and and my duck so everybody that's on
my channel
i wanted to let make sure you're not
confused you're seeing louis but you're
on
my channel you're also seeing the same
exact stream
on the ifixit channel so we're trying to
do this at three
different places at once and we're here
to talk to kyle
and hear about that crazy thing you guys
remember to fix the
dmca where it used to be illegal
to unlock carry or unlock your own
iphone and now it's not
but it could be illegal again if this
law that's up for renewal doesn't get
renewed so we're going to hear all about
that and there's nobody that knows more
about the stuff than kyle and carrie
from ifixit so kyle tell us all about
this stuff
so the the dmca is the law that that is
responsible for youtube videos getting
taken offline
i think probably all of us have seen
that we've seen video removed through
the dmca
there it's a interesting sort of broad
law governs copyright of all things
copyright is designed to protect
creators uh but there is a section of
the dmca
uh section 1201 that is a real problem
and
it was a mistake for congress to pass
this law in the first place
it's a mistake for it to continue to be
around and i'm gonna i'm gonna bore all
of you
and show you the actual law here real
fast uh just to kind of
kind of set the stage so this is the
cornell law school and i know
none of us are normally wanting to look
at law i really hate that i have to be
on here talking about copyright law at
all i don't want to have to talk about
copyright i want to be fixing things
um but what this law says is no person
shall circumvent a technological
measure that controls access to a work
protected under this title
and what that means is that software is
a work that's protected under the title
and so any physical device that has a
lock on it that has
software uh like say a cell phone uh you
know
your cell phone is locked to at t or
verizon
if you want to bypass that lock it is a
violation
of the dmca and increasingly we're
seeing manufacturers put locks on all
kinds of things
specifically to stop people from fixing
them so this is a cartoon that ran
alongside an article that i did where he
says hey you're under arrest for
circumventing a technological measure
that controls access to this tire it
looks like you'll be needing a new car
and this seems totally ludicrous
but tires these days have pressure
sensors in them they're attached to the
overall car and it's very possible that
you would need to
break a software lock to modify
the ecu of the car to tell about the
entire pressure sensor
um so this feels like a dystopian
nightmare
and i am here to tell you we are living
in that dystopian nightmare right now
uh and so every unfortunately like we
have this this terrible law passing 98
we're all dealing with it
fortunately congress built an escape
hatch into the law where we can ask for
exemptions for things like fixing tires
carrie can you walk us through like what
does that that three-year process look
like
yeah absolutely so every three years the
copyright office
uh holds a rulemaking proceeding where
they ask people to petition for new
exemptions that they want
uh for the right to circumvent these
these digital locks
and uh that that includes you know you
file a petition you have to hire a
lawyer or work with a legal clinic
uh you file comments arguing making
legal arguments in favor of your
exemption
you have to file multiple rounds of
comments usually uh you get one
opposition gets one then you get another
one then there's a hearing process so
the copyright office holds a series of
hearings for everyone who wanted to
uh who requested an exemption and so
this year the
we re-requested i fixed it requested two
exemptions
to allow you to fix your stuff so one we
requested an exemption
for the ability to repair video game
consoles that have optical drives
and two we requested an exemption for
the ability to repair
all software enabled devices so
everything from your software enabled
cat litter box
to your laptop to your uh lawn mower
or tractor or tractor uh and which you
know
is an exemption that we won in previous
years and kyle and i will be going to
this hearing you guys are all ip lawyers
we saddle up so these guys are
strawberry farmers in santa maria uh
and and these guys are intellectual
property lawyers
we got everybody together banded
together fought on behalf of farmers and
we were able to get an exemption to
legalize tractor hacking
yeah and then so uh next week on tuesday
uh kyle and i will be testifying at the
copyright office in favor of these
exemptions arguing against the
opposition so
you know opposing these exemptions we
have folks like the equipment dealers
association and the dvd copy control
people and the entertainment software
alliance uh all of those folks who are
trying to
keep us from getting the right to fix
our stuff and so we'll be coming up
against them
and answering questions from the
copyright office and trying to argue in
favor that exemption that's on tuesday
morning uh and we can uh share out the
link in a little bit in the
in the uh chat um but also
carrie yeah thank you so let's say
that you got sick you and kyle you got
the rona
and you can't make it on tuesday you're
laid up it's not happening
nobody shows up for to argue for these
exemptions
and so the the librarian says no
exemptions
nothing passes how would my life be
affected the most
like i'd wake up the next day what would
happen yeah so you would wake up the
next day and you would still be
vulnerable to being sued by a company
for violating 1201 so
violating this law so if you violate the
law that kyle just showed you
uh you're potentially subject to massive
