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"Cloudy Future" For CueCat
Posted by
Hemos
on Wed Sep 20, 2000 08:58 AM
from the oh-no-my-revenue-model! dept.
from the oh-no-my-revenue-model! dept.
Edgester writes "There is an article at Security Focus about Digital Convergence and the CueCat Barcode Scanner. DC thinks that those Cease and Desist letters completely stopped the hacker community from hacking the CueCat scanners." Oh - and we should just point that in the continuing example of Digital Convergence's wonderful security their site was cracked and all user info was captured.
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I love loss leaders (Score:2)
Loss leaders don't love us, though! And we definitely don't like the way many of them treat us.
This is obvious damage control on DC's part; not news that slashdot should be spreading. (Except on slashdot it means that hundreds will now go set up mirrors...)
My God, it's full of URLs (Score:2)
This link, http://www.securityfocus.com/news/89, [securityfocus.com] led to no fewer than fourteen URLs:
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/ad.html?group= secnews? &_ref=19861971m l?id=89&_ref=19861971e f=19861971m l?&_ref=19861971l ?&_ref=19861971m l?&_ref=19861971m l?&_ref=19861971m l?&_ref=19861971s =home&_ref=19861971t ml?&_ref=19861971m l?&_ref=19861971= home&_ref=19861971t ml?&_ref=19861971
http://www.securityfocus.com/focus/home/menu.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/article.ht
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/logo.html?&_r
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/upper_left.ht
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/left_edge.htm
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/lower_left.ht
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/right_edge.ht
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/upper_edge.ht
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/top.html?focu
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/upper_right.h
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/lower_edge.ht
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/ad.html?group
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/lower_right.h
Someone tell these guys to read some basic web design docs. (You can't even link to a printable text-only version!)
sulli
Re:More CueCat (Score:2)
I've already scanned in my books and CDs, so I can tell you before you start that it's not as easy as it sounds.
For one thing, if your book collection is anything like mine, you'll have a good number of books that don't have ISBN's (crummy British paperbacks from the 60's), let alone bar codes. Then there are a bunch where there's some stupid sticker, or a bend in the book cover, etc. to make it unreadable. Then, once you've got the barcode, at least a third of them don't successfully get a title and author from Amazon. I even hacked up a CGI-Z39 gateway to look up the ISBNs in Melvyl (Univ. of Cal's catalog), and got about the same hit rate there (though better data when it did hit).
CD's are roughly the same: a third of mine (mostly old stuff and punk) didn't have UPCs on them, so didn't match. I pointed them at barpoint.com, and got a hit rate of roughly 75% on the ones that did have barcodes.
I also did a lot of mucking around with the various different drivers, and wound up recoding some of it in Perl (the UPC->ISBN stuff was in Python), so I spent a lot of time before I even got started messing around with the drivers and stuff.
My $0.02, anyway.
--
-Esme
Re:DC is focusing on the pennies... (Score:2)
I (or my father) was on their mailing list, and I recall receiving a catalogue advertising a hard-disk (probably called a Winchester in them days) for some TRS80 machine. At the time I'd no idea what one was, and for the amount of money that they wanted, I wondered who could afford one.
Then there were all the components. Resistors, diodes, switches and so on. Few other places sold them.
Now the local Tandy has become a telephone store. Other shops still exist, but have cut down badly on geekish things. Couldn't even buy a box of floppies (I needed some to install Debian) last time I visited one. And I couldn't find a fuse for my PSU, either. Not a geek hangout any more. We do have Maplin stores, though. The local one is huge.
Totally OT, but related to this thread.. (Score:2)
I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
Re:More CueCat (Score:4)
Re:Why do companies get away with this? (Score:2)
What type of laws do you thing would benefit us consumers? Should the government pass a law stating that all systems must be totally secure? How would this be enforced? How would anyone know whether their systems are completely secure? I don't believe it is possible to prove a complex computer system as being secure. It can only be proven insecure. As such, prosecutors could only go after companies whose servers have been cracked. Maybe crackers could then become employees of various law enforcement agencies.
Anyway, civil recourse against breaches of privacy seems to be the only sane route. Companies should be liable for gross negligence about security, but then how gross is gross?
As far as "the police/military/sceret services[sic]" just sitting back, I would rather have that than Carnivore/BadEvilGuyFinder watching everything. The system just needs time to settle into equilibrium.
