Poll

What do you think is ok?

You should pay for everything.
18 (7.3%)
Tweaking hardware is ok, downloading or tweaking software is not.
22 (8.9%)
Tweaking hardware and software is ok, if it is mine I can do what I want.
157 (63.3%)
Everything is ok as long as it saves me money.
31 (12.5%)
Something else.
20 (8.1%)

Total Members Voted: 239

Author Topic: Stealing: The double standard?  (Read 122599 times)

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Offline AlfBaz

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #275 on: February 13, 2014, 01:35:08 pm »
By your intentions. I'm sure any court would see that you didn't act out of curiosity, you tried to hack access to something you didn't buy a license for. On the other hand, if you do that to a signal you found in your radio telescope and see images of green seven legged creatures, you'd be the scientist of the year.
That or it's the SciFi channel ;D
 

Offline madires

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #276 on: February 13, 2014, 01:40:37 pm »
From the German point of view :-)

- When you buy something, you enter to implied agreements. It is not necessary to read or sign anything. You buy a cup of coffee, and there are a lot of legally binding agreements on both sides, implied by the act. No signed agreements are needed.

If you're unhappy with the user licence you may return the product. The licence agreement may not be unfair or discriminate the buyer beyond some limit. If it does, the problematic parts of the agreement are invalid. If the buyer is a company less pretective rules apply. Microsoft lost a lot of lawsuits over the years resulting in some nice benefits for local buyers (OEM licenses etc.). The latest war is about reselling used licences of standard software including volume licences. Microsoft is losing again.

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- Hacking keys to get something you didn't pay for is illegal (payTV, turning demo software to full version etc).

Circumventing DRM is illegal, not hacking. Owning hacked software isn't illegal, but distributing hacked software is. Tools helping with both fall into a legal gray area.

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- Embedded software is software too, with the same protections.

We differentiate several types of software which also has an impact on the rules/laws applicable.

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Some analogies that I think are relevant: You buy a set-top box, but you are not free to do what you want with it. Specifically, you can't unlock channels that you did not pay for. You expect that keygen program turns your scope to a real higher end model, whereas overclocking a CPU, the expectation is that  the manufacturer guarantees the operation to a limit your paid for and you are experimenting about how high you can go. Totally different issues.

The analogy you've choosen isn't one ;-) Unlocking DRM protected channels is completely different (by means of law) from hacking option codes for your DSO. The latter would be not illegal over here.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #277 on: February 13, 2014, 02:54:18 pm »
You shouldn't be messing with your own hardware either to get channels you didn't pay for.
If data is broadcast, I capture it, study it and find that modifying that data reveals moving pictures and sounds, how is the onus on me to determine the source of this data and any licensing requirements behind it?
As an individual that is not really a problem. If you are going to make money from selling hardware/software or writing about how to view paid channels for free then you may find yourself in court (at least in Europe). Just like the case about the magazine article I mentioned earlier.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline JuKu

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #278 on: February 13, 2014, 03:14:25 pm »
You shouldn't be messing with your own hardware either to get channels you didn't pay for.
If data is broadcast, I capture it, study it and find that modifying that data reveals moving pictures and sounds, how is the onus on me to determine the source of this data and any licensing requirements behind it?
As an individual that is not really a problem. If you are going to make money from selling hardware/software or writing about how to view paid channels for free then you may find yourself in court (at least in Europe). Just like the case about the magazine article I mentioned earlier.
Off topic and bit of a conspiracy theory, but a guy who I trust and who should know said that the reason for putting such a heavy penalty (up to three years in prison) for owning hardware for payTV decryption is not to protect TV companies, it is to get a reason to confiscate any computer without warning if needed.
http://www.liteplacer.com - The Low Cost DIY Pick and Place Machine
 

Offline Phaedrus

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #279 on: February 13, 2014, 03:50:26 pm »
People used to buy lower-end CPUs with the intention of overclocking them to match the performance of higher CPUs.

Then the "fun' of overclocking became the main reason for doing it.

Then Intel embraced overclocking and now sells CPUs that cost more for the privilege of being able to overclock them.


The TE companies will embrace hacking soon enough, if they can see any profit in it.
"More quotes have been misattributed to Albert Einstein than to any other famous person."
- Albert Einstein
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #280 on: February 13, 2014, 03:57:54 pm »
Any lost sales is down in the noise, and it's very arguable that hacks actually have a net positive effect on sales.