amounts of civil damages so
huge money judgments against you or
possible jail time
so you could go to jail for breaking the
drm that's that's preventing you from
accessing the software code on your
devices and so
uh the current state of affairs is that
for any device that doesn't already have
an
exemption from the copyright office uh
if you break the drm on that you
you know could get sued or could end up
in jail uh and that's
you know that if we didn't if we didn't
don't win these exemptions this year
that'll be
continue to be the state of the affairs
after the hearings um one thing to note
though the copyright office isn't going
to make its decision in that hearing
live
uh we'll be seeing its decisions
probably in the fall they tend to
release them around october
uh so they'll take some time to consider
everything that was said at the hearings
take meetings with people consult with
that
an entity called ntia and the federal
government
and then they'll produce their
recommendation in the fall which is then
given to the library of congress who
either adopts
the recommendation or or doesn't but
pretty universally adopted but a really
good example of this process going
totally haywire
is it used to be legal in the u.s to
unlock phones to move it from at t the
verizon
and then one year the copyright office
woke up on the wrong side of the bed
denied the exemption and the u.s became
the only country in the world was
illegal to move your
atn phone to t-mobile and this had huge
wide-reaching impact it meant that
repair shops that were doing phone
unlocks for people were doing it
illegally and were open to liability
it totally screwed over all the
electronics recyclers that are
accustomed to
getting phones unlocking them and then
selling them overseas it did hundreds of
millions of dollars of economic damage
and it took three years to unwind
because we had to wait for the next
three year process
does that have to do with like me
putting check
rain on a phone in order to recover data
from it by rolling it back to an
earlier ios would that be a modification
yeah so i could go to jail if if they
did not renew one of the existing
exemptions is for jail breaking phones
if they don't renew that that phone
jailbreak exemption then absolutely you
could go to jail
and and carrie what's the criminal
penalties for violating 1201
oh gosh um i don't remember exactly 150
000 per instance plus up to eight years
in jail i think
it's crazy uh and this is not academic
our good friend
cena conifer uh he uh he developed the
first joe uh it was in jailbreak it was
an unlock for the motorola razer phone
back in the day
and motorola sued him for hundreds of
thousands of dollars of damage i think
well they said per instance and he was
helping thousands of people unlock their
razors
and we're trying to send him to jail for
this
just for unlocking a phone yes
so the the one that we're concerned
about right now is game consoles
uh so uh louis do you do you ever
deal with the optical drive problems
repairing game consoles
i haven't i don't do anything with game
consoles but all we've ever done
most is you know data recovery on the
drives from them when they start
clicking
but you know the the idea you're talking
about the fact that if you change the
drive the drive is paired to the device
so you have to have a change by the
manufacturer
yeah that's incredibly annoying i mean
it's one of these things where people
don't believe me when i say that you
know
if you uh that that you have to go back
to the deal or
but you actually literally do have to go
back to the dealer in that case to get
that part fixed
yeah that's what when i asked brad who
will never show up on camera
hey what is something that you can think
of that might you know that this impacts
your life that was the first thing he
said was you know oh you mean like the
optical drive on all the game consoles
and then and then two of them walked in
the door right now
so that's a that is a big one do you
think that you're gonna get that
exemption kyle
so the game console exemption is the one
i want the
the most bad to get we have been
applying for this one and failing
like we applied for this six years ago
we played this three years ago and the
copyright office keeps saying no and so
it continues to be illegal
uh to do these optical drive swaps it's
infuriating
i fix it we would like to sell just an
optical drive and then say here's the
optical drive run the software program
pair it with your xbox and you give you
we can't sell that part and instead we
have to sell people a combo new
motherboard plus
optical drive which is so expensive you
might as well just buy a new game
console
what's the opposition argument for not
allowing you to change the drive i
imagine it's piracy and one of the
things that i've noticed
with most of the arguments is that they
very rarely if ever actually bring up
an instance of where that happens so
when they say safety is they say it's a
safety issue they'll never bring up
this person hurt themselves from a fixed
device and here's how so
when they bring what do they bring up
and when they bring this up do they ever
bring up an actual citation
of how this would happen they uh say the
sky will fall
uh so this is you know microsoft and
sony and nintendo are too chicken to
show up and oppose us themselves
and so instead they send their their
lawyers they send the entertainment
software
association to oppose us and actually i
have a i have a photo here
uh so this is uh three years ago this is
us testifying it's me in the center
you have matt uh who uh is a good friend
of ours he's an independent repair guy
