[Music]
so it's Robert the pressure yeah do you
know those YouTube channels that are
broadcasting town meetings that haven't
taken place in ten years are just a live
stream of an empty room and things going
and they've never had the room yeah no
and nobody ever shows up that's you know
the waterboard of these pigs knuckle
just like I know what they never meet
they're never courted and it's just this
this transparency sunshine loudly I
think we it's three hours at the bog
confinement unit can go down the road to
someone else's town yeah
so fellow at the end of the room I'm
pulling up Twitter and I've got my god
one retweeting Cory Doctorow I feel like
can you call me a Nazi know what the
discussion go a little bit you know it's
not tell my god one's called you and not
see that you really arrived he uses a
very sparing yeah he's very careful
how's it gonna feel when you're like if
you and your abs for your Google
searches it's your name is my god I'm
confused by this feel well this doesn't
seem strong control it seems yeah I
think you're right but not particularly
it was that added before the Anitha
[Music]
go through the brutalist theme it's like
it's it's easy this is brutalist me it's
quasi Victoria on the outside fruitless
nothing so it's very like Southern
California Disneyland stimulate grow
[Music]
motorized make retrofit meets
post-modernism yeah yeah let's get
started Kyle how we doing good okay well
thank you all for coming tonight I'm
Corey doctor I'm a special consultants
to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
thanks to our friends at scale I think
you wanted to say a few words before we
kick off okay welcome to the rights to
repair the freedom to maker and the
right to know so we'll be discussing the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act which
has been an active 20 years ago I'm here
on behalf of Read Me which is a students
right rights organization here at UCLA
they addresses current issues of digital
rights especially as they relate to
information workers and professionals
here in our department information
studies so thinking about the DMCA and
the obstacle it brings for the right to
repair is especially important for us
since the right to repair the right to
open devices to know their contents to
communicate how they work is critical
for maintaining a sense of our current
information environment for ensuring
access to knowledge about technology and
for preservation of digital technology
software and data tonight we're excited
to have a number of experts and
activists in the space here behind me to
talk about the DMCA bringing
perspectives from their work in action
on behalf of the electronic the tear
Fondation I fixed it smart X and pulse
so we'd like to thank the F F for
connecting us to allies in the space
Cory Doctorow for reaching out to us to
convene this conversation and UCLA gse
is for providing us with a space to talk
here tonight
and I'll pass it over according to this
thank you thanks everyone
so I wanted to start by seeing a few
words of context about the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act in Section 1201
the last 20 years and how we got here
what we've been doing today and
yesterday at UCLA here in the hearings
the copyright officer holding and then
I'm going to turn it over to my
colleagues and friends here who have all
been testifying or an active part of
these Copyright Office hearings here at
UCLA which happened every three years so
I sometimes call this a funny thing
happened on the way to the 21st century
in 1998 the Clinton administration and
Congress sat down and crafted this thing
called the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act it's a big gnarly hairball of law
you may know what is the author of your
favorite videos is in this video has
been removed thanks to acclaim into the
digital Nick Cochran I've had section
512 we're talking about section 1201
that's the bit that makes it illegal to
bypass digital logs access controls on
copyrighted works and in 1998 the idea
was that if you made a DVD player you
might want to stop people from bringing
DVDs home from like Mexico or India and
playing them on their DVD player here
because you might want to sell them for
a cheap and overseas territories and
charge more here and you wanted to stop
that parallel importation and so what
you do is you'd say that anyone who made
a DVD player would have to check to see
what region the disc was made in and
make sure that it matched the disc the
region that the DVD player was sold in
and if it didn't match the DVD player
would refuse to play the disc not
athletic it couldn't play the disc it
just wouldn't play the disc it's the I
can't let you do that Dave school of
computing design and it's important to
note that that doesn't really have any
nexus with copyright infringement right
going into a store in Mumbai and buying
an authorized DVD at the price that the
rights holder set for that DVD and then
taking it home to Los Angeles and
watching it in your DVD player is the
literal non hyperbolic opposite of
copyright infringement paying the rights
holder what they asked for their work
and then watching their work that's no
copyright infringement
that's just copyright but there's this
whole suite of things that manufacturers
would like to do that are really covered
by copyright
kind of nice to haves not needs to have
manufacturers who really like it overall
if you would arrange your affairs to the
benefit of their shareholders instead of
your benefit and DVDs were kind of
ground zero for this along with games
consoles and a few other early
technologies and when these laws were
enacted in the late 90s activists and
security researchers computer scientists
they warned the Copyright Office and
they weren't Congress and they were in
the administration that very soon every
category device would have a copyrighted
work in it because they don't have
software in it
software is copyrightable and that all
manufacturers would need to do to force
you to arrange your affairs to the
benefit of the manufacturer instead of
to your own benefit would be to install
a kind of thin scrim of copyright lock
around the device that you would have to
puncture in order to use the device to
your benefit instead of their benefit so
put your own ink cartridge into your
printer or get your car fixed by an
independent mechanic and so that their
mechanic or use a third-party part to
repair a device instead of buying the
part that they charge an enormous markup
on all they need to do is design the
device so that in order to effect that
there's some kind of copyright lock that
sits between you and there that you
might have to bypass and then bypassing
that lock becomes an offence and
providing the tools to bypass that lock
becomes radioactively illegal the
statute provides for a $5,000 fine and a
five year prison sentence for a first
offense and as the years tick by one by
one device categories have started to
see this kind of copyright lock
integrated in theory to protect some
kind of copyright interest in software
or to you know the manufacturers might
claim that it has some Nexus with safety
or some other thing but in practice it
always seems that defending their
copyright interests and keeping you safe
and all the rest also involves you
paying through the nose for stuff that
you could otherwise get for free or
cheap and it's hard to believe that
that's purely a coincidence and every
three years the Copyright Office as
pests specified in the statute holds
these hearings they hold a set in DC and
they hold a heat asset here on campus
and they ask the public to come in and
talk to them about the uses that they're
trying to make that are legitimate uses
that a copyright lock has gone in the
way of and then they grant them a use
exemption an exemption that allows them
if they can figure out how to jailbreak
their device and make the use that is
otherwise sought by the statute it
doesn't allow anyone to provide the tool
forth there some pretty significant
limitations in this regime but at the
very least once you're clear to make the
use if you can figure out how to make it
