DRM for batteries

[Steven M. Bellovin]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2008 17:23:56 -0800
Jon Callas <jon at callas.org> wrote:

> 
> On Jan 6, 2008, at 9:09 AM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 15:28:50 -0800
> > Stephan Somogyi <cryptography at 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.
> 
It's worth reading the actual opinion of the Appeals Court.  (Legal
note: this opinion is only binding in the Sixth (U.S.) Circuit; the
Supreme Court declined to hear Lexmark's appeal, so no national
precedent was set.)  The Court had many reasons for rejecting the DMCA
part of the argument.  Among other things, they held that the
copyrighted work -- the printer software -- wasn't protected against
copying, and that the purpose of the DMCA was to protect works against
*copying*.  They held that the copyrighted code in question -- the
firmware in the printer -- was "used" by people trying to print things,
rather than by the print cartridge, and that access to the protected
work was gained by buying a printer, not by buying a print cartridge.

There are a lot more nuances than that in the opinion; I suggest that
folks read it.  For now, let it suffice to say that the DMCA bars
circumvention of mechanisms that protect copyrighted material; it does
not bar circumvention of access control mechanisms that protect other
things.  (I also fear that a clever, technically-minded lawyer could
design a print cartridge that would work around the Court's ruling.)


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com