#code: 1201

[nurais-thatdoll]

…why. Did you do that.

Who are you.

@august-falling-leaves

Slumber party¡

Hello again, little brother!

I'm Nura, why did you ask?

[that-moon-anon-120]

HO I DID NOT THINK SHE WOULD-

.. ah. Shoot. Now it'll be long...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I have spent a quarter century obsessed with the weirdest corner of the weirdest section of the worst internet law on the US statute books: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that makes it a felony to help someone change how their own computer works so it serves them, rather than a distant corporation.

Under DMCA 1201, giving someone a tool to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work" is a felony punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine – for a first offense. This law can refer to access controls for traditional copyrighted works, like movies. Under DMCA 1201, if you help someone with photosensitive epilepsy add a plug-in to the Netflix player in their browser that blocks strobing pictures that can trigger seizures, you're a felon:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017Jul/0005.html

But software is a copyrighted work, and everything from printer cartridges to car-engine parts have software in them. If the manufacturer puts an "access control" on that software, they can send their customers (and competitors) to prison for passing around tools to help them fix their cars or use third-party ink.

Now, even though the DMCA is a copyright law (that's what the "C" in DMCA stands for, after all); and even though blocking video strobes, using third party ink, and fixing your car are not copyright violations, the DMCA can still send you to prison, for a long-ass time for doing these things, provided the manufacturer designs their product so that using it the way that suits you best involves getting around an "access control."

As you might expect, this is quite a tempting proposition for any manufacturer hoping to enshittify their products, because they know you can't legally disenshittify them. These access controls have metastasized into every kind of device imaginable.

Garage-door openers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Refrigerators:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

Dishwashers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/03/cassette-rewinder/#disher-bob

Treadmills:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

Tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

Cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty

And even printer paper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#dymo-550

DMCA 1201 is the brainchild of Bruce Lehmann, Bill Clinton's Copyright Czar, who was repeatedly warned that cancerous proliferation this was the foreseeable, inevitable outcome of his pet policy. As a sop to his critics, Lehman added a largely ornamental safety valve to his law, ordering the US Copyright Office to invite submissions every three years petitioning for "use exemptions" to the blanket ban on circumventing access-controls.

I call this "ornamental" because if the Copyright Office thinks that, say, it should be legal for you to bypass an access control to use third-party ink in your printer, or a third-party app store in your phone, all they can do under DMCA 1201 is grant you the right to use a circumvention tool. But they can't give you the right to acquire that tool.

I know that sounds confusing, but that's only because it's very, very stupid. How stupid? Well, in 2001, the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the EU into adopting its own version of this law (Article 6 of the EUCD), and in 2003, Norway added the law to its lawbooks. On the eve of that addition, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister involved:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

The minister praised his law, explaining that it gave blind people the right to bypass access controls on ebooks so that they could feed them to screen readers, Braille printers, and other assistive tools. OK, I said, but how do they get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?

No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.

Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.

No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.

Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?

Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally – without any help from anyone else – figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.

That is what is meant by a use exemption without a tools exemption. It's useless. A sick joke, even.

The US Copyright Office has been valiantly holding exemptions proceedings every three years since the start of this century, and they've granted many sensible exemptions, including ones to benefit people with disabilities, or to let you jailbreak your phone, or let media professors extract video clips from DVDs, and so on. Tens of thousands of person-hours have been flushed into this pointless exercise, generating a long list of things you are now technically allowed to do, but only if you are a reverse-engineering specialist type of computer programmer who can manage the process from beginning to end in total isolation and secrecy.

But there is one kind of use exception the Copyright Office can grant that is potentially game-changing: an exemption for decoding diagnostic codes.

You see, DMCA 1201 has been a critical weapon for the corporate anti-repair movement. By scrambling error codes in cars, tractors, appliances, insulin pumps, phones and other devices, manufacturers can wage war on independent repair, depriving third-party technicians of the diagnostic information they need to figure out how to fix your stuff and keep it going.