Build our own? (Score:2)
Seriously, why don't we build our own open-source bar-code scanning solution? True, one can get laser and wand scanners that output to serial ASCII pretty cheap and all, but even for those one must surf the used market. Doing it ourselves though is the way we work - we are geeks, right? A soldering iron and some simple parts never hurt anyone (outside of a burn here or there, right?)...
These devices are simple! Something could be built quite easily with a handful of parts (heck, most or all could be found in a busted remote control). Find something to stuff it all in, and a scanner can be built.
What isn't so obvious is the software to decode the barcode - plenty to normalize the scanning speed, direction of scan, and probably a million other things that I don't know of would need to be coded, but come on! Open Source enthusiasts have managed to put together amazing packages of complexity - a bar-code decoding package shouldn't be too difficult, I would think. What is stopping us?
I would think that we could come up with a true open design for a wand style reader, made from a few parts (I would imagine on the low end the scanner would consist of a high brightness red LED, a phototransistor, and a low val resistor, like 470 ohm - vcc (5 volts) would be run through the resistor (to drop current and voltage a bit), then split to drive the collector of the phototran, and the LED. The emitter of the phototran (I am thinking a NPN phototran here) could drive a pin on a parallel port. Throw all of this into a nifty case - like a BIC pen). Once the code is done (GPL'd, of course), distribute it with schematics for the reader, maybe a few pictures of a completed sample device, and construction hints...
We have an itch to scratch - let's scratch it!
I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
Why don't they just *sell* the things (Score:2)
Searching for CDs via bar-code? (Score:2)
I'd like to see someone take that hack that directs CueCat scans to an Amazon page another step further...
I'd like to be able to scan the bar-code on the back of a CD and have a CDDB [cddb.com] (or MusicBrainz [musicbrainz.org], etc.) record be returned.
Obviously, you first would have to find a place to search the bar-code against and then filter those results and plug them into a CDDB query...
Well, I can dream anyway...
"Do no unnatural thing today." - Captain Flak
Re:My favorite quote (Score:2)
Here's an example:
^[[21~.C3nZC3nZC3nXE3b7DxjZCNnX.fHmc.C3PWDxf3Dx
DATA 000000002838610102 UPA 093624609322 9362460932
CUE 9362460932 http://t.dcnv.com/CRQ/1..ACTIVATIONCODE.04.c3Nzc3
BN 093624609322 http://search.borders.com/fcgi-bin/db2www/search/
tab delimited fields, one record per line.
---- ----
Different Product Model (Score:2)
I totally agree with you on the merits of alternative uses of the device.
I've got a PalmPilot and a keyboard interface from the folks that brought us the "Happy Hacker's" keyboard; I could use that as a portable bar code collector.
Velcro the components to my belt, and I could run around my apartment, barcoding all my books into a notepad, and then decode en masse to put together a library listing.
Note the use of the PalmPilot; the reader is a whopping lot more useful if there is some way of collecting a bunch of bar codes as you walk around.
The other piece of the puzzle is to be able to PRINT your own bar code stickers to attach to things. That then means that there is no "fixed" interpretation; you have to create your own framework in which to interpret the code.
As with putting a bar code on each CD you burn, so that you can do an inventory in ten minutes of 100 CDs...
There's lots and lots of cool stuff to do with this; hopefully we'll get past the idiocy of the present situation.
Re:Intellectual Property (Score:2)
Most of the people responding here missed my point. In an ideal world this would be used for knowledge and easy access. I pointed out that i knew that this would b used for commercial purposes and that that was really sad.
I could care less about the damn barcode reader, it was a stupid little toy to play with. I'm talking about their end result... Linking traditional media to web accessible information.
That's what I would love. Not commercials, not ads. Real information. We all know that it won't be used for that. I remember when the net was good for that also.
Re:DC is focusing on the pennies... (Score:2)
Except that they didn't install the software, and won't do it, because they don't want to be bound by the obnoxious license "agreement", so using the cuecat isn't really possible for those hackers, who, ironically, are probably in the top 5% of people who might actually want to buy something at Radio Shack!
This is where DC is hurting themselves.
