$900 Robot Commits Adorable Seppuku, Showing Again How In The Modern Era You Don't Own What You Buy

from the very-expensive-paperweight dept

Here at Techdirt we've talked a lot about how in the modern, internet-connected era, you don't really own the things you buy. For over a decade we've shown how your digital books, music, or films can simply and quickly disappear without much recourse. The game console you've bought can be suddenly and mysteriously downgraded via firmware update, leaving you with a product that actually does less than the one you bought. And more and more frequently, companies are going further and completely bricking products they no longer want to support, leaving consumers with a pricey paperweight.

The latest case in point: many consumers shelled out upwards of $900 for a twelve-inch tall "social" robot by the name of Jibo. Started as a research project at MIT, Jibo was crowdfunded then marketed as the "the first social robot for the home." First sold in 2017, the robot offered some basic interactive functionality much like similar products, promising to offer a digital home assistant with a little more personality. Reviewers were generally not all that impressed, saying the product had charm but lacked functionality:

Elbowed out by better products, Jibo was ultimately forced to scuttle the effort, and last year sold off all of its assets to a VC firm. And because Jibo's owners were forced to shut down the servers that powered much of the robot's functionality, owners of the $900 robot have since reported that Jibo has been informing them that it's dying just a few years after it was created, delivering one final pre-programmed message before the lights go dark and consumers are left with a useless relic:

Consumers get a cute song and dance, but no recourse for the fact they bought a $900 robot that's now utterly useless, barring some creative hacking. It's yet another example of how in the internet of things era, endless attention is given to marketing and hype, and little to real-world questions like "what happens when the servers go dark?" or "why does this product have paper mache grade security?" By the time those questions are seriously asked, companies that hype and sell these kinds of products have already moved on to the next great thing, leaving consumers (and in the case of security -- the entire internet) left holding the bag.

Filed Under: iot, jibo, ownership, robots, social robot

Auto Finance Company Sues Massachusetts City Over Its Unconstitutional Sale Of Seized Vehicles

from the money-v-power dept

An opponent of asset forfeiture has arisen from an unexpected place. Honda's finance division has taken the city of Revere, Massachusetts to court over the seizure and sale of a vehicle it still technically owned.

American Honda Finance Corp., based in California, alleged in its lawsuit filed Feb. 12 in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts that its constitutional rights were violated when a Honda Civic was seized in 2016 by Revere's police department.

"Plaintiff brings this action to remedy a deprivation of its long-settled and fundamental rights to be free from unreasonable seizures and to due process of law under the United States Constitution," American Honda Finance Corp. said in its 13-page complaint.

The complaint [PDF] makes it clear the company thinks this is some bullshit: seizing and selling a vehicle that still belongs to the company holding the lien. Until the vehicle is paid off, Honda still owns the car. But Massachusetts law enforcement doesn't appear to care who owns the car so long as they get to profit from its sale. The narrative detailed in the lawsuit makes it clear zero effort was made to make the car's real owner aware of the city's plans for the seized car.

On or about November 2, 2016, HONDA obtained a purchase money security interest and lien in The Subject Vehicle.

On November 28, 2016, The Subject Vehicle was officially titled in the State of New York with Shanasia Hackworth recorded as the owner and HONDA recorded as the first priority lienholder.

On or about December 30, 2016, REVERE took possession and custody of The Subject Vehicle pursuant to REVERE’s police officers acting in the course of their duties as law enforcement officers.

On or about December 30, 2016, REVERE, through its police officers acting in the cause of their duties as law enforcement officers, and pursuant to laws enacted to further official state interests, directed Mario’s Service Center, Inc. to tow and detain The Subject Vehicle.

On or about December 30, 2016, Mario’s Service Center, Inc. towed The Subject Vehicle and retained The Subject Vehicle on behalf of REVERE as part of an “investigation.”

REVERE did not notify HONDA that The Subject Vehicle had been seized.

REVERE thereafter concluded its investigation. REVERE did not, thereafter, return The Subject Vehicle to HONDA or anyone else. Instead, REVERE authorized its agent, Mario’s Towing Service Center, Inc., to detain and dispose of the vehicle pursuant to Massachusetts G.L.c. 255, §39A.

REVERE did not notify HONDA that after the investigation ended that REVERE authorized Mario’s Towing Service Center, Inc. to detain and dispose of The Subject Vehicle.

