To me this says "we make such huge margins on these welders that we can intentionally cripple them and sell them at a lower price. Someone out there could produce our top end model for the low end price." It logically follows that maybe I should start looking into other manufacturers who sell at closer to manufacturing cost, like Everlast.
I realize that big welding shops aren't going to drop the big two (Lincoln and Miller) overnight, but I think practices like this are really going to hasten the rise of Chinese upstarts making high quality IGBT welders. Once they (or a third party) starts offering good support and warranty guarantees it's going to be hard to compete with them when you employ sales practices like this.
For example, the Miller Syncrowave 210 shown in the video is $2,700, base price. I use one weekly, and it's a decent welder. Alternatively, one could get an Everlast PowerTig 250EX for $1,700 that comes with features missing from the Miller at a price that's $1,000 less. The Chinese manufacturers know their price point, and they're not going to leave out features supported by their hardware because they're hungry for the business. I think the way Miller is behaving is a sign of complacency, and it's going to come back to bite them.
I already find myself using the cheaper IGBT welder day to day because we don't have the SD card upgrade for the Miller and I like features like up-slope and down-slope that have been left out for product segmentation reasons.
Have you seen the AHP AlphaTIG 200X? It's a 200A AC/DC tig/stick welder with nearly all the features of the PowerTig for $700. The only real difference I can see is that it only goes to 200Hz on pulse vs 500Hz for the PowerTig. Comes with everything for TIG and stick, including a flex head torch and a ball flow meter and dual 120/240 voltage. Supposedly it uses high quality components internally and it has an American company supporting it. It gets great reviews from everyone who tries it.
I've thought about buying one just to try it. I've only welded TIG on an ancient transformer 400A L-TEC. I really want to see what it's like to use one of these modern inverter machines.
I know someone who just got the Eastwood TIG and it looks like an older version of the AHP without pulse and AC freq adjustment. I'm hoping to try it out soon.
I can see why Miller is getting scared and trying to lock in businesses using DRM with these Chinese coming in at 1/4-1/3 the price and getting cheaper every year. The Chinese welders really got a bad name from Harbor Freight, and for good reason. But these new inverter machines are really starting to hold their own.
I'm guessing it's purely for DRM purposes. In that sense, it's a case of "We'd like to price this physical item at two different price points, and control it in a soft fashion".
Playing devil's advocate, I guess there are certain situations where you could justify this type of thing. Let's say that a product has an additional capability which 90% of the market doesn't need, but required significant research to accomplish. It's a soft-capability, so there's nothing additional that you need to manufacture to enable it. You have a couple of options - you can make two different models (essentially identical underneath, except for the cheaper one disabling the extra capability), but this is inefficient. You can of course have one product, one price. But this is also less than perfect, as you have everyone paying for a feature 10% want, and you can be outcompeted at a cheaper price for the basic product. Another option would be to DRM the product and soft-enable the feature for the 10% who want it, at a higher price.
I mean, it's a bit of a stretch, but it's plausible in some situations.
The problem is you're not making the case for DRM, you're just making the case for copyright.
Laws against circumventing DRM have a simple fatal flaw: If the DRM is strong enough to prevent a given user from circumventing it then you don't need a law to prohibit it, but if it isn't then it still isn't any easier to get the user for circumventing the DRM than it is for the underlying copyright infringement. The law is utterly useless for its stated purpose.
But it still causes all kinds of grief for innocent people when companies abuse it for things other than its intended purpose.
I donno, I thought I made a (rather far fetched) case for when it's actually physically cheaper / more efficient / beneficial to have DRM, for all parties involved. I.e. a case where we'd actually want to have DRM, I'm not sure how it relates to copyright by itself.
In the general case though, I'm also relatively strongly against DRM for everyday consumer goods, but mainly from an experience and cost efficiency perspective. Companies seem to spend large amounts of money on heavy DRM, and it seems to cause products to be inferior (persistent connectivity, etc).
> I donno, I thought I made a (rather far fetched) case for when it's actually physically cheaper / more efficient / beneficial to have DRM, for all parties involved. I.e. a case where we'd actually want to have DRM, I'm not sure how it relates to copyright by itself.
Your argument seems to be that the seller is only going to go to the effort of designing the extra feature if they can charge a premium for it to the market segment that wants it. That is the traditional argument in favor of copyright (and patents). Those things do what you're asking for without a separate law prohibiting circumvention of DRM. The seller can copyright the enabling software or patent the feature (depending on whether the difficult part of implementing the feature is part of the enabling software or the hardware).
It doesn't. The drm needs it as a very simple way to tell the chip inside that you've paid for it. SD cards can be trivially bit-banged from almost any processor, unlike other protocols such as USB.
One of the most important issues raised by this article is that of enforcement. That the US Government is employed to enforce DRM is non trivial. Imagine you left a magnificent gold brick on your porch on the way out to work. You reason, it'd be illegal for anyone to move or take the brick without your permission, let alone enter your yard. You come home to find the brick gone and hold the US Government responsible. You tell the the Gov't, "When you leave a brick on your porch tomorrow, it better be there when you return home, or else (no campaign funds and you'll move you're $27 bank account off shore )."