Please leave DC alone. (Score:5)
--
I went and got a CueCat (Score:2)
Why do companies get away with this? (Score:2)
Don't Believe It. Devel still going strong... (Score:5)
Linux Driver has steadily progressed
from 0.0.8 to 0.1.3, and has gotten a
lot better. Pierre Coupard and other
folks have done a lot with the device.
Since the C&D letters, the driver has
added support for multiple CueCats, we've
put together 2 different models of serial
port converters for the CueCat (think Palm)...
and added support for using the CueCat on
a serial port, keyboard port, or mouse port.
The driver is now a loadable module, and even
supports the USB CueCat which isn't even
officially RELEASED yet!! We've also been able
to test the CueCat with all kinds of different
barcodes and figure out many of the CueCat
codes for them.. On a hardware level, we've
figured out how to wipe or even reprogram
the ID code... I don't know about you folks
or about Kevin Poulsen for that matter,
but I see this as a successful project so far..
For the 1 week after the C&D letters, people
were a bit worried and the development went
more private, but that's only 1 week! That's
a reasonable amount of lag time to allow lawyers
to digest the problem. After 1 week without
response from Digital Convergence, we all just
started breathing again and went back to work.
PS... Happy RSA Freedom day..
Flawed Business Model (Score:3)
They probably would have been better off selling the CueCat Reader for a small fee (maybe at cost) and then providing some sort of special service (beyond simple linking) with their software. That way they don't lose any money if the hobbyist wants to disect their CueCat and they give your average joe a reason to purchase it.
-Jennifer
CueCat technological problem (Score:2)
I've scanned many barcodes with a couple different copies of their device now, and I've found that it consistently reads UPC/EAN, 3 of 9, Code 128 and all these other symbologies really well. I try to scan the Cues in the catalog -- maybe a 33% first time scan rate. Appalling. I've tried varying my scan speeds, the angle with which I hold the scanner, the distance from the page, starting and stopping within the white space near the ends of the code, but nothing seems to help.
I don't know if it's because the barcodes in the catalog are too dense or if they were printed poorly. I imagine the 22.5 offset angle probably made for some uneven aliasing during the catalog printing process.
Has anybody else noticed this problem?
John
The Church of the SubGenius [subgenius.com] -- because somebody had to put all that slack in there...
Oh the shame! Oh the horrors! (Score:5)
"An Internet company that's given away one million cat-shaped barcode scanners to magazine subscribers and Radio Shack shoppers is claiming victory in a skirmish with hackers over how the feline freebies can be used."
PR 101: Manage expectations. When you have completely lost, declare unconditional victory.
"We had to make a bold statement up front that we didn't authorize you to do this, we encrypted our cat data, and you're not allowed to take over that output," says David Mathews, vice president of new technology at Dallas-based Digital Convergence.
Bold statement (n.) - Impotent claim that is ignored by everyone. See political speech, press release.
"Digital Convergence was aghast. "If people take over our cat and start using their own databases, the world becomes cloudy," says Mathews. "Our revenue model is being the gate keeper between codes and their destinations online."
Oh the horrors! The world will become cloudy if we don't stop using our own databases! Why, we might even get access to our own information and then where would we be? I mean, think it through people! Is a free world the kind of world you want for your children?
"By way of example, Mathews points to one hack, created by network engineer Michael Rothwell, that allows users to scan the ISBN number on the back of a book with the CueCat. "You could swipe a code, and it would serve up a page on Amazon.com. But what if [the publisher] doesn't want it to go to Amazon.com, they want it to go to web site under their control..."
Think of the implications! We might wind up at a web site that is not under their control!
"By the Linux community taking over and redirecting where these swipes go to, they were circumventing our software."
Oh the shame of it all...
________________
My favorite quote (Score:3)
"You could swipe a code, and it would serve up a page on Amazon.com. But what if [the publisher] doesn't want it to go to Amazon.com, they want it to go to web site under their control... "
Umm...tough shit what the publisher wanted. What right does the publisher have to force me to a certain web page? None whatsoever. Yet another example of a clueless corporation trying to control every little detail and getting pissed when normal citizens won't play along.
Re:Nice product, shame about the concept (Score:2)
The thing that really made me laugh though was this SciFi channel commercial - 30 minutes long, you know the type. The setting was in Heaven, where Bob the Angel (can't remember the name) visits Heaven's R&D department, and the top-of-the-line item that Heaven's R&D department has come up with is - no, not an Aston Martin with flamethrowers and ejector seat, but THE CUECAT!!!
