Supreme Court Should Block Printer Company’s Ploy to Undermine Consumer Rights | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court Should Block Printer Company’s Ploy to Undermine Consumer Rights

eff.org

185 pointswslh53 comments

Another move in the war on general purpose computing.

Printers (and 3D printers) are as much of a threat to IP as the internet was/is. Nobody would argue that the costs of that threat outweighed the benefits, we all understand it was worth it. I think the same will be true for 3D printing.

I'll enjoy ignoring Lexmark next time I buy.

I've done that for a long time now. I still remember the first time I realized that I could buy a new printer AND spare ink for less than ink refills on my Lexmark alone.

There is both an outside war and an inside war going on, and right now i worry as much or more about the inside war.

The problem with both of these wars is that their participants are mostly either unaware about the conflict, or without any intent to fight in it. On the outside, you have people wanting more security, pressure of various business models (e.g. IP protection), and people who would just want to watch the new episode of their favourite show with as little hassle as possible. On the inside, you have techies following the trends, or following money. I doubt many of them consciously want to destroy general-purpose computing, but the end result of the aggregate trend is nevertheless a huge threat. And it's hard to fight against without looking like an idealist with head in the (cloudless) sky, or an RMS follower, or something like that. Short-term practical thinking unfortunately tends to win over the big picture.

Some money is shifting to the "Edge" to supplement the cloud, due to volume of sensor data and need for real-time response to sensed events at the edge, http://a16z.com/2016/12/16/the-end-of-cloud-computing/

One wrinkle is that the security aspect straddles the inside and outside, as there are quite a number of insiders that want to restrict what owners can do "for their own good" (never mind for the good of society, aka internet).

If the doctrine of patent exhaustion is undermined, I can only imagine how the public's ability to use general purpose computers might be restricted. Possibly the only unencumbered computer I own is an 8088 that hasn't been powered on for well over a decade.

Yeah, that's my biggest concern. It's already hard to buy a PC without a copy of Windows. Imagine if you couldn't even buy a PC without relinquishing the right to switch your OS later. Or if you had to agree to leave the bloatware installed. One could come up with all sorts of horrible things if SCOTUS rules in favor of the printer company.

Was looking through our alumni magazine this weekend. This section [0] really caught my attention. Massive props to the Prof. That said, seriously nice donation.

"In 1984, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)’s donation of $24 million provides the University of Waterloo with eight new VAX machines — on the condition that work created using the machines would be the property of DEC.

Wes Graham, a professor of computer science, stopped the shipment until the company agreed to Waterloo’s policy of leaving intellectual property in the hands of its inventors."

[0] https://uwaterloo.ca/magazine/fall-2016/feature/60-years-inn...

The irony of that is most universities make their students sign a clause stating that all IP generated by the student for the duration of their studies is the property of the university.

I would be very surprised if the University of Waterloo doesn't have a similar arrangement.

Well color me impressed, the University of Waterloo indeed does not make claim to student IP [1].

[1] https://uwaterloo.ca/research/waterloo-commercialization-off...

Waterloo is pretty good in encouraging their students to pursue and monetise their ideas. They quite fancy being able to brand themselves as a university preferred by accelerators and incubators.

At University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, a student owns the IP to his inventions that are not part of funded research.

And where does the bulk of that funding come from...? ;-)

Grants, university funded research is not the same thing as curriculum paid for by tution and non specific funding sources.

I don't know if it's accurate to say 'most.' I've attended and worked with many universities over the years, and in my experience the only time a uni will make that claim is if it was a result of university funded research, or as part of a large scale collaborative process.

I wonder if their is an index somewhere that would list universities that blanketly attempt to claim IP developed by students independently.

Another Canadian university story: the University of Saskatchewan has a fairly decent agreement. Faculty, staff, and grad students (but not undergrad students) make an agreement to assign any patents coming from their research to the university, and the university in return gives back 50% of the commercialization of the patent back to the researcher.

Additionally, if the university decides it doesn't want to commercialize a patent, it will return ownership to the original inventor.

This came up in my MSc program, when I was considering commercializing some of the software that I wrote while doing my research. Likely not patentable (the university's IP lawyer agreed). My supervisor felt he deserved partial ownership, but I had written all of it on my own. The university's lawyer basically told us that since I was the sole author of the work, and the university has no copyright assignment agreement, it was all mine to do with as I pleased.

The corrupted legal system seems like an academic concern, in the worst case necessitating a Faraday cage. Benevolently backdoored firmware, on the other hand...

I hedge by archiving my old motherboards/laptops on a shelf.

Or even specialized computers: the engine computer in your car might come with some license or restriction preventing you from transferring the engine computer to the next purchaser. That would require the next purchaser of your car to pay a few hundred dollars for a newly licensed engine computer.

Recent thread: Five States Are Considering Bills to Legalize the 'Right to Repair' Electronics, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465303

> he Federal Circuit decided in Lexmark’s favor, ruling that a customer’s use of a product can be “restricted” by the patent owner with something as simple as a notice on disposable packaging.

Holy hell. IP law is getting out of control. How are we debating someone's right to use the thing they legally purchased?

If you don't want someone to use your product, then don't sell it.

This is why I am glad the TPP is dead. Whatever good it may have done in other arenas, it exported our utterly insane IP policies, which is something I can't support.

There was a similar story two years ago about how a farmer was legally prohibited from altering the software in a John Deere tractor owned by the farmer.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...

Lots of printing companies undermine privacy by including serial number tracking dots.

Don't expect this to change, it's used to help track counterfeit money.

Couldn't Lexmark just have an EULA covering the firmware inside the chip on the toner bottle that has to be clicked through on the printer's UI when the bottle is installed which then restricts sale of the licensed firmware in order to prevent this?

