[112604] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: DRM for batteries
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jon Callas)
Mon Jan 7 09:54:16 2008
In-Reply-To: <20080106170943.2b42f5d4@cs.columbia.edu>
Cc: Stephan Somogyi <cryptography@lt.gross.net>,
cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: Jon Callas <jon@callas.org>
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 17:23:56 -0800
To: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
On Jan 6, 2008, at 9:09 AM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 15:28:50 -0800
> Stephan Somogyi <cryptography@lt.gross.net> wrote:
>
>> At 16:38 +1300 04.01.2008, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>>
>>> At $1.40 each (at least in sub-1K quantities) you wonder whether
>>> it's costing them more to add the DRM (spread over all battery
>>> sales) than any marginal gain in preventing use of third-party
>>> batteries by a small subset of users.
>>
>> I don't think I agree with the "DRM for batteries" characterization.
>> It's not my data in that battery that they're preventing me from
>> getting at.
>
> Correct. In a similar case, Lexmark sued a maker of print cartridges
> under the DMCA. Lexmark lost in the Court of Appeals and the Supreme
> Court declined to hear the case. See
> http://www.eff.org/cases/lexmark-v-static-control-case-archive and
> http://www.scc-inc.com/SccVsLexmark/
>
Also remember that there is a specific exemption in the DMCA for
reverse engineering for the purpose of making compatible equipment.
It is there precisely to protect people like the printer cartridge
folks. That's why they lost.
Going back to the '60s, there was the Ampex case, where they made
compatible tape drives for IBM mainframes. IBM sued, and lost in the
Supreme Court. This is what gave us the plug-compatible peripheral
biz. My memories of this say that some judge or other said that
copyright is not intended to give a monopoly.
That doesn't mean that other companies can't pull crap and try to sue
competition away. But they're wrong, and the effect may help the
little guy, because by now, the big guys ought to be able to pay for
lawyers smart enough to know the precedent.
Jon
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