain period of time at night,” Tencent Games said at the time (via Sixth Tone). “Anyone who refuses or fails the face verification will be treated as a minor, and as outlined in the anti-addiction supervision of Tencent’s game health system, and kicked offline.”

And you can bet that the facial recognition piece of this will be defeated, too. That is how this sort of thing tends to go, after all. This is something akin to the famous John Gilmore quote that the internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it.

Game on, Chinese youth!

Filed Under: china, restrictions, video games, workaround

Nintendo Continues To Make It Hard To Play Classic Games Legitimately

from the pew-pew dept

When it comes to being crazy restrictive on all things IP coupled with being amazingly combative with making lots of properties readily available for legitimate purchase, Nintendo barely needs an introduction. This is the company that has taken down ROM sites for classic games all over the internet, taken down fan-made games that use Nintendo properties, taken down all manner of fan-made ports of Nintendo properties onto other hardware, and has even taken down fan-made creations that involve putting Nintendo characters and the like into 3rd party creative games and software. Now, to be clear, Nintendo can do all of this. The open question has always been why it bothers to do so. What threat is a fan-game to legitimate Nintendo titles? Especially when Nintendo often times makes it quite difficult to legitimately get classic Nintendo games on its current hardware.

Case in point, Nintendo recently announced a new Metroid side-scroller that has Metroid fans very, very excited. So excited that some of them want to go back and play the classic Metroid games before playing the new title, only to find out that on the Nintendo Switch you just can’t.

During E3 2021, Nintendo announced Metroid Dread, the first 2D classic style Metroid game in nearly 20 years. As you might expect, lots of fans got excited. Many of them wanted to play the older Metroid games as they waited for Dread to release in October. However, if you go looking for old Metroid titles on the Switch, you’ll quickly discover that Nintendo has done a poor job of supporting the series and its catalog of beloved games. In fact, you’ll need to boot up a Wii U if you’re looking to enjoy games like Metroid Fusion or Metroid: Zero Mission.

A quick search for Metroid on Nintendo’s eShop returns a selection of classic titles. But after toggling on a filter to only show Switch content, you’ll quickly see that none of those games are currently available on Nintendo’s super-popular console/handheld hybrid. In fact, the only two items that show up for Switch are a pre-order page for Dread and for some reason a random game called Wunderling.

It would be one thing if Nintendo wanted its stance to be that the public can only play legitimately purchased classic games on its hardware, thereby nixing things like ROMs, ports, etc. That would be, oh, let’s just call it annoying but expected. But to remove the ability for fans to play those classic games out of excitement for the new title and to fail to make those classic games available on its most current and popular hardware? Well, that’s just callous and ultimately unproductive.

We have said for a long time that in many instances piracy, especially in the retro-gaming space, can actually be a boon to sales of new releases of franchises like Metroid. That’s the case because of exact circumstances like this. Nintendo announces a 2D Metroid side-scroller, leading fans to want to revisit previous 2D side-scroller Metroid games. When they cannot do so on their Nintendo hardware, well, we’ve just injected a massive negative perception into what should be a totally positive fan experience.

That is, of course, unless they turn to copyright infringement instead.

Meanwhile, fans and pirates have done the hard work and continue to be better than Nintendo at supporting old games. In the case of Metroid, this is incredibly useful for anyone looking to play the past games without relying on Nintendo’s official stores or consoles. You are, right now, a quick Google search and a few files away from having hundreds of NES and SNES games available to play on whatever device you are using to read these words. Many of these fan-created emulators rival anything Nintendo has officially created and often support more features, fan translations, and mods. These emulators and their communities have done incredible work preserving Nintendo’s history and have no doubt helped introduce folks to older games from the company.

Yet Nintendo continues to fight emulators and ROM sites while offering no real legal equivalents. Imagine an alternate universe where fans excited for Metroid Dread could head over to a giant online Nintendo store on their PC or phone, where nearly every classic Nintendo game was waiting for them. Nintendo would make a ton of money and would, in the process, help support classic games for decades to come. But instead, it’s just lawsuits and disappointment.

It feels like we have a new Nintendo corporate tagline for the brand.

“Nintendo: it’s just lawsuits and disappointment.”