or if you can find a tool somewhere out
there on the Internet you can make the
use even if the person providing the
tool isn't supposed to be providing it
to you and so these are important
proceedings and this year the Copyright
Office to its extreme credit has said
that they're going to have the
presumption that they're gonna renew the
exemptions that came up in 2015 and so
mostly we've been hearing about new
exemptions we've had a couple of days of
hearings and we'll have one more day
tomorrow and and today we have some of
the people who presented petitions for
those exemptions we're gonna hear from
them today hear about the exemptions
that they that they argued for what they
need of the of the questions they got
asked by the Copyright Office then we'll
take your questions and we'll have a
kind of free-for-all I remind you a long
rambling statement followed by what do
you think of that is technically a
question but it's not a good one
and so I'm who we're gonna start with
let's start with Kyle right coedes
is with iFixit Kyle maybe you can stand
up and choice yourself and talk about
what you petitioned for absolutely yes I
run like fix it or a online repair
community and we have the idea that we
we should be able to fix all of our own
stuff I fix its mission is to teach
everybody how to install their things
and we've been that ever since I was in
a dorm room that Cal Poly trying to fix
my laptop couldn't find the information
and very quickly stumble into the world
of copyright law where it turns out the
manufacturers believe that the surface
manuals are copyright level and that
they could use that copyright to refuse
the license those manuals to anyone and
just keep them secret and so I was I was
trying to fix my laptop I couldn't find
the service manual I modeled my way
through the repair and I barely sort of
got it fixed and it would have done a
lot better if I'd have access to service
manual so I decided that nobody else
should have to suffer through that that
indignity again and I wrote
service manuals and said already the
other part and those of you that like
pink ring and like taking things apart
the first time you take notes something
apart is the hard time after that it's
easy and the problem is that we have so
many things in our lives that the first
time is usually the only kind and that's
where we turn to Google and the other
net and the way that I think repair
works now is if you can google it and
find information about how to fix it
then you can fix it and if Google has no
information then you're out of luck and
so we have taken upon ourselves this
idea that everything that has been made
should be fixable and we should were in
the position of trying to figure out for
any given thing what's the process to
fix it so a few years ago a friend of
mine his name is Dave he's a local
farmer and San Luis Obispo couple hours
north of here came to me and said hey
I've got this John Deere tractor and I
you know I used to be all all the
repairs myself recently I've had to go
through the John Deere dealer who's
about an hour south of us and there you
repairs I've got a problem where I've
got a harvest coming up actually
harvests are supposed to start today and
the tractor won't start up and I'm
convinced that it's not the mechanical
problem with the tractor it's actually
the sensor that's failed and I want to
know how can I disable this sensor so I
can get the tractor to go and I'll take
the risk that the sensor isn't actually
revealing some underlying problem and he
had tried to get the sensor from John
Deere and they said yes we're out of
stock with our local warehouse we'll
send you one that's gonna be three days
before you get another sensor eNOS says
this is a it was literally a three
hundred thousand dollar tractor
I can't wait three days for my to run
the harvest I have to run it now can you
come out with your laptop and your
computer science degree and help me
figure out how to fix my tractor and so
I said sure I'll try and it turned out
it was complicated and but as I did a
little bit more research we realized
that even if I was able to technically
help him using my fancy software
engineering skills it probably was was
going to be a violation of section 1201
and in that in that moment in a couple
days window I wasn't able to figure it
out since then I've learned a lot more
about how John Deere protects their
hardware they have a diagnostic software
that their technicians have access to
the farmers don't
and so they have to come in with their
laptop plug it in it does a handshake
with the tractor and says I'm indicated
as a John Deere technician and then it
will actually give John Deere more
information more diagnostic information
about the tractor then the farmer is
given access to themself and John Deere
is so protective of this information of
the software that runs on this laptop is
designed to auto erase itself every 90
days so if the technicians somehow leaks
the software somebody steals his laptop
and won't work for more than three
months and so we applied for an
exemption in the last training
rulemaking to be able to modify and
repair tractors and John Deere fervently
came out and said no absolutely not the
locks we put on these tractors are very
important they're essential to the
security infrastructure of the tractor
and farmers should not be able to do
those kinds of repairs in addition of
that they said look the soft the farmer
doesn't actually own the software that
runs on the tractor he just has them
tighten license to operate the software
for the life of the vehicle which was
news to me and it certainly was news
departments and after I showed that
leather to the National Farm Bureau and
the Corn Growers Association they got
very upset they said how can we help I
said well we have this idea that maybe
we can pass rate to repair legislation
in editions of the copyright exemptions
we'll be able to actually help us get
the access to that diagnostic software
because you're wasn't selling the
software in the farmers and so since
then or 3-4 years later we had 18 states
so far this year introduced right
repaired legislation we had a hearing
last week in Illinois
now they've introduced it yeah yeah
because this is an idea whose time has
not yet come eighteen states have
introduced bills we've had a lot of
hearings California introduced a bill
this year
Assemblywoman almanza's Eggman from
Stockton was awesome hero introduced
legislation unfortunately the
legislation has systematically been
killed offered died in every state
legislature it's been heard in so far
this year we have a few states left
Illinois is looking potentially
promising but overall we've seen
strident fervent opposition from
manufacturers LG told lawmakers in
Illinois this last week that if rate
repair was passed that information about
how to
pericle geez refrigerators with any
danger in Public Safety and if all of us
are fixing our refrigerators all of a
sudden we're going to be we're going to
be put in harm's way and you know the
legislators are listening and if they
don't have another voice saying hey this
isn't credible there isn't actually
threaten some people hurting themselves
14 refrigerators or maybe there is a
threat of people hurting themselves but
not if they have access to the service
manual then then this is going to be an
ongoing issue so very excited to be here
to be a part of this conversation we're
going to see this legislation continuing
to evolve we see this issue being
something that needs to be fought on two
fronts
you've got the federal challenge to
repair where we have locks on systems
where manufacturers of taking advantage
of section 1201 the lock down their
equipment and we need we need statutory
reform - 1201 and in the meantime before
we get statutory reform we need the
Copyright Office to grant some relief
around some of the areas like like
automotive and tractor repairs where
where there's so many challenges but
then we also need state-level reform
where we can get states can tell the
manufacturers look you've got this
diagnostic tool make it available to
farmers so they can fix it so we see
this as a dual fight both of the federal