The next day, there is a squad car and 4 cops sitting outside your gate. Not only that, the Gov't ensures you laws are being drafted to stiffen the penalty for anyone that might steal your brick or even enter your yard without permission, and Gov't prosecutors are standing by ready to prosecute with the threat of jail time (, but don't worry they'll pick up the legal and prison fees).
Without such Gov't activities you wouldn't be able to afford to continue leaving gold bricks on your porch.
This practice is absolutely standard in oscilloscopes (which is what I'm right now shopping for). Additional options will set you back between a few hundred or maybe a thousand dollars/euros easily.
In the past "options" were actual PCBs to be installed, or swapping out of pricey components/subassemblies.
But software options are typically "only" things like being able to decode i2c/spi/canbus/... from acquired traces or calculating a fourier-transform.
Also on the lower end models (where it doesn't make sense to build additional hardware, because even the relatively cheap amplifiers and ADCs will be able to do a few 100MHz or few GS/s) scope bandwidth might be artificially limited when not purchasing a software option. Some vendor also limiting the amount of used sample memory intentionally.
Heck, some scopes cripple their memory capacity which can be unlocked with a software upgrade.
Curiously, Rigol, a test equipment company, recently updated their dirt cheap line (DS1052E to DS1054Z). The DS1052E had a notoriously weak software option unlock encryption, so hobbyists bought the 400 dollar scope, punched some code into it generated with some Javascript on some webpage, and bam, you got a 1500 dollar scope.
Funny thing is the DS1054Z has the same exact issue. The crypto on the 1054Z is also crap (http://gotroot.ca/rigol/riglol/ yay!) -- some have even speculated that they do this intentionally because they know corporate people won't hack their scopes, but hobbyists will, furthering their brand in a market filled with American competitors (Keysight formerly Agilent, Tektronics, etc)
So how is this different to selling a computer and then selling software for it? Obviously the computer would be capable of running the software already pre-installed...
1. These are generally hardware drivers rather than generic software. If your computer comes without a text editor, anyone can provide your with one for whatever price they decide. If your oscilloscope comes without an I2C decoder, no-one else can add it.
2. Usually the software is used to cripple the device and then you pay to remove it. For example on oscilloscopes they use a software low-pass filter to limit its maximum frequency. You can pay to have it removed.
You know, I bought an R&S 50MHz mixed-signal scope that had the ability to software upgrade to 100MHz. It's more expensive than the Rigol, but the UI is miles ahead of Rigol as well.
Anyway, I was pretty happy with it and used it at 50MHz until one day I needed the extra speed to debug a higher speed glitch. Quick call to my distributor, pay a couple hundred bucks, and I instantly have a faster scope on my bench.
Part of me is grouchy that it was just a product key to type in, but honestly, I have a great tool at a reasonable price point and I didn't have to pay for the extras until I needed them.
Could I have just hacked it? Probably. But I'm making money using the thing, it's a tax writeoff, and I don't mind paying for well-made equipment.
How is this abusive? It's market segmentation, and if they didn't do it this way, they'd do it some other way. This just allows them to have one standard set of hardware, and differentiate in software.
I do find market segmentation to be morally wrong (at least, it's against free market principles, even though I don't agree with those always).
Why shouldn't everyone deserve access to the best tools, and by extension, best things? (Taking the production costs into account.) Best tools save time and make everybody more productive, which should be in everybody's interest.
Imagine you would say something like that in education - that some children do not deserve the best education, simply because they may never use it. How do you know they will not find some use for it?
Yet, when it comes to tools (and stuff in general), it is readily accepted as a principle (that it is OK to intentionally cripple someone else's productivity). Neither the fact that there are business models around market segmentation doesn't make it a good choice.
You will probably now follow with the standard argument about how they need to make profit and recoup their investments and so on. Guess what - the investment was already made, and it can't be undone! And frankly, I am sick of this lazy ass market god which requires investors to get return on profit so they would do something at all. (It's kinda like you're probably not a very good human if you need threat of hell and promise of heaven to make you not bad!) Just like everybody else, an "investor" should get a good salary (for the work done in decision-making) and that's it.
Also, the argument "if they didn't do it this way, they'd do it some other way" is interesting. In this nebulous form, it's often used to justify something morally fishy. Note that you can also use it other way around: Why should there be laws to protect DRM, if people who want to break will find some other way? The correct answer is, of course, the laws and regulations (legal system) are the correct resolution of this argument - we have them to steer people away from "other ways".
>and recoup their investments and so on. Guess what - the investment was already made, and it can't be undone!
You've got the sequence of motivations and expectations of investments & revenue backwards.
A more accurate timeline is that before the product is built, the businesses will segment the potential markets. They estimate the various price curves of price-sensitive and price-insensitive customers and then use that to determine how much to allocate to each feature. Some features are valuable to price-insensitive customers. Some features are useful to all customers.
