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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday March 23 2017, @03:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the and-copyright-while-you're-there dept.

Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could allow companies to keep a dead hand of control over their products, even after you buy them.  The case, Impression Products v. Lexmark International, is on appeal from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who last year affirmed its own precedent allowing patent holders to restrict how consumers can use the products they buy. That decision, and the precedent it relied on, departs from long established legal rules that safeguard consumers and enable innovation.

When you buy something physical—a toaster, a book, or a printer, for example—you expect to be free to use it as you see fit: to adapt it to suit your needs, fix it when it breaks, re-use it, lend it, sell it, or give it away when you're done with it. Your freedom to do those things is a necessary aspect of your ownership of those objects. If you can't do them, because the seller or manufacturer has imposed restrictions or limitations on your use of the product, then you don't really own them. Traditionally, the law safeguards these freedoms by discouraging sellers from imposing certain conditions or restrictions on the sale of goods and property, and limiting the circumstances in which those restrictions may be imposed by contract.

But some companies are relentless in their quest to circumvent and undermine these protections. They want to control what end users of their products can do with the stuff they ostensibly own, by attaching restrictions and conditions on purchasers, locking down their products, and locking you (along with competitors and researchers) out. If they can do that through patent law, rather than ordinary contract, it would mean they could evade legal limits on contracts, and that any one using a product in violation of those restrictions (whether a consumer or competitor) could face harsh penalties for patent infringement.

If you refill the ink in your printer cartridges, you will go to jail?


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 23 2017, @05:58PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday March 23 2017, @05:58PM (#483308) Journal

    There are so many screwy laws and contracts that are nothing more than outrageously unfair transfers of public wealth into private pockets. Feels like America has become more corrupt. Our publicly funded law enforcement is routinely used against us.

    I'd really rather not be a law breaking rebel pirate deadbeat criminal, but it's tough to avoid. Can't get medical care in the US for a fair price. I've tried. Went round and round for more than a year and couldn't get so much as a plausible explanation let alone a reasonable justification for the prices of some emergency care. You really have little choice but to rebel, tell the doctors (by the action of not paying, if not in words) that you don't agree with their charges, and that you refuse to be gouged. Pay them what Medicare says their services are worth, block the phone numbers of their debt collectors, and go on with your life. So many people are still too naive and trusting on medical billing.

    Drug manufacturers and seed companies gouge patients and farmers shamelessly. Can't use your consumer electronics without being threatened with lawsuits and lectured about "digital theft", though 99% of them are groundless and empty threats that they're just trying to use to scare and bully people, when their propaganda and fake moralizing about starving artists and inventors fails to impress. They're trying to make fixing your own tractor or car illegal. Parking tickets and red light camera tickets are more a money grabbing racket than an honest effort to serve and protect. Same with the War on Drugs, and the War on Sex and Women. There's also Civil Asset Forfeiture. Then there's Wall Street, still running their swindles.

    The whole idea of allowing the patenting of software has been a disaster. I've read that you can't write even a little program without violating patents by the dozens.

    I feel it is a civic duty to break bad laws. Learn what to rebel against, and how to do it. The national 55 mph speed limit was eventually repealed, and that actually had its good points. Was a much better law than some of the crap we live with now.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 23 2017, @07:43PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday March 23 2017, @07:43PM (#483365)

    The funny thing about the "digital theft" messages embedded in DVDs - when my kids were little they were untrustable with DVDs, so I copied all of ours to a server. The copies remove the Piracy lectures, by default - no special effort - it's actually how Hollywood packages the files on the disc.

    It is always kind of jarring when we play an actual disc to have all that crap thrust on our screen, because we see it so rarely otherwise.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]