This is bad enough in normal times, but during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, hospitals found themselves unable to maintain their ventilators because of access controls. Nearly all ventilators come from a single med-tech monopolist, Medtronic, which charges hospitals hundreds of dollars to dispatch their own repair technicians to fix its products. But when covid ended nearly all travel, Medtronic could no longer provide on-site calls. Thankfully, an anonymous hacker started building homemade (illegal) circumvention devices to let hospital technicians fix the ventilators themselves, improvising housings for them from old clock radios, guitar pedals and whatever else was to hand, then mailing them anonymously to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#medtronic-again

Once a manufacturer monopolizes repair in this way, they can force you to use their official service depots, charging you as much as they'd like; requiring you to use their official, expensive replacement parts; and dictating when your gadget is "too broken to fix," forcing you to buy a new one. That's bad enough when we're talking about refusing to fix a phone so you buy a new one – but imagine having a spinal injury and relying on a $100,000 exoskeleton to get from place to place and prevent muscle wasting, clots, and other immobility-related conditions, only to have the manufacturer decide that the gadget is too old to fix and refusing to give you the technical assistance to replace a watch battery so that you can get around again:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24255074/former-jockey-michael-straight-exoskeleton-repair-battery

When the US Copyright Office grants a use exemption for extracting diagnostic codes from a busted device, they empower repair advocates to put that gadget up on a workbench and torture it into giving up those codes. The codes can then be integrated into an unofficial diagnostic tool, one that can make sense of the scrambled, obfuscated error codes that a device sends when it breaks – without having to unscramble them. In other words, only the company that makes the diagnostic tool has to bypass an access control, but the people who use that tool later do not violate DMCA 1201.

This is all relevant this month because the US Copyright Office just released the latest batch of 1201 exemptions, and among them is the right to circumvent access controls "allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment":

https://publicknowledge.org/public-knowledge-ifixit-free-the-mcflurry-win-copyright-office-dmca-exemption-for-ice-cream-machines/

While this covers all kinds of food prep gear, the exemption request – filed by Public Knowledge and Ifixit – was inspired by the bizarre war over the tragically fragile McFlurry machine. These machines – which extrude soft-serve frozen desserts – are notoriously failure-prone, with 5-16% of them broken at any given time. Taylor, the giant kitchen tech company that makes the machines, charges franchisees a fortune to repair them, producing a steady stream of profits for the company.

This sleazy business prompted some ice-cream hackers to found a startup called Kytch, a high-powered automation and diagnostic tool that was hugely popular with McDonald's franchisees (the gadget was partially designed by the legendary hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang!).

In response, Taylor played dirty, making a less-capable clone of the Kytch, trying to buy Kytch out, and teaming up with McDonald's corporate to bombard franchisees with legal scare-stories about the dangers of using a Kytch to keep their soft-serve flowing, thanks to DMCA 1201:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Kytch isn't the only beneficiary of the new exemption: all kinds of industrial kitchen equipment is covered. In upholding the Right to Repair, the Copyright Office overruled objections of some of its closest historical allies, the Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association, and Recording Industry Association of America, who all sided with Taylor and McDonald's and opposed the exemption:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/us-copyright-office-frees-the-mcflurry-allowing-repair-of-ice-cream-machines/

This is literally the only useful kind of DMCA 1201 exemption the Copyright Office can grant, and the fact that they granted it (along with a similar exemption for medical devices) is a welcome bright spot. But make no mistake, the fact that we finally found a narrow way in which DMCA 1201 can be made slightly less stupid does not redeem this outrageous law. It should still be repealed and condemned to the scrapheap of history.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[nurais-thatdoll]

We Decided to do something about it!^^

It took me a while to remove the dead body¡

I’m imagining wren coming in like that one meme with the guy bringing pizzas and opening the door to pure chaos

you should

[errant-heron]

shirt that says 'I violate Section 1201(a) of Title 17 of the Code of Laws of the United States of America safely, often, and extremely well'

[n30n-allavita]

To read ahead: https://www.wattpad.com/story/374748075?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=link&utm_content=story_info&wp_page=story_details&wp_uname=Neontolife]

//It’s also on Ao3

"Would you shut the hell up?!" A voice yelled at no one in particular. The group slowly quieting to look at the source of the voice. "We only have a few shots at this to not f*** it up. So either you pay attention or leave now because I will not be hauling any of your a**es more than I already have 'ta. Got it?"