REVERE did not ensure that its agent, Mario’s Towing Service Center, Inc., notified HONDA that REVERE had authorized detention and disposal of the Subject Vehicle.

On or about May 18, 2017, REVERE’s agent, Mario’s Towing Service Center, Inc., sold The Subject Vehicle and The Subject Vehicle was retitled through the Massachusetts Department of Transportation with HONDA’s lien not recorded on said title.

Under Massachusetts law the sale pursuant to Massachusetts G.L.c 255, §39A and subsequent retitling extinguished HONDA’s property interest in The Subject Vehicle.

At no time prior to the sale or retitling of The Subject Vehicle did REVERE or any person provide any notice to HONDA relating to The Subject Vehicle.

There's a genuine question of property interest in a vehicle whose title still resides with the financing company. This can't be the first time a company has complained about a vehicle of theirs being auctioned off without notice, but this is the first federal complaint I've seen directly challenging a state's seizure of vehicles from drivers who don't actually own the vehicles they're driving.

This was filed ten days before the Supreme Court held that certain forms of asset forfeiture violate Constitutional protections against excessive fines. Honda's complaint seems to anticipate the high court's displeasure with abusive forfeitures and pulls no punches in its description of the program the city of Revere participate in. (Emphasis in the original.)

Massachusetts G.L.c. 255, §39A effectuates the Commonwealth’s interest in enforcing traffic laws and in protecting the public from hazardous street conditions. The statute provides a means for the state to compensate private parties who assist the state by towing and storing vehicles at the direction of police. The statute has, however, fallen out of step with modern developments in constitutional law which confirm that a duly perfected security interest and lien in a vehicle is a constitutionally protected property right.

A program that takes property away from the property's true owner -- an entity completely disconnected from the underlying criminal activity/accusations -- appears to be a violation of the company's Constitutional rights, if not the greater protections given to property owners by the state's constitution. The suit alleges a host of violated rights, as well as conversion under state law, arguing the sale of the vehicle without notifying the lien holder is basically theft of Honda's property.

Is it going to take the deep pockets of pissed off corporations to finally make a serious dent in abusive forfeiture programs? It might. This case may be more tow-and-sell than most forfeitures, but the principle behind it -- the state depriving companies of their property without notice -- is identical. If this case adds to the judicial dialog on forfeiture programs, I'm all for it.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, cars, leasing, massachusetts, ownership, theft
Companies: honda

Florida Dept. Of Corrections Sued For Screwing Inmates Out Of $11.3 Million In Digital Purchases

from the you-don't-own-what-you-overpaid-for dept

Last fall, the Florida Department of Corrections decided it needed to enrich itself at the literal expense of its inmates. It signed a new contract with new provider of jailhouse entertainment, instantly making $11.3 million in purchased digital goods worthless. You don't own what you paid for, even at inflated prison prices.

The new contract with JPay rendered the purchased content unusable. Even the players purchased by inmates aren't technically theirs and must be returned to the vendor. Not that keeping the players would help much. The licensing agreements covering the content are only valid if the previous contractor is providing the service. Since it's not, the mp3s and ebooks can't be transferred to JPay devices.

Unsurprisingly, inmates are furious. So are their families -- the ones who paid extortionate rates to give their imprisoned family members a little music to enjoy. The DOC recognized this was a problem and created a portal for the filing of complaints related to this disappearance of purchased digital goods. That portal is going to be very useful in the upcoming lawsuit against the Florida DOC for screwing inmates out of their purchases. (h/t Boing Boing)

The Florida Department of Corrections is facing a potential class action over recently forcing inmates to forfeit millions of dollars worth of mp3 and other multimedia files purchased under a since-axed media player contract.

William Demler, a 74-year-old incarcerated man at South Florida Reception Center is the lead plaintiff in the case, which was filed in the northern U.S. District Court on Tuesday with the backing of the nonprofit legal firm, the Florida Justice Institute.

The lawsuit [PDF] says the Florida DOC violated its own contracting guidelines when it decided to prioritize its profits over the inmates' purchases.