robert miranda runs a xbox repair
operation in barstow
this guy on the right is representing
the entertainment software industry and
he's
sitting there making thousand dollars an
hour to show up
and make it so that we can't fix our
things
for a thousand an hour
[Laughter]
the arguments are crazy they'll say
things like you know
it will unlock uh hordes of pirates
right all of a sudden you know
the video game companies will will
completely go out of business because
too many people will be pirating video
games
and we're over here saying we just want
to fix the game console we want it to
work again we don't want it to be a
piracy vehicle the other opposition has
said things like
well it's going to undermine the market
for that software that if we allow
people to
to unlock this digital lock on the on
the pairing software that
that pairing software is going to lose
its marketability um and that
the dvd copy controls mechanisms the drm
on your on your
optical disc it's gonna lose
marketability um which is which is
patently ridiculous and not a concern
for copyright law
and we hear just these nonsensical
arguments i mean they'll say things like
people can hurt themselves
that they can fix their game consoles
okay
you know in the in the automobile
context that if someone can fix their
tractor or their car that they're then
gonna
violate emissions controls and that
that's why the copyright office
shouldn't let them fix their cars
what would it look like for me to
actually
uh let's say you win and you get an
exemption so
now just for the game console that would
allow me to solve a problem where i've
bought and paid for a playstation and
the drive stops working which does i
remember having a student in here worked
on these things and he said that a motor
failure of the drive
was really common you know just like any
kind of motor that you sort of manually
stop
that thing gets gummed up it's going to
fail and so
being able to replace that was something
that was had a
legitimate mechanism for failure so with
the exemption i would be able to go
just get another drive
plug it in there and play the games that
i paid for
i don't understand why what what is the
protection there now like what is the
how how does it work right now that
there's a protection i don't understand
that
what is keeping me from from you know
ripping a copy of super mario brothers
or whatever you play on
playstations cs go is that is that one
right yeah so the the the drive this kit
is connected it's kind of paired at the
factory to the main board and there's a
cryptographic tie there
so in order to in order to make it work
in order to be able to make a new
uh drive work if you took if you took
two playstations and you swapped the
heart of the
optical drives on them you then have to
pair or marry
the uh the new drive to the to the unit
and that involves basically doing the
same thing that check rain does you have
to basically
break open the thing pair the new one
and then re-lock it down
um and i mean what's so frustrating is
there are plenty of these drives out
there you have the the
motor in your drive fails well i can go
to the electronics recycler and take
ps5s that we're about to go and maybe
not ps5 ps4s ps3s
that we're about to go into a shredder
uh and and
i can pull those drives and we can sell
them and i mean i have those drives
sitting on a shelf when i fix it but
they don't you can't make them work
unless you have the software tool
to pair the new drive yeah it's that but
i don't understand how
the existence of the native drive how
does that
prevent me from playing i mean i assume
this is all about you're it's trying to
prevent me
from sticking a dvd in there
that is a copy that i didn't pay for
yeah that my friend like how how does
the native drive prevent me from doing
that
there's some fancy sauce in these
optical drives and there's a fancy chip
on them that can detect
the difference between a genuine blu-ray
game
and a ripped blu-ray game and and that's
the copy protection that they're afraid
of they don't want you to modify
the the optical drive to be able to read
ripped discs which is you know mod chips
for game consoles are a thing right
and so this is why they're so sensitive
about this uh and and we from the repair
world are saying hey look you know mod
chip should be
illegal that's fine that's you know uh
if you're going to steal someone's game
that is its own violation of the
copyright but it you know the act of
repairing the console
should not be its own its own uh
violation and so this is
like the legal term for this we say that
the repair
as long as the repairs for the sake of a
repair and not an activity that you're
engaging in
in in an act of piracy right we're just
doing the the bypass we're not
we're not uh attempting to pirate games
so there's kind of a double jeopardy
where they want they want there to be
two laws where it's illegal
to parrot games it's illegal to pirate
the game and it's illegal to break the
lock so that you can pirate the game
well why does it why do we need double
jeopardy
one law should be sufficient yeah i like
that that makes sense
yeah it's not preventing people from
pirating
games or installing mod chips right it's
only preventing people who
want to respect the law who want to do
legal repairs from being able to do that
right if you don't care about copyright
law if you're like copyright scoflaw
you're just going to go ahead and
install the mod chips and pirate the
games anyway
and you know we know that people are
already doing that so it really doesn't
add any kind of extra deterrence or
anything like that it just makes it
harder for people who want to do the
legal repairs
