Cell Phone Owners Allowed To Break Software Locks 305
An anonymous reader writes "The library of congress approved many copyright exemptions today. Among the exemptions were new rules about cell phones, DVDs, and electronic books." From the article: "Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday.
Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations and let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books.
All told, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. For the first time, the office exempted groups of users. The new rules will take effect Monday and expire in three years.
In granting the exemption for cell phone users, the Copyright Office determined that consumers aren't able to enjoy full legal use of their handsets because of software locks that wireless providers have been placing to control access to phones' underlying programs."
How kind of them to smile upon us wretches. (Score:5, Interesting)
That pretty much sums it up. I was thinking of it more like you just got the shit kicked out of you by someone, and the LoC was too weak to do anything to help you, but now that you're lying facedown in a puddle of your own blood he'll helpfully get you an ice pack.
These concessions are great, but they're like the Warden giving you an extra ration of food, when you're not supposed to be in jail in the first place. We shouldn't have to have these concessions granted -- all the things mentioned in the summary are common sense, and ought not be protected by copyright in the first place.
Plus, these concessions are just three years. Since they're not permanent, if they're not renewed constantly, they disappear. That makes them hard to count on in the future. When the media lobby got its copyright extension last time, I can't help but notice that there wasn't an expiration or "lets revisit this in 5 years" date; it was permanent.
Read or Die? (Score:1, Interesting)
Without the cheap locked-down handset bundle, mobile telephony market could never take off in the first place, since handsets were truly expensive. I think Europe is smarter than USA and will not destroy the lock-down supported expansion of mobile telephony. Europe and its GSM system is much ahead of americans in mobile communications and cannot alow it to collapse.
Otherwise, I thought USA is governed by President, Representatives and Senate. The only Library that had government power was in the japanese anime "Read or Die" and that was the British Library. Who is a library to decide what can be hacked? That is a matter of legislation, reserved for the authority of elected officials only.
Re:Technicalities (Score:3, Interesting)
I might buy a phone for $1 and pay it off over 24 months. If I break the lock I am not paying for the phone. If I buy a CD of music the supplier doesn't lose anything if I shift it to a different format.
Smart phones? (Score:2, Interesting)
Cellphone locks (Score:3, Interesting)
Examples? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Read or Die? (Score:1, Interesting)
Maybe in Britain it does not hurt. But in the rest of Europe, especially to the east, where people are not that rich, most mobile phones are running on pre-paid scheme instead of monthly subscription.
You pay once to have a phone number assigned to you and get a SIM-locked handset (for cheap due to big subsidy from the telco) but if you actually want to talk on it, you have to buy creditcard sized vouchers with a taped over code. Remove the tape, type the long keycode into the handset and send it in SMS short message to a service number. The voucher is invalidated and your SIM card is credited with the amount of money or talktime.
So if you decode the phone and then move to another telco, the original telco who subsidized you, obviously will not get any of his money back via services. This is why unauthorized decoding is a crime and harshly prosecuted. The gov't knows that mobile telecomms development is crucial for any modern economy, so the fair business interests of telcos must be protected because installing a nationwide mobile comm network cost them billions in funds and telcos are not charities!
It is true that telco must decode if you ask - after you paid them the flat fee, about 100 USD (20,000HUF in local currency). Without that it is a crime.
Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th (Score:3, Interesting)
Most importantly, in 50 or 60 years when the copyrights actually expire, will you still even want your 128kbps mp3? Of course not. The public domain file will be provided in a superior format from a master recording.
Moreover, there's no fundamental reason why future DRM can't include a system which automatically disables DRM upon copyright expiration. But of course, any system which checks the validity of DRM licenses would be attacked as an invasion of "privacy."
Don't understand (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't really follow the bit about being allowed to copy snippets from a DVD. How exactly are you allowed to do that legally? Does that mean it's okay to use DeCSS for such a purpose? Can decss now be legally shipped with distros "for the express purpose of only copying snippets" ?
If cracking a DVD is still illegal, then does is this kinda like the right for a man to bear children. We can't actually do it, but we now have the right
Re:Technicalities (Score:3, Interesting)
If you actually use your phone for a non-trivial amount and switch back to a zero-monthly-due plan as soon as possible, you'll usually come out ahead taking the plan.
AFAIK, there are no technical locks, only contractual obligations (i.e. you can actually switch to another provider; but if you do, you still need to pay the monthly due to the provider that you don't use).
Re:Read or Die? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have some experience developing applications for Microsoft Windows mobile smartphones. They have always allowed vendors to choose what level the OS is locked down. By default the Windows Mobile OS is not locked down, which is something I must commend Microsoft for, however vendors of mobile phones can choose to change this such that the Windows Mobile OS is either totally locked down i.e. doesn't allow any 3rd party applications to be installed or run, or locked in such a way that the user is prompted to verify software should be run that has not authorised by the mobile phone vendor.
This is a discussion about whether or not small DEVELOPERS can get into developing applications for the mobile market or whether it is going to be left to the big players to decide what software we're allowed to have on our handsets.