To say the above was "investment already made" is flawed because that perspective depends on reversing the timeline around in a way that businesses don't actually think. Instead of "sunk cost", it's actually a "before-we-build-it calculated investment" based on "future revenue projections".
Likewise, when a pre-med student considers going to medical school, he may envision a future where he provides medical care for free in Africa and at the same time earn a $200k+ salary as a hospital surgeon. Those future market segments affects his current decision to spend (go into debt) $150k+ for his medical degree. When the doctor is 40-something, we, as patients can't say that he should give us medical care for minimum wage because we morally deserve his services and his medical school tuition 10 years ago is a "sunk cost" anyway.
As for how a business delivers that segmentation of product to a customer, that is a separate issue. Some methods are perceived as more distasteful than others. The tig welder with a software config switch causes more outrage than a different physical chassis.
Yeah, that paragraph was just an aside, but anyway.
> Those future market segments affects his current decision to spend (go into debt) $150k+ for his medical degree.
I think the problem here is that we let him make the decision which should be really responsibility of the whole society to make. If he didn't go to debt (and got a salary instead while is he studying), it would be IMHO perfectly OK for society to say "we changed our minds, now you have to work for minimum wage" (and he would have replied "F Y" and perhaps got a better arrangement). This is normal acceptable order of business (that things change). And in sane countries, degrees are for free (well obviously you have to work, and you can even get a stipend) for that very reason.
So in case of market segmentation, we are trading off some efficiency in the future for the fact that the whole society doesn't bear the risk of the investment. But is it really needed, to make this trade-off? What is wrong with society bearing that risk as a whole? That's what I was questioning in that paragraph.
I think the real problem though is that the whole idea of investment is not very compatible with the theoretical description of the free market (perfect competition). So to recoup investment, you need to introduce some inefficiency. And it can be abused - you can produce more inefficiency than is needed to recoup it.
What principle is it against? A buyer and a seller make a mutual agreement or they don't.
Due to one time expenses, some kinds of goods cannot exist without discriminatory pricing. (Where the total income from both low volume high price and high volume low price is required to make the good worth producing.)
I find your exchange of comments very nice because it so perfectly illustrates a pet peeve of mine.
The assumption "free market = good" is so widely spread and deeply rooted that anything which is identified as "bad" is then assumed to be against "the free market", when really, it is often perfectly aligned with "the free market", and the truth is that "free market = good" is naive. Free markets have good and bad sides; the good tends to significantly outweigh the bad, but unless you recognize that there is some bad in there as well, you're not going to end up with a very good policy mix.
One can try to excuse the naive way of thinking by pretending that one is merely using a shorthand, but really, I'm doubtful that that's anything more than an excuse.
Free market = non-compulsory, voluntary choice. As things go, it's not a bad place to start. Also, what does your comment have to do with the specifics of this discussion?
Not sure if "principle" is the best word, but I wanted to keep the post short. Better would be to say that it's against assumptions which make free markets at least theoretically efficient.
The other response to you is correct, and on top of that:
When you have discrimination, you're effectively making multiple different "equilibria" on the demand curve (instead of one intersection with supply curve). Once you admit multiple equilibria, all the bets about efficiency (and also fairness) are off.
Alternatively you can look at it as follows: The free market can be characterized by existence of market price, on which the participants converge... If you have discrimination, they won't converge on market price and so you don't really have free market (free as in speech).
> Due to one time expenses, some kinds of goods cannot exist without discriminatory pricing.
I don't think it's true. Linux does exist, for instance.
Cheap airline tickets wouldn't exist without discriminatory prices, your ticket for $50 bought eight weeks in advance is subsidised by the business traveller who paid $400 the day before travel.
Without the discriminatory pricing the flight may not exist for either traveller. With it both travellers are satisfied, you because you get a cheap holiday, the business traveller because he gets to close a big deal.
>Why shouldn't everyone deserve access to the best tools, and by extension, best things? (Taking the production costs into account.) Best tools save time and make everybody more productive, which should be in everybody's interest.
I agree with this in principle.
>Imagine you would say something like that in education - that some children do not deserve the best education, simply because they may never use it. How do you know they will not find some use for it?
Sure, but the other side of this is that the guy who wrote the education curriculum ought to be paid, in order to encourage the development of further artistic works.
Absent some kind of taxpayer-funded way of compensating artists, how are they supposed to get a reasonable amount of money without denying non-payers access to their works?
>Also, the argument "if they didn't do it this way, they'd do it some other way" is interesting. In this nebulous form, it's often used to justify something morally fishy. Note that you can also use it other way around: Why should there be laws to protect DRM, if people who want to break will find some other way? The correct answer is, of course, the laws and regulations (legal system) are the correct resolution of this argument - we have them to steer people away from "other ways".
I agree that it's often used to justify something morally questionable. However, there's a distinction here, because the "other ways" that we're trying to steer manufacturers away from are not a clearly delineated set of behaviors. If you prevent people from crippling their products in software, they'll cripple them in hardware. If you prevent people from crippling their products in hardware, they'll make two different products with different features at two different prices, and costs will be higher all around. If you prevent someone from selling a less-featured version of another of their own products, they'll just make one of the two products, and some competitor will make the other.
