Sony and Robots...shows how crazy the "anti-hacking" regime has become

[Tim May]

Saw this interesting application of the new hardware 
copyright/anti-tampering/anti-reverse-engineering regime in place"

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011107/tc/sony_robot_hack_1.html

excerpt:

"Wednesday November 7 2:20 PM ET

Pet Robot Owners Mad at Sony

By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer

TOKYO (AP) - Many owners of the world's most sophisticated robot pet, 
the cuddly Aibo, are growling at Sony Corp (news - web sites). over its 
demand that a Web site stop distributing free software that teaches the 
machine new tricks.

``It was a very stiff legal position Sony took without regard to how it 
will affect the Aibo community,'' said Richard Walkus, a publishing 
house employee from Madison, N.J., who owns two Aibo robots but is now 
putting any new Aibo orders on hold. ``Sony is to some degree 
undermining its own success.''

In a letter last month, Sony told the owner of the AiboHack site that he 
was violating its copyright and altering its product without a license. 
It demanded a long list of Aibo software - including code that taught 
the machine disco steps and new words - be pulled off the site.

--end excerpt--

This shows how crazy the laws have gotten. These robots are essentially 
computers, and the "hacks" are just new computer programs.

Imagine:

"Dell has announced they are are suing anyone who makes available 
software for their machines that Dell did not authorize."

"Ford plans to protect its intellectual property by blocking 
after-market sales of trailer hitches, bed liners, light bulbs, and even 
motor oil not sold by authorized Ford dealers. "By examining our 
products and determining how to make things like trailer hitches, these 
pirates are in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright," said Ford 
spokesman Jason Natter."

If robots cannot be reprogrammed, then neither can all sorts of other 
electronic gear that people routinely reprogram, improve, take apart, 
etc. Adding a programmable search function to a shortwave radio, for 
example, would fall under the same nonsensical terms as the Sony case.

ObCypherpunks: I despise the DMCA, but my faith is not in having such 
laws overturned. In fact, the explosion of new laws is likely 
unstoppable. However, using technology to thwart traceability (*) is a 
means of monkeywrenching such laws.

(* I wonder if anonymous remailers will someday be classed as 
"circumvention devices"? We debated this years ago, wondering whether 
the laws against unauthorized (!) possession of lock-picking tools and 
"burglar tools" could be used to de facto illegalize remailers.)




--Tim May
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a 
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also 
into you." -- Nietzsche