Exactly this. A business will just say "we need a scope to do X" and buy one. A hobbyist will consider what they can afford and hacks make expensive scopes more attractive. Even for those of us in relatively well off countries a mid range scope like an Agilent 2000 or Rigol 2000 series is not pocket change even for the base models
For several companies I have worked for a scope north of €2000 is a big expense.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Rigby

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #281 on: February 13, 2014, 04:09:37 pm »
In the US, EU, and AU (at least) modifying hardware you own for your own purposes is not illegal.  Anyone can hack their own PS3 hardware to do whatever they want.  You are not always allowed to distribute tools needed for others to make the changes though, and you're never allowed to distribute the intellectual property of others without their consent.

Software is another thing entirely, because most of the time, if you pay for software, you pay for the right to use the software, and you do not pay for ownership of the software.  It isn't yours to fiddle with.  This usually includes software running on hardware you purchased, such as oscilloscopes.  In the PS3 example, you lose the right to use the PS3 operating system to connect to the PlayStation Network at all if you've modified the hardware, even though you own the hardware outright, and you're not allowed to modify firmware at all, because it isn't yours.  This includes tricking the firmware into doing things it isn't meant to do, even if you do it without modifying the firmware at all.  These are called exploits and if using exploits is against the EULA for the software in question then that's enforceable as you losing the right to use the software you paid for the right to use, without refund or compensation.  Continued use of the software after you've violated the EULA is considered theft of service and is punishable under the law.

This is what is so dangerous about licensing agreements.  Intellectual property in and of itself doesn't feel right to me.  I should be able to fiddle with software on hardware I purchased.  It's in my bloody possession!  It's the notion of intellectual property and software license (rather than purchase) that protect software authors who wish to "sell their software" -- sorry, license their software for use by the end user.

Stealing has two halves.  The entity that gains and the entity that loses.  Sometimes there is loss without gain (such as intentional destruction of someone else's stuff), sometimes there is gain without loss (such as software piracy, when the pirate would not have purchased under any circumstances), and the usual theft where an item exchanges possession without an agreement between parties.  They are all stealing, technically, though legally usually intentional destruction of someone else's stuff can go by a lot of other names (arson, vandalism, graffiti, lots of others.)

morally it's a huge debate I won't get into.  It isn't really possible to define that anyway as it will vary by culture and even generations within cultures.
 

Offline Rigby

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #282 on: February 13, 2014, 04:12:21 pm »
The TE companies will embrace hacking soon enough, if they can see any profit in it.

If they can see it as a business opportunity (which it is) then they will.  I'd pay extra for access to an API that let me write my own protocol decoders, for example.
 

Online hans

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #283 on: February 13, 2014, 09:25:58 pm »
What does the ownership of software actually mean? Is it the compiled executable? Or the source code?  I think (simply put) it's the source code and the permission to compile/distribute executables. So I actually only acquire permission to use/run the executable they supply me.

Software is so often defended as a black box. You may only double click on the icon on your computer desktop, click the buttons inside the windows and do nothing else with it. "Don't touch it, it's our IP!"

Whereas if I have got a hardware device and don't like to press the power button, there is little to stop me from changing that around by automating it with a relay, either internally or externally.

Moreover, I am pretty certain Dutch law prescribes that if you have got a piece of software, which you have the full rights to own&use (valid license and stuff), and want to create/maintain interoperability between your own software, then you're 'allowed' to reverse engineer (disassemble) the software to figure out how it works, so your own software can adopt/react to it. However you may not release this information, nor may you create a product which competes with the original.

It almost says jailbreaking your iPhone to run own apps (that are not from the app store) is not illegal, but it's a grey area as it doesn't say anything about modification of original software. Apple (but any other company , like Microsoft or Nokia Symbian) will claim it's (disassembly, decompilation, etc.) not allowed by any stretch of the imagination, but probably is nonsense.
Because modification is not (yet) mentioned: I would argue that to increase the interoperability between a DSO and me I need to modify the branch-if-conditions code in the scope to unlock all serial decoders and bandwidth.[/sarcasm]

There are some examples where hacked software is distributed and sometimes even promoted (although not always supported) by the original creators. I take some examples from games, like Just Cause 2 Multiplayer Mod or Skyrim Script Extender. These mods all rely on hacking the original binary/game engine on the fly (not on disk, but in memory) with clever memory signature scanning, function hooks, so game code calls to their mod instead and changes the behavior of the software. Thus enables them to create what they want to do. They however, did not modify the original binary!
This is done all over the place, most original Half Life 2 mods work this way too.. Not to mention cheat programs like trainers. And arguably even more dirty, "anti-cheating tools" use very similar tools to those of game modders&hackers to protect their game from cheaters. Fight fire with fire.

In case of Just Cause 2, this has been acquired with reverse engineering and other clever hack techniques, and is actually picked up by the official developers.