yeah people have been pirating stuff
since the beginning of time i mean you
know the whole
idea that you shouldn't be allowed to
rip a dvd didn't stop dvd decrypter from
working it didn't stop the
dvd movies from showing up on emul
nutella use net kaza
sulci click everything and you know what
there are tons of tauren sites out there
where if you want to pirate a game and
you don't want to pay for it you can
like not even getting into the morality
of whether it's right or wrong but all
this is doing is stopping people from
being able to fix their device not
actually stopping piracy which is still
rampant to this to this day
yeah uh this particular uh log just
drives me absolutely up the wall i mean
what they're saying when when they say
you know you can't circumvent the
technology protection measure
there's it's really just math it's it's
me typing
numbers and letters into into a computer
to be able to to break this encryption
um and and the idea that certain kinds
of math would be illegal as an engineer
that drives me absolutely crazy
it's it this is a free speech issue like
th this law is basically saying if i
have the let's say i've got the computer
code
for well i'll pull up and i'll show you
so
the computer code for uh removing uh the
encryption from a dvd
is on wikipedia here we go
so this is the math that allows you to
remove the encryption from the
from a dvd uh the act i believe of
showing you this
may well be a violation of section 1201
of the dmca
like it is it is outrageous that
that um this law is restricting free
speech
copyright is supposed to incentivize the
creation of creative works and and it's
doing exactly the opposite
i think it's gonna be really funny which
one of you guys is going to be going to
jail for that
would it be kk because she's kind of
like
you know the only thing here on the
stream you're in charge of it
you're the one going to jail because
this wait i'm going to jail and so is
lewis now
hopefully none of us are going to jail
i get the top bunk i'll say it's not
just software too like we see companies
arguing that like
the shape of a particular card is
is a tpm or a particular attachment for
a dongle is a tpm um so it's not just
you know companies saying well you
shouldn't be able to to do the
decryption it's like
you shouldn't be able to just access the
software period and they're they're
arguing that
kind of every possible thing could
constitute a lock
that's designed to keep you out and
protect access to the software
it's kind of crazy like this law was
passed in 1998
it was designed to prevent people as
we've just discussed like from pirating
creative works from copying dvds and
distributing them
on the internet it was not uh you know
in 1998 the kind of technology that
we're talking about largely now like was
not in the scope of
this law it was not in the minds of the
members of congress who were passing
this law
as one of my favorite law professors has
said congress might have been thinking
about the celestial jukebox but they
certainly weren't thinking about the
celestial refrigerator
like the kind of devices that now have
software
uh we're just like not considered uh at
all when this law was passed and because
of that like
and because of this laws super broad
language it applies to
almost every device it now because
software is in almost everything
rather than just sticking to what it's
supposed to do which is you know prevent
piracy
so why don't we put you guys on the spot
i love to do that and say especially you
carrie you're an attorney right
that's your job what i'm attorney i'm
not practicing
let's have you practice today what if
you had
what if you had to argue uh make an
argument
from the opposition and i i i really
like when i sit and hear all the right
to repair hearings or whatever
i think it's it's always good to try and
put yourself on the other side of the
table and try to figure out
what is the nugget within your argument
that is valid so what is that what's the
what's the the nugget of truth that
you know where where can we kind of
identify with
why why is anybody even bothering to
show up on the opposition side
yeah i think that's a great question i
think when we think about game consoles
i think there is a real concern on the
opposition side that people will do
exactly what we just talked about that
they'll
uh circumvent the tpm's that are pairing
the optical drive to the
motherboard and the console and then
they'll install a mod chip and they'll
you know use it to play pirated games
and then that'll undermine the market
for um
for legitimate games which would then
like make it harder for video game
creators to make a living
uh but again like that argument is
really
it's going beyond what we're really
asking for what we're asking for is the
right to repair
something the right to repair our video
game consoles we're not asking for the
right to pirate something and so
um you know that all of the things that
they're afraid of piracy
cracking uh dvd encryption or optical
disk encryption
installing mod chips that's all still
illegal and would still be illegal under
1201 so they'd still have this
big scary law that they could go after
people with um
so it sounds like things it sounds like
the
manufacturers want you to be required to
lock your car
in order to deter
theft i don't want to lock my car my
car's not locked right now
go out and steal it it's right out front
i'm in here streaming everybody knows
that
well they want to take my car it's not
just that they want you to be required
to lock your car it's that they want to
lock your car for you every time you get
out of it and they want to be in charge