That's the argument for not preventing manufacturers from crippling their products in software.
> the guy who wrote the education curriculum ought to be paid
He absolutely should be!
> how are they supposed to get a reasonable amount of money without denying non-payers access to their works
Good question! But I don't think there is a good answer to it that doesn't involve society at large, in one way or another. Why is enforcing DRM in order to protect some monopoly by society at large better than community investment into the technology by society at large?
> the "other ways" that we're trying to steer manufacturers away from are not a clearly delineated set of behaviors
I think that's case with all laws and all human behaviors. That's why we have judges, to make judgements.
> they'll cripple them in hardware
I think they should try that. So far they didn't - that's why they are doing it in software, because they now can.
> two different products with different features at two different prices
Yep, and if that happens, it's bad for economy overall, that's what I argue.
> I think they should try that. So far they didn't - that's why they are doing it in software, because they now can.
I heard it's common in computer parts manufacturing - they just add an additional production step where a laser cuts through some traces on the PCB to disconnect the part they don't want you to use in the cheaper model. Apparently customers got too good at reversing the softer methods of market segmentation.
Yes, you're right, it was the case in Intel 486 SX/DX.
All I am saying here that this is of course a waste of resources, even though I don't know how to prevent this sort of waste in our society.
(IMHO, bigger problem is for example throwing out foods by restaurants and supermarkets, which is also OK by doctrine of economic liberalism, yet wasteful.)
I think it's morally wrong to demand that people who build things should be expected to share the thing they build in a particular way just because the thing they've build is easy to reproduce.
Market segmentation generally allows producers to expands downwards in to lower market segments without cannibalising their full-price customers.
Crudely speaking, the alternative to a $5,000 full-featured device and the same device with a smaller set of features ("crippled") at $1,500 isn't a full-featured device at $1,500, it's a no device at $1,500.
> it's morally wrong to demand that people who build things should be expected to share the thing they build
They don't have to share them! If you want to invent something and keep it secret, by all means, be my guest! This only concerns people who specifically build things for others (i.e. already sharing them).
You're free to share or not, but if you decide to do so, the recipents are free to say whether or not you're being an asshole because of the way you're sharing. That's how I see market segmentation - douchy behaviour. It's purposefully creating waste and/or artificially limiting the value you give to customer in order to profit more.
See what cell phone manufacturers are doing: segmenting the market by launching dozens of different models at the same time (half of them barely usable, but that's a topic for another time), each with a different set of "features" - little less RAM, little more storage, sensor A and B included, sensor B and C included (note that a model with sensors A, B and C is usually missing).
A sane situation would be when they'd be launching a single phone packed with features - powerful CPU, lots of RAM, lots of storage. Or maybe two, second being the "economy version" or basically the previous year's top model. But launching dozens of models a time means a lot of unused cellphones floating around, a lot of incompatibile parts being produced, and a lot of people learning for the first time that you don't go cheap on a smartphone because companies are very happy to sell you crap that barely works at all.
> I do find market segmentation to be morally wrong (at least, it's against free market principles, even though I don't agree with those always).
I completely disagree. Free market principles allow manufacturers to make whatever separate product lines they choose, and sell them at whatever price they can fetch. I see nothing immoral about this, but maybe you do.
> Why shouldn't everyone deserve access to the best tools, and by extension, best things? (Taking the production costs into account.) Best tools save time and make everybody more productive, which should be in everybody's interest.
People deserve what they pay for, what they bargain for. No more and no less.
> Imagine you would say something like that in education - that some children do not deserve the best education, simply because they may never use it. How do you know they will not find some use for it?
That's not the question. The analogous question would be, is it ok to allow them to purchase a more rudimentary education for a lower price? I see no reason why not.
> Also, the argument "if they didn't do it this way, they'd do it some other way" is interesting. In this nebulous form, it's often used to justify something morally fishy.
I was just responding to the idea that this is an "abusive" business practice. My point was that if the law didn't allow for them to segment the market this way, they'd just sell multiple hardware lines--crippled by physically having lower capabilities, etc. In that situation, no one is better off, and the manufacturer is somewhat worse off. So I have trouble swallowing the idea that this is abusive.
Offtopic, but I think it's high time to reverse the discounts - students should have it more expensive than employed people. Right now in my country, as a student you get discounts everywhere - in restaurations, cinemas, in transportation, etc. And the country also suffers from having way too many people with degrees and no job. Those discounts serve as a big incentive for people to stay in "education" (it's hard to call it an actual education) as long as they can.
That's a good and interesting point. I guess I have less moral problem with it if the item in question is a final product (such as work of art) than a tool, and if the price difference is not large (say up to half of order of magnitude).
But I actually think student discounts are wrong for moral reasons, because they discriminate against non-students, but I do find discounts for young people and older people (in most cases) acceptable.