Almost all toner these days has a chip attached, they just need to put something inside the chip which is copyrightable rather than patentable in order to "fix" this (from Lexmark's point of view).

Chips are quite easily replacable. Try searching on AliExpress.

See Sega v Accolade [1]. Violating copyright used purely to protect a monopoly is fair use.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade

It's funny to see the AARP working together with EFF and Mozilla.

A friend of mine is a Brand Ambassador for AARP and they are working to reverse this exact perception. She teaches "technology" classes -- basically, how to use a tablet/smartphone -- to seniors.

Why? The AARP foundation is involved in all areas of consumer protection since many retired people have limited funds.

http://www.aarp.org/aarp-foundation/our-work/legal-advocacy/...

Your comment comes across as ageist.

Edit: surprising rather than funny would have been a better adjective.

  Why?

It's a little surprising because a lot of advocacy groups focus their resources on problems with a significantly disproportionate impact the people they represent, and it's not obvious at first glance why this issue would disproportionately impact retired people.

Coloured people and gun owners also print things out, but I don't see NAACP or NRA putting their names on this amicus brief :)

Still, when it comes to supporting common sense amicus briefs like this one I say the more the merrier! If NAACP and NRA want to sign the brief too, let them :)

Holy shit, did you just say "colored people" in 2017? That's not cool, anymore, dude

I suspect it was a deliberate usage based on the expansion of the NAACP acronym, rather than a term one would normally use. In _this_ case, that seems relatively harmless.

I've definitely seen the acronym POC - people of color - used by awareness advocates in a non derogatory way. I don't think GP's usage is terribly archaic.

So why do electronic devices work by one set of rules but car parts go by another?

are you talking about the security stuff? i think in that case it's about the software that they assert is their IP, where this is the physical cartridge

How did I know this was going to be Lexmark, before I even clicked to read The Fine Article?

Oh, right. Because Lexmark.

Never knew there was a Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents.

for $250000 there can be a Coldcode Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents too!

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/staff-attorney-daniel-naz...

I think as long as it is communicated clearly to the consumer I don't have any problem with whatever restrictions the company wants (purchasing is a voluntary decision).

saying that "purchasing is a voluntary decision" is kind of ridiculous. sometimes it's not. printer cartridges are a good example, because most of the major manufacturers do similar things with their cartridges and say you shouldn't reuse them. taking this further, they also say that you shouldn't put generic cartridges in your printer. a printer is something that in many situations (eg businesses) are not optional

if you switch shouldn't to can't (like lexmark is asserting) then it's not a choice

*edit for clarity

The purchase of the printer is voluntary. It is the buyer's responsibility to check that the cartridges will not be expensive.

Just like how when purchasing a car, buyers check MPG to ensure the cost of fuel will not be too high.

Purchasing could be a voluntary decision but, here, we are talking about changing the definition of purchasing because it's not convenient for the seller.

This has been already done with music and other media, by the way.

It can be explicitly labelled as not being a "purchase".

That would be fine, so long as it's not sold in stores alongside other items for purchase, and is explicitly and prominently communicated to the buyer. There's nothing wrong with renting, so long as everyone knows it's a rental.

Somehow, I think Lexmark might have a problem with this. They want the benefits of the rental model without the drawbacks.

There is nothing wrong with that. For the right price it could even be an net benefit the consumer. If PrintCo rents printers to customers for a fee and takes on the accompanying liability then consumers may have access to higher quality and more durable goods as it reduces PrintCo's maintenance cost.

However, using IP law to gain the rights of ownership without the responsibility is something entirely different.

>Purchasing could be a voluntary decision but, here, we are talking about changing the definition of purchasing because it's not convenient for the seller.

This isn't really new. Major purchases often have contractual limitations. There was time in America where many houses had a restriction on their deed that prevented them from selling to African Americans.

The fundamental problem here is the method of contracting, and this change is sort of recent. Contract law has evolved to the point where you can enter a contract just by opening a box with very vague terms on it. I think that is ridiculous.

If Lexmark wants to have a program where you contractually promise to not resell in exchange for a discount, I'm fine with it. But slapping a warning label on the box shouldn't count as a contract.

But there really isn't any hope of courts changing the law on contracts. It's well settled now.

I think it's fine to restrict the ways an artificial monopoly can be used.

If you want to get all "free market" about it, drop the larger distorting effect of government sanctioned monopolies first.

Are you saying the printer market is a government sanctioned monopoly?

How so? Especially regarding the part about "government sanctioned"?

Go read up on the first-sale doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

OK, done reading? That's why this is terrible. Our economy is partially built on the principle that once you buy something, it's yours to do with as you see fit. There are still limits, like you can't buy a book then distribute copies of it, but in general it's yours to modify, hack, fold, spindle, and mutilate.

In this context, Lexmark is trying to say "you gave us your cash, but we still own the thing". No, screw that. Toyota doesn't have a say in what I do with our minivan. I can swap its engine with one from a Ferrari if I want, paint it neon orange, and reupholster it with frog skin. It's mine. I don't have to get their permission to modify it in any way I want. (Laws still apply, of course, but that's outside of Toyota's control.) Well, same with Lexmark: they give up the right to tell me I can't refill a toner cartridge when I buy it from them. At that moment, the transaction is finished. They have money; I have full ownership of the unit.

This is just semantics. You think that this does not constitute purchasing.

The company can just make it clear that they are not selling the product.

If they were to start doing that, we could debate those merits. However, Lexmark offered their products for sale, not rent, and they're claiming in court that some unexpected technicality makes it OK.

Commerce would grind to a halt if you had to retain a lawyer every time you wanted to buy something off the shelf from Target.

Yes, I agree.

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