Then they described it as the biggest technological breakthrough ever. Seriously, that's *exactly* what they said.
The word arrogance doesn't even come close.
You're probably right about the lawyers, but offering a similar service under not such an obvious name might be a good idea. Maybe some jobbing hardware hacker can design the same thing but for the COM port - and while she's at it, make it accept data from remote controls too, so I can operate my DVD drive from my bed ;)
For DC, hackers are on the start... (Score:2)
If we can distribute software for the CueCat, in a way that suits our needs without going through DC - What's to stop Staples or OfficeMax from offering their own software that reads barcodes printed in their catalogs without going through DC?
They're seeing the big picture now... so I think. They screwed up and now they're going to have to fight for their life or go out of business having provided all of North America with free bar code readers.
Those who ask why they're bothering with a few geeks aren't seeing the bigger picture of them allowing "rogue" software to proliferate.
While I agree entirely that we have every right to use the device as we see fit, (I've downloaded various decoders alrready) they ain't going to just let this one go.
Perhaps their TV tech will be the real "killer" app of for them and ordinary bar code reading won't matter a great deal, but I figure them for toast.
QUESTION:
Anyone think of some sort of action to "teach" them a lesson?
-- While normally I would consider the following very unethical, given this companies willingness to use scare tactics against honest legal hackers, I suggest the following:
Every time you see a Radio Shack, stop in and pick up another CueCat. Collect them, discard them, whatever, every geek here that picks one up and doesn't use it (in their intended manner) makes a nick in their bottom line. If we all do it that becomes a major dent.
Hopefully they take note and apologize.
Re:More CueCat (Score:2)
Why? Because I'm an Ubergeek and I like barcodes, shiny red lights, and coming up with neat things to do with free hardware. Hell, I even like the thing when it's just sitting on my desk shining the LED light on my wall.
I have been using it on my Windows machine as it was designed, scanning things and bumping my profile value for them up a few pennies... but soon I plan to attach it to a little 486 computer on top my fridge.
Why? Because then I can scan things as I throw empty containers out. And then post that to my own private house 'intranet'. And then at the market, browse my shopping list from my WAP phone. Eventually, I might even automatically have certain things ordered via internet once I've built a buying profile on myself.
After that, I might even get bored and start cataloging my CD's & Books (several 1000 items in each collection) for insurance purposes. I figure that might work better than photographing everything.
See, that's what being a Geek is about. Have stuff. Open the hood. Hook stuff together and make it do stuff it probably shouldn't. For fun.
In the end, my advice to DC would be to embrace the hacking community. The value they 'lose' on hackers not providing profile data could be recouped in cultivating a community to help generate new ideas for their product. Hell, establish projects for bounty using the CueCat. Sell the CueCat for up to US$20 for hackers who aren't going to use it as designed for marketing money.
Spread good will in the hacking community, let me do my projects, hire me to polish them up and let you sell them... (I mean, I don't have the business sense or money to produce the hardware) and my mom will still use it to scan things and see the neat home pages. And eventually you (DC) might even be able to sell my fridge idea.
Re:DC is focusing on the pennies... (Score:2)
Re:DMCA? (Score:2)
Re:Please leave DC alone. (Score:2)
If you don't uphold your rights you loose them.
Re:More /. Sensationalism (Score:2)
Yes, they have a cloudy future.
Re:Why Stop? (Score:3)
Because receiving the threat of a lawsuit from a company is a scary thing. J. Random Hacker does not have a legal budget, let a lone an entire legal department. We've already seen that corporations use litigation as a stalling tactic, and try to drag the case out until the defendant has to give up due to lack of resources. Aside from the massive amount of money you could lose (without even losing the trial, just on legal fees), this is something that will dominate your life for an indefinite amount of time - if you're spending all you time in court or preparing for court, how do you work?
Litigation, or threat of it, is unfortunately a very effective tactic from a corporate point of view. It's a rare kind of person that can push crappy laws like the DMCA to the limit and still have the time and desire to go to court to obtain their rights for the rest of the country.