Filed Under: metroid, restrictions, switch, wii u
Companies: nintendo

Come On Elon! Tesla Stupidly Bans Owners From Using Self-Driving Teslas For Uber

from the you-don't-own-what-you-bought dept

We’ve talked a lot about the end of ownership society, in which companies are increasingly using copyright and other laws to effectively end ownership — where they put in place restrictions on the things you thought you bought. This is bad for a whole variety of reasons, and now it’s especially disappointing to see that Tesla appears to be jumping on the bandwagon as well. The company is releasing its latest, much more high powered, version of autonomous self-driving car technology — but has put in place a clause that bars Tesla owners from using the self-driving car for any competing car hailing service, like Uber or Lyft. This is not for safety/liability reasons, but because Tesla is also trying to build an Uber competitor.

We wrote about this a few months ago, and actually think it’s a pretty cool idea. Part of the point is that it effectively will make Tesla ownership cheaper for those who want it, because they can lease it out for use at times when they’re not using it. So your car can make money for you while you work or sleep or whatever. That’s a cool idea.

But it’s flat out dumb to block car owners from using the car however they want.

If Tesla wants to compete with Uber, that’s great, but it should compete and offer a better deal for car owners, rather than artificially limiting what they can do. And the thing is, Elon Musk knows this. Remember, a few years ago when he famously freed up all Tesla patents into the public domain, recognizing that it was better to compete on execution rather than artificial legal limitations? So why not take that same approach with competing in car hailing services as well? Don’t limit what owners can do with their cars. That’s now ownership. ow they’re just leasing.

Tesla’s plan for a competing ride hailing service is a good idea, and I’m excited to see what the company does with it, but if it starts off by artificially blocking Tesla owners from using their cars on competing services, it makes me think that Tesla doesn’t think it’s own service will be very good, and therefor it needs to artificially lock Tesla owners into its own platform, rather than competing on the merits. That seems antithetical to the message that Tesla and Elon Musk have given off in the past. Hopefully Musk reconsiders this anti-consumer move and recognizes that Tesla can build such a service that can stand on its own merits without artificially restricting Tesla owners.

Filed Under: autonomous vehicles, car hailing, competition, drm, elon musk, limitations, ownership, restrictions, ride hailing, ride sharing, self-driving cars
Companies: lyft, tesla, uber

To Combat Dropping Ratings, The NFL Thinks Fining Its Teams For Sharing Video On Social Media Is The Answer

from the no-it-isn't dept

It’s been a time of remarkable progress of late when it comes to professional sports organizations being smart about how to pursue viewers in this here digital era. Major athletic institutions are finally opening up the door to wider streaming options, putting aside the doomsayers. Add to that that other leagues are starting to realize what a boon Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media product has been to viewership and attendance and it seemed like we were on the precipice of a golden age in digital sports media.

Leave it to the NFL to ensure that we take at least one step backwards. What once seemed like a never ending funnel of money and upward trending viewership, the NFL has undergone something of a ratings correction as of late. It seems that amidst the controversy over head injury, bad officiating, the contraction of one-day fantasy football, and what some think is a generally declining quality of the on-field product, less people are watching games, both in person and on television. This had to happen at some point, if for no other reason than because NFL ratings over the past 2 decades were completely boffo. But the NFL’s choice to combat this inevitable decline takes a page from the days we finally just got over.

We’ve obtained a memo that went out to all 32 teams reflecting that, starting Oct. 12, clubs are subject to a new fine schedule for exceeding the limits on video and any moving content. Those are particularly strict during the 60 minutes leading up to games, and through games, with clubs largely limited to re-posting from the NFL’s own accounts (with some allowance for approved content on Snapchat). The memo says that first-time offenders will be fined up to 25,000,asecondoffensewillwarrantafineofupto25,000, a second offense will warrant a fine of up to 25,000,asecondoffensewillwarrantafineofupto50,000, and a third offense will merit a fine of up to $100,000 and loss of rights to post league-controlled content.

This is flat out dumb for a number of reasons. To start, a top-down control over how teams choose to market their product breeds rigidity. Rules applied both to a market like New York and Green Bay are going to be flawed almost by definition, as those markets are completely different and the tactics needed to attract fans simply aren’t the same.

