ColorHug drops remote disable [LWN.net]

ColorHug drops remote disable

Posted Apr 26, 2012 20:50 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

The only reason he did it was because British laws regarding mail order devices is dumb as crap. It set up the situation were customers can rob him blind and he has absolutely no recourse.

Trying to turn it into a issue about IP is just servng to highlight a different form of government retardation.

ColorHug drops remote disable

Posted Apr 26, 2012 23:25 UTC (Thu) by jhardin (guest, #3297) [Link]

...British laws regarding mail order devices is [sic] dumb as crap. It set up the situation were customers can rob him blind and he has absolutely no recourse.

He'd still be liable if he shipped it signature-required and there was a signature on the form? If so: YGBFKM.

ColorHug drops remote disable

Posted Apr 26, 2012 23:49 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

I don't know that acronym, but all the person would need to do is claim that it isn't their signature.

He had a valid fear (or more precisely, his banker had a valid fear and infected him with it), but as he says, it's not much of a problem for this type of purchaser.

ColorHug drops remote disable

Posted Apr 27, 2012 8:11 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

"You gotta be (copulatory participle) kidding me".

Distance selling

Posted Apr 27, 2012 8:24 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

The Distance Selling Regulations (the UK implementation of a European Directive which harmonised and improved existing regulations in EU countries) work like this:

You can sell people stuff over the phone, by mail or via the Internet, but they have the same right to examine the product and decide not to buy it after all as they would in a store. Since they cannot examine the product at a distance, you will have to send it to them, and then they might reject it and send it back. Maybe they don't like the finish, or it's heavier than they thought, they can reject for any reason at all.

Just as in a store this doesn't apply to products which were custom made, or various other cases where you wouldn't normally get to examine the goods. The idea is to make it _safer_ to buy things remotely, helping both consumers and legitimate businesses and hurting unscrupulous businesses which deliberately deceive customers.

All of this was already _common practice_ for respectable retailers selling at a distance, e.g. mail order catalogue companies in Britain had operated "no quibble return policies" for decades. My mother might order a dress, try it on, realise that the colour isn't quite what she expected, and send it back, no need to obtain "authorisation" or prove it was "faulty", just put it back in the post and get the money back in a few days.

For web retailers this provides a powerful incentive to offer the best possible information in advance, in order to reduce the overhead from returns.

However the DSR has a potential downside, in theory a scammer can buy your product and then say they sent it back but in fact keep it, they get their money back unless you can prove they were lying which may be very difficult.

BUT the vast majority of customers are fairly honest, so this isn't a serious problem for any retail business unless it deals primarily with criminals and scammers for some strange reason.

Distance selling

Posted Apr 27, 2012 9:07 UTC (Fri) by mr_bean (subscriber, #5398) [Link]

Broadly I'm in favour of the distance selling regs in the UK but they do discriminate somewhat against the garage/cottage industries.

Not returning the item at all is easy because the Act requires sellers to issue a refund before they have received the returned item. In fact for small items the buyer could probably go as far as being upfront and saying "nope I'm not sending it back" once they have their money back. The seller would have to take legal action but the cost of chasing this would probably be prohibitive.

An other scam is sending back an identical, but faulty item. You can even make the seller pay for the postage because, although sellers can require buyers to pay the carriage on returns this must be clearly specified up-front and if you don't it's the sellers responsibility to pay for the reclaim of the goods.

The regulations weigh things so far in the buyer's favour that they almost invite dishonesty.

But even without that you have to give a full refund including postage. Assuming you get the item back and can re-sell it you can't recover postal costs. That's fine if you send out so much stuff that you get discounted rates but if you ship small quantities of stuff postal rates are fairly high and might easily equal or be a large fraction of the profit margin on something like the ColorHug.

I'd like to see small enterprises relieved of the inability to inspect returned goods prior to issuing a refund and being able to give a refund for the goods but not delivery (after all the buyer has "consumed" the delivery service) but I doubt it's going to happen.

Distance selling

Posted Apr 27, 2012 9:28 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Anyone daft enough to, having secured their refund, actually say "I'm not sending it back" in any traceable way would enable the merchant to get the police involved.

Distance selling

Posted Apr 27, 2012 10:28 UTC (Fri) by mr_bean (subscriber, #5398) [Link]

Who, knowing the UK police, probably wouldn't be interested.