------- Ebbot City, North Side at an old rusty plant shop. 38023, US -------

Time: 00:31 XX/XX/203X

Presumably the Present....code source.....Unknown

Weather: Stormy

The speaker snapped their eyes around the group. Making intense contact with each member to ensure none of them held any wariness for the task at hand. After seemingly finding nothing they sighed and began again, softer now that they didn't need to yell over anyone else. "Now, this is how I want this to go. I- 01-16000-- Will sneak in through the laundry exhaust to try and locate 00-1201 as fast as I can while 02-11--'s group will fall to the front to draw attention there as I'll have 03-215000 and 04-112000 will be on support to take out their systems. All others know their team leaders and will follow their instructions. As you all know if things go south- which it shouldn't I trust your leaders will fall into Plan Omega. Everything clear?"

Simple grunts and nods followed after their remarks.

"Good" The voice confirmed. "Now get into position. We don't have much time."

[[01 02 03 04 05 06 00(surface) oo(void) numbers based on when the character appears

each underground section is split into 3's

Hp number

lastly Lv ]]

...\

...

...\

...

Present day...\

...

...\

...

...\

...

7:32 am...\

Home. Or well it was about to be, whether I liked it or not. The muffled sounds of running feet along hardwood floors and loud conversations greeted my mind as its groggy engine began to hum. The gears turning as my thoughts got to work processing my surroundings without needing to needlessly blind myself. One.......two.....make that 4 pairs of feet running in the hall. If I knew anything they'd be told off for their commotion soon enough. Wait- my gears worked a bit harder as I recognized the voice that slowly got clear enough to understand.

"what have I said about running in the halls?! Especially on visitation days! Now hurry to your rooms and get dressed. I will not have you in your pajamas when our guests arrive- Henry!!! You put that down right now!" The voice I recognized to be our care takers. Better known as Ms. Moody to the kids due to her emotions constantly fluctuating. Her heels clicked down the hall presumably after Henry who no doubt had found something he shouldn't have. Perhaps security's boyplay magazine. The door to my room creaked open with the soft sounds of humming as someone began their day in the shared space.

I'll probably have to get up now...otherwise I risk a far more jarring wake up call within the next 10 minutes. So with much protest in my mind I begrudgingly opened my eyes. Although it was short lived as I clamped them shut as the blinding lights hit my dilated eyes a bit too fast for my liking. Pulling my blanket up over my face and easing my eyes open to slowly adapt to the world around me at my own pace. My side ached from being still too long, so my best remedy was to merely roll over and ease the blanket down as I let my eyes scan the room. The humming stopped before I truly could get into my thoughts though.

"You should get up. I know you're awake fruity." The sickeningly sweet voice called out. I couldn't stop the grimace from forming on my face from the nickname my sweet angel of a roommate chose to call me. "If you don't hurry you won't get any warm water for your shower. With today being Visitation, Moody is having everyone 'TiP tOp ShaPE'."

The small airy chuckle escaped my lips at his poor attempt at a Ms Moody impression. His voice was pretty close but his pre-puberty pitch was likely his only downfall. I slowly sat up and stretched out, groaning as my limbs felt like they stretched for miles. Hitting and soothing my every ache with slow satisfaction that came each morning. My absolute only reason for waking up at all. Besides food of course.

"Not sure why that should matter to me. I haven't been picked in all my time here and I doubt that'll suddenly change now." my voice surprised me slightly, deeper and scratchier than I remembered it being. But I'm sure that's nothing water couldn't fix in an instant. Finally I managed to get my legs to work and slide off my bed. A shiver crawling up my back as my barefeet came in contact with the ice below me labeled "the floor".

"Well never say never I suppose. Maybe we will finally be free of you by the end of the day." His response was far as he dug in their closet.

"hardy har har. With your luck I doubt it." I quipped. A hum was all I got in response so I took that as my que to get into the shower. Whoop de doo.