But the larger idea of blacking out or setting limits on social media video content as a way to increase viewership is both a misunderstanding of how such content is viewed and shared, as well as a misunderstanding as to its wider effects on audience numbers. Simply nobody is watching highlights of video on an NFL team’s social media account in lieu of watching the game live. That isn’t the point of those highlights. Rather, the point is to attract, through the sharing of the video, new viewers who perhaps weren’t initially interested in watching the game.

It’s what makes MLBAM so powerful. I’m not perusing Twitter to get my live game action, but I sure as hell will switch over to a game in progress, or one upcoming, should some video content give me a compelling reason, whether it’s a pitcher throwing a no-hitter, a batter one hit away from the cycle, or some on-field altercation that ratchets up the intensity level. I’m a baseball fan; I live for that stuff. And having a team try to lure me to their broadcast, which I can likewise access via the excellent MLB.tv service, is a brilliant piece of marketing.

Marketing that the NFL, normally smart in its business practices, has decided to forego. Television blackouts of old have become social media blackouts today, and for no good reason.

Filed Under: nfl, restrictions, sharing, social media
Companies: nfl

Why Is The Copyright Office Lying To Protect The Cable Industry's Monopoly Stranglehold Over The Cable Box?

from the defenders-of-the-status-quo dept

Thu, Aug 4th 2016 10:41am - Karl Bode

The FCC’s attempt to bring some much needed competition to the cable box has birthed an absolute torrent of lobbying shenanigans by the cable and entertainment industries. They’ve pushed a flood of misleading editorials in major papers and websites claiming the plan is somehow racist and will unveil a piracy apocalypse. They’ve nudged Congressional campaign contribution recipients to bash the plan as an extreme case of government over-reach. They’ve also managed to convince the press and some FCC staffers the idea is an attack on copyright, when copyright has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Quick background: under the FCC’s original proposal (pdf), the FCC wants cable companies to provide programming access to third-party hardware vendors without the need for a CableCARD, the goal being to generate competition in the space resulting in better, cheaper and more open cable boxes. Under the proposal cable operators would be able to use any copyright protection or DRM standard they choose to deliver this content to companies like Google, Amazon or TiVO — and the FCC has repeatedly stated any final rules would respect existing copyright and financial arrangements between cable and the customer.

But because the plan would cost cable providers $21 billion annually in rental fee revenue and result in more open cable boxes (more likely to direct viewers to third party streaming competitors), they’ve been trying to use a false definition of “copyright” to protect its monopoly stranglehold over cable hardware. And now, the cable industry has another ally in their attempt to mislead the press and public on this subject: The United States Copyright Office.

For months the Copyright Office has been quietly going around “educating” DC regulators and politicians on the FCC’s cable box reform plan, falsely claiming that the plan is an attack on copyright. These efforts have been effective in getting some of the FCC Commissioners that originally voted to approve the plan to waffle on their decision. The behavior resulted in a number IP lawyers (including Annmarie Bridy) recently warning the Office that it’s giving horrible advice and ignoring legal precedent as to the scope of copyright.

Undaunted, the Copyright Office this week doubled down on its misleading arguments, sending a letter to Congress (pdf) that’s absolutely jam-packed with claims ranging from the incredibly misleading to downright bullshit. At its core, the Office’s letter continues to pretend that the FCC?s NPRM would require copyright owners to give their content away for free exploitation by third party devices. That the FCC’s plan lets “big tech” hijack cable’s innovation and re-purpose it for all manner of nefarious use has been a cable lobbyist argument for the last year, and it pops up repeatedly in the structural underpinnings of the Office’s own argument:

“The Office’s principal reservation is that, as currently proposed, the rule could interfere with copyright owners’ rights to license their works as provided by copyright law, and restrict their ability to impose reasonable conditions on the use of these works through the private negotiations that are the hallmark of the vibrant and dynamic MPVD marketplace.”

Use of phrasing like “vibrant and dynamic” to describe the most-hated industry in the United States gives you a pretty solid sense of the objectivity of the Office’s argument. But again, this idea that third parties can simply take cable company programming, throw their own ads on it, and present it as their own isn’t what the FCC’s proposing. At all. All the same licensing arrangements, consumer cable pricing, advertising, and DRM will remain intact (for better or worse).