If the buyer was inclined to go so far as to say "sorry, no intention of returning it" that *might* be considered fraudulent so you're correct in that the police *should* get involved as it's a criminal matter. However you'd *still* have to take a civil action to recover your money so it's not worth it unless we're talking hundreds or thousands of pounds. Filing using the "small claims" process in the courts costs at least £100 - not worth it for a £60 item (even if, in theory, you can get the court fees and admin fees added to the claim if you win).

You're right, though, anyone who really wants to defraud you will opt for the easier option of claiming to have posted the item which will make it almost impossible to prove fraudulent intent.

Distance selling

Posted Apr 27, 2012 11:42 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Or people can walk into a store, ask to see a product and then run out of the store with it. But mostly they won't do this either.

Someone who says over the telephone that they're not going to return your property has admitted theft, not fraud. "Intention permanently to deprive" is the magic phrase in a typical English language theft statute. Fraud is when somebody obtains something of value through deceit. For example, if they persuaded you to mail them another product, having falsely claimed never to have received the original, that would be fraud.

And maybe my experience of the police is unusual but I found them to be very responsive, albeit they were unable to work miracles. I'm sure if I told them the name and address of somebody who I could prove had stolen my property, they would go there forthwith to investigate.

Distance selling

Posted Apr 27, 2012 12:16 UTC (Fri) by mr_bean (subscriber, #5398) [Link]

> Someone who says over the telephone that they're not going to return your > property has admitted theft, not fraud

They originally obtained the property by deceit so it's fraud.

Most fraud involves theft because although the goods, money or services are obtained by deceit there is obviously the "intention to deprive permanently" the mark of said goods, services or money.

A long time ago someone explained the difference thusly - if the owner of the goods handed them over with a smile on his face, it's fraud; if they were taken without his consent or handed over under duress it's theft and I think that is a reasonable working definition.

Distance selling

Posted Apr 27, 2012 14:11 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> They originally obtained the property by deceit so it's fraud.

They originally obtained the property by purchasing it. No fraud there. What is fraudulent is that they obtained the refund by promising to return the property, and then refused to actually return it after receiving the refund. That would be similar to accepting payment for a purchase and then failing to deliver the product.

Whether that counts as theft depends on whether you consider the title to the property to have changed hands upon completion of the refund--in which case the buyer is withholding property belonging to someone else--or whether the refund and the change in ownership of the property are two separate events connected by a mere promise. The more consistent models tend to treat all trades as belonging to the former category, meaning that backing out of the transaction halfway--accepting the refund but not returning the property--is both fraud (by intent) and theft (by action).

Distance selling

Posted Apr 27, 2012 11:44 UTC (Fri) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link]

The big thing Mr Hughes' bank manager forgot is that the same risk applies to accepting payment by PayPal or by bank transfer. If the payment is deemed fraudulent by PayPal or by the sending bank, Mr Hughes is on the hook for the refund, and has to chase the buyer via the courts to get his money back.

A fraudulent buyer might choose to commit fraud via the DSRs, but they might also use a stolen credit card via PayPal, or lie to PayPal about receiving the goods, or commit fraud in some other fashion. If you've decided that payment fraud is not a high risk, why would you then expect other forms of fraud to be probable?

ColorHug drops remote disable

Posted Apr 27, 2012 2:09 UTC (Fri) by cmorgan (guest, #71980) [Link]

I'm pretty sure he mentioned a case where people might start copying the hardware but in any case, since when is IP "retarded"? I guess if you don't make money coming up with ideas...

ColorHug drops remote disable

Posted Apr 27, 2012 8:10 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

I believe drag's position is that all forms of "IP" are government-granted monopolies, and therefore stupid, evil, or both.