Intellectual Property (Score:3)
Okay... I'm sorry but this is getting rediculous. They are treating this damn bar code scanner like it's the holy grail of cool things. It's not... It's a cheap little barcode scanner that doesn't even really do that good of a job.
They do have some work and some intersting things in their C.R.Q. software. I never used it (I'm really glad now), but what it does actually probably took 5 years to develop.
In case no one looked at it. You hook up and audio source (T.V. or Radio) to your sound card. There are specially encoded audio codes that the C.R.Q. software will recognize and open a browser to the appropriate page. Basically barcodes over tv/radio audio.
That's kinda cool. It would be cooler if it wasn't mainly used for advertising (although I hear PBS is going to use it). I am also fairly certain that there is quite a bit of skill, talent and hard work in that.... there is however NOT in a cheap little barcode reader.
DC sells software and a service, they make their money from companies being able to use their barcode and audio codes. I wish that they would realise this... let the crap with the cue cat drop and focus on making their real products useful.
I would love to be watching a Discovery channel show about say, penguins, and be linked to a site that has more in depth information about penguins.
More about Cue Cat's silliness (Score:4)
1. It's a dumb idea to scan barcodes just to go to a web page.
2. The thing is really really hard to get to install.
3. It doesn't even work right when installed.
Yep, mine is still in the box and staying there.
Re:Why Stop? (Score:5)
You believe what DC said? Go to freshmeat and search for cuecat. As far as I can see, the *only* one who doesn't still have their code up is flyingbuttmonkeys. Online decoders like http://www.jounce.net/~maarken/decode.html are still up (never went down, as far as I know).
I wonder if DC really believes the hacking has stopped or if they see this as the only face-saving stance that they could take.
The only other reason I can think that there is any "less" hacking is that the decoding is 100% solved in 7 lines of perl:
#!
printf "%s %s %s\n",
map {
tr/a-zA-Z0-9+-/ -_/;
$_ = unpack 'u', chr(32 + length()*3/4) . $_;
s/\0+$//;
$_ ^= "C" x length;
}
Stopped? (Score:3)
I'm still considering trying to round up about 10-15 of em, daisy chain them, if possible, and have a bright colorful window decor for Xmas.
Who needs twinkle lights when you've got Cuecats?
Re:DC is focusing on the pennies... (Score:4)
Amateur radio hobbyists, especially those from the Linux community, end up sending part of their paychecks to places like RShack. I'm there at least once a week buying stuff. But how can I use the CueCat when the DC PHB's forgot to develop a Linux driver for it? Sorry boys, but the five boxes down in my shack don't have a single Microsoft product on them!
Instead of firing up the attorneys, why not pull the Microsoft "embrace and extend" trick. Grab those drivers, thank the community, contribute $10,000 to
Instead of boycotts, hacking and general disasterous public relations that is a serious abuse of their investor's bucks, you might find a bunch of new customers (who are usually the bigger spenders at RShack) who'd cost you only an occasional un-intercepted barcoding scan of their books in the home library.
*scoove*
"Poor sportsmanship: They just can't stand to see the other man win."
Re:Please leave DC alone. (Score:3)
They don't want their intellectual property to be reverse engineered.
Correction, that should be: "They don't want their intellectually property to be reversed engineered." See their CEO's letter [slashdot.org] for more useful grammar and spelling tips.
Loss-leader hacks (Score:4)
The truth about this is that the only devices that have been exploited have been loss-leader type electronics, and built on useful hardware, which often makes the best loss-leader (ie, it's a good product).
Things that haven't done so well, and haven't been hacked have been *extremely* proprietary devices like the Mailsite personal email box [linux-hacker.net] (man that'd make a sweet portable bash terminal).
So... useful things tend to get reused if they're given to us. The only way companies can avoid a situation like this is to make something damn near worthless if hacked (funky hardware, no ram, no hd, odd processors, etc)... The problem of course is that those types of things don't always make good products.
----
I'm sick of this... (Score:4)
"Our revenue model is being the gate keeper between codes and their destinations online."
In other words, they want to protect their bottom line. The truth is, they should have thought of this sort of thing happening, and taken steps to protect their interests before releasing their product. It's their own damn fault, and I have no sympathy.
Nice product, shame about the concept (Score:4)
It seems pretty obvious that here's a company who have read "New Economy 101" and decided that their tangible product should be free so they can create money on the spin-off merchandise (the software). Shame they didn't think one step further.