Once you start grouping people into big lumps like "student" and "old", it opens up a rat's nest of unfairness. What about disabled people who aren't old? What about old people who are very rich and healthy? Etc. I think we have to tolerate a bit of unfairness so that a large chunk of needy people can benefit, even if a few outliers miss our or are unfairly advantaged.
So?
By law you also can't grab the higher end tig welder next to it.
Your argument seems to be essentially "if they want to do this, they should have to produce identical models with slightly different firmware and give them different skus and blah blah blah blah blah"
That seems pretty silly.
These are market segmentation restrictions, they would normally just do what i suggested, and produce models with identical insides except for the firmware rom.
Why force them to do that, exactly?
IE what grand purpose does it serve?
This is, IMHO, very different from "you've made it illegal for me to play with my phone that i own", because you don't want to put your stuff on it or mess with the hardware using your software, you just want to not pay for the stuff they wrote.
If you want to install your own firmware on the tig welder hardware, that isn't theirs, and you wrote, awesome, that sounds great. I'll support you to death.
Yeah, but if they want to "sell" me a widget, I should be able to behave in the assumption that I then own it and can do whatever I like with it.
If I buy an IKEA table, and choose to take it apart and assemble it differently, I'm not going to expect the police to come knocking at my door saying "IKEA says you can't do that."
If they want to retain ownership and control over "their" widget, that's fine - I'm happy enough to pay Apple something less than half of what I used to pay for a physical CD - but if you put a "thing" on a shelf in a store, and I can pick it up and hand over some cash and walk out with it, there's no assumption that the manufacturer has any more legal right to tell me what I can and can't do with it when I get it home (there may be _other_ interested parties, if I turned a TIG welder into a homebuilt Taser, the police might come after me themselves, but not on behalf of the manufacturer.)
I'm not saying they can't fo it. But I am saying they shouldn't be allowed to call that "selling a TIG welder". Because it's not what people usually think it means.
lol, hilarious how the site is still up and using the exact same name and everything. Doesn't seem like they actually "confiscated it". Also, using a trademark however you want and using a physical object that you own however you want are radically different concepts.
If you buy a computer, this has never been true. You only get a license to use the software that comes with it and not complete freedom to do what you want. For example, you can't copy Windows off your computer on to your friend's. You're even restricted in making backup copies for yourself. We've been happy to accept that restriction since the invention of copyright. A guy in his basement with no connection to the outside world has always been able to break the law by pressing the wrong sequence of keys on his computer. DRM circumvention law is just an extension of those restrictions, not a quantitatively new thing.
So I think we already call this "selling a computer" or "selling a CD" or "selling a phone" and should get used to what "selling a welder" seems to mean now too.
I do kind of wonder what does and doesn't count as circumventing though. Can you pull out the transformer and connect your own homemade controller to it? What if you reuse the same power electronics too? What if you also reuse the same computer but put your own software on it? Can you even unplug the handle and plug it into another welder that has different capabilities?
Nonsense. Show me the contract I signed that created that situation. (difficulty: a post-purchase EULA or inside-the-shrinkwrap document is not a contract)
I can't copy Windows because of copyright law. If I buy a book I own that copy. I cannot copy it, but I can do what I want with that copy, because the author's rights end at the first sale[1].
Now this does get complicated when you bring in the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. This is a separate problem that restricts the use of purchased goods.
There is a recent attempt to use the copyright on the firmware in in a product as leverage to extend these anti-circumvention restrictions to the entire product (see: John Deere[2]). As this drama is ongoing, we will have to wait to see how it is handled, but I would bet that the first sale doctrine is upheld; not because I think that outcome is likely, but because the alternative is de facto the end of personal property rights, which will not be a stable society.
> Show me the contract I signed that created that situation [that is, getting a license to use the software].
(IP lawyer here.) First, there doesn't need to be a contract; second, even if a contract is required, it's quite easy for a supplier to get a customer to form one without getting a wet-ink signature from the customer.
Fundamentally, an IP "license" is simply this: You want to take Action A. Licensor has the legal right to prevent you from taking Action A, e.g., under the copyright laws. Licensor announces (to you specifically or to the world) that Licensor will not invoke that legal right against you, as long as your taking of Action A is limited to Circumstances C. You are now licensed. (That's how the GPL putatively works -- it's a bare copyright license, not a contract [1].)
If a contract is required, one can be formed in a variety of ways, including an offer that is accepted by performance (known as a "unilateral contract") [2]. So-called browse-wrap agreements fall into this general category [3].
> (difficulty: a post-purchase EULA or inside-the-shrinkwrap document is not a contract)
That's not a universally-held view in the courts [4].
> GPL ... it's a bare copyright license, not a contract
Yes, the GPL is a licence... for redistribution. As buyer of a product containing code licensed under the GPL, the GPL is not involved, though there is a recursive offer of a license should I want to redistribute the code. I can ignore the offer of redistribution license and use product any way I want (provided I do not copy it). This is even stated in the GPL itself (GPLv3, section 9).
> Licensor has the legal right to prevent you from taking Action A, e.g., under the copyright laws.