level of a state level and it's it's
clearly it's happening across the
country it's even happening around the
world and I'm optimistic we're going to
see something change but it's going to
be a few it's going to be a while it's
going to be a hard fight to get there
thanks Kyle makes a really important
point something that we talked about in
that and a kind of big header for this
for tonight's event which is that
property rights you know if you've ever
if you're any of you have ever done a
first year property law course you'll
learn Blackstone's definition of
property that which you enjoy soul and
despotic dominion over to the exclusion
of all other men in the universe you
know property rights mean that it's your
stuff you you bought it you own it you
get to do stuff with it you get to do
stuff with it even if it makes the
manufacturer and their shareholders sad
and foundationally the right to own
something is also the right to choose
who fixes it what you plug into it
whose consumables you buy for it and you
know on its face it feels like well okay
but Apple really wants to
decide whose apps I can buy and maybe I
can live with that
the principle that says that it should
be a felony to provide you with a tool
to unlock your iPhone so that you can
choose whose app store you use in
principle is no different from the idea
that if your toaster at a vision system
it would be a felony to provide you with
the tool to let you decide whose bread
you can use we are really one RFID
system away from a dishwasher that won't
wash unauthorized dishes once the
manufacturer has decided which supply
chain you can use and uses copyright
locks to protect that then DMC 1201
gives them cover of law to make that
preference into a rule and so with that
we're gonna hear from our next speaker
who is Matt from hulls
Thank You thanks you know I represent
pulse technologies which is a on demand
in all smartphone repair TV mounting and
smart home setup services basically the
easiest way to sum it up is uber or
repair and start it straight so if you
need your iPhone impaired we'll come and
fix it we do your Galaxy your pixel any
type of key mount and including cutting
into the wall and rewiring and
electrical we also do making sure that
your Google home works with all of those
things that we just set up for you I
know far less about the copyright
nuances of repair what I do know is the
practical implications of that
so we employ a network of about 2,000
technicians across 50 major US markets
and those technicians are all local to
their areas so when you talk about using
1201 dmt I to to limit repair you're
talking about impacting those local jobs
and when you think about in the context
of manufacturers you have to understand
that they are sending their jobs right
if you send your iPhone out to Apple to
get it repaired they didn't do those
repairs by enlarge it's too complicated
they don't do it at the Apple Store in
Omaha Nebraska they send it out to
Denver Colorado to the nearest Apple
facility so now you're sending jobs out
of your state so specifically how I'm
involved in all this is I've been
working
Kyle on the right to prepare stuff I've
been going to Nebraska and stuff in
California and all over the country of
Boston and soon-to-be LA again for
lobbying against legislators to say that
we need to ask these regular pair of
legislation bills so that these jobs are
protected so that we can find a better
service for consumers and so that you
know all in all the consumer just gets a
better experience with the products that
they are buying anything they buy the
expectation of ownership by the way we
work very where we're kind of
interesting as opposed revisional repair
shop is we work one-on-one directly with
manufacturers so we work we have a
partnership with Google we have a
investment one of our investors is
samsung next program which invest in
startups it's an affiliate of Samsung we
are pushing very hard to work with Apple
but they just tell us go away and so
every every couple of weeks we knock on
the door and say hey do you want to talk
yet as the new thing comes out right and
so right now the biggest issues that
we're facing is iOS 11.3 where what
Apple has done is said if you had a
newer iPhone an eight eight plus iPhone
10 you upgraded and you happen to get it
repaired on not Apple guess what we
can't use your phone anymore
and I say that and it kind of sounds
extreme but it actually is it's you
couldn't touch the screen to interact
with anything going on you could see
what's going on but you couldn't do
anything with it right and so Apple
released a software patch to fix that
which is great news
but in the interim time of I think about
three or four weeks where that was going
on consumers are pretty much screwed and
as a reparent see what we had to do was
recall all of those parts help consumers
you're Sol you get to go to Apple and
wait for months to get a repair
appointment and then all of a sudden
Apple releases is fixed but now all of
the stuff that was coming back wait send
it back out for the text and we'll do
the fixes now and and this isn't just an
exception we saw this with the battery
issue a couple months ago where they
were you know the term but they were you
know squeezing their hands around your
battery that your phone's making run
port we saw with era 53 even more a long
time ago so that's kind of a quick sum
of what we do
we heard that when white repair comes up
one of the recurring themes for the
manufacturers is that this undermines
our security and it's certainly true
that electronic devices have an enormous
security problem it can of escaped any
of your attention in the last year that
like people steal whole hospitals by
releasing malware and and you know from
the computer science perspective
security is hard but it what the DMCA
has done effectively is not made devices
more secure it's just made our ability
to explore and report on the security
devices more fraud it's always been the
case that manufacturers would like to
decide who can complain about their
products and point out their defects and
when and what the DMCA has done is given
them an effective veto over it because
of course people don't want to face
criminal and civil liability especially
really large-scale criminal and civil
liability for warning people about
security defects and because firms have
been able to invoke section 1201
whenever a security researcher comes
forward and says well you know i
bypassed this drm in order to see how
the device was working and I found these
defects and I published this week
concept code and they say well now
you're a trafficker and we're gonna hit
you for half a million dollars in five
years in prison what we find over and
over again is that researchers are being
chilled from coming forward now this
doesn't actually make devices more
secure right the idea that if the
researcher doesn't tell the public about
a defect in a device no one else will
discover that defect and weaponize it
it's on its face kind of a silly idea
but we actually have some data now and
thanks to our Stanford so after the
vault seven vault eight CIA a cyber
weapon release or NSA cyber weapon
releases we were able to see the rate at
which security defects that are
discovered and kept secret are
rediscovered independently and
weaponized and what we saw from those
releases of government malware was that
about one in five defects will be
independently rediscovered and
weaponized in a given year and so when
you tell a security researcher you're
not allowed to come for
and and disclose the existence of your
defect you don't foreclose on malicious
actors finding that defect and
weaponizing what you do is you create a
kind of one in five dice roll that that
defect will be weaponized and used to
attack everyone who is vulnerable to it
until such time as it's so widely
dispersed that it can no longer be
denied and then the defect becomes
widely known and gets finally remediated
we have seen all kinds of bad effects of
chilling researchers and their ability
to come forward one is that researchers
have made a new practice for disclosing
defects rather than asking the
manufacturer in advance if they know