Now they seem to be *proving* their ignorance of the real world. I mean, how naive can these people be? Does their whole business plan smack of "pointy haired boss" or what? "Our revenue model is being the gate keeper between codes and their destinations online!
Sorry DC, but I think you'll find that your (Cue) Cat is out of the bag and no amount of bullsh*t is going to put it back again. Better rethink that business plan.
"Give the anarchist a cigarette"
Re:Don't Believe It. Devel still going strong... (Score:3)
Its a good think lego did not do this! (Score:3)
James
Re:My favorite quote (Score:3)
I'd certainly rather go to Amazon where I can read reviews that are NOT controlled by the publisher than to a fluff site about the book.
When I want to know about a movie, I go to the IMDB. If I want hype, I guess I'd go to the studios site. Same difference.
Re:My favorite quote (Score:3)
Here's a page about converting barcodes to ISBN's just in case you are interested. It also describes a complete barcode scanner to Palm Booklist
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/bookscan/ [eblong.com]
Winton
Re:Loss-leader hacks (Score:5)
But the irony of it all is that this "damn near worthless" situation is exactly what drives the so-called "hackers" in the first place. When you have a piece of hardware sterilized by lack of software (or lack of a monthly 'hookup' in the case of the TIVO or iOpener), it's only human nature to examine closely the relationship between the hardware and the software that some business guy says we need to operate it.
Moreover, this loss-leader shit does expose some pretty lousy business models. TIVO is an exception here because they actually take a pretty generous view of their boxes and the hackers that tweak them -- but take a look at the iOpener, for example: why in the world would they seriously expect everyone to just sit back, not touch their boxes, and pay their US$21.95 a month for internet service when (in most cases) the people who take the most interest in their boxes are people who (a) already have an ISP subscription, (b) probably already have a home LAN, and (c) don't like to be told what they can and can't do with hardware once it's in the confines of their own home?
It's a lousy business plan -- and that's why (despite the fact that iOpener continues to try to be generous to the "open-source" community) iOpener substantially raised the price of their hardware. (They have other reasons, of course -- service reasons -- but I think it's pretty obvbious that they raised the prices because their initial business plan was a piece of shit, they realized it, and now they want to, uh, 'reposition' [as the suits love to say] themselves in the market.)
What, do these companies expect a bunch of "laws" to stop hackers? (I say this tongue in cheek -- and while I know they *do* expect laws to stop the hackers, they can't *really* expect the laws to stop hackers.)
What's even more insidious is the fact that -- if you look at this stuff in a more general, big picture sort of way -- these companies -- iOpener, Dig Converg -- are really attempting to 'reposition' themselves into our private spaces. And by that, I mean that they're attempting to control their products even when their products -- and I'm talking hardware here, the physical stuff -- are in the confines of our private bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens.
What's at stake here isn't some dumb lawyer letter from a dumb, corporate lawyer paid by the dumb corporate shitheads at DC -- or wherever -- what's at stake here is control of our private space and far the corporations (thanks to the government) will be allowed to intrude upon our private space.
I'm not talking 'privacy' here as it is traditally used -- privacy of information like our names, credit card numbers, and medical records -- I'm talking about our private spaces: the walls in which we live, eat, breed, and sleep. This isn't about some dumb reverse engineered algorith that would take a freshman compsci student 45 minutes to crack -- it's about how far are we (consumers, slashdotters, geeks, whatever) going to let business control our physical, private space.
That's what's at stake here. And, IMHO, it's even more insidious than information -- the bits and bytes that make up our identity and our credit history and the files on our computers, etc -- it's the actual, physical space that -- up until recently -- we've considered our homes.
It's clear that the government -- at least in the past few months -- is siding with the corporations: the government (our fat cat elected officials) is saying, look, we know stuff like copyright and intellectual property is important, so, um, we'll keep passing legislation so that you (Big Business) can keep making profits.
But what are the implications of these laws? The implications are simple: the physical space that I consider my private space -- my home, my car -- is being given away, given up, and sold down the river by government to big business. We'll soon not be able to 'touch' hardware inside our homes.
