|
Is interoperability a part of fair use? |
|
|
|
Tuesday, 18 November 2003 |
Here's an intersting article discussing a case involving the DMCA and garage door openers.
One company produced a garage opener with a security feature designed to prevent criminals from "Code Grabbing". Apparently, that's door opener security slang for packet sniffing combined with a replay attack. The attacker waits for you to use your door opener and uses a device to record the code you sent to your opener. Then, when you're not home, the attacker sends the same code opens your door and runs away with anything valuable in your garage, or uses access to the garage to mount further attacks.
Another company developed a "universal remote" for garage door openers that worked around the security feature (it was a pretty lame security feature with a built in backdoor). The manufacturer sued them under the DMCA.
What makes this case interesting is why the judge ruled that the universal remote manufacturers were innocent.
a homeowner has a legitimate expectation that he or she will be able to access the garage even if the original transmitter is misplaced or malfunctions
As the author of the article stated, consumers have a right to replace a lost remote with a competing product without violating federal law. This is a very interesting round about way to arrive at fair use.
If this is a valid legal position, and it seems reasonable to me (IANAL!), then it has implications for other cases regarding the DMCA and reverse engineering in general. For example, when I buy an MP3 from iTunes do I have the right to circumvent their copy protection so that I can use the music with a competing product? And what if you see DIVX as a competitor to DVD? Does that all of a sudden make cracking DVD encryption legal?
Powered by AkoComment 2.0! and SecurityImage 3.0.4 |
