Stealing: The double standard?

[EEVblog]

This talk of various hardware mods reminds me of some Fluke models that require no modification to any electrical component.   The Fluke 10 and 11, for example have the PCB conductive pads, and the software for the features of the model 12, but the rubber buttons are shaved and covered with plastic.  All one must do is drill a hole in the plastic case and push the button that's already there.   

That also dates back to the earliest original model 70's. The TouchHold button was missing, but the pads were still there, and a zero-ohm resistor set the function.

Dave.

[saturation]

As another wrote, because modern manufacturing can do so much so cheaply, what requires payment must be specified now in a contract.

If it can be used in only 1 device to unlimited devices to a single owner, or even multiple owners aka site license, it depends on the contract.  If you disagree with the terms, then don't buy it.

[hammy]

When I buy an item I want to do whatever I want to do with it. Repairing, tweaking, upgrading, everything!
See the Self-Repair Manifesto -> http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto

[jucole]

See the iFix-It Manifesto -> http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto

superb concept!

[Jon Chandler]

Another way of looking at hardware is to consider printers or razors.  Both may be sold at a loss to tie you into buying expensive supplies from the manufacturer (ink cartridges or razor blades).

If you refill the ink cartridges or find a pyramid thingee to restore your razor blades (no, I don't think it works but some people do), the manufacturer is loosing money.  That's a risk he takes!

[jancumps]

On a lighter note:

How many of the people that pimped the Rigol are actualy using it to measure the higher frequencies, except for the one time to check if the upgrade worked? Just wondering.

Now back to topic.

[M. András]

Another way of looking at hardware is to consider printers or razors.  Both may be sold at a loss to tie you into buying expensive supplies from the manufacturer (ink cartridges or razor blades).

If you refill the ink cartridges or find a pyramid thingee to restore your razor blades (no, I don't think it works but some people do), the manufacturer is loosing money.  That's a risk he takes!

you forgot to mention the fact that they made the inkjets the way they work, wasting ink at every power on, every print start, just to buy another catridge sooner, if i could i would gladly refill it with regulat paint but unfortunatly this wont work...

[alm]

This is not about IP rights.
My view is clear and simple.
- If you pay for something, be it hardware or software, you should a) own that copy, and b) have the right to personally do with that copy whatever you want.
- If you don't pay for it, and you use it, you are stealing it.

It's funny how the copyright lobbies attempts to get illegal copying classified as piracy or stealing appears to be successful among lay people.

This falls apart as soon as you consider different business models. If you download Kicad or gEDA, it's obviously legal and morally right. It's also hard to see a problem with downloading the free version of Eagle. Is hacking this version to remove artificial limits crossing the line, even though you acquired it? What about paying whatever they're charging for a commercial license to the limited version, and then hack it to remove the limitations. Is this any different because you gave them at least some money?

[Pentium100]

you forgot to mention the fact that they made the inkjets the way they work, wasting ink at every power on, every print start, just to buy another catridge sooner, if i could i would gladly refill it with regulat paint but unfortunatly this wont work...

And this is the reason I keep repairing my old HP PSC 2500CM (made in 1999) instead of buying a new printer. The cartridge refill lock does not work properly and the cartridges are quite easy to refill.

[free_electron]

i have a different take on this subject ..

-if you make money off a product you buy ( whether a cad tool , scope , meter or anything else ) : BUY IT ! don't hack it don't crack it. You made money of something you designed/built using the too. give the developers of that tool their share. it's a one time thingie from you to them while your product is repeat for you. you have NO excuse if you try to sidestep it. The hammer should fall and fall hard if you try.

-if it's for hobby : you are in the grey zone if all you do is flick a bit in the EEprom or set the clock back to get extra 'runtime'. But i can understand you doing it. most likely manufacturers won't prosecute because they would not have sold you the more expensive option anyway. Throwing the how-to in the wide open is another thing..... it's fun to have the bragging rights but it can be seen as 'enabling' others to steal... and that's a whole different can of legal worms... at that point you are causing harm to the manufacturer. It gets worse if it involves ripping a chunk of code or a 'key' from  more expensive machine and backporting it to a cheaper machine that does not have that module... that is clearly stealing. you have no rights to that chunk of code. hobby or not.

if it's software : buy what you can. the devs need money too. otherwise we'll all have to run broken source stuff and compile our own chain of tools before we can get anything done (fine if that's your thing, but it ain't my thing. i use screwdrivers and have zero interest in learning to make screwdrivers. software is a screwdriver to me) .
There is excellent software out there at reasonable prices. Many of these tools are made by small companies. Altium Is a small company. So is McNeel associates ( Rhino3D ). 5K is a lot of money but it is a kick-ass tool. People spend 5K on new rims and a spoiler for their car .... while the car already comes with wheels and a spoiler does exactly what it is called : spoil the look of the car. Again , if that's your thing : go for it . it ain't mine. That 5K ( actually i paid 2.9 K a few years ago when they had a super-promo ) is money well spent and spread over the years of usage isn't all that much. But i agree with dave : they should make a sch/pcb/sim version only ( remove fpga/ip and compilers ) for 995$. don't cripple it apart from maybe max 4 or 6 layer and max size 20cmx20cm board. that would cover a lot of users. And they would move a truckload of licences... all the other low end software out there would be wiped off the table in one blow.