As for software "licenses", I think this is an interesting video:
For me personally software licenses sounds like, if you don't ask, you don't get no as an answer.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2014, 09:41:04 pm by hans »
 

Offline peter.mitchell

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #284 on: February 14, 2014, 07:27:34 am »
I buy a car, i choose 0 optional extras.
No foot well lighting. No aux input on the stereo. No auto-dimming headlamps ect.
I get home and find that in the footwell, there are sockets, with bulbs in them, there is the 3.5mm input jack for the stereo in the fascia, there are the sensors in the headlamps.
I google around and see you can turn these features on by pressing some keys on the car stereo and turning the key on and off.
I do this and enable those features.

Is this illegal? Is this stealing?
 

Offline CM800

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #285 on: February 14, 2014, 08:27:59 am »
My feels are simple:

If you can do it, do it.

IF the manufacture does not like what you did, it is their job to make a better system to try prevent you from doing so.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #286 on: February 14, 2014, 08:56:50 am »
There are case examples to all of the points leading to my conclusions.

Not in the test equipment industry, and that is all we are talking about here. Because ti is not the same market or the same circumstances.

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Didn't Rigol stop making the 2000 series and change it to 2000A, which is not hackable? (I might be wrong on this, I am not looking for a new scope and haven't followed.) On the other hand, they don't seem to care very much, as the "Cease and Desist" letter hasn't come. And they might even be happy for their market share on the low end scopes - or maybe not, the -A model speaks otherwise. It would be nice to get a Rigol spokesman to talk about this!

Sure, most manufacturers will usually block up holes in the next release, because that's what big companies do.
But other than that they don't really care.

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But certainly, this is one of the cases where the law is more strict than individual hobbyists sense of what is right.

There is no case law in this example for the test equipment industry, and no state or federal laws. So as far as the "law" is concerned, it has essentially no say on the matter until a suitable goes to court and gets a ruling. You can't just extrapolate other cases from other industries and circumstances and assume they apply here.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #287 on: February 14, 2014, 08:58:02 am »
IF the manufacture does not like what you did, it is their job to make a better system to try prevent you from doing so.

Or simply not make the scopes hackable in the first place by software upgrading hardware. That is a very deliberate choice and risk they take, and they know it.
 

Offline CM800

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #288 on: February 14, 2014, 09:36:59 am »
IF the manufacture does not like what you did, it is their job to make a better system to try prevent you from doing so.

Or simply not make the scopes hackable in the first place by software upgrading hardware. That is a very deliberate choice and risk they take, and they know it.

 Exactly my point!
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #289 on: February 14, 2014, 10:13:10 am »
Human society is fast becoming one big joke with it's extreme pettiness, it really is crazy.

This is an electronics forum full of nerds, it's what we do!
 

Offline AlfBaz

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #290 on: February 14, 2014, 10:23:45 am »
There is no case law in this example for the test equipment industry, and no state or federal laws. So as far as the "law" is concerned, it has essentially no say on the matter until a suitable goes to court and gets a ruling. You can't just extrapolate other cases from other industries and circumstances and assume they apply here.
I haven't studied this in great detail but as far as Australia is concerned, they seem to be borrowing bits and pieces from different acts such as the copy right act 1968 which doesn't seem to gel with what we are talking about.

So this is how I think it works in Australia. You are bang on with your statement, there appears to be no law against it and it can only be dealt with in a civil law suit.
"Associations" and "committees" which try and make themselves seem like legal entities but are not statutory bodies and are comprised of large companies such as MS, apple, adobe etc... have produced documents and studies outlining what they deem is wrong and will take to court where they will argue patent and/or copyright infringement

One of their documents (iGEA which is referred to as IEEA on the au govs consumer law website) actually talks about "mod chips" citing the playstation, as one of the things that can trigger a lawsuit. They also go on to say how the mod can cause "safety" issues for the consumer (clutches at straws)

 
 

Offline GEuser

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #291 on: February 14, 2014, 04:07:10 pm »
Its the Nerd-Burglars (nerdburglars) that one has to watch out for .

Nerdburglars mimic nerds , they burglarize , steal the identity of the nerd , nerds i cannot have a case against , burglars can hang !

See nerds have a very natural sense of what is what and what could be what with no actual "cause" for a dollar or other , first is naturally , then if a dollar or fame or other insidious events happen "so it is" , but nerburglars steal , mimic , imposterize , the good name of nerds solely for the latter mentioned above First!

Just ask anyone  :blah:  :blah:
Soon
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #292 on: February 15, 2014, 02:05:39 am »
I am a self confessed hacker. I have been hacking for 38 years.