about the defect and giving them a
chance to remediate it before they come
forward because they don't want to just
dump a zero-day on the world before the
manufacturers have a chance to remediate
it now because they're worried about
getting attacked they just dump it on
paste them because they want the world
to know about it and they know that if
they tell the manufacturer about at
first that they face liability and the
kinds of devices the constellation of
devices that DNC 1201 effects just keeps
growing so we're seeing it in medical
implants we're seeing it in seismic
dampers we're seeing it in voting
machines we're seeing in high speed
payment processing systems and so all of
these systems now are becoming systems
that are not readily auditable by third
parties just last year the World Wide
Web Consortium greenlit a proposal to
put DRM in the browsers used by three of
three billion people to conduct their
finance their personal affairs their
education their romances their
connections with their families and also
to control their Internet of Things
devices and now those three billion
devices have an unattached surface that
no security researcher can touch without
facing this liability under 1201 and so
with that I'd like to turn it over to
Jeff from Stanford who is here giving
testimony to the Copyright Office as
well
so I'll just talk about a little slice
of the right to repair and what we've
been helping the the Institute of scrap
recycling industries with their 1201
exemption which is for sofa you know
that probably if you've got a cell phone
it certainly if you got it a few years
ago and quite likely if you got it today
it's locked to a particular carrier
you bought a verizon phone and if you
want to switch that phone to 18 T or
sprint historically to bad
nowadays maybe if you're lucky after
your contract runs out you can request
that the carrier will give it to you and
because under the threat of FCC
regulation they agreed to be voluntary
and still was left they might they might
get with you until we've been and I
would say if I have a theme here sort of
related to what Corey was talking about
about importing lawfully purchased DVDs
is tell me again what this has to do
with copyright because the idea is every
phone have software name and they put a
walk around the software I mean the
software it says whether or not you are
allowed to take that phone to another
carrier most of these phones are
perfectly capable of working on another
carrier and it's simply a little piece
of software in there that says no and so
because these are protected by digital
locks you need to break that lock in
order to unlock the cell phone without
the permission of the carrier and
suddenly you're in 1201 violation line
violated federal law and so we've been
our students Chris Connolly who's here
tonight and Dylan sure we're testifying
as today before the Copyright Office
about why they should grant an exemption
for people who awfully owned a mobile
device to unlock that mobile device and
take it to another carrier and we
already have an exemption for this but
it is limited to use devices and it is
limited to one of four categories which
they have arbitrarily I would say semi
arbitrary those cell phones tablets
wearables and mobile hotspots and so
we've been telling the Copyright Office
one there's really no difference between
new and new devices there's really no
reason you should have the right to take
a device that you awfully purchased and
bring it to another carrier if it was
already used on the carrier but not if
it wasn't and to is it this is the age
of the Internet of Things there's no
reason that we should be looking into
these numerous
enumerated categories the NTIA told the
Copyright Office that these categories
are blurring and disappearing and it's
really hard to even tell what's a phone
what's a tablet today leaving aside the
many many many types of devices that now
have software are now becoming so you
are activated like open security systems
or irrigation systems or your car so our
students were telling the Copyright
Office yesterday about why they should
be an exemption for unlocking your
devices and taking them to another
carrier and I just want to return to
that same question which is what well
come to you again what this has to do
with copyright breaking this lock isn't
about getting access to software that
you're going to copy and take to your
other phones somewhere else this is
about flipping a single page that says
yes I can think my phone to another
carrier so that is what Stanford has
been helping history do and so half a
millennium ago before we had a science
we had a thing that looks a lot like
sciences tell that alchemy an alchemists
did a lot of things similar to what
scientists would do they would observe
some phenomena in the universe and they
would formulate a hypothesis about their
causal relationships and then they would
run an experiment to see whether or not
they understood the causal relationship
and then that's where science and
alchemy diverges scientists tell people
what they think they've learned so that
their enemies can tell them about the
stupid mistakes they made and their
friends can can are their enemies you
can call them idiots grabbing me the
mistakes their friends can congenitally
point them at alchemists never told
anyone about about what they've learned
so no one ever pointed out their
mistakes which is how every Alchemist
discovered in the hardest way possible
that they shouldn't drink
mercury right when we create a regime
that says that in order to investigate a
product you have to keep what you learn
to yourself we return to a pre rational
era we return to an era in which our
peers can no longer audit our work more
importantly the manufacturers become
kind of practitioners of alchemy the
idea that any company is so smart that
they can find all of their defects and
don't need the rest of us to put our
eyes on what they think they know to
escape their
groupthink I mean it's a dead letter on
its face you know 500 years ago only a
small class of people were allowed to
own property and everyone else had to be
a tenant of that property and use it in
the way that the owner of that property
gave permission for we call that
feudalism today we have a kind of new
feudalism
we're only these kind of trans human
artificial colony life forms called
illiterate called limited liability
corporations get to truly own property
in that sense of despotic dominion over
over a device to the exclusion of all
other people and the rest of us are
rapidly disappearing under this regime
in which we have to use our devices in
compliance with the rules they said even
if we think we bought them because it
turns out we're only licensed or you
know we have john deere saying you've
only licensed your tractor GM wrote a
letter in support of it it turns out and
they said that that's that's not your
father's pontiac they were speaking
literally like your father never owned a
Pontiac and neither can you
so this you know it's great to tinker
around the margins with this our 1201
hearings every three years and Eddie if
I'm really proud to do that work but we
need a better fix and so that's why EF F
is suing US government on behalf of two
of our clients to question the
constitutionality of 1201 and to restore
some of these traditional rights that
have been part of our lives really for
500 years
and that we have no reason to abandon at
this moment in which our devices are
becoming more powerful not less in which
they're becoming more entwined and more
intimate with our lives and not less and
so that brings me to our our last
speaker tonight KITT is a lawyer tff she
happens to be the lawyer who's running
this case for us and she also gave some
testimony today will be testifying
tomorrow
[Music]
[Applause]
hi everybody I'm Kip Walsh I'm a senior
staff attorney at EF f and my fellow
panelists have done a great job
highlighting a lot of the features of
this law particularly the way that it
lets manufacturers impose their
preferences on what you do with the
devices that you rely on in your lives
one thing that's really unusual about