Now there are other legal ways to get your hands on hi-end stuff :
Sign up for a course at a university so you get a student card. You learn something new ( even if you flunk every course) and you can get your hands on 100$ licences from all the big guns : Adobe, Autodesk , Altium , Solidworks ,Matsoft and many others.

Lot's of licences have a dual install clause that let's you use at home. Altium does, so does microsoft office ! corporate licences of ms office include use-at-home. just pay for shipping of the cd. 45$ gets you office Pro ( including access , publisher and the other tools not found in 'home' )

[EEVblog]

-if you make money off a product you buy ( whether a cad tool , scope , meter or anything else ) : BUY IT ! don't hack it don't crack it. You made money of something you designed/built using the too. give the developers of that tool their share. it's a one time thingie from you to them while your product is repeat for you. you have NO excuse if you try to sidestep it.

Unless you fundamentally believe in the concept of owning the hardware product you buy, and you should be allowed to do anything you want with it. And you also (often) believe that such hardware crippling is wrong.
If we (as a society) believe such things are wrong, then we have the right to try and shape industry by way of some good'ol civil disobedience 
That's how society works.

Dave.

[HLA-27b]

Whew this is a long winded thread...!
Here are a few points that formed while reading this far:

1 - It is their problem to fix, you don't have to!  Seriously, if a company can not succeed in preventing their software from being pirated maybe they should leave the business. This is not some sort of negativism, it is simply a reality of the market. If your business model relies on people not copying your code you are in the wrong business. People will copy your program. Competition will steal code. Lawyers will sue. Deal with it or GTFO. Same goes for any other industry out there.
Cant make a safe airplane? How about making cooking utensils?
Can't secure your safe? You don't belong in banking.

2 - "Intellectual property" is not property, the very notion is wrong. If it was all these companies should have been paying royalties to the descendants of Babbage, Turing, Maxwell, Einstein and the like... Some company coming forth and implying that their intellectual property is somehow more important than these guys is preposterous.

EDIT: Even if we accepted the existence of value, this value only extends to the source code itself, not to the binary blob that the end user receives, which is not maintainable, can not be peer reviewed or checked against the existence of malicious code.

All that a software company can claim is that they provide a tool of limited usability, which is acceptable as long as the price is right.
The fact that the company employs 1000 people (half of them lawyers) to produce this tool is simply a manufacturing inefficiency and does not concern us in the slightest. If the same tool could be produced with three people the company would fire the rest of them without squinting. Therefore seeking moral grounds in "keeping the coders employed" is futile. 
Hell, I wish somebody was concerned with keeping me employed but this is not how life works.

3 - Confusing human rights with companies. This seems to be an issue here. People seem to impart human qualities to companies. Companies obviously take advantage of that in their marketing by claiming that they are not "evil" but "good" or implying that they will be somehow "hurt" if you don't pay up, yearly.
A company is obviously an abstract construct and has no human qualities nor human rights. Confusion arises because companies employ people so most of us assume that companies somehow represent the people they employ. Nothing can be farther than the truth! Companies do not represent their employees. Employees do not represent the company. Sales matter, customers don't.  So better to keep perspective there.

[JoeyP]

1 - It is their problem to fix, you don't have to!  Seriously, if a company can not succeed in preventing their software from being pirated maybe they should leave the business. This is not some sort of negativism, it is simply a reality of the market. If your business model relies on people not copying your code you are in the wrong business. People will copy your program. Competition will steal code. Lawyers will sue. Deal with it or GTFO. Same goes for any other industry out there.
Cant make a safe airplane? How about making cooking utensils?
Can't secure your safe? You don't belong in banking.

I've seen various versions of this statement in this thread and others. To me, that's like saying "If I can defeat the alarm system on a car, then I am entitled to steal it". No. You're not. It's still theft. You can use various rationalizations to sooth your conscience, but when you benefit from the efforts of others, against their will, and without compensating them, it's theft.

[HLA-27b]

I've seen various versions of this statement in this thread and others. To me, that's like saying "If I can defeat the alarm system on a car, then I am entitled to steal it". No. You're not. It's still theft. You can use various rationalizations to sooth your conscience, but when you benefit from the efforts of others, against their will, and without compensating them, it's theft.

