Comment Sorry, wrong number (Score 1) 197
The anti-circumvention
provisions only pertain to circumventing technological measures that effectively control
access to a copyright work
That is precisely why replacing the boot PROM is illegal. Remember, the DMCA only talks about
circumventing technological measures (eg here), it doesn't require actually accessing the copyrighted work itself afterwards.
By replacing the PROM, you circumvent a technological measure that controls access to the TiVo code, regardless of your motives.
Not true. The boot PROM checksum dance does NOTHING to protect the TiVo code; it is intended to prevent anything EXCEPT the TiVo code from running. Bypass the checksum dance, and your TiVo will run the TiVo code exactly as before; thus, there's no "protection of a copyrighted work" being circumvented here. All that changes is that the (BTW, uncopyrightable) hardware will now run YOUR operating system of choice. Before tou argue that the checksum thingy protects the copyright on THAT code, let me point out that the "protection measure" is supposed to protect a specific copyrighted work, and cannot mean categorically locking out an entire class of works (i.e., everything EXCEPT code from a specific vendor). There's even a specific exception for compatibility, which this modification would fit into.