I mean, for chrissake: imagine what would have happened if 40, 50, 60 years ago, Henry Ford declared the engines of automobiles off limits. "If you fuck with my engine, I'm gonna sue your ass so hard and so deep you won't be able to feed yourself and your family, much less ride around town in my automobile. You can ride in my automobile, Pal, and you can *pay me* for my automobile, but god dammit almighty: if you so much as pop the hood and clean those valves, I'll get my lawyers on your ass and make you weep. You can't look at that engine or touch that engine. Why? Because that's my life. That's my livelihood. And, come to think of it, not only can you not touch it, I want US$21.95 a month before I allow you to take the gas cap off to fill it with gas. Hell, I'll be generous: I'll give you one free tank of gas. But once that's gone, it's $21.95 a month for rights to unscrew that gas cap." (Which translates -- in the case of legal MP3s, for example -- into this: you pay me a monthly fee so that you won't get sued.)
It's madness.
Intellectual property? (Score:4)
Now, if someone were to pull apart a cat, and build one and market it to emulate the original, yes, that'd be infringement.
However, their encryption isn't of their own devising, so, no real reverse engineering there. Just application of existing algorithms.
Data generated from the cat isn't Intellectual Property at all.. Merely generated statistics.
Ok, I understand their stance that it'll affect their revenue stream by hijacking the cat, and using it for things it was never intended.
Still, what percentage of their market will persue this track? If they've done their marketing correctly, an absolutely minimal amount. And some of those may still use it for it's intended purpose.
Basically, if someone doesn't want their device pulled apart, and reverse engineered, don't throw it mainly at the tinkerers market segment.
It's like putting your hand in a tank of hungry pirhanas, and expecting them to ignore it.
In just about every venture, there's the concept of 'acceptible losses'.
As DC don't seem to be tying the whole thing down, and chasing it carefully, I think they just hit the kneejerk 'Call in the legal vultures, and the world will conform', and ignored it.
Not the kind of behaviour of a company really worried about the release of this info.
Malk.
DC is focusing on the pennies... (Score:5)
I think they're really barking up the wrong tree trying to shut down the hobbyists and the LINUX driver writers. Their true revenue stream lies with the AOLers of the world, and not with the bitheads that read Slashdot.
They should recognize that 5% of the people are going to hack their cats NO MATTER WHAT THEY WANT, and that the other 95% will be firing up AOL so they can quick scan the barcode on the front of the Radio Shack catalog.
Even if a Windoze version comes along (AOL compatible), over 75% of the users will still not circumvent their device. Mr. Matthews should chalk these up to "acceptable losses" and make sure that the content he provides to his "real" subscribers is good enough that the hacker substitutes don't compete in features.
When did "Cease and Desist" become an acceptable substitute for "Common Sense"?
John
The Church of the SubGenius [subgenius.com] -- because somebody had to put all that slack in there...
Re:Why are we bothering? (Score:3)
I don't care if they understand my "convictions." I don't care if they give a "flying fuck" about us. We never gave them our "hard earned money." We're not asking for "customer support."
We're not asking for anything except to be left alone, essentially.
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Re:More CueCat (Score:3)
If I get REALLY bored I might see if I can hack something similar for my CD collection.
That, and what self-respecting geek wouldn't be interested in ANY toy like a barcode scanner to play with? Especially if the price is right?
Re: the SecurityFocus article. Does this guy have his head way up his arse or what? He really thinks the cease-and-desist had any real impact? Doesn't he realize all those sw bits are still out there, just hidden a little better? This guy appears a textbook example of a clueless suit in charge of a tech company. No fscking idea of what is going on in the real world.
Dumb (Score:5)
The CueCat case is a problematic one. On one hand you can not deny obvious user benefits from the product, everybody seems to want one, so in a way the company has created a market for the product. On the other hand the company failed to realize that the consumers tend to minimize their costs, just like the eco classes teach them. Nobody wishes to pay more than is required by the law, and the law does not require making any payments to the CueCat, since CueCat did not bother to protect themselves. So what is CueCat to do in order to stay in business? I imagine the costs are already high for the CueCat. To save the situation they should think of some kind of user benefit they can offer to the customer to buy CueCat software, maybe they should offer an UPGRADE and SUPPORT for the CueCat hardware only to the customers that buy their software.
But, what would I know, I only took the first level of economics...
Hand in the cookie jar... (Score:4)
Chief Wiggum (to Ralph): "What IS your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?"
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