By hacking, I modify equipment or code to make to work differently. I steal nothing and I don't access anything illegally. It is my right to modify equipment that I bought for myself in any way I want, providing that equipment does not break the law.

It is the reckless media and the public who have demonised hackers. They commit slander against the hackers who don't break the law (almost all hackers). Anyone who thinks hackers are evil people, need some re-education  :box: because they they have been brainwashed and are offensive.

Maybe Dave could produce some pro-hacker T-shirts with an electronics theme.





« Last Edit: February 15, 2014, 05:11:24 am by VK3DRB »
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #293 on: February 15, 2014, 08:03:42 am »
Maybe call yourself a 'senior tweaker' instead of a hacker.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline microbug

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Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #294 on: February 15, 2014, 08:52:54 am »
Here's my take:

I'm 14 years old. My 'income' is pocket money and mowing my grandmother's lawn. I try to save my money with the intent of buying hardware, but I have no intention if doing so for software simply because I don't have enough. I would never steal a piece of hardware but, unless there is a decent open source version available, I am fine pirating software.

Once I have enough money to just buy the hardware/software I will, but in the mean time I can't afford it. I would happily modify the software on my hardware to enable features that the manufacturer has disabled.
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #295 on: February 15, 2014, 09:46:25 am »
It is a sliding scale, I recognize microbug's comments from earlier years, back in the Atari ST time I was also pretty short on cash and the software I had was almost all illegal.
Nowadays I have a pretty good income so if I want a game or piece of software I can buy it.
But for instance movies I don't first buy them, I download them first and watch them (which is not illegal in our country) and if I like them I still buy them (if I know I want to watch them another time). That is because I did buy them in the past and more then 60% was crap so I had this closet full of movies that sucked, took up valuable space and nobody wanted to buy them 2nd hand. 
For professional software that costs 1000's of $'s I unfortunately don't use them or buy them because the benefits don't outweigh the costs.
I would love to use those pro compilers for instance I can use at work but not in my lifetime I am spending that kind of money for them. If I could make money out of it and earn the investment back I probably would do that but that is not the case. I regret that those software houses do not sell non-commercial (maybe even outdated) versions without support for a reasonable price. Some do, most don't. I even contacted some to find out what they could do for me and without support, non commercial license I would get 40% off, still having to pay $2k for a license. Not going to happen.
 

Offline madires

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #296 on: February 15, 2014, 02:12:49 pm »
By hacking, I modify equipment or code to make to work differently. I steal nothing and I don't access anything illegally. It is my right to modify equipment that I bought for myself in any way I want, providing that equipment does not break the law.

I'm absolutely with you!

Quote
It is the reckless media and the public who have demonised hackers. They commit slander against the hackers who don't break the law (almost all hackers). Anyone who thinks hackers are evil people, need some re-education  :box: because they they have been brainwashed and are offensive.

That's really a problem, because most people think that hackers are bad kids breaking in to computer systems. The TV told us so. But it's totaly misleading since hacking involves much more. Just repeat wrong assumptions again, again and again and people start to believe those.
 

Offline madires

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #297 on: February 15, 2014, 02:14:55 pm »
Maybe call yourself a 'senior tweaker' instead of a hacker.

It's called Hacker Spaces, not Tweaker's Inn or Tinkerbell's Tea Room :-)
 

Offline Galenbo

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #298 on: February 17, 2014, 07:36:22 pm »
I buy a car, i choose 0 optional extras.
No foot well lighting. No aux input on the stereo. No auto-dimming headlamps ect.
I get home and find that in the footwell, there are sockets, with bulbs in them, there is the 3.5mm input jack for the stereo in the fascia, there are the sensors in the headlamps.
I google around and see you can turn these features on by pressing some keys on the car stereo and turning the key on and off.
I do this and enable those features.

How do you do this for Airco and a Towing bracket? What's the code for the hack to get these?
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
 

Offline 8086

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Re: Stealing: The double standard?
« Reply #299 on: February 17, 2014, 07:47:31 pm »
I buy a car, i choose 0 optional extras.
No foot well lighting. No aux input on the stereo. No auto-dimming headlamps ect.
I get home and find that in the footwell, there are sockets, with bulbs in them, there is the 3.5mm input jack for the stereo in the fascia, there are the sensors in the headlamps.
I google around and see you can turn these features on by pressing some keys on the car stereo and turning the key on and off.
I do this and enable those features.

How do you do this for Airco and a Towing bracket? What's the code for the hack to get these?

It makes no difference since we're talking about hardware you already purchased, and making use of it without requiring any further physical items.
 


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