of when you can unlock it again
yeah yeah i don't like that that's a lot
of control dro's law
is if someone puts a lock on something
that you own and doesn't give you the
key
they're not doing it for your benefit
yeah i like that like why
okay i sell you a car here's your car
here's your key
or but i mean in the modern world and we
see this with iphones right you get a
phone you can't load any app that you
want on it right it has to go through
the apple gatekeepers
uh is that really for your benefit
yeah i like that they also like we
haven't really seen a lot of cases that
were brought by the video game console
manufacturers over 1201
in the us uh the there's only one case
that i'm aware of and it was a canadian
case
um of a few years ago but but you know
for all of this insistence that they
need this law to prevent piracy
they use it very rarely if at all
and yet it totally prevents folks like
us from selling
game console parts like ifixit does not
sell standalone optical drives for game
consoles
because of this law i would like to
uh and i mean this isn't just so
taking this beyond game consoles i think
that one is near and dear to our hearts
but but the rest of
uh that there's a whole world of really
much any product out there that has a
microchip and it has software and 1201
can apply to
so there was a case a couple years ago
dorman is a car parts manufacturer and
they sell replacement like transmissions
for gm
trucks and gm sued them for 1201
infringement for selling a tool to
enable you to install a transmission in
a new in a new truck and the
transmission would come with
transmission enable or module you
plugged into your obd port
to take the software from the old
transmission and move it onto your new
transmission and
and gm said no that's a violation of
1201.
so you can see like they're just like
with with the optical drives on game
consoles there are repairs where there
is no way to do the repair
unless you circumvent a lock
and increasingly all products have locks
they're going to
wasn't this what am i remembering about
drm
and coffee was that something that had
to do with this
yeah so uh i i believe that's um
you know kerrig had a special uh claim
that they had a technological protection
measure that wouldn't let you use
third-party uh coffee capsules in your
coffee machine
um and i believe there was a lawsuit
about that um and and it really was just
uh an anti-competitive practice really
they just did not want you to buy your
coffee from someone outside kerrig which
you know is not something that copyright
law protects you know cleverhead doesn't
give you your right to
control the market for uh products or
services outside of the the device
itself
um so yeah that is that's another kind
of thing we're talking about is
uh you know as manufacturers claim that
these different things are technological
protection measures whether it's like a
little tab
on the on that little k-cap or whether
it's
you know a software lock that's keeping
you from unpairing your optical drive
um a lot of a lot of times these are
just you know anti-competitive practices
by the manufacturer trying to lock you
into their
systems their services uh buying new
consoles when your console breaks
things like that i've seen in
lewis's uh channel morningstar says i
had to replace the optical drive on my
ps3
twice i he swapped the the controller
board in order to do it
and then he said eventually the
controller board failed and he lost all
of his games
so i don't know if that's like a
subversive motive that they have here
where it's it's not just trying to sell
more consoles they're also trying to
sell more games because you lose access
so even if you have the game on the hard
drive if you the optical drive stops
working
then the game that you have on your hard
drive stops working i think the problem
was he probably had to get into a
machine
i don't know we've heard from it from a
few folks that um when you install a new
if your optical drive is broken
and you know you go to install the
latest update for your machine
that the that update will check and make
sure that your
optical drive is running before it like
beats up or finishes installing
uh and if the optical drive is broken or
not present
then it just won't finish uh installing
or won't finish loading
and you just won't be able to play any
of your games including your digital
downloads
well that stinks sure does
the k-cup so someone was asking where is
the drm on
on a k-cup there isn't actually a chip
instead it's in the ink there is a
specially formulated ink
in the keurig brand cups uh and again
the the law says a technological
protection measure it doesn't
necessarily say a software protection
measure right so any kind of
protection that they put on things as
long as bypassing that
involves accessing some kind of software
can fall follow the law
do you ever hear from the e-bike people
i have not heard of locks with e-bikes
uh
they may exist and the e-bikes would be
covered under the exemption that we
asked for but
i haven't heard of a problem i bought an
e-bike which i love
and uh unlike some youtubers i'm smart
enough
to get it serviced at the dealership
rather than try to add funky batteries
and stuff like that but i'd like to when
it gets old when it's old enough that i
you know want to mess around with it and
change the battery myself like i
i got the impression from talking to the
very normal repair guy
at the bike shop that i wouldn't be able
to do that
this was a vado 3.0 i think
yeah and i have no idea whether or not
that's a thing or not but it seems like
it would be in the
it's increasingly proprietary it's in
the kind of like apple style proprietary