That's entirely my point - I am not making copies by using the software. I'm not even making copies reselling my copy (provided I actually actually transfer the work; keeping a "backup" would be a violation). I have zero need for a license.
Conflating use with redistribution has been a popular scam in recent years, in an effort to apply copyright enforcement tools to mere use. While software companies would like to control how their product is merely used, their rights end at the first sale.
> copyright license, not a contract
Yes, I'm very familiar with the difference.
> unilateral contract ... browser-wrap
Sure, provided all the elements are there. I have nothing against actual contracts. These are not involved when I walk into a shop and buy a widget with firmware in it. The only transaction is: pay cash, receive widget.
Some software is sold under a proper contract, of course. Most things with software in them (and a lot of software) are sold plainly as a simple exchange.
> That's not a universally-held view in the courts
Key phases in my post: "post-purchase", "inside-the-shrinkwrap". Throwing legal papers at someone after consideration has already been exchanged is at best a new offer, which the customer has no obligation to accept.
Yes, there have been a few badly argued cases on this topic. Contracts are not supposed to be a "gotcha"/surprise; a "meeting of the minds" (mutual agr4eement) is a requir4ed element. Therefor, I find it hard to believe that, in the long run, undermine hundreds of years of contract law by allowing extra obligations only seen post-purchase.
That's not how the law (in the U.S.) sees it. When you load software into RAM to run the program, you're making a copy, which requires a license from the copyright owner --- and that license can restrict the extent to which you're allowed to use the software (e.g., no service-bureau use). [1] [2]
> I have zero need for a license.
As you seem to recognize, but for the benefit of any other readers who don't know: The copyright owner's exclusive rights aren't limited to the making of copies -- those rights also extend, e.g., to the distribution of copies and to the creation of derivative works. [3]
First, you seem to be going out of your way to pretend the First Sale doctrine exists.
> MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc.
That was 1993. Several cases have handled the issue of temporary RAM copies since then. In particular, Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc.[1] found that the MAI case didn't address how RAM copies only exist for a "transitory duration", and thus are not eligible for copyright. Using software normally is patently fair use. Again, this supposed license requirement doesn't exist in most cases.
Besides, this entire line of argument is strange; pretending that normal use of a product infringes copyright sure seems like a claim that the product was not fit for purpose.
> those rights also extend
Up until the first sale. Generally, anything beyond that point requires a contract.
> the MAI case didn't address how RAM copies only exist for a "transitory duration", and thus are not eligible for copyright.
You might want to read the Cartoon Network opinion itself [1] if you haven't already, because it doesn't provide nearly the support for your position that you seem to think. See especially pp. 128-29, where the Second Circuit noted that in MAI Systems the software in question had been loaded into RAM and used by an unlicensed individual for several minutes:
<blockquote>
... Accordingly, we construe MAI Systems and its progeny as holding that loading a program into a computer's RAM can result in copying that program.
We do not read MAI Systems as holding that, as a matter of law, loading a program into a form of RAM always results in copying. Such a holding would read the "transitory duration" language out of the definition, and we do not believe our sister circuit would dismiss this statutory language without even discussing it.
It appears the parties in MAI Systems simply did not dispute that the duration requirement was satisfied.
</blockquote>
(Extra paragraphing added.)
> Using software normally is patently fair use.
That might well be true in some circumstances. But if you're using software in violation of the express terms of your license, good luck persuading a court to adopt your fair-use position.
I don't need to dodge the first-sale doctrine, because on the facts you recited, the doctrine doesn't apply. The case law has been pretty consistent that when you "buy" software in a typical mass-market transaction, you're not buying a copy, you're buying a license, and consequently the first-sale doctrine doesn't apply. See, e.g., Vernor v. Autodesk [1] [2]
EDIT: Suppose that the first-sale doctrine did apply (e.g., in the case of an object with embedded software with no license as part of the transaction). You'd only have the right to redistribute that copy. Without a separate license, you still wouldn't have the right to create new copies, nor to create derivative works -- that is, no hacking to "improve" the code" --- nor to "publicly perform" or "publicly display" the copyrighted work (which conceivably might apply in some circumstances).
As to your Upton Sinclair quote, you're assuming facts not in evidence. I try to stay on top of this area of the law, but it's never been more than a miniscule part of my practice --- nor for that matter of anyone else's, save for those rare lawyers who have to actually litigate a case in which these issues arise, which happens only rarely.
A spirited debate is one thing, but a comment suggesting that you haven't won the debate merely because the person you're arguing with is corrupted by money crosses a line. It's flatly uncivil and, more or less, an accusation of shillage; those accusations are verboten on HN.
I saw this because I read all of 'dctoedt's comments, because they are uniformly excellent, and was moved to comment because accusations like the ones you made here drive me fucking nuts. Please stop making them.
For the last 5 years, I've been running on almost exclusively Free Software. Cases where that hasn't been the case are in ATI and nVidia drivers. I can easily plop in an Intel graphics card and even route around that, if I chose.
The public should be educated about this.
Maybe printing and distributing some flyers would be beneficial. (Does the EFF maybe already do something like this?)