this law is that it doesn't just govern
what you do it also governs what you're
allowed to know so by creating a ban on
accessing copyrighted works which can be
the software in your device this is the
law that gets in the way if you want to
figure out if your Volkswagen is
achieving on emissions if you want to
figure out if your kids doll is
recording their voice and sending it
back to a server somewhere you want to
figure out if any of the cameras or
microphones pointed at your living room
are taking advantage of your trust for
the benefit of the manufacturer and that
enforced ignorant is really uncommon
that's not something that traditionally
was permissible under any kind of
intellectual property law once the
advice is out there you get to buy it
you get to take it apart you get to
understand it fix it make it better
etc and that's part of the unintended
consequence of section 1201 that's
really troubling yep eff is a civil
liberties organization we care a lot
about your autonomy your ability to
protect your privacy and your ability to
make the changes you want to see in the
world you achieve all of those things
using technology so when that's that's
let me step that back technology is
integral to amplifying your impact
ideally technology is a tool that allows
you to amplify your impact in the world
section 1201 is a big impediment to that
because as we've heard it can mean that
your technology is always an agent of
the manufacturers they're the ones
ultimately in control of what it can do
where you can fly your drone etc and you
tell a sort of personal origin story
which is that when I was an
undergraduate I was a neuroscience under
and I was building things that connect
electronics to nervous systems and
ultimately the goal is either create a
prosthetic component that can help with
neurodegenerative diseases create
interfaces between you and your
computers and as I learned about the way
that the law treats your rights with
respect to digital technology I got
really concerned about making that
technology a reality in the world I want
you to ultimately be in control of what
your mind your body the devices that are
intimate parts of your lives are doing
and that's part of our work to prevent
section 1201 from getting in the way of
your use of technology to advance the
things that are important to you let's
repeat the question and we'll work the
question for the camera you first
develop products or how to use things
like that be part of the prepare thing
and so my question is and it's not what
are so the question broadly is about to
repeat with camera is about tools about
the the right to make and circulate
tools and instructions and
other material that will help people who
aren't you make use of it after our
software is like these kind of great
self executing recipes where you can you
it's not like a hammer where I get
really good at a hammer and then I give
you the hammer you're not good with the
hammer but I can get really good at code
and write a program and you can run the
program as well as I could and so can we
find a way within the 1201 exemption
process or through some other process to
address this tools it's this tools
conundrum maybe kids like the best pose
tell me how to talk about state right to
repair sure so the the tools issue is in
large part something that arises from
the way this statute is written because
there are a bunch of separate
prohibitions on different activities
that you might undertake one is the act
of circumventing to get access to
something and a separate provision is
providing the tools services trafficking
so it there's not a ton of case law
about what that means but in the first
instance we and others have spoken to
Congress in the Copyright Office about
that the Copyright Office suggested that
Congress revisit that issue at the level
of a legislative change to make
exemptions more helpful and we've also
suggested some ways that within the
scope of the Copyright Office is
statutory mandate they can avoid
narrowing exemptions in unnecessary ways
so for instance the repair exemption
excluded third parties entirely but
there are third-party activities that we
think do not rise to the level of
conduct that's prohibited under the anti
tools anti services provision and so
that's an immediate opportunity for the
Copyright Office and the librarian of
Congress who's the ultimate decider to
take a step forward in the context of
the rulemaking process and the the the
broader very clear legislative fix would
of course be welcomed as well yeah you
have to
have tools in order to do these repairs
and increasingly those tools involve
software they're relatively complex I'll
kill you a story about another friend of
mine who's a local farmer in San Luis
Obispo who is not Dave and I'm not going
to tell you who he is because he
probably would prefer he's definitely
prefer I didn't identify him so he
actually has done news Diagnostics up
and I said how did you get it he said oh
well there's this forum and I found out
that if I put five thousand dollars in a
duffel bag and I leave it under a park
bench at a certain time a laptop will
appear that then has the Diagnostics
offline and at that point once he's got
the software that then he can do the
work and and that was really the light
bulb moment that was okay so the
Copyright Office has said that it's very
challenging for them to legalize the
development and sale of tools so if I
can't go out and as a software engineer
to build the tool and distribute it
because it's a violation of 1201 what I
can do is go and pass a law that
requires john deere make that tool
available to farmers and the john deere
is providing it with the tool then it's
not their convention and so that's
that's the approach so that's what
because of the approach that the copy'
robinson has taken it's really driving
us towards state level right your parent
legislation and if you look at the bill
that's being introduced in those 18
states it says you must make available
to consumers access to service
information security updates and
diagnostic software for maintaining
equipment under the same terms that you
make it available to your dealer
networks so we've got two approaches one
is looking at how do we fix the federal
law that we can't make our own tools and
then as a reaction to this this
interpretation of federal law you have
states stepping in and saying all right
well we're just going to completely
change the market and require the
manufacturers make the tools available
yeah and just to close that out we have
our board member and Samuelson who takes
a slightly different view to ours and
she thinks she's a UC Berkeley she's one
of the country's leading copyright
scholars and and she says well you know
there's some exemptions where it's hard
to imagine how the tool tool exemption
could be squared up with other
exemptions where they're very broad
right an exemption it allows me to
jailbreak an iPhone it's broad and it
doesn't anyone that's allowed to do it
it's not limited to service technicians
or left-handed people
or Wednesdays or whatever you're always
allowed to jailbreak your iPhone and she
says well the statute says you can't
produce a tool to jailbreak a covered
product but once the Copyright Office
says you're allowed to jailbreak the
product it's not covered anymore and
then the tool should be legal - I don't
think Pam's found any takers to be your
test case yeah but I mean she's not
whistling Dixie right she's when Pam
says something like this with some
certainty it's because she's thought
hard about it and there are very few
people in this country as qualified as
she is to think hard about it and have
an opinion on it certainly I'm not as
qualified as she is there was a question
[Music]
so the question is like once I ot
pervades our lives and there are
security dimension is your CEO to
monitor your fire monitor your locks and
so on when the manufacturer says well we
can't guarantee that your door says
stays locked if you plug a third-party
gadget into our device how do we square
that up
[Laughter]
yes I like to say that software is
eating the world software is moving into
our gizmos if you maybe take a 32 with