Throughout the letter, the Copyright Office repeatedly claims that copyright gives cable companies more control than they actually have. While copyright obviously gives an author some control over the copying and redistribution of their works, these rights can’t magically be extended wherever and whenever one chooses, especially, as the EFF this week argued in a great reply to the letter, when it conflicts with the rights of the end user:

“Once a copyright holder has released their work to paying customers, like cable subscribers, those customers have their own set of rights: to view TV programs at home or on the go, to skip around within the programs as they wish, to search for and organize the programs and other content they?re entitled to see, and to choose tools that enable them to do these things.

The Copyright Office?s letter implies that cable and content companies could create new rights for themselves just by writing them into private contracts between each other: the right to control which ?platforms and devices? customers can use, the right to limit time-shifting and other fair uses, and the right to ?exclude? other software from a customer?s device. While private companies are free to negotiate conditions like these between each other, nothing in the law gives copyright holders the power to impose those conditions on the whole world, snuffing out the rights of users.

Of course that’s precisely what the cable industry wants to do. For decades the cable industry has enjoyed a captive monopoly over cable hardware, resulting in expensive household rental fees and an erosion in consumer viewing rights. As the more open PC era arrived and challenged the inflexible mantra of traditional cable, the cable industry has worked harder on protecting this model than it has on evolving. Finally faced with a viable threat to monopoly hardware control, cable is falsely claiming that copyright gives it the right to continue imprisoning customers in an antiquated walled garden smelling faintly of old people and mothballs.

But here’s the important part: copyright law cannot be used for this purpose — and you’d think the Copyright Office would know that. The Copyright Office is twisting the fact that two private parties can negotiate away fair use and other rights for themselves, but the absolutely cannot negotiate away those rights for the public. Yet that’s exactly what the Copyright Office is claiming.

In short this isn’t a debate about copyright, it’s a debate about control. The idea that these new cable boxes and associated services might interfere with contractual agreements around windowing and tiering is simply not a copyright concern and yet here is the Copyright Office incorrectly claiming that it is. The Copyright Office also ignores that these changes don’t eliminate or weaken DRM, and that customers using these new, more open cable boxes would still be cable customers, paying the same high prices they always have. Also ignored by the Copyright Office is the fact that these changes would be a net benefit to consumers and countless companies alike.

Needless to say, consumer advocacy groups like Public Knowledge were equally unimpressed with the Copyright Office’s selective reasoning:

“Under the Copyright Office’s analysis, the interests of consumers are irrelevant, and fair use is an obstacle to be overcome. This letter is another example of how the Copyright Office has become dedicated to the interests of some copyright holders — as opposed to providing an accurate interpretation of copyright law.”

In short, the Copyright Office is being used as a puppet to defend one of the least liked industries in America, distorting the very definition of copyright to help protect said industry’s monopoly control over the cable box.

Filed Under: competition, copyright, copyright office, fair use, public rights, restrictions, set top boxes, video

Scientist Bans Use Of His Software By 'Immigrant-Friendly' Countries, So Journal Retracts Paper About His Software

from the open-is,-as-open-does dept

Retractions of scientific papers are by their nature quite dramatic — the decision to withdraw recognition in this very public way is never taken lightly, especially given all the work that goes into writing a paper. But the specialist site Retraction Watch, which we wrote about back in August, has a new retraction story that is rather out of the ordinary. It concerns a much-cited 2004 paper about a piece of scientific software called Treefinder. The program is used to create phylogenetic trees, which show the probable evolutionary relationships between species based on comparing their respective DNA sequences. Retraction Watch explains what happened:

> Recently, German scientist Gangolf Jobb declared that starting on October 1st scientists working in countries that are, in his opinion, too welcoming to immigrants — including Great Britain, France and Germany — could no longer use his Treefinder software, which creates trees showing potential evolutionary relationships between species. He’d already banned its use by U.S. scientists in February, citing the country?s “imperialism.” Last week, BMC Evolutionary Biology pulled the paper describing the software, noting it now “breaches the journal?s editorial policy on software availability.”

