Internet of Things Applications

People don’t want to own anything anymore. They much prefer licenses that let them use it.



At least that’s what lawyers from The Software Alliance—a trade group representing the likes of Microsoft and Adobe—and the Motion Picture Association of America told the Copyright Office.

Through an unlikely sequence of events, I found myself sitting across the table from them late last month at a series of “roundtables”—hosted by the Copyright Office—on copyright law. Unlikely, because I’m a repairman. Copyright law should have nothing to do with me. But it does. Why? Because over the last 20 years, manufacturers and entertainment lawyers have warped copyright law to screw consumers, undermine property rights, and create huge amounts of unnecessary legal work for people who want to repair their cars or back up their DVDs.

The public has been asking Congress to address the problem of copyright law for years. So, last year, lawmakers directed the Copyright Office to conduct a handful of studies to figure out (a) what’s wrong with Copyright law and (b) if it’s fixable. Hence the roundtables. Eventually, the Copyright Office will turn the information they glean here (and elsewhere) into a set of findings.

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Kit Walsh of the EFF told the Copyright Office that some of these licenses, often tacked onto the end of manuals or click-through screens, assert outrageous restrictions upon users. Nest’s licensing agreement prohibits owners from discussing performance evaluations of software with third-parties, which—as Walsh pointed out—curtails free speech. Most people don’t know, because they don’t read the fine print. At 3,000 words, Nest’s pages-long agreement, filled with esoteric language, is painful to read. Every piece of software in your life has an agreement like this. It’s not impossible to read every single agreement—but it’s incredibly impractical. A reporter from The Guardian tried, and he spent eight hours of his week reading licenses before giving up entirely. People mostly just click “I AGREE” never realizing these agreements often prohibit reverse-engineering, aftermarket modifications, and even “unauthorized” repair.

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“Letting those devices trump the autonomy of the people who are using them is a very dangerous thing,” Walsh warned the Copyright Office last week.

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“That’s where this yellow brick road leads,” Andrew Shore, Executive Director of the Owner’s Rights Initiative, told the Copyright Office. “The more you have licenses, the less you have ownership.”

The funniest thing about Congress’s request for a policy study is that members of Congress have already proposed solutions to this problem. Representative Blake Farenthold already introduced YODA, the You Own Devices Act—which asserts that the software in a device belongs to the person who bought it. And Rep. Zoe Lofgren already introduced the Unlocking Technology Act, which would let owners unlock devices for uses that do not infringe on copyright—like repair, modification, and research. Both fixes stalled in committee. But I’m hoping these studies provide Congress with the proof they need to patch the bugs in the DMCA. And to find solutions that work for the rest of us, instead of just entertainment companies.

See more at: ifixit.org