Miller is free to segment the market however it wants, but I don't agree that altering the welder that I own should be a federal crime.
We're changing the very definition of property here to support some company's price discrimination scheme.
> Why force them to do that, exactly? IE what grand purpose does it serve?
Without the DMCA, Miller could decide that their DRM is sufficient allowing that they can't legally prevent people from bypassing it. Or they could decide to ship different programming in different products. The grand purpose, though, is upholding the notion that when I own a thing that means I am free to do I want with it.
" but I don't agree that altering the welder that I own should be a federal crime"
Altering plenty of things is a federal crime.
You can't file the serial number off a gun, for example.
As a more apropos example, you can't make a sawed off shotgun. it is a federal crime to possess them, and this includes making them, without paying some tax and registering for a permit.
If you want a less violent example, most medical devices can't be modified, etc.
"We're changing the very definition of property here to support some company's price discrimination scheme."
No, we really aren't. While completely controlling everything you can do with every physical device you own is a great theory, it's definitely not reality, nor has it been, for many many years. It's definitely not "the very definition of property".
In fact, historically property law was worse. If you physically mutilated or damaged some things you owned (religious, etc), you could often get stoned/killed.
"The grand purpose, though, is upholding the notion that when I own a thing that means I am free to do I want with it."
You are working off the premise that this changes the state of the that. It does not.
That is because this notion has never been upheld, and i can point to tons of examples of physical property you can own but are not free to do what you want with.
Your examples of changing weapons to be untraceable or more lethal are not apropos because these are violations of legal restrictions passed by congress into law.
You can not saw off a shotgun not because Browning doesn't want you to saw it off, but because sawed off shotguns are not legal.
What the DMCA does is take a manufacturer's prerogative and elevate it to the status of federal crime as soon as the manufacturer decides to create a "digital rights management" scheme to enforce that prerogative.
"Your examples of changing weapons to be untraceable or more lethal are not apropos because these are violations of legal restrictions passed by congress into law.
"
So is the DMCA?
I'm not understanding what distinction you are making. They became federal crimes identically.
"You can not saw off a shotgun not because Browning doesn't want you to saw it off, but because sawed off shotguns are not legal."
I'm not sure how this is relevant, particularly?
What relevance does who wants you to not touch your property matter to your notion you should free to do with your property what you want.
"What the DMCA does is take a manufacturer's prerogative and elevate it to the status of federal crime as soon as the manufacturer decides to create a "digital rights management" scheme to enforce that prerogative.
"
I'm quite aware of what the DMCA says (and in fact, have been directly involved in pushing back on large numbers of crappy DMCA requests).
I'm trying to understand why you think this is special somehow, compared to all the other things that folks have made it illegal to do with your property, which span the gamut from government saying you can't do this directly, to government saying you can't do what this other guy says you can't do, to etc.
The DMCA's anti-circumvention language constitutes a delegation of congressional power to private manufacturers, who can create schemes at will to criminalize uses of their products which they consider to be harmful to their business.
"The DMCA's anti-circumvention language constitutes a delegation of congressional power to private manufacturers, who can create schemes at will to criminalize uses of their products which they consider to be harmful to their business.
"
?????
No it literally does not.
You make it sound like they choose what is circumvention and not, and they don't. Congress did.
You are really stretching here to try to differentiate it.
You'd be much better off saying "it's not different, but it still sucks", because right now, your argument strongly stretches credulity IMHO.
> So? By law you also can't grab the higher end tig welder next to it.
False comparison. If you bought the cheap welder and opened it up and twiddled it to make it as good as the more expensive one then that is fine and totally lawful. (And there have been a fair number of products intentionally differentiated that way: someone willing to move a jumper gets the premium product, but lots of buyers will just pay)
The complaint about the DMCA is that it gives a trivial distinction which many users could presumably self-upgrade otherwise the force of law.
"
False comparison. If you bought the cheap welder and opened it up and twiddled it to make it as good as the more expensive one then that is fine and totally lawful. "
The DMCA does not prevent you from doing anything to this welder except trying to work around their firmware to get something you didn't pay for.
You are, in fact, free to take it, twiddle the inside bits, write your own firmware, from scratch, and use the hardware in it.
You just can't take their software and hack it to do it
"The complaint about the DMCA is that it gives a trivial distinction which many users could presumably self-upgrade otherwise the force of law.
"
You have not actually shown this, because of what i said - you are free to upgrade it as you see fit. You just have to not use someone else's IP to do it. You have to use your own.
Agilent could choose to ship products without that functionality, but they make a business decision that it is cheaper to make many models with the same hardware, and differentiate them only by unlock codes/different firmware.
If you believe that you should be able to do what you want with physical items you own, any functionality included in a product you own should be fair game. If Agilent want differentiated products, perhaps they should sell products that are actually different.
But if Homedepot and ever other hardware store suddenly developed a technology that let them sell wood that worked great for many standard construction practices but would suddenly demand more money for artists or anyone doing anything usual with that material, one would could easily feel that one's world had become truncated.