repair where
where you figure out how to fix apple
products we all really care about a lot
there's
a lot of smart people working on it with
e-bikes i think it's all new
everything's proprietary and so we just
don't know uh so someone needs to be the
jessa of e-bike repair and figure it out
and put the
answers on the internet and then maybe
yeah well
as soon as this bike stops working so
far i love this bike doesn't have
anything wrong with it and
ride it to work it's been fantastic
highly recommended
um i will let you make it faster as long
as you
don't have any track record of any kind
of fires no fires i want the fire free
e-bike no fires in rochester so far
as long as you're going fast enough you
can run away from the fire
did lewis explain his e-bike or what yes
he did
rest in pieces all right so kyle why
don't you tell us a little bit more
about you know so it's we're having a
chat here but there's a reason
why we're talking about this today and
what is it what can people do and
why are we talking about this today
we're talking about this today because
the copyright office is right in the
middle of deciding they are going to be
uh basically uh grilling carrie and i
next week
asking us you know deep technical
questions
about about game consoles and they're
going to decide whether it's legal for
us to fix game consoles in the future or
not so that
that decision is being made by a very
small group of lawyers at the u.s
copyright office it's not
this isn't your elected representatives
uh this isn't the vitamin administration
this is the u.s copyright office
uh gets to decide kind of by fiat who uh
who can fix who can fix things so we're
gonna be up uh
uh talking next week we could certainly
uh use your support
um we we need you know people you know
tweeting at writing to the copyright
office let them know that this matters
to them
yeah and i think also you know keep part
of our larger goal here is this law is
broken
there is no reason that this law should
be this broad and that this should
continue to stay on the books given how
awful it's been for pretty much every
good thing in the world right it's it's
terrible for repair it's terrible for
accessibility
it's terrible for teaching and reporting
you know there if you if you watch these
hearings or if you follow the process
that there are
public interest groups and individuals
and advocates
um from you know all walks of life who
have to who get dragged into this
process every three years just to be
able to use their stuff
and so uh what we what we want we want
this lot of change so we you know we're
here arguing for these exemptions from
the copyright office but really what we
think
what we think we need is uh a change to
the law we need our elected
representatives in congress
to uh create a permanent exemption for
repair
so that we don't have to you know muster
all of these resources and spend you
know 500 hours
every three years trying to get the
copyright office to issue a simple
exemption
this happens every three years it
happens every three years
yep uh the copyright office has made
some changes recently but um
every three years you have to go back uh
if you've got an exemption
that was passed uh in the last cycle you
have to go back to the copyright office
and argue for that exemption
again because does that work you just
copy and paste last year's argument or
so they're trying to streamline that a
little bit more this year in the past
you had to make all your arguments all
over again
now if you um starting this this round
if you were granted an exemption in a
past
cycle uh the the burdens on you are
lower
unless there's a new opposition or
substantial opposition to the renewal of
the exemption you can kind of just
petition for the renewal and like
hope you don't have to make any
arguments about it but if there is
substantial opposition then you have to
go and make all the arguments all over
again
uh and that said the copyright office
has been insisting on defining the scope
of exemptions super narrowly so they're
essentially doing like
device like very narrow device category
by very narrow device category
so this year we're asking for a broad
exemption to be able to fix all
software-enabled devices
but they've indicated in the past that
they're very hostile to that approach
and that really we should be going like
if this year it's like software-enabled
light bulbs and next year it's
software-enabled toothbrushes and next
year it's software enabled
cat litter boxes and so there's you know
we're we're going to have to keep doing
this
basically like for the rest of our lives
change in 2018 it looks like one of them
said it's
and i quote it's my own damn car i paid
for it i should be able to repair it or
have the person of my choice do it for
me
was that a quote from someone uh that
you included in your evidence or was
that from the actual copyright office
who said that because if that's from
them saying that it seems like they
understand the problem will be a little
bit no it's not from them saying that
that's
that's from someone who's advocating for
the exemption not the copyright yeah i
figured that was too good to be true
because it said that that showed up in
the report and it's like
there's someone in our government that
believes in freedom
well i'm sure there are but just
generally not as much in the copyright
office
something that's a little bit
frustrating about this is is it's
lawyers who are the ones making this
decision last i checked most lawyers
make pretty good money and aren't
general ones
the people that are fixing things
themselves so they are pretty
disconnected from
meet the needs of the rest of us uh and