microcontroller kind of thing that the
powered is the first computer that I own
there are numbers of 16 megahertz
computer writes a 32-bit micro coil it's
25 cents these days and it can run you
can have hundreds of thousands of lines
of source code on that on that 25 cent
microcontroller so we have the world
you're talking about property personal
property that the kinds of laws that
govern what we can do with our personal
property the moment that you add
software to it all of a sudden now our
intellectual property regime and it
becomes under the aegis of the Copyright
Office and all of these additional
restrictions so the moment a microchip
does something it completely changes
what
right sir and I will argue that moves
from a world where it's relatively
intuitive so I would challenge anyone to
find an intuitive way to navigate the
current set of DMC exams very carefully
constructed way than slicing the baby
into 37 pieces so where do we go in the
world where any other things is moving
electronics into everything we were
having the conversation with the capri
labs yesterday about not just is it
electronically and everything but pretty
much everything has a sudden load of
connectivity I've been noticing all
these electric scooters so they're
floating around now another relatively
controversial okay
well though all of those have a cellular
chip so they can report their locations
[Music]
nobody thought about that yesterday and
all of a sudden I was wondering if the
city of San Francisco 10 pounds all
these scooters in them what is the value
of the skew there to the San Francisco
so these are these are really
fundamental questions and it impacts
every single product that we're touching
and I think it's it's really been
underestimated by society how much of an
impact and I think that's why this is
such a hugely important inflection point
do you think that where is society going
the next hundred years the decisions
that we make now the decisions that the
copyright office makes now are are going
to have a huge shape and whether we're
moving for the world with more freedom
or a world with less it one thing I just
want to add to that is is that simply
because adding connectivity and adding
microprocessor capability to all the
things that we already have in our lives
gives us the capability to walk in these
ecosystems doesn't mean that it makes
sense to do so or that it's good to do
so I'm sure when we first got
electricity and lighting in our houses
manufacturers would have loved it if
they could have wired it so that you
could only use the wedding that they
provided they just lack the technical
means to mandate that I mean you know
AT&T back in the day did a pretty good
job of man making that you could only
use an ADT blackgate EMT phone that you
rented from them until they were
ultimately forced to give up that
monopoly so the fact that this new
technology
creates a technical barrier that allows
them to create these closed ecosystems
doesn't mean that we necessarily want of
course a federal enforcement yeah how
many you have ever heard of the nest
thermostat great so have you ever heard
of the revolved thermostat it was
acquired by Google and it works
perfectly fine and it allowed you to
control the climate in your home and who
will say well this competes with nest so
we're just going to shut it hit play and
overnight it all of these consumers that
have a thermostat in their home it just
didn't work and sorry and that's kind of
you know there's really no harm except
for the inconvenience it happens to you
but we were actually reading an article
yesterday from ZDNet talked about 17
things that are on the internet that are
connected that should not be connected
right and one one was a hydroelectric
dam and and just the notion that a
manufacturer of somebody that released
that software that equipment that allows
you to make that connected right saying
we don't really want to support anymore
it's just too hard and then the
individual third party hackers whatever
you want to call them they couldn't go
and code something that would continue
to support that that requires little to
no effort just because the manufacturer
said we don't want to do that anymore
the implication is when you're talking
about a thermostat are very little when
you're talking about a hydroelectric dam
that's huge when you're talking about
autonomous vehicles if Tesla goes under
tomorrow what happens to all those
vehicles that are out there on the lots
does GM get to step in and say well
sorry you guys can't do this stuff and
so like the practical implication for me
from from post perspective is that we
need to have a way to continue to
support these smart kind things long
after these manufacturers are gone
because they come and go GE has a really
down year this last year seared is going
under Tesla there's all this you know
all these things that are building these
smart connected things they may not
always be around but what we do know is
that dedicated smart individuals like
all these poor people behind me will be
there to help us code the software that
we need to keep those things running
long half of those manufacturers are
gone yeah I'm gonna call him you next to
than you so before there was ransomware
there was robotic car parking garages
where you drive your car in and the
robot drive it puts it in a slot and it
turns out that if you own one of those
and you have a dispute with the software
vendor they have a really easy win
settle dispute they turn off your garage
and they trap hundreds of cars in it
until you pay them the licensing fee
right there are lots of good reasons in
a market economy that you would want to
have a multiplicity of vendors so that
you can negotiate as an equal with the
people in your supply chain and not just
have to capitulate the minute you and
they have an argument imagine if the
last time you had a an argument with a
company about who was in the right and
who is in the wrong they could just
reach it and shut it off now imagine
that it's your artificial pancreas that
you're doing it back and you get to see
why even in especially in the most
sensitive applications you really want
to be sure that you have the questions
about planned obsolescence and
California statutes that require firms
to continue to make parts but not
continue to support software what can we
do in California and in the world to to
vote with our wallets or vote with our
with our coats with our ballot papers or
with some other means to ensure that
that's always available and also what
other action is underway yeah when do
you want to take that yes there's a lot
of you're referring to is California's
lemon law and it says that manufacturers
must provide service for products for
seven years from from the sale date
that's actually the longest law any
jurisdiction in the world a turkey
actually
just California seven years only only
jurisdictions in the world and the
seven-year mandate and so it's
interesting if you have a six year old
laptop from Apple in Oregon Apple won't
support it but they will support it here
unfortunately the way the law was
written they only have to provide
service that service provided by there
may not believe providers it's not
service independent so it doesn't mean
that bless us all you parked it just
means Apple has by the way some kind of
progress service so this is great
clearly we need these kind of laws in
other states and we need to expand it to
cover selling parts and making
diagnostics available so so that that's
we're right to repair comes in from us
and so let me talk about ride repair and
then maybe I'll let ask can you mention
your right to repair or your repair
coalition i popping headline figures
about jobs created by repair and recycle
oh absolutely
yes so if you look and a major repair
we're talking about about civil
liberties and it's certainly a digital
rights issue but it's also fundamentally
just a local small business issue if you
think about the Contiki typical american
county it's throw it down to its essence
you pretty much have a post office in an
other repair shop and it can be in-store
right that's that's the central locus of