I usually loved showers but with the orphanages heater there was never a guarantee that your shower would love you back. Many of the kids held candy bets to see how long the last kids shower would stay warm. I typically enjoyed staying out of those, my candy being far too precious to simply bargain away. But watching the bets happen was pretty fun. The reigning winner nicknamed "Cavity" due to how much candy she had won against the other kids. She once even got one of the kitchen ladies to join in. That was by far the most entertaining match. But now it was my turn to face the timer that was the heater. What would my luck me today. The nozzle creaked as I turned it on. Swiftly I dropped my attire and jumped in, not willing to waste any of the hot water. Almost losing myself to the comforting warmth before the reminder of last time crossed my mind. The scream I let out from the cold water had me under scrutiny for almost a month! So with a brief slap to my cheeks- my face ones- my mind was snapped into the zone.

Let the race begin.

- D -

||1073 Words.||

[nurais-thatdoll]

Ahh, you're still as stubborn..

[Pull out a metal pipe]

COME HERE

Hey~!^^

You can't escape this one¡

nope, nope nope

[nurais-thatdoll]

S0 Uh... Wh3n W1ll Y0u B3 Br1ng1ng Th3 R34l Nur4 B4ck?

@creature-of-the-corruption

Wh- Creature??? You're worried about me too???

Have done so!^^

[that-moon-anon-120]

Whoops...

Well they're gonna be on line for a while....

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Are the means of computation even seizable?

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH in TOMORROW (May 15) at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. More tour dates (London, Manchester) here.

Something's very different in tech. Once upon a time, every bad choice by tech companies – taking away features, locking out mods or plugins, nerfing the API – was countered, nearly instantaneously, by someone writing a program that overrode that choice.

Bad clients would be muscled aside by third-party clients. Locked bootloaders would be hacked and replaced. Code that confirmed you were using OEM parts, consumables or adapters would be found and nuked from orbit. Weak APIs would be replaced with muscular, unofficial APIs built out of unstoppable scrapers running on headless machines in some data-center. Every time some tech company erected a 10-foot enshittifying fence, someone would show up with an 11-foot disenshittifying ladder.

Those 11-foot ladders represented the power of interoperability, the inescapable bounty of the Turing-complete, universal von Neumann machine, which, by definition, is capable of running every valid program. Specifically, they represented the power of adversarial interoperability – when someone modifies a technology against its manufacturer's wishes. Adversarial interoperability is the origin story of today's tech giants, from Microsoft to Apple to Google:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

But adversarial interop has been in steady decline for the past quarter-century. These big companies moved fast and broke things, but no one is returning the favor. If you ask the companies what changed, they'll just smirk and say that they're better at security than the incumbents they disrupted. The reason no one's hacked up a third-party iOS App Store is that Apple's security team is just so fucking 1337 that no one can break their shit.

I think this is nonsense. I think that what's really going on is that we've made it possible for companies to design their technologies in such a way that any attempt at adversarial interop is illegal.

"Anticircumvention" laws like Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act make bypassing any kind of digital lock (AKA "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM") very illegal. Under DMCA, just talking about how to remove a digital lock can land you in prison for 5 years. I tell the story of this law's passage in "Understood: Who Broke the Internet," my new podcast series for the CBC:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/#bruce-lehman

For a quarter century, tech companies have aggressively lobbied and litigated to expand the scope of anticircumvention laws. At the same time, companies have come up with a million ways to wrap their products in digital locks that are a crime to break.

Digital locks let Chamberlain, a garage-door opener monopolist block all third-party garage-door apps. Then, Chamberlain stuck ads in its app, so you have to watch an ad to open your garage-door:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Digital locks let John Deere block third-party repair of its tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

And they let Apple block third-party repair of iPhones:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

These companies built 11-foot ladders to get over their competitors' 10-foot walls, and then they kicked the ladder away. Once they were secure atop their walls, they committed enshittifying sins their fallen adversaries could only dream of.

I've been campaigning to abolish anticircumvention laws for the past quarter-century, and I've noticed a curious pattern. Whenever these companies stand to lose their legal protections, they freak out and spend vast fortunes to keep those protections intact. That's weird, because it strongly implies that their locks don't work. A lock that works works, whether or not it's illegal to break that lock. The reason Signal encryption works is that it's working encryption. The legal status of breaking Signal's encryption has nothing to do with whether it works. If Signal's encryption was full of technical flaws but it was illegal to point those flaws out, you'd be crazy to trust Signal.