As part of this bidding process, both the FDOC’s Invitation to Negotiate Contractual Services, as well as the FDOC’s Request for Proposal for Contractual Services, explicitly stated that compatibility with the FDOC’s prior vendor was a mandatory requirement of the contract, in order to ensure that prisoners would not bear the cost of the transition between vendors:

[T]he proposed system must allow for inmates who currently have a device and/or songs purchased from the current Contractor to transfer and/or obtain updated equipment and/or music compatible with the successful contractor’s Digital Music Player Program. It is the intent of the Department that the implementation of a new Digital Player Program to have little or no financial impact on inmates presently participating in the Department’s current program.

Obviously, that's not what happened. A new contractor was picked based on prison profit margin, disregarding the standards the DOC set for itself. On top of that, the previous contractor offered up its own false assurances about the longevity of purchased digital content.

In addition to touting the qualities of the digital media players themselves, at least one widely-distributed advertisement, which appeared on the digital media player order form itself, also touted various qualities of the Digital Music Player Program, including the following representation:

Browse, search and preselect songs from updated music catalogs holding millions of song titles representing a wide array of music genres. You have the ability to purchase and listen to unlimited music utilizing the re-download feature free of charge. Once music is purchased, you’ll always own it! (emphasis supplied).

The only concession the new vendor has made is one that solves none of the problems created by the new contract. For a fee, inmates can have their mp3s transferred to a new device or CDs, but those copies can only be sent to friends or family members who can hold onto the purchased content until the inmate is released. This means every inmate wishing to access the music and books they thought they owned will have to not only repurchase the content again, but the devices and accessories needed to access them.

The suit is probably a long shot, but it does highlight the bullshit engaged in by companies selling digital media that relies on a thicket of licensing to make its way to the end user. Promising anyone that their digital purchases will be around "forever" is so out of touch with the reality of the situation it should be considered fraudulent on its face. In this case, the planned obsolescence was accelerated by the DOC's desire for a better profit margin. If there's any justice, those profits will go towards replacing the purchased goods it took away from the inmates it houses.

Filed Under: copyright, department of corrections, digital goods, florida, inmates, mp3s, music, ownership
Companies: jpay

AI Writes Article About AI: Does The Newspaper Hold The Copyright?

from the the-monkey-gets-it dept

For many years, we wrote about the infamous monkey selfie copyright situation (and lawsuit) not just because it was hellishly entertaining, but also because the legal questions underlying the issue were likely to become a lot more important. Specifically, while I don't think anyone is expecting a rush of monkey-authored works to enter the market any time soon, we certainly do expect that works created by computers will be all over the damn place in the very, very near future (and, uh, even the immediate past). Just recently, IBM displayed its "Project Debater" offering, doing an AI-powered realtime debate against a human on the "Intelligence Squared" debates program. A few days after that, the Guardian used OpenAI to write an article about itself, which the Guardian then published (it's embedded about halfway down the fuller article which is written by a real life human, Alex Hern).

In both cases, the output is mostly coherent, with a few quirks. Here's a snippet that shows... both:

This new, artificial intelligence approach could revolutionize machine learning by making it a far more effective tool to teach machines about the workings of the language. Deep-learning systems currently only have the ability to learn something specific; a particular sentence, set of words or even a word or phrase; or what certain types of input (for example, how words are written on a paper) cause certain behaviors on computer screens.

GPT2 learns by absorbing words and sentences like food does at a restaurant, said DeepFakes’ lead researcher Chris Nicholson, and then the system has to take the text and analyze it to find more meaning and meaning by the next layer of training. Instead of learning about words by themselves, the system learns by understanding word combinations, a technique researchers can then apply to the system’s work to teach its own language.

Almost... but not quite.

Anyway, in the ensuing discussion about all this on Twitter, James Green asked the "simple" question of who is the "author" of the piece in question. The answer, summed up by Parker Higgins is:

This is why I think the monkey selfie case was so important. In determining, quite clearly, that creative works need a human author, it suggests that works created by a computer are squarely in the public domain. And while this seems to lead some (mainly lawyers) to freak out. There's this unfortunate assumption that many people (especially lawyers) seem to make: that every creative work must be "owned" under copyright. There is no legal or rational basis for such an argument. We lived for many years in which it was fine that many works entered life and went straight into the public domain, and we shouldn't fear going back to such a world.

This certainly isn't a new question. Pam Samuelson wrote a seminal paper on allocating ownership rights in computer-generated works all the way back in 1985 (go Pam!), but it's an issue that is going to be at the forefront of a number of copyright discussions over the next few years. If you think that various companies, publishers and the like are going to just let those works go into the public domain without a fight, you haven't been paying attention to the copyright wars of the past few decades.