an american community and and that all
the mechanic is probably fixing more
things for you than just your car
illinois economic department did a study
and they found that for every thousand
tons of electronics that are landfill
that creates way less than one job for
every thousand tons of electronics that
you recycle it creates something like
ten jobs and if you process those same
electronics and you repair them and
bring them back to the market it creates
two hundred and fifty green jobs so that
that's really where we want to see and
that's actually how we've gotten a lot
of Republicans on board with rate repair
right you're very much a bipartisan
issue we have Republicans in Tennessee
in Nebraska and Wyoming introducing rate
repair we have Democrats in California
introducing rate repair it's very much a
broad grassroots issue so you ask how
you can get engaged right repair is is
very much an individual activist level I
mean this is where at the very beginning
of this it's much less organized than
even some of the other
pleasure with money like net neutrality
it's a very very small group of people
and we need we need only the volunteer
activists we can get working on the
issue absolutely something we can have
an impact on and I don't really believe
in political corruption do they agree
that some of some people online might
say that the politicians really want to
do what their constituents are asking
and they will listen if we show up that
what the professional lobbyists have is
more time and more dedication in there
in Sacramento more frequently and so we
can spend the full than the primer out
spend them in time
over the long run I think I think we've
really got the opportunity to beat them
but it's going to it's gonna take
dedication it's gonna take a lot more
more resources like America they call up
here you and you're in your spare time
and what's the or repaired other organs
the organization that's putting together
on all of the work and you can if you're
interested in any particular state if
you go to California dot repaired or who
have a handy farmer you can write your
legislator or even you punch in your
phone number we'll call you and connect
you with your legislative yeah your
State DOT prepared org the answer the
software question because I think
software obsolescence is really
interesting do you have a perspective on
what we should do about all these apps
others I think you mirroring what you
said about the lemon law it's important
that we have a solution that allows for
competition that's that's the ideal a
solution that you reinforces the
monopoly you maybe you can get your
device prepared and updated but it's not
the ideal it's compared to so one
solution that I realized is there's this
guy named Jay Freeman that releases
these hacks for the iOS software right
it's been allows you to actually keep
your iPhone 5 updated to the current OS
features and even to push out some maybe
security features for your phone that
would otherwise keep it running and so I
would say that the one way that you can
key to support that because it's the
theory in the jailbreaking community
right now is that nobody's Joburg me
anymore
as nobody's actions using the Joker's
right and so it's to keep using those
jailbreaks so that there's a inclination
for the people that are doing it to
continue to look for those exploits in
Apple's OS software so that we can still
support the iPhone you know five and
even further back kyle is using a
headphone for us up until a year ago
yeah so I think it's totally possible I
just think that it requires people and
then you had the neck so the question is
about accessing copyrighted works in the
more traditional sense programs and
games and things that you made yourself
that you might have kicking around in
old floppy
I have logo programs I wrote in 1979 in
an apple tree plus on my laptop that
made the transition from positive half
inch floppies into three two quarter
inch floppies onto a hard drive and so
on
and yesterday we did hear from someone
who's involved in this we heard from
group of people who are working on
preserving early multiplayer games
they'd like to preserve later
multiplayer games as well we're starting
with really early ones games that were
designed for the Commodore 64 dialing up
to AOL and these are games that people
really felt very strongly about who feel
very strongly
and there was a there's a lot of energy
that goes into it it's a very difficult
thing to do because you're
reconstructing the server software just
by looking at the client and there's
often some very baroque drm elements
that they have to jailbreak yesterday we
heard about a four year effort to bring
back a game what was it called habitat
we don't have a ton of co2 or goos where
you can play it now where there was a
tiny bit of code that was used in the
AOL sign-on and they spent a year and a
half negotiating with AOL to get the
right to use this code they had the
Creator at the game had given them in
the source code they had all of their
cooperation from everyone involved
except AOL AOL got bought by Verizon and
like just before they were supposed to
get this and have a press release about
how great al was to bring back this
piece of inch in history they just
filled the whole deal year and a half of
these people's work and they were asking
for the right to to go on jailbreaking
devices to get our software to get there
but also to use volunteers because the
exception they had only let them use
people who work for their museum they
wanted to use volunteers all over the
world and one of the things we heard
from the other side on this was well
these volunteers that you're talking
about they're people who are already
engaged in preservation work before
there's a an exemption
there's scofflaws they use that word
there's scofflaws why should we trust
them just to stay within the lines if we
give them this
okay you're more familiar with all the
exemptions that we've heard this year
and last good last went around do you
have any more preservation examples like
that um so first of all if you're really
sure that it's all your own stuff on the
thing you can authorize yourself to do
the circumvention yeah avoid the issue
that way but my my sense is that I'm not
as familiar with all of the archival
exemptions it seems like none of us are
cos here to talk right to repair but it
is really important it is something that
we seek and my impression is that in
general if there's an institution that's
interesting oh yeah
okay if there's an institutional entity
that wants to do it that that gets
treated more favorably in the rulemaking
process than if it's a community say
people who are attached to a video game
and want to keep it going
or individuals who want to do their own
archival work that tends to be less
favored but as for the details I can't
give you all that Evelyn's so breaking
DRM yes it may be that to
reverse-engineer the format of the file
is not a violation of section 1201 so
things like encryption or password those
are things that are clearly contemplated
by section 1201 but if it wasn't put in
place to control access to the work it's
just I need to know the facts about sort
of how to read this format that's not
necessarily that's something that's
going to trigger the lock
yeah damn Rick Lanoue created the first
spreadsheet visicalc Wright has written
a lot about how because all those phone
records are any visit health and how
when they ship is a cuff they put a
defective sector on the floppy disk
so that they could tell them you copied
it because if that sector could be ready
it was on a copy and if it couldn't be
it was on the original and now because
none of the floppy emulators allow you
to emulate a defective sector you can't
run does it look it can axis is that
mystery was there anyone else going to
ask the question burden test
[Music]
that sounds kind of up here your
question it's not like how do you
conceptualize it sure yes if people ask
me all the time who would want to fix a
VCR and the answer is librarians right
every librarian needs to fix a VCR
because you have mountains of all of
those footage and and VCRs simply taking