I'd rather call that abuse than not-abuse.
The ability to buy a thing, an object, that you can do whatever the heck you want with (by yourself, in the private of your home), is the antidote for being serf to pay-by-what-we-think-it's-worth-to-you services.
Even you choose to purchase services instead of things, the existence of things keeps the service provider honest and oppositely the non-existence of things makes the serfdom more onerous.
If what they say is "if you add this extra functionality without our permission, we will sue you", it is not OK. This cripples peoples ability to innovate.
If they on the other hand say "This is the basic functionality, and you can buy this add on package for $400 if you want extra functionality", I have less problems with it. The latter opens up for third party addons, possibly being more innovative than the original addon software. What I find abusive is the attempts to prevent people form innovate using the law.
I think the fact that it's purely in software now only serves to highlight how market segmentation is a shitty practice. It's like planed obsolescence - just because it's standard practice, doesn't mean it's ok.
From my speculation, rather than the memory card carrying a binary (e.g. control code) that provides extra functionality, it's far more likely that the welding machine is inherently capable of working at a large range of frequencies, but the control software deliberately disallows these options without the SD card, which likely carries some serial# or decryption key.
A more suitable analogy would be a console game with so-called DLC that is already present on the disc. Or classic Casio fx-82ES => fx-991ES hack (OT: My copy of 82ES happens to be rev. A which is trivially hackable; Casio responded by producing a rev. B that is harder to hack).
I personally believe that at least modification of this sort for own use (i.e. not offering it as a service) should not be prosecuted. That is, if I own this awesome welding machine, it should be totally fine for me to reprogram it, regardless whether I changed only one bit or page in the Flash, or completely wrote code for it from scratch.
Unless it's connected to the internet and does some online verification of single use, it seems kind of pointless protection. I expect a dumped mmc card is already available on torrent trackers...
Edit: of course depends on which model it applies to. If it's for the $15k range, then I don't think anyone would care about extra $400. If it's for the $1k range however, it's going to be a lot of skilled, money saving individuals.
It could work like license keys for software before the internet. In this case it could be made a bit better if tied to a hardware identifier and verification could be done in hardware based on some unique id thing.
The problem then of course is that how much of the actual functionality goes through that "protection module"? They can put some hardened super secure module but if it just connects into the main functionality via a 1/0 wire, then the bypass will just be to cut that wire and install a fix there. (I've seen that in software as well, fancy shamncy public key license check followed by a simple "if not verified, then disable feature" check in main code).
I think the important part here is the legal protection. Sure they know people will bypass it. But they also know that they can no go after some (larger companies) if they need to and sue them because now the law is in their side.
If they are smart, each SD card will contain a unique file which signs the serial number of that SD card, so copying the contents of an SD card won't work, unless you can also copy the serial number.
Don't forget Tesla did this with some of their earlier Model S's. Preventing use of the full battery capacity on cheaper versions. It's obviously standard practice in all commercial software too. The whole idea of selling software depends on restricting how people use it - at the very least - not allowing them to copy it and give it away. The marginal cost of producing software is zero so you can't make money only charging for that. Probably the marginal cost of producing a welder is lower than they total cost too, so they need to recover it somehow.
Of course when you buy a Miller welder, you're paying for the brand name so you're not too concerned about price. Get any cheap Chinese one instead and you'll get the features are a "fair" price but without feeling so good about yourself.
I wonder what the price of entry is to that market. If they're doing something so obviously flawed and if the price of entry is low, it strikes me it'd be relatively easy to make something decent that isn't crippled and sell it with all the bells and whistles.
It's not too complex or expensive to manufacture or even design welders. But the problem is that the market is mostly B2B and thus dominated by "nobody got fired for buying XYZ" mentality of practically price-insensitive customers.
I don't think this type of DRM (you get what you pay for, it's an appliance) can be fully compared to DRM in a computer which is designed to limit the use of a computer.
I'm not sure how this is really a debate in a place like HN. We have a pretty clear picture of where we stand wrt proprietary DRM software. This doesn't appear any different to me.
why the downvote? Do we not all agree that DRM proprietary software is unethical? Did I miss something here?
I realize that big welding shops aren't going to drop the big two (Lincoln and Miller) overnight, but I think practices like this are really going to hasten the rise of Chinese upstarts making high quality IGBT welders. Once they (or a third party) starts offering good support and warranty guarantees it's going to be hard to compete with them when you employ sales practices like this.
For example, the Miller Syncrowave 210 shown in the video is $2,700, base price. I use one weekly, and it's a decent welder. Alternatively, one could get an Everlast PowerTig 250EX for $1,700 that comes with features missing from the Miller at a price that's $1,000 less. The Chinese manufacturers know their price point, and they're not going to leave out features supported by their hardware because they're hungry for the business. I think the way Miller is behaving is a sign of complacency, and it's going to come back to bite them.
I already find myself using the cheaper IGBT welder day to day because we don't have the SD card upgrade for the Miller and I like features like up-slope and down-slope that have been left out for product segmentation reasons.