I fully expect that there will be a number of other legal fights, not unlike the monkey selfie case but around AI-generated works, coming in the very near future. Having the successful monkey case in the books is good to start with, as it establishes the (correct) baseline of requiring a human. However, I imagine that we'll see ever more creative attempts to get around that in the courts, and if that fails, a strong push to get Congress to amend the law to magically create copyrights for AI-generated works.

Filed Under: ai, articles, copyright, monkey selfie, ownership, public domain
Companies: guardian, openai

Apple Didn't Delete That Guys iTunes Movies, But What Happened Still Shows The Insanity Of Copyright

from the different-but-still-bad dept

Last week we, like many others, wrote about the story of Anders G da Silva, who had complained on Twitter about how Apple had disappeared three movies he had purchased, and its customer service seemed to do little more than offer him some rental credits. There was lots of discussion about the ridiculousness -- and potential deceptive practices -- of offering a "buy" button if you couldn't actually back up the "purchase" promise.

Some more details are coming out about the situation with da Silva, and some are arguing that everyone got the original story wrong and it was incorrect to blame Apple here. However, looking over the details, what actually happened may be slightly different, but it's still totally messed up. Apple didn't just stop offering the films. What happened was that da Silva moved from Australia to Canada, and apparently then wished to redownload the movies he had purchased. It was that region change that evidently caused the problem. Because copyright holders get ridiculously overprotective of regional licenses, Apple can only offer some content in some regions -- and it warns you that if you move you may not be able to re-download films that you "purchased" in another region (even though it promises you can hang onto anything you've already downloaded).

And, here the situation is slightly more confusing because Apple actually does offer the same three movies -- Cars, Cars 2 and The Grand Budapest Hotel -- in both Australia and Canada, but apparently they may not be the identical "versions" of the film, as they may be slightly altered depending on the region.

And while this may be marginally better than completely removing his "purchased" films, it's still absolutely ridiculous. The CNET article linked above is sympathetic to the idea that Apple has to go to extreme lengths such as these to prevent "region hopping," and says that da Silva is just an "edge case" that "fell into a licensing crack." But, again, that's nonsense. This is digital content that he "purchased" using a "buy" button. It shouldn't matter where he is at some later date. He should still get access to those original files. That's what a purchase means. The fact that this might possibly in some cases mean that (OH MY GOSH!) someone in Canada can access a movie released in Australia when they're actually in Canada, well, uh, that seems like an "edge case" that a movie studio and Apple should deal with, rather than screwing over legitimate purchasers.

But, alas, we're left with yet another example of the insanity driven by excessive copyright, in which copyright holders get so overly focused on the notion of "control" that they feel the need to control absolutely everything -- including making sure that no wayward Canadians might (GASP!) purchase and download a movie meant for Australians. It's this overwhelming, obsessive desire to "control" each and every use that messes with so many people's lives -- including da Silva's -- and makes sure that the public has almost no respect at all for copyright. Give up a little control, and let the edge cases go, and maybe people wouldn't be so quick to condemn copyright for removing their own rights so frequently.

Filed Under: copyright, downloads, drm, itunes, licensing, ownership, regional restrictions
Companies: apple

Fugitive Fraudster Who Demanded Half Of Facebook Arrested After Three Years On The Run

from the tough-to-hide-in-the-age-of-facebook dept

It's been a while since we last wrote about Paul Ceglia. If you don't recall, way back in 2010, Ceglia suddenly claimed that years earlier, he had hired Mark Zuckerberg to do some software development, and bizarrely (and literally unbelievably), that part of the contract for Zuck to work on Ceglia's project... was an agreement to hand over 50% of Facebook, which didn't even exist yet. Making it more ridiculous, Ceglia then claimed some weird interest amounts, and therefore was demanding ownership of 84% of Facebook. The whole thing was nonsensical, and while Zuckerberg admitted he had done some work for Ceglia prior to starting Facebook, nothing about the supposed contract made any sense at all. Beyond the bizarre nature of the contract Ceglia claimed he had with Zuckerberg, it quickly became clear that other evidence Ceglia presented, including purported emails, didn't look real.