As mobile phones become increasingly more like mobile pcs, this is a big issue. If the day comes when this is the platform on the market, and XP, Linux and all other desktop flavours of operating systems are history, which is actually quite a likely scenario, then how locked down a system is to 3rd party developers becomes a major issue for personal liberty and freedom of choice. If we cannot choose what software we can develop and run on our computers we have lost our ability to communicate freely.
Basically I simply don't think any locked down system is going to prevail simply because the market will ultimately reject it in favour of who ever supplies a system that is not locked down. In terms of features no locked down system is going to compete with another that allows any developer in the world to create new applications for it.
Re:This sets a bad precedent (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh, you're being granted "use" back again. (Score:4, Interesting)
Low opinion of government notwithstanding, the fact that this is coming under mandatory review in 3 years is a good thing. Once again, Slashdot attacks people in government for doing the right thing (in this case, taking steps to correct a previous wrong). Do you honestly think that Congress got together and said, "let's take away our own rights and the rights of our constituents, too!" or is it possible that the DMCA simply fell victim to expert lobbying and a level of severity that simply wasn't anticipated?
Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. Nothing against rights holders protecting their rights, but if the DRM scheme prevents me from exercising my fair use rights, and I circumvent the scheme in order to exercise those rights, I don't feel _I_ should be the criminal.
Re:As if anyone cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
That may be true of natural persons, but companies can't have such a lax attitude. Before you know it, you have an audit on your hands...and if things aren't in order, you could lose everything you've built up, perhaps more.
Also, I'm not sure wholesale copyright violation is a Good Thing. Remember, copyleft is about using copyright to ensure user's rights and freedoms. If you take away copyright, the GPL and LGPL (and similar licenses) will lose their force, and this could very well lead to companies (and other parties) distributing binary blobs based on what used to be Free software, without contributing back their improvements to the community. This could be a major setback for Free software.
CDs & DVDs are 8-Track Tapes, time to move on. (Score:1, Interesting)
CDs and DVDs are the past, and forget the blue ray junk too - Seagate is about to make blue ray look like a 8" floppy disk.
If you pay for 1 copy of it, you should be able to do what you need to do to view it.
Copy to an iPod, dvx encode it for your portable video player, take that downloaded iTunes Pirate movie and burn it to a DVD so you can actually watch it on the big screen TV (though it will look awful on a 60" screen, now you know why you need to buy the HDTV DVD player and up-converter...)
Content producers should just find a way to make buying content more desirable & affordable (how about $9.99 instead of 19.99?).
CD's with paper booklets or DVDs with special casings and non-digital extras are a good start.
Remember the little statues packaged with Lord of the Rings DVDs? That 'freebee' was a toy surprise to get you to buy the happy meal, and it worked.
The no-talent business types once again should turn to the creative people to save their butts.
Such little 'extras' usually cost under $1 but can increase sales ten fold.
Booklets, Collector Packaging, and Limited Edition collectable extras toys, statuettes, posters, coupons, special offers, club memberships. - All great things to increase profit margin, none of which involve expensive recalls of computer harming Sony Root Kit CDs.
I work for a cell phone company (Score:1, Interesting)
This is more meaningful than most seem to realize (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, all of these explicitly-authorized activities arguably fall in the domain of fair use, and should have been allowed to begin with, and most of the exceptions seem like they don't directly affect most people, but they create a huge crack in the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions.
See, the big problem for consumers isn't so much that the DMCA outlaws circumvention, but that it outlaws circumvention *tools*. If you read the text of the law, it actually doesn't prevent you from circumventing copy protection (because it specifically allows Fair Use). What it does is prevent you from creating or distributing anti-circumvention tools.
But with these explicit exceptions in place, the tools needed to achieve the allowed circumvention become legal. It's possible, for example, that allowing DVDs to be ripped for educational purposes makes libdvdcss legal, because it now has a legal use. And if you can legally acquire a copy of the tool needed to break DVD encryption, you can then legally exercise your full Fair Use rights.
What about disabled features on Cell phones? (Score:3, Interesting)
When my 6620 got lost, instead of getting another phone from my provider, I went to http://www.celluloco.com/ [celluloco.com] and purchased an unlocked Motorola A780 [celluloco.com] that let me do all the bluetooth mp3 ringing goodness that I wanted. It was a little harder to setup as Cingular doesn't support that model and settings won't automagically download from the network, but I was able to get network settings and voicemail number from tech suppport and it works fine now.
How about others here? what carrier and what features does your phone have turned off?
Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th (Score:2, Interesting)
Only 3 years! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:2, Interesting)
I had the same problem with my Nokia with T-mobile where I could not run any applications(google) on the phone or browse correctly; they set it and now everything works.
Re:How about not treating me like a criminal in th (Score:2, Interesting)
A popular myth, but not true, as shown by survivors of extraordinary falls.
One woman survived a fall from 10 kilometers [wikipedia.org]. (She was strapped into a seat and may have enjoyed some protection from that; however this guy [wikipedia.org] jumped out of a plane at 18,000 feet, about 5.5 kilometers, and thanks to trees and snow cushioning his fall, suffered on a sprained leg.)
Ginsberg's Howl notes the story of Tuli Kupferberg [answers.com] (of the band The Fugs) who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and survived.