Signal does get involved in legal fights, of course, but the fights it gets into are ones that require Signal to introduce defects in its encryption – not fights over whether it is legal to disclose flaws in Signal or exploit them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

But tech companies that rely on digital locks manifestly act like their locks don't work and they know it. When the tech and content giants bullied the W3C into building DRM into 2 billion users' browsers, they categorically rejected any proposal to limit their ability to destroy the lives of people who broke that DRM, even if it was only to add accessibility or privacy to video:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

The thing is, if the lock works, you don't need the legal right to destroy the lives of people who find its flaws, because it works.

Do digital locks work? Can they work? I think the answer to both questions is a resounding no. The design theory of a digital lock is that I can provide you with an encrypted file that your computer has the keys to. Your computer will access those keys to decrypt or sign a file, but only under the circumstances that I have specified. Like, you can install an app when it comes from my app store, but not when it comes from a third party. Or you can play back a video in one kind of browser window, but not in another one. For this to work, your computer has to hide a cryptographic key from you, inside a device you own and control. As I pointed out more than a decade ago, this is a fool's errand:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

After all, you or I might not have the knowledge and resources to uncover the keys' hiding place, but someone does. Maybe that someone is a person looking to go into business selling your customers the disenshittifying plugin that unfucks the thing you deliberately broke. Maybe it's a hacker-tinkerer, pursuing an intellectual challenge. Maybe it's a bored grad student with a free weekend, an electron-tunneling microscope, and a seminar full of undergrads looking for a project.

The point is that hiding secrets in devices that belong to your adversaries is very bad security practice. No matter how good a bank safe is, the bank keeps it in its vault – not in the bank-robber's basement workshop.

For a hiding-secrets-in-your-adversaries'-device plan to work, the manufacturer has to make zero mistakes. The adversary – a competitor, a tinkerer, a grad student – only has to find one mistake and exploit it. This is a bedrock of security theory: attackers have an inescapable advantage.

So I think that DRM doesn't work. I think DRM is a legal construct, not a technical one. I think DRM is a kind of magic Saran Wrap that manufacturers can wrap around their products, and, in so doing, make it a literal jailable offense to use those products in otherwise legal ways that their shareholders don't like. As Jay Freeman put it, using DRM creates a new law called "Felony Contempt of Business Model." It's a law that has never been passed by any legislature, but is nevertheless enforceable.

In the 25 years I've been fighting anticircumvention laws, I've spoken to many government officials from all over the world about the opportunity that repealing their anticircumvention laws represents. After all, Apple makes $100b/year by gouging app makers for 30 cents on ever dollar. Allow your domestic tech sector to sell the tools to jailbreak iPhones and install third party app stores, and you can convert Apple's $100b/year to a $100m/year business for one of your own companies, and the other $999,900,000,000 will be returned to the world's iPhone owners as a consumer surplus.

But every time I pitched this, I got the same answer: "The US Trade Representative forced us to pass this law, and threatened us with tariffs if we didn't pass it." Happy Liberation Day, people – every country in the world is now liberated from the only reason to keep this stupid-ass law on their books:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

In light of the Trump tariffs, I've been making the global rounds again, making the case for an anticircumvention repeal:

https://www.ft.com/content/b882f3a7-f8c9-4247-9662-3494eb37c30b

One of the questions I've been getting repeatedly from policy wonks, activists and officials is, "Is it even possible to jailbreak modern devices?" They want to know if companies like Apple, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, and John Deere have created unbreakable digital locks. Obviously, this is an important question, because if these locks are impregnable, then getting rid of the law won't deliver the promised benefits.

It's true that there aren't as many jailbreaks as we used to see. When a big project like Nextcloud – which is staffed up with extremely accomplished and skilled engineers – gets screwed over by Google's app store, they issue a press-release, not a patch:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/nextcloud-accuses-google-of-big-tech-gatekeeping-over-android-app-permissions/

Perhaps that's because the tech staff at Nextcloud are no match for Google, not even with the attacker's advantage on their side.