the part of VCR I have okay so they're
pretty complicated right so we we were
we spent a jump this morning and Matt
and I we went down to homeboy industries
here in LA homeboy industries they they
give jobs to ex-convicts and people that
would have a hard time otherwise fitting
into the society they give them job
training and one of the things that they
do is electronically and it just I spend
a lot of time electronics recyclers it's
kind of a hobby of mine to see what
happens to all of our stuff where it
goes
and what you might not realize about
electronics recyclers is that most of
the money that they make is actually if
you're reusing and repair not from
recycling so if I were that takes a
phone and recycle it and melt it down
and if the gold in the copper rabbit
there's something like 50 cents of raw
material value in this phone $50 that's
how you and homeboy industries they're
their primary goal is just to create
jobs so as many things as they can
possibly fix the better they also have
to be here in Los Angeles hub of the
entertainment industry for the world and
so therefore a home of lots and lots of
different kinds of media and so it turns
out the homeboy industries were
cycling's down there really specializes
in repairing old media devices they
specialized in fixing VCRs and he showed
us some Gameboy he's walked plants were
greeted as a simple they're fixing
Walkmans and he told me that the value
of certain Walkman models after the most
recent guardians of the galaxy movie
came out where he's got his
they used to be worth $50 now they're
worth $500 because everybody wants
walkins all of a sudden and consent they
spend a lot of time doing doing repairs
of cassette players which is fabulous
but their mechanical devices kind of
like VCRs and they break a lot and a lot
of the parts aren't available and so he
was asking me if I could 3d model some
of the gears and some of these players
so that they can print them because he
says every single vinyl gear that I have
has deteriorated and failed them the
whole thing is not functional because it
does this one part so I think we're
going to increasingly see that it takes
creativity and a community to come along
and support these these devices and this
is an area where I feel like 1201 that
set up a bit of an adversarial
relationship between the manufacturers
in the community and that's not a place
that I want to be is if Sony made the
VCR back in the 1980s they made the
product support alone under the warranty
of aisle after that it's not Sony's
fault the VCR that I am using 30 years
later has broken it's not even their
responsibility to maintain it past that
responsibility off to the community let
but the the librarians and the recyclers
in the repair community let's let's
figure out how to maintain your product
unfortunately 1201 is said even 30 years
later I have to go back and have to ask
them for permission and it almost denies
them the ability to pass responsibility
off to the community and that's
something that I think is really
unfortunate is let us support these
products ourselves we'd love to do it
without to the likies online without the
open-source everything we know create
these models publish the models within
the public domain and so that's that's
where you're going to see the recycling
community in the repair community come
in and and hopefully work that working
to solve that problem philosophical
anyone it because one of the questions
here is whether you get to exercise your
conscience and make choices about how
you use technology can be very
attractive to manufacturers and even to
regulators to say well we have the
ability to physically stop you from
doing a whole range of activities so
we're going to use that lever and that
doesn't allow for unforeseen beneficial
uses it doesn't allow for civil
disobedience in
heeds social change in the advancement
of alterations a lot if you were
physically prevented from being
homosexual by the law that would be a
big problem and it would impede the
advancement of society to the point
where it was no that's not a good rule
to have so that's that's another
philosophical take that might be
interesting do you exercise your human
conscience or do the devices in your
life define the scope of what you're
physically capable of doing I think
that's really well have a very very
short thing defaults matter and
permission structures matter so in these
for the world we've been used to living
in if you have a thing you can do what
you want with it and that was the
default and now if we change the default
so that you need to ask permission and
you change the default so that Sony
needs to give you permission you've made
it harder on everyone because Sony
doesn't want to spend the time and
energy to figure out whether you can
think whether they can give you a
contract that will it's really about
like why are we imposing a permission
structure on something is a society long
to our benefit no I don't think I can
say anything nearly as good as again
anybody else can you know the only thing
that keeps running through my mind from
a philosophical question it's just jobs
when I was at Nebraska State Legislature
hearing and seeing the local farmer and
you know a local repair shop guy that
just at his shop broken in to come in
and testify about how much jaw you know
how many jobs he's getting from local
community members bringing their devices
in for him to be fixed for them to be
fixed by him it was just inspiring
because it makes you realize that these
guys are from that area they are not
from anywhere outside I think their best
serve to serve their community and I
think like it says it has a lot of
repercussions further to society than
really just immediately hey I can get my
phone
it's it's actually that hey I can get my
phone fixed get closer to my community
as a whole
Bruin I know Kyle and I fix it done fix
at clinics you know in San Luis Obispo
and all over the world they're happening
and those types of things
draw that community together and
ultimately it makes society better as a
whole yeah as well so I feel really
strongly about libraries and I think
there's a category where we make about
them we say like well you know libraries
existed to collect books under a roof
and now that we have the internet we
don't need them because now everyone has
all the information we need that's like
saying you know now that we have all
have a plate we don't need doctors right
you know the job of a librarian was not
to aggregate all the books of the
difficult more tiny and difficult and
one of the things that we're pairing and
building your own technology does is it
gets you down to the bare metal it gives
you a kind of information in digital
literacy that allows you to exercise
your conscience to be the sole and
despotic
master with this tool instead of being
it's it's vassal and you know ultimately
like there's a reason that you're not a
samurai until you can make your own
sword once you can build and fix your
own gear you have a relationship with it
that is a foundationally different and
if we want to have a generation of
people are active participants in their
own future and in the world that we live
in which is dominated by these
general-purpose devices where software
is eating everything they have to be
able to fix and they have to be able to
open not change them reconfigure them
and make them suit their needs
so I'd like to thank you all for coming
tonight I really like to thank that
folks would read me who helped organize
it you guys are great and we'll be
live-tweeting tomorrow's last day of the
hearings should be a good one there's an
aviation jailbreaking bit yeah oh yeah I
don't know what they open it in the
morning does anyone know it's just in
the afternoon yeah but well they open
that will they open the signup sheet so
there's a spider
the public to speak at the end of the of
the event I put my name down I think if
you come down to the llama school on the
first floor or to something
15:14 yeah you can put your name on the
list and come to see don't be weird
and say interesting things well thank
you all thank you protector it's moving
right