Here’s the official retraction note published by the journal in question:

> The editors of BMC Evolutionary Biology retract this article due to the decision by the corresponding author, Gangolf Jobb, to change the license to the software described in the article. The software is no longer available to all scientists wishing to use it in certain territories. This breaches the journal?s editorial policy on software availability which has been in effect since the time of publication.

The editorial policy on software availability is as follows:

> If published, software applications/tools must be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without restrictions such as the need for a material transfer agreement.

The policy then goes to make an important suggestion:

> BMC Evolutionary Biology recommends, but does not require, that the source code of the software should be made available under a suitable open-source license that will entitle other researchers to further develop and extend the software if they wish to do so.

Another advantage of releasing the code as open source is that it would have avoided the current awkward situation, whereby the Treefinder program is no longer available to everyone, and BMC Evolutionary Biology retracted the original paper. Once code is published under a free software license, that can’t be rescinded, although the same or modified versions of the source could be published later under a non-free license by the copyright holder. It’s regrettable that Treefinder was not released under a free software license, but it’s nonetheless good to see an open access journal sticking to its requirement for free availability of software, and retracting the offending paper.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: bmc evolutionary biology, gangolf jobb, open source, restrictions, sharing, software, treefinder

Apple's Insistence On DRM And Other Restrictions Means EFF's New App Is Android-Only

from the eff-your-walled-garden dept

The EFF has produced a new mobile app that allows users to access its alert center and instantly take action on issues pertaining to digital rights and other areas the group focuses on. And, it’s Android-only, because the EFF took a long look at Apple’s walled garden and said, “Include us out.”

Sadly, though, we had to leave out Apple devices and the folks who use them. Why? Because we could not agree to the outrageous terms in Apple’s Developer Agreement and Apple’s DRM requirements.

What specifically bothers the EFF about Apple’s Developer Agreement? Well, how about the fact that you can’t talk about the agreement? The agreement forbids “public statements” about a public document.

Apple also bans reverse engineering, prevents rejected apps developed with its development kit from being distributed by competing app stores and forbids jailbreaking of its devices. The EFF would prefer more open platforms, hence its decision to bypass Apple and its defensive perimeter.

Going beyond Apple’s tight control of apps and its app store, there’s the problem with the company’s insistence on saddling software with some form of DRM. For a company that fought off the major labels’ insistence that iTunes include DRM in its offerings, it seems rather hypocritical that it insist others do the very thing it refused to do for others.

As of now, the app is still in its infancy. There’s not much to do with it (at least not until the next alert rolls through the system) other than install it and recommend it to others. But the EFF is seeking input both on features and design (contact rainey@eff.org) and has made the code available for forking at Github.

Apple obviously loses nothing but a bit of its reputation by EFF’s shunning. But the EFF is still pushing to make the Apple App Store a better environment for all developers.

We’re inaugurating our new mobile app with a suitable campaign: a petition calling on Apple to change its Developer Agreement to respect the privacy and innovation rights of developers. Add your signature today to stand up for free speech and oppose DRM.

Apple’s tight control does more damage to its reputation than any rogue app that sneaks past its controls. It has played the villain in the past, booting controversial apps and exposing itself as a guardian of nothing more than the safe and inoffensive. It has also deployed its developer agreement inconsistently, making navigating its lists of “don’ts” an aggravating exercise in minefield tiptoeing. And that’s when it’s not booting apps simply because they might jeopardize the home team’s offerings.

Its similar control of its devices is starting to work against it, as a recently-filed class action lawsuit over its internal storage claims makes clear. When you can’t add removable memory or swap out the internal storage for something bigger, you’re forced to rely on the manufacturer’s claims of how much room is actually available on your phone. And once you’ve preloaded everything Apple wants you to have on your iPhone, you’re left with far less than the 8/16/32GB printed on the outside of the box. (Apple’s software will “helpfully” suggest your purchase some iCloud storage when your phone nears capacity.)

Walled gardens are the antipathy of the open internet and free speech, as the EFF points out. So, as long as Apple wants to force developers to play nice with a long list of limitations, the EFF will be having no part of it.

Filed Under: android, apps, drm, ios, restrictions, walled garden
Companies: apple, eff