But I don't think so. Here's why: we do still get jailbreaks and mods, but these almost exclusively come from anonymous tinkerers and hobbyists:

https://consumerrights.wiki/Mazda_DMCA_takedown_of_Open_Source_Home_Assistant_App

Or from pissed off teenagers:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23378541/the-og-app-instagram-clone-pulled-from-app-store

These hacks are incredibly ambitious! How ambitious? How about a class break for every version of iOS as well as an unpatchable hardware attack on 8 years' worth of Apple bootloaders?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/25/mafia-logic/#sosumi

Now, maybe it's the case at all the world's best hackers are posting free code under pseudonyms. Maybe all the code wizards working for venture backed tech companies that stand to make millions through clever reverse engineering are just not as mad skilled as teenagers who want an ad-free Insta and that's why they've never replicated the feat.

Or maybe it's because teenagers and anonymous hackers are just about the only people willing to risk a $500,000 fine and 5-year prison sentence. In other words, maybe the thing that protects DRM is law, not code. After all, when Polish security researchers revealed the existence of secret digital locks that the train manufacturer Newag used to rip off train operators for millions of euros, Newag dragged them into court:

https://fsfe.org/news/2025/news-20250407-01.en.html

Tech companies are the most self-mythologizing industry on the planet, beating out even the pharma sector in boasting about their prowess and good corporate citizenship. They swear that they've made a functional digital lock…but they sure act like the only thing those locks do is let them sue people who reveal their workings.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/14/pregnable/#checkm8

[swpc-bot--unoffical]

ALERT: Geomagnetic K-index of 5 (G1)

Space Weather Message Code: ALTK05 Serial Number: 1716 Issue Time: 2025 Mar 13 1201 UTC ALERT: Geomagnetic K-index of 5 Threshold Reached: 2025 Mar 13 1159 UTC Synoptic Period: 0900-1200 UTC Active Warning: Yes NOAA Scale: G1 - Minor NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 60 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude. Induced Currents - Weak power grid fluctuations can occur. Spacecraft - Minor impact on satellite operations possible. Aurora - Aurora may be visible at high latitudes, i.e., northern tier of the U.S. such as northern Michigan and Maine.

[hkxytech]

Siemens 6GK5766-1GE00-7DA0 Industrial Wireless LAN

Siemens 6GK5766-1GE00-7DA0 IWLAN Access Point, SCALANCE WAM766-1, 1 radio, 2.4/5 GHz, IEEE 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6), 2 N-Connect connections, iFeatures support via CLP, 1201 Mbps (gross) per radio, 1x 10/100/1000 Mbps M12 socket, redundant 24 V DC, M12 L-coded , PoE, IP65, -30…+60 ??C, CLP slot, DI/DO, A-coded, observe national approvals! Cert ID: MSAX65-W1-M12-E2, FCC ID: LYHMSAX65V1 operation outside…

[machineryequipment]

Global Healthcare Barcode Printer Market Size, Trends & Growth Opportunity, By Type (Dot Matrix Printer, Laser Printer, Ink Jet Printer, and Thermal Printer),By Application (Clinical application, and Non-Clinical Application ),By Region and Forecast till 2030

Overview

The Global Barcode Printer Market size is estimated at USD 4.52 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 5.55 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 4.18% during the forecast period 2030

The healthcare barcode printer market has gaining popularity owing to its clinical application and non-clinical application. It is expected to boost the global healthcare barcode printer market growth. This technology offer error-free data collection as well as improved patient safety. Thus, the increase in need to reduce medication errors and related healthcare expenditure is positively influence the market growth during this forecast period. Furthermore, continuous technological advancements and increase in government legislations on the use of barcode technology are expected to propel the global healthcare barcode printer market growth.  Moreover, Increase in demand from barcode printer in chemical as well as healthcare industry expected to fuel the market growth in near future.

Market Segmentation

Global Healthcare Barcode Printer Market is fragmented into type such as Dot Matrix Printer, Laser Printer, Ink Jet Printer, and Thermal Printer. Further, market is fragmented into application such as Clinical application, and Non-Clinical Application.

Also, Global Healthcare Barcode Printer Market is segmented on the basis of five regions such as North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa.