so
we you know when i fix it shows up they
are often asking me very basic questions
like
if you need to change the tire sensor in
your car what is that
what is involved in that what kind of
tooling do you need um they're asking me
like how do you open an iphone just like
very basic questions so i feel like we
kind of have to bring the
the world of reality to the copyright
office and explain it to these
these lawyers up on their ivory tower uh
where
and what how can we help it sounds like
you know carrie sent me a link that i
posted on
my community tab for public comments
so where is the primary opposition this
round is it the video game consoles
and what else what do they need to know
yeah the
the two so is are we category 12 i think
uh
there's there's two exemptions that
we're asking for we're asking for
uh game consoles specifically and then
pretty much
all all things that have software uh and
we are expecting the copyright office
will uh
not be super excited about either of
those um
so i would say you know the biggest
thing that you can do is call your
congressman and complain about 1201
yeah i would agree i would say you know
watch the hearing and see what kind of
questions the copyright office mate asks
and what kind of statements the
opposition makes
and and call your members of congress
call your senators and tell them that
that you think the law needs to change
and that's that's what we're all angling
for long term just to show you kind of
how ridiculous this is i'm going to show
you the list of things
this is the exemptions that we got
granted last year so this is the blog on
ifixit where we talk about what we got
and so it's like it's legal to unlock
phones tablets wearables
but only if the device is used if it's
new if it's a new phone you can't do
that i don't know what the difference is
between the new and used phone but maybe
you do
we got access for cars tractors and 3d
printers but not some other things
so they're breaking this out category by
category like
like we got an example of 3d printers
but not 2d printers
um so to be clear i'm i i
have a software controlled litter box
and i sent a software controlled litter
box to lewis we both have these
right now am i going to jail if i start
to
open that thing up and mess around with
it mr clinton bro
if someone finds out well i'll never
tell
i'll take that one to the grave yeah and
you know that our friends at the
electronic for cheer foundation
i used the used the litter box the
software enabled litter box as an
example
of where uh people would really like to
be able to modify and change this
cleaning schedule to be like more
environmentally responsible
or use if it's yellow let it mellow
precisely
and right now that's illegal under
copyright law
let's just think about that for a second
it's illegal under copyright law
to change the settings on your
electronic litter box
the other thing doesn't really matter
but uh yeah i mean like we'll we you
will survive if you can't fix your cat
leather box but there are other things
that matter a lot more i don't know
you don't have an indoor cat i mean
lewis lives in an apartment
with three cats yeah i'm going with
survival being
just a time limited mr clinton is
engaged in chemical warfare
yeah he broke that litter box like uh
over a year ago
and you didn't and you didn't fix it
because you were afraid of jail time
no i didn't fix it because it was filled
with car it's crap
but imagine that you have a electric
wheelchair
uh there are and you know maybe you have
to swap out a tire or something on it
and then you need to change a parameter
or there are like acceleration uh
adjustments you might want to make or
they're actually in most electric
wheelchairs they have a traction setting
let's say you're in minneapolis and it's
icy out and you want to put studs on
your electric wheelchair
and uh you need to access the traction
control setting that's behind a password
that the owner of a wheelchair isn't
given access to
so if you want to jailbreak your
wheelchair for the purposes of
you know modifying it to work better for
yourself or for fixing it
uh you're out of luck right now yeah and
it can take if you decide to go like the
formal route try to get the manufacturer
to fix it it can take months
so we um we were talking to one advocate
in colorado who had to replace the
battery on his wheelchair
and it took over 60 days for the
manufacturer to send someone out who was
authorized to replace that battery
so that was over 60 days from which he
was completely immobile
totally exacerbated all of his health
conditions it was just a
horrible situation for something like
surprise repairs seems to be slow as
hell regardless of the industry
yeah i even that sen there was that one
senator
in washington that said that it took
something over two weeks
because he had an issue with with his
xbox
i'd like to propose that we stop using
the word authorized and change that to
the word branded repair
because that's what it is and i really
liked that when i was reading the
magnuson moss
warranty stuff where that's the wording
it says you can't require somebody to
use branded service so
branded repair is what authorized repair
is so let's
let's like kind of make a campaign to
swap that language
authorized sounds uh must be good
branded sounds
hell hellfire i like it
i might propose cartel
repair shop but sure
uh yeah absolutely i mean this is uh it
is a
yeah if you didn't have competition in
your business you might not be super
fast at respond to everybody
either because you know the customer is
going to be there today or next week
especially if they're in a wheelchair
