[sdiy] TCPA / Palladium -- more trouble for DIYers & hardware hackers

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow all.

Machinerygod, I'd hate to be a nail if you were holding the hammer. For all 
you tiredness you managed to cover about two years of ground extremely 
succinctly. What you're actually looking at is an actual real life 
conspiracy. Not your crop circles by aliens conspiracy or the one about 
Elvis is really alive and working for the CIA. This is an actual real life 
ordinary garden variety conspiracy but somewhat up scale. Fritz hollings is 
taking a wad from the so called entertainment industry to go against the 
very people who actually elected him. By definition, that's a conspiracy. 
Whilst it can't be proven, it is most likely that the two parties have 
conspired.

But it is really our fault for letting them. We voted for him. Or someone 
just like him. We are all idiots. We all unwittingly play the game. We are 
divided and conquered. If human beings had an ounce of real intelligence 
we'd realize that if we all banded together, we'd have some power. But none 
of us want to become political because we just want to do whatever the fuck 
we do. So we let them ass fuck us every time and hope, even prey that it 
won't hurt so much this time round.

See it had always been a basic tenet of electronics that if you bought a 
radio or something, you could do what ever 'n' fuck you wanted with it. If 
you wanted to modify it and put a bigger speaking in it, so be it. It's 
your radio. Consumer Laws in Australia state that even software is a 
product like any other. No matter what the EULA says, there are consumer 
laws that override it. If someone sold you a program to do a certain job 
and it didn't do it, then shrink wrap or no shrink wrap, you're entitled to 
your money back. Etc Etc.

If you buy a Sony Play station, it's your right to open it up and make any 
modifications you want to it. It's YOUR DEVICE. YOU OWN IT. The only right 
the manufacturer has after market is to refuse to warrantee the device. You 
can't prevent anyone from reverse engineering your product. Even though 
people here let Sony walk all over them. Just like they walk all over 
everyone else. But where Sony does have rights is if the "MOD CHIP" or 
whatever still contains code written by Sony's surfs. And you then sell it. 
It's the "Sell" component that does the trick and it's always been like 
that. This would seem fundamentally fair enough. It's not even a "Fair Use" 
issue.

But where this really affects us here, is that the line is increasingly 
blurred. Suppose you produced a mod for recent synth (or something) that 
was all hardware but! Allowed the synth to do something of which the 
manufacturer subsequently claimed was specifically disallowed. In the mean 
time you've published your circuit on your web site and thousands of people 
had downloaded it. Now you've suddenly found your self right in the middle 
of DMCA territory. And you didn't even make a dime.

Can't happen? Already has. There was a guy who had a web site devoted to 
those sony robot dog things. What do they call them? Fleabags or something? 
These things cost like 3 grand a piece and he had 3 of them alone. He's 
published a pile of mods that made them do stuff that Sony never even 
dreamt of. Why would they? They're a big Japanese zibatzus. They have no 
imagination. Just look at their synths these days. But anyway, Sony set 
their attack lawyers on this guy. He wasn't even using any of their code 
but the DMCA and all things given, he pulled the site. There were thousands 
of complaints from other fleabag owners but it all fell on deaf ears at Sony.

On the other hand, it was a different story when Sony ripped off that 
independent techno guy. (Names escape me for now but I'm sure someone will 
be able to fill me in.) Essentially what happened was some guy in Europe (I 
think) did this techno song and for some reason it became really popular. I 
don't even think it was released on a label or anything but he had a minor 
hit on his hands. A few weeks later, Sony released a clone of it by some 
un-knowns they'd cobbled together somewhere and were promoting the shit out 
of it. No-one know's what Sony's motivation was for trying to fuck this 
poor bastard over like that but you can probably make a good guess. 
Eventually someone got behind this guy and called Sony out. I forget what 
sony's lame-assed excuse was but it was pathetic. No reparations were 
offered and the damage was done.

And then they wanna tout DRM and CRAP and every other consumer straight 
jacket they can get their government stooges to put in place. These people 
are all total hypocrites but they don't even care. And lawyers never signed 
a Hippocratic oath compelling them to do right by society so sony have no 
trouble bullying people and throwing their weight around. Even though it's 
more morally and socially irresponsible than leaving your 8 year old alone 
in the company of a priest.

In the movie "Crash and burn" individuals were not allowed to own a 
computer. They were obviously allowed to own devices which they could not 
program but only governments and corporations were allowed to own actual 
computers. And if you remember Max Headroom, they had these Orwellian 
televisions with no off buttons. It's ironic that all this stuff paves the 
way to that future.

No DIY. No innovations. No individuality.

Well, for the unwashed masses at least.

And what's the point of building synths anyway, if no-one's ever going to 
hear them. And that they're just going to become land fill when you die 
anyway. Because there's no outlet. There's no channels left that the 
multi-nationals haven't seized and blocked access to. They already try to 
make you pay THEM for the right to make YOUR music.

And still I find all of it hysterically funny. After all they've done to 
us, and are attempting to do in the near future, we still go out and buy 
their product. Not only do we buy it but we promote it for them by telling 
people how good it is.

As the great Scottish Philosopher Alexander Harvey said. "Give my 
compliments to the chef."

Be absolutely Icebox.

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