A year later, during the discovery process in the lawsuit, the actual original contract was found and it didn't mention Facebook at all, just as most people assumed. Instead, it became clear that Ceglia doctored their contract. Ceglia tried, weakly, to claim that even though the original was found on his computer during discovery, that it was actually Photoshopped and planted by Facebook. As you might imagine, literally no one believed that. It also probably didn't help that he kept some of the details of his plan in an email account called GetZuck.

Finally, in 2012, Ceglia was arrested for fraud. He was set to go to trial in 2015 when he disappeared -- apparently cut off his ankle bracelet and disappeared with his family. Late last week, however, it was reported that he had been found and arrested in Ecuador and was likely to be sent back to the US shortly.

I guess it's hard to just disappear in the age of Facebook. Even if you pretend to own a giant chunk of it.

Filed Under: fugitive, mark zuckerberg, ownership, paul ceglia
Companies: facebook

Tribune Kills Merger, Sues Sinclair For Its 'Unnecessarily Aggressive' Merger Sales Pitch

from the you-did-it-to-yourself dept

Sinclair Broadcast Group's $3.9 billion merger with Tribune Media has reached an inauspicious end. Tribune has formally announced that it's not only terminating the planned merger, but will be filing a lawsuit (pdf) against Sinclair for what the company states was an "unnecessarily aggressive" sales pitch to FCC regulators and the DOJ. According to Tribune, it's hoping to recoup its losses and "hold Sinclair accountable" for causing the companies' controversial merger to implode:

"In light of the FCC’s unanimous decision, referring the issue of Sinclair’s conduct for a hearing before an administrative law judge, our merger cannot be completed within an acceptable timeframe, if ever,” said Peter Kern, Tribune Media’s Chief Executive Officer. “This uncertainty and delay would be detrimental to our company and our shareholders. Accordingly, we have exercised our right to terminate the Merger Agreement, and, by way of our lawsuit, intend to hold Sinclair accountable."

If you recall, the merger was on life support after the FCC shoveled the merger off to an administrative law judge for review, a move traditionally seen as a death knell for such deals. The FCC was prompted, in part, by allegations from numerous critics on both sides of the partisan aisle alleging that the company had tried to use "sham" transactions to pretend the merger fell within media ownership limits.

As it stands, law prohibits any one broadcaster from reaching more than 38% of U.S. homes, a rule designed to protect local reporting, competition and opinion diversity from monopoly power. The Sinclair deal would have given the company ownership of more than 230 stations, extending its reach to 72% of U.S. households. Critics charge Sinclair attempted to skirt around this limit by trying to offload numerous stations to Sinclair-linked companies and allies, some of which had absolutely no broadcast experience, with an eye on simply re-acquiring them later at bargain-basement prices.

If you've watched the viral Deadspin video or John Oliver segment on Sinclair's creepy, facts-optional "news" reporting, you should have a pretty good idea why the merger was so controversial. It was, effectively, an attempt to dominate local broadcasting and fill the airwaves with what many have argued is little more than Trump-friendly disinformation.

Sinclair's efforts were buoyed by Ajit Pai's FCC, which had spent the better part of the last year attempting to neuter media consolidation rules in order to grease the skids for the deal. That included eliminating rules requiring a broadcaster have a physical local office, restoring obscure, un-needed regulations specifically to aid Sinclair's bid to limbo under media ownership rules (odd for a guy that endlessly whines about "unnecessary, burdensome regulations"), and even contemplating elimination of the media ownership cap entirely, authority the FCC doesn't actually have.

While the FCC tried to claim that the carefully-coordinated and times skid greasing was all just quirky happenstance, the effort was so blatant that it resulted in an ongoing FCC investigation into potential corruption and coordination by Pai. That investigation, in turn, likely helped contribute to Pai's about face on the deal, given it's abundantly clear that the agency head has post-FCC political ambitions (though his attacks on net neutrality may have something to say about that).

Granted while the deal is dead, the regulatory and market dysfunction that birthed it remains. And the massive FCC erosion of decades-old media consolidation rules also remains, paving the way to potentially even worse deals waiting just over the horizon.