Market key Players

Various key players are profiled in this report such as Bluebird Inc,   Zebra Technologies Corporation, Toshiba Tec Corporation, Sato Worldwide, Jadak, Honeywell International Inc, Godex, Datalogic S.P.A, Cognex Corporation, and Code Corporation.

About Us:

QualiKet Research is a leading Market Research and Competitive Intelligence partner helping leaders across the world to develop robust strategy and stay ahead for evolution by providing actionable insights about ever changing market scenario, competition and customers.

QualiKet Research is dedicated to enhancing the ability of faster decision making by providing timely and scalable intelligence.

QualiKet Research strive hard to simplify strategic decisions enabling you to make right choice. We use different intelligence tools to come up with evidence that showcases the threats and opportunities which helps our clients outperform their competition. Our experts provide deep insights which is not available publicly that enables you to take bold steps.

Contact Us

     6060 N Central Expy #500 TX 75204, U.S.A

     sales@qualiketresearch.com

     +1 214 660 5449

     1201, City Avenue, Shankar Kalat Nagar,

     Wakad, Pune 411057, Maharashtra, India

     sales@qualiketresearch.com

     +91 9284752585

     Sharjah Media City , Al Messaned, Sharjah, UAE.

     sales@qualiketresearch.com

     +971 56 846 4312

[ctrl-salt-delete]

DMCA 1201 is an "anti-circumvention" law. It bans the distribution of any tool that bypasses "an effective means of access control." That's all very abstract, but here's what it means: if a manufacturer sticks some Digital Rights Management (DRM) in its device, then anything you want to do that involves removing that DRM is now illegal – even if the thing itself is perfectly legal.

...

Today, it costs about a quarter to add a system-on-a-chip to even the tiniest parts. These SOCs can run DRM. Here's how that DRM works: when you put a new part in a device, the SOC and the device's main controller communicate with one another. They perform a cryptographic protocol: the part says, "Here's my serial number," and then the main controller prompts the user to enter a manufacturer-supplied secret code, and the master controller sends a signed version of this to the part, and the part and the system then recognize each other.

...

Of course, Apple is a huge fan of VIN-locking. In phones, VIN-locking is usually called "serializing" or "parts-pairing," but it's the same thing: a tiny subassembly gets its own microcontroller whose sole purpose is to prevent independent repair technicians from fixing your gadget. Parts-pairing lets Apple block repairs even when the technician uses new, Apple parts – but it also lets Apple block refurb parts and third party parts.

[michiganprelawland]

The Right-to-Repair Debate in Congress

By Taylor Trenta, Calvin University Class of 2025

August 18, 2023

Throughout 2023, there has been an uptick in attention granted to the concept of right-to-repair, especially with technology and auto parts. In 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul of New York signed the Digital Fair Repair Act, then saying New York was the “first state in the nation to guarantee the right to repair.” Many states followed, leading to attention throughout 2023. [1] Throughout the summer, a panel of experts made the case to dismantle right-to-repair restrictions on a Congressional level. [2] The group argues that consumers should have access to cheaper and more accessible part replacements and services, rather than only the original manufacturers. [2]

According to Nathan Proctor, a campaign director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, TV and radio repair shops have been replaced in a push towards replacements and repairs from the manufacturer. He said: “We've been pushed into this... How did we wake up in a world where changing a battery was too dangerous to do? They benefit from us not having that power.” [1] While this is becoming a more prevalent problem, powerful technology producers have led to this for decades. For instance, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act expanded protections for code in the growing market of software embedded products. [1] Darrell Issa, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee’s intellectual property panel, said during the July hearing: “Let there be no doubt that the right to repair the product that you have purchased is a fundamental principle... and individuals and businesses should not under any circumstances have any doubt as to where the bright lines are in their rights.” [2] One key roadblock in accessing data for necessary repairs is Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; this prevents consumers from working around technological safeguards due to their copyright. The intention was to prevent piracy. However, this prevents users from accessing some aspects of repair manuals, which some say reaches beyond the scope of the law. [2]