On the other hand, you as a car manufacturer knew from the very beginning that an unstealable car is impossible to manufacture.
Yet you went ahead and built the car fully knowing that your only defense against me stealing your car is to weigh heavy on my conscience... 

And yet you went ahead and welded the hood shut, you made the car go slower and burn more and put only one seat!..and made me buy a new one in a year because the tires are not replaceable!

Of course I am going to steal it. Not only that but I am going to teach my neighbor to steal cars as well. Also I am going to reverse engineer your engine and give it to the aftermarket boyz.

What did you expect? Flowers?

Relevant:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/19p38w/apple_microsoft_and_adobe_to_front_government/

[JoeyP]

Thanks for clarifying your position.

[AlfBaz]

I've seen various versions of this statement in this thread and others. To me, that's like saying "If I can defeat the alarm system on a car, then I am entitled to steal it". No. You're not. It's still theft. You can use various rationalizations to sooth your conscience, but when you benefit from the efforts of others, against their will, and without compensating them, it's theft.

That's not what we're talking about!

To draw a analogous parallel between a car and our crippled hardware, its like buying a sports vehicle and then changing the ecu rom with a beefed up one and calling that stealing

[Ed.Kloonk]

Routers are a great example of this. You could get after market firmware for certain routers such as the Linksys wrt ones. The company winked in acknowledgement and as Mike said, quietly enjoyed the fact that it's one more product that wasn't sold by the competition. They were on the verge of embracing hacking routers openly...

The problem came in when the original software (and accompanying hardware) started to be closely scrutinised and revealed some serious short falls in both.

The company responded by squashing non-genuine firmware like a annoying bug and commenced several other non-hacker-consumer-friendly practises and frankly, has been putting out shittier routers ever since.

[JoeyP]

That's not what we're talking about!

Then I wasn't referring to your comments. Many different positions have been expressed in this thread. I stand by mine.

[NiHaoMike]

Routers are a great example of this. You could get after market firmware for certain routers such as the Linksys wrt ones. The company winked in acknowledgement and as Mike said, quietly enjoyed the fact that it's one more product that wasn't sold by the competition. They were on the verge of embracing hacking routers openly...

The problem came in when the original software (and accompanying hardware) started to be closely scrutinised and revealed some serious short falls in both.

The company responded by squashing non-genuine firmware like a annoying bug and commenced several other non-hacker-consumer-friendly practises and frankly, has been putting out shittier routers ever since.

Which leads the users to buy from other companies like Asus and Buffalo...

[Ed.Kloonk]

Routers are a great example of this. You could get after market firmware for certain routers such as the Linksys wrt ones. The company winked in acknowledgement and as Mike said, quietly enjoyed the fact that it's one more product that wasn't sold by the competition. They were on the verge of embracing hacking routers openly...

The problem came in when the original software (and accompanying hardware) started to be closely scrutinised and revealed some serious short falls in both.

The company responded by squashing non-genuine firmware like a annoying bug and commenced several other non-hacker-consumer-friendly practises and frankly, has been putting out shittier routers ever since.

Which leads the users to buy from other companies like Asus and Buffalo...

Maybe. Too bad for the unaware suckers that will eventually want to sell their unhackable old router on ebay.

[JuKu]

To draw a analogous parallel between a car and our crippled hardware, its like buying a sports vehicle and then changing the ecu rom with a beefed up one and calling that stealing

If the content of that beefed up rom came from the car manufacturer, then yes, that is stealing. [I have a hard time believing that the rom content could be developed by an independent company and be cheaper than one from manufacturer. I guess that is in theory possible, but... ]

[AndyC_772]

You might be surprised, then. ECU mapping is absolutely commonplace and there are plenty of well equipped, reputable companies who do it. The benefits of a mapped ECU can include better MPG, more power, improved smoothness and lower CO2 emissions - and all the more so if the map is refined specifically for the engine it will be used with rather than a generic off-the-shelf one.

[jancumps]

You might be surprised, then. ECU mapping is absolutely commonplace and there are plenty of well equipped, reputable companies who do it. The benefits of a mapped ECU can include better MPG, more power, improved smoothness and lower CO2 emissions - and all the more so if the map is refined specifically for the engine it will be used with rather than a generic off-the-shelf one.

does it impact guarantee when the motor blows up for some -unrelated - reason?

[JuKu]

You might be surprised, then. ECU mapping is absolutely commonplace and there are plenty of well equipped, reputable companies who do it. The benefits of a mapped ECU can include better MPG, more power, improved smoothness and lower CO2 emissions - and all the more so if the map is refined specifically for the engine it will be used with rather than a generic off-the-shelf one.

One learns something every day... Thanks!

[houdini]

id say its more like hot wiring YOUR OWN CAR.  I see nothing wrong with that.  If you want to pull it to bits that's fine.  And just because a company loses profit does not  mean its stealing.  Is it stealing from digikey every time you take apart some old junk for parts?