Filed Under: ajit pai, fcc, media ownership, merger, ownership
Companies: sinclair, sinclair broadcasting, tribune, tribune media

Hey Mark Zuckerberg: Don't Lock Down Everyone's Data, Open It Up To Services That Give Your Users More Control Over Their Data

from the there-are-other-solutions dept

As we've been discussing all week, a lot of people are reacting to the wrong thing in the whole Facebook / Cambridge Analytica mess. The problem was not that Facebook had an open API -- but that its users were unaware of what was happening with their own data. Unfortunately, many, many people (including the press and politicians) are running with the narrative that Facebook failed to "protect" data. And, just as we warned, the coming "solutions" won't help matters, but will actually make them worse.

Case in point: when Mark Zuckerberg finally made his big press tour on Wednesday evening, he repeatedly told people that, the public has spoken and Facebook will lock down your data now.

I do think early on on the platform we had this very idealistic vision around how data portability would allow all these different new experiences, and I think the feedback that we’ve gotten from our community and from the world is that privacy and having the data locked down is more important to people than maybe making it easier to bring more data and have different kinds of experiences.

This is the wrong solution for two reasons: (1) It makes Facebook that much more central and dominant to online activities, making it that much more difficult for upstarts and competitors to compete and (2) it takes away power from the end users to do more with their own data. For all the people whining about Facebook having too much of your data, this is not the solution you want. This is effectively giving Facebook even more power over your data, not less.

If people were to take the time to actually understand the issue, then they wouldn't be pressuring Facebook to react this way. And there are better solutions: give people more access to their own data. That means, as Cory Doctorow suggested, the better way out is for Facebook to open itself up in a different way: to open itself up to third party app developers not to suck up data for marketing databases, but to give end users more control over their own data and how it is used.

People are so focused on Facebook sucking up their data, that they're responding by demanding Facebook be a better steward of their data... rather than demanding that they get to manage their own data.

Nearly a decade ago, EFF suggested a social media bill of rights that it hoped sites like Facebook would adopt. It included giving users transparency into who wants their data and who gets it, giving users full control over their data, and finally enabling them to export their data in a useable format to bring to other sites on their own terms. If we lived in such a world, then we wouldn't have to worry about the Cambridge Analytica situation, because users would know that some creepy personality test app was requesting their info, and they could deny it (or they could set filters that would automatically block it).

So, if Mark Zuckerberg really wants to respond to this crisis in a way that's helpful, he should be opening up his platform... to a different set of app developers. It shouldn't go to the developers who are siphoning up everyone's data, but to those who can provide tools for end users to have full transparency and control over their data.

Unfortunately, the political and media reality is that if Zuckerberg actually went down this path, he'd probably be slammed for "opening up" user data, rather than locking it down.

Filed Under: apis, competition, control, data, data portability, mark zuckerberg, ownership, transparency
Companies: cambridge analytica, facebook

Wireless Carriers, Hardware Companies Use Flimsy IOT Security To Justify Attacks On Right To Repair Laws

from the lobbyists-within-lobbyists dept

A few years ago, anger at John Deere's draconian tractor DRM birthed a grassroots tech movement. The company's lockdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM and the company's EULA prohibited the lion-share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair, or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.

The John Deere fiasco resulted in the push for a new "right to repair" law in Nebraska. This push then quickly spread to multiple other states, driven in part by consumer repair monopolization efforts by other companies including Apple, Sony and Microsoft. Lobbyists for these companies quickly got to work trying to claim that by allowing consumers to repair products they own (or take them to third-party repair shops) they were endangering public safety. Apple went so far as to argue that if Nebraska passed such a law, it would become a dangerous "mecca for hackers" and other ne'er do wells.

Wary of public backlash, many of these companies refuse to speak on the record regarding their attacks on consumer rights and repair competition. But they continue to lobby intensely behind the scenes all the same. The latest example comes courtesy of the "The Security Innovation Center," a new lobbying and policy vehicle backed by hardware vendors and wireless carriers. The group issued a new "study" this week that tries to use the understandable concerns over flimsy IOT security to fuel their attacks on right to repair laws.

The study starts out innocuously enough, noting how they hired Zogby to run a poll of 1015 users on consumer privacy and security concerns in the internet of broken things era:

"Almost two-in-three American consumers said that the explosive growth of Internet-connected products makes them more concerned about their privacy and security, the survey of 1,015 Americans found. And only 1 in 3 Americans expressed confidence that people they know would not be affected if one of their devices was hacked."