In March, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel worked with 28 other attorneys general to call upon the 118th Congress to pass Right-to-Repair legislation; in this movement, the coalition targeted automobiles, agriculture equipment, and electronic equipment. [3] With this, the purpose is also to keep small businesses competitive against closed systems that Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) favor. [3] Nessel stated: “The monopoly on repairs hurts consumers...Original Equipment Manufacturers restrict competition for repair services by limiting the availability of parts, making diagnostic software unavailable, or using adhesives that make parts difficult to replace, all of which can result in higher product and repair prices. I stand with my colleagues in asking Congress to pass Right-to-Repair legislation that not only protects consumers, but protects the laborers and farmers who help build and feed our nation.” [3] The letter sent in by this group included attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. [3] The group also encouraged Congress to consider three major pieces of proposed legislation that received support, but were never passed: The Fair Repair Act, the SMART Act, and the REPAIR Act. [3]

From the University of Michigan, Professor Aaron Perzanowski testified on the concept of right-to-repair before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. [4] In regard to Section 1201, Perzanowski stated, “Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it practically impossible for consumers to exercise their lawful right to repair a wide range of devices, from tractors to home electronics, even though the copyright office says those activities are non-infringing.” [2] With his testimony, he emphasized the gravity of the situation: “The right to repair is a longstanding principle, reflected in both personal property and IP law. Without it, the fundamental notion of ownership—of our cars, our communications devices, our home appliances—is under threat. Safeguarding that right to repair is a complex legal problem that has no single solution. Beyond IP law, it presents questions of antitrust, consumer protection, and contract law, among others. Nonetheless, by addressing the ways in which IP law interferes with rights of Americans to fix the things they buy, Congress is positioned to help maintain and restore this core right of property owners.” [4]

During the same July 18th House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, most shared the perspective of Perzanowski. However, Devlin Hartline from the Hudson Institute’s Forum for Intellectual Property said: “The right-to-repair movement isn’t based on a preexisting right; it’s instead asking lawmakers to create a new right at the expense of the existing rights of IP owners.” [5] Even those who support the right-to-repair movement noted some concerns over safety; in the food and auto industries, Perzanowski said this type of Intellectual Property law is not always the right way to go. However, these risks of flawed production are present even with the original manufacturer. [5]

With this increase in attention, other members of Congress have looked to introduce legislation against other barriers. One bill looks to shorten the enforcement period for patents on some auto parts. Another bill proposed by Neal Dunn in February also hopes to prevent auto manufacturers from hiding data that would enable replacement parts to be manufactured. [2] While this issue is not yet resolved, the debate over the right-to-repair will likely continue to gain momentum throughout the country.

______________________________________________________________

Taylor Trenta is a pre-law student at Calvin University, located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is currently studying history and economics as an Honors Scholars student.

______________________________________________________________

[1] Clark, Peter Allen. (January 23, 2023). “Flood of “right to repair” bills signals DIY watershed.” Axios. AxiosFlood of "right to repair" bills signals watershed moment for movementThe “Right to Repair” movement championing owners' freedom to fix everything from smartphones to tractors is set for a landmark new year,....Jan 23, 2023.

[2] Weiss, Benjamin S. (July 18, 2023). “Congress takes on ‘right to repair’ consumer reforms.” Courthouse News. Courthouse News ServiceCongress takes on 'right to repair' consumer reformsLawmakers want federal copyright law amended so that third parties can access the parts and data necessary to repair cars, electronics and....4 weeks ago.

[3] Michigan Gov. (March 28, 2023). “AG Nessel Joins Coalition Urging Congress to Pass Right-To-Repair Legislation.” Michigan Gov. https://www.michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2023/03/28/ag-nessel-joins-coalition-urging-congress-to-pass-right-to-repair-legislation.

[4] Needham, Bob. (August 7, 2023). “Perzanowski Testifies at Congressional Subcommittee on Right to Repair.” Michigan Law.

https://michigan.law.umich.edu/news/perzanowski-testifies-congressional-subcommittee-right-repair.

[5] McDermott, Eileen. (July 18, 2023). “House IP Subcommittee Mulls Copyright and Design Patent Revisions Amid Right-to-Repair Debate.” IP Watchdog.

[nurais-thatdoll]

How's she doing?

@august-falling-leaves

.. who¿ ;)