yeah they're not going anywhere
yeah that's like that's got to be
against some other kind of law that's uh
that's
that's wrong all right what else do we
need to talk about
please send your pacemaker into a
branded repair contractor
[Laughter]
can we get a link to the hearing so
uh you know we're gonna put the i put
the links to the hearing
on the community tab so if you click
over to community
i made a post with both the link to the
hearing and to
the public comments thing survey
and i'll put that i'll move that over to
the description
and i'm sure louis is busy doing the
exact same thing
yeah the other thing i would mention is
outside of what the us copyright officer
is working on there's a lot of other
race repair activity happening right now
27 states have introduced bills um
there's a lot of momentum
the california medical right to repair
bill just passed out of the senate
health committee unanimously yesterday
very excited about that the canadian
parliament
uh had a discussion on on
right to repair uh specifically a fix
for this copyright issue
in in canadian law they had an extensive
debate about this yesterday and
uh and by extensive i mean uh
representative representative came up
and talked about how important right to
repair was
and not a single representative has to
fight against it
so until the lobbyists show up everyone
likes it
um that's something actually i think
it's important because i know we have an
international audience for a lot of
these and that
um the us has steadily exported this law
in through trade agreements throughout
the world so almost every trade
agreement since 1998
contains a version of section 1201 uh
and this legal protection for
technological protection measures
uh most of them also contain some kind
of limitations or exceptions so
an authorization that a nation state can
enact certain exceptions
um but you know that that differs in
terms of implementation from country to
country
and it's bad it is a bad part of us law
and it is
bad that we have exported that
everywhere this is american imperialism
exporting the worst
aspects of our law to the rest of the
world and that's the only reason it's in
canadian law so we need to we need to
fix it we need to fix it everywhere
uh also the us federal trade commission
is investigating this and we're
expecting that they will release a
report later this
month on warranty issues you know those
warrants you avoided for move stickers
are totally bogus and unenforceable
but companies keep putting them on
products so maybe the ftc will step up
and ask them to stop
one of the interesting ones is the robot
on lg's website when you contact them
and you ask about fixing something it
says
if you if you have an unauthorized
person work on it they say that it voids
the warranty
so it's not like something where
internally that's their policy but
externally they'll make up a fake reason
as to why
your warranty won't exist or some kind
of tricky language it's just
straight up we're breaking the law it's
crazy how do they get away with it
nobody cares ftc how are they getting
away with it
yeah we're hopeful the ftc will step up
but i mean i
we've been kind of like blown away at
the amount of attention that we've
uh been able to get on on all these
issues this year this really feels like
a moment
for uh for advocates in our space right
now
yeah it's important and this is why we
need all of you to help
us and this is why both on the state
level and the federal level and the
international level you know make it
make it
clear to your lawmakers that you support
the right to repair whether it's through
state level right to repair legislation
or changing section 1201
performing copyright law to make repair
legal for all software enabled devices
um we can't do it without you
yeah and then let's do the video on the
ftc thing it's ftc.repair.org is a forum
for for writing the ftc please do that
many many thousands of you have and we
super appreciate it we are going to be
i don't think we've announced this yet
we uh we are going to be hand delivering
those petitions i think we will print
them all out and then deliver them
to the federal trade commission next
week in washington dc
and will you say making it rain
[Laughter]
we might yeah all right very good well i
think we are
kind of at the end of the attention span
at least
uh at least i gotta go do stuff and so
thanks guys for talking to us about this
stuff i had no idea
that we had to redo this thing every
three years
that's crazy
you know we often work with legal
clinics one of the legal clinics we work
with out of harvard law school
they represented someone for a very
simple like medical device data
exemption that wasn't opposed
several cycles ago and it took over 500
hours of legal work just to get that
exemption an exemption that
was not nobody even cared about yeah
that's
that's crazy and frustrating for sure
and you know i think that a lot of us in
this space would definitely like to see
the game console repairs kind of open up
especially for a really common failure
of that motor drive so
all right thanks so much and we will put
a link in the
in the description for uh how to
show up for the hearings because they're
on zoom so everybody can go why not
and to submit some comments so that you
can help
folks that might be lay people
understand why this is important so
thank you very much and louis you can
end your stream
and i am going to end my stream right
now
thank you everyone thank you for lewis
and jessa we'll see you later thank you
so much for taking the time
thank you this is awesome all right
i hit uh stop streaming
as i fix it still streaming yes i
don't know how to stop it