Which is understandable. Especially in an era where countless IOT companies value gee whizzery over privacy or security. But it doesn't take long for the real purpose of this study to reveal itself--demonizing efforts to break the monopoly over repair:

"These concerns have placed a focus on security when getting Internet-enabled products fixed: 84 percent value the security of their data over convenience/speed of service....More than 80 percent expect repair professionals to both provide a warranty for their repairs and demonstrate that they are trained or certified to fix their specific product. Further, 75 percent value warranty protections over convenience and 70 percent feel most comfortable having their products fixed by a manufacturer or authorized repair shop. Yet, only 18 percent can determine if an electronics repair shop is protecting their security and privacy."

In other words, the not so subtle message being sent by hardware vendors and wireless carriers is this: don't allow third-party or user self repair because you'll wind up hacked, or worse. That matches the same message being sent by Verizon, Apple, Microsoft and others as they try to convince the public that being able to access less expensive third-party repair vendors (or repair your own devices yourself) will result in reduced security and privacy, dogs and cats living together and the world being ripped off its axis.

Again, the "Security Innovation Center" isn't much of a center at all. It's basically just a lobbying and policy vessel created by a New York PR firm (Vrge), backed by other, existing lobbying and policy vessels (CTIA, CompTIA, NetChoice). It's such a thin veneer, the Center's press release lists its "executive director" as Josh Zecher, the guy who founded the PR outfit running the campaign. It's basically just the Russian nesting doll equivalent of lobbying and policy, all to obfuscate Apple's, Verizon's and other companies' blatant disdain for repair competition and consumer rights.

Filed Under: anti-circumvention, drm, iot, lobbying, ownership, right to repair, security

Apple, Verizon Continue to Lobby Against The Right To Repair Your Own Devices

from the monopolizing-repair dept

A few years back, frustration at John Deere's draconian tractor DRM resulted in a grassroots tech movement. John Deere's decision to implement a lockdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM and the company's EULA prohibited the lion-share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair, or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.

The John Deere fiasco resulted in the push for a new "right to repair" law in Nebraska. This push then quickly spread to multiple other states, driven in part by consumer repair monopolization efforts by other companies including Apple, Sony and Microsoft. Lobbyists for these companies quickly got to work trying to claim that by allowing consumers to repair products they own (or take them to third-party repair shops) they were endangering public safety. Apple went so far as to argue that if Nebraska passed such a law, it would become a dangerous "mecca for hackers" and other rabble rousers.

In the wake of Apple's recent iPhone battery PR kerfuffle (in which it claimed it throttled the performance of older iPhones to protect device integrity from dwindling battery performance), longer than normal repair waits have resulted in renewed interest in such laws. A new bill that would make it easier for consumers to repair their own electronics or utilize third-party repair shops is quickly winding its way through the Washington state legislature. That bill would not only protect the consumers' right to repair, but prevent the use of batteries that are difficult or impossible to replace:

"Starting in 2019, the bill would ban the sale of electronics that are designed “in such a way as to prevent reasonable diagnostic or repair functions by an independent repair provider. Preventing reasonable diagnostic or repair functions includes permanently affixing a battery in a manner that makes it difficult or impossible to remove."

Washington State Representative Jeff Morris says the bill was born directly from frustration by consumers and third-party repair shops in the wake of Apple's PR face-plant late last year:

"Morris told me this provision in the bill came out of a conversation with an independent repair shop owner in his district, who noted that many electronics now use glued-down batteries, which makes them difficult to repair and much harder to recycle, because batteries are flammable when shredded. There is currently no easy way for recyclers to remove the batteries from MacBook Pros at scale, for instance.

“With Apple phones in particular, they glue the battery in the case, so for me, that sounds like a purposeful attempt to make it so you couldn’t repair the phone,” Morris said. “It helps accelerate the path of those devices to the waste stream. So we’re trying to keep the philosophy our state is behind, which is recycle, repair, reuse."

Needless to say, Apple is furiously lobbying to kill Washington State's new law. As are fourteen other lobbying organizations representing hardware companies. Verizon's also lobbying against the bill (via the CTIA and the Telecommunications Industry Association), obviously concerned such a law would hurt the company's phone repair and insurance business it runs with Asurian. Unfortunately for Verizon and Apple, with 12 states introducing such bills last year and 17 such laws already proposed so far this year, this isn't an issue that's going away anytime soon.

Filed Under: drm, eula, iphone, iphone battery, ownership, right to repair, washington
Companies: apple, verizon