SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday March 23 2017, @08:41PM (4 children)
And why do they do that? Because they know that failing to do their business within their private confines, brings the trouble and costs associated with the State which looms overhead.
The government doesn't need to be explicitly a party to an agreement, when it's understood that's it's always there as a last resort in a dispute (most lawyers will tell you that arbitration clauses are BS, which they can get around if they believe a judge will side with them).
I do not revere any government. I just know that selfish bastards (aka humans) will seize any opportunity they can, regardless of how many they hurt, if they are not afraid that the next entity above them (be it $parent, $council, $deity or $gov), will come to whack them for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @08:47PM (1 child)
There is no reason why there must be a monopoly on violent enforcement of a contract. Indeed, it seems quite obvious that a monopoly would be a BAD thing; better to have competition (a separation of powers, if you will) when it comes to the service of enforcing contracts.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday March 23 2017, @08:55PM
Start a war between my Contract Enforcer and your Contract Enforcer?
"Today, 5 more buildings were burnt down as the dispute over Alice or Chris paying Dominic for the pizza enters its second month."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @08:52PM (1 child)
Where's the government to protect us from the selfish bastards abusing the government?
You've reached the conclusion yourself: You cannot just keep vertically stacking authority; you've got to have horizontal competition; you've got to have a separation of powers, which is provided best by competition within a market.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday March 23 2017, @09:03PM
Ask the French (and less spectacularly other Euro countries).
The people working for the entity called government should be afraid of the People.
If your government is not afraid of the people it serves, and feels impunity for the shit it does (like 95% re-election rates), then you are right to call it tyranny.
Cops are the little people. Soldiers are the little people. Private security guards are the little people.
The guys at the top have to constantly be reminded that they have no magical protection against the anger on the street.
Basics, people, basics...