ColorHug drops remote disable

Posted Apr 27, 2012 11:48 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

I don't know his position, but personally I'm fine with the government-granted monopoly part (though I think it needs to be for a LOT shorter period of time with copyrights)... The thing I don't like about "IP" is that it leads to thinking of this stuff as "property", when it's nothing of the sort... That then leads to people stupidly calling copyright infringement or patent infringement "theft", when nothing has been stolen... It just muddies the waters unnecessarily... And, once you have people thinking of this stuff as their personal "property", then they just want more and more protection of it... Why shouldn't I "own" it for my entire life, and then be able to pass it on to my children who can "own" it for all of their lives and pass it on again as well, just like I can with all my other personal property?? Well, because it's not property and you don't own it! It's a creative idea you came up with, and we as a society decided to cut a deal a long time ago whereby you keep coming up with cool ideas we like, and we'll let you have a TEMPORARY monopoly on those ideas so you can monetize them, after which time you agree to give up your idea to the public domain thereby enriching society as a whole... You can't own an idea; it's no one's property... But, you as the one who came up with it definitely deserve some benefit for doing so... What you don't deserve is to keep it locked up effectively FOREVER (as modern copyright does), thereby cheating society out of your end of our bargain...

ColorHug drops remote disable

Posted Apr 27, 2012 13:04 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Most unhelpful is the conflation of three very different laws into "intellectual property". Trademarks, copyrights and patents have little more in common than do dogs, fish and trees. There is hardly anything to be gained by treating them together rather than individually. Apparently it is common for lawyers to specialise in this amalgamation, but that's a convenience for them, not us. It's as if the existence of ENT specialisation among doctors were to influence everybody else to refer to all three body parts interchangeably.

I have no problem with trademarks, on the whole, despite them lasting indefinitely. The Coca-Cola company does me no harm (and perhaps may do good through consumer protection) by being exclusively entitled to that name, and to the associated logo. If they should still be selling a delicious cola flavour beverage after a thousand years using the Coca-Cola brand name it wouldn't bother me at all.

Whereas by contrast patents are a scourge, rarely of real benefit to society even in ideal circumstances. If every patent law in force were to be abolished at midnight tonight I hardly think it could make the world overall a worse place although no doubt it would have its downsides.

ColorHug drops remote disable

Posted Apr 27, 2012 13:34 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

I agree that trademarks are mostly harmless, and generally do more good than harm, even if they last forever... Avoiding using a specific name/logo is easy enough to do...

I also agree patents, especially in the software realm, are a royal pain, and generally do more harm than good these days... But, their one good feature at least is that they're still relatively short-lived, compared to modern copyright terms... Still, I think the world would definitely be a far better place if all software patents at least were abolished... For actual inventions in the physical realm, I don't care much one way or the other... I don't think it's nearly as harmful to allow them there... But, it's absolutely poisonous to software development to allow them on software...

Some not-fully-thought-out ideas re IP

Posted Apr 30, 2012 6:05 UTC (Mon) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]

I'd say you actually can "own" an idea- by never publishing it. I think this is important to the long-forgotten moral principles behind IP law. We do some minor things to help protect that kind of "ownership." Nobody's under compulsion to publish their writings, mass-produce their inventions, etc; they could just do such things for their own private benefit/enjoyment. If you were to publish someone's private writings I think there's a legitimate sense in which that constitutes theft.

Part of the idea of copyright is to try to entice people into giving up such "ownership"; publishing, performing, etc are all really ways to give ideas to the public. On top of incentivizing such gifts via royalties etc, there's a moral point behind granting the giver a limited time of control over the way the idea is disseminated i.e. the way the gift is given. Wresting that control away by violating a reasonable copyright term is immoral, but as you say it strains language to call this theft.

Somehow we've come to see the transfer of ownership of an idea to the public as something entirely separate from publishing it, something which may or may not happen "forever minus a day" after its publication (at least life+50yrs but subject to prolongation at legislative whim). This is absurd.

It's in this sense that the claim "you can't own an idea" makes sense- asserting private ownership of ideas they chose to make public is trying to have their cake and eat it too. It's unnatural, and as the time from the initial publication grows the enforcement efforts look less and less like trying to give the giver what he deserves and more and more like a senseless imposition of government power.

Some not-fully-thought-out ideas re IP

Posted Apr 30, 2012 10:37 UTC (Mon) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

True, that was the original motivation, especially regarding patent protection... (I'm not sure how many people were really writing novels, music, etc. and refusing to publish them... Sounds kind of pointless, really... But, inventions at least could be used privately to give the inventor some kind of benefit no one else has, theoretically...)

> If you were to publish someone's private writings I think there's a
> legitimate sense in which that constitutes theft.

I'd still have a hard time calling even that "theft"... If they stole the physical writings themselves, sure... But, if they just copied them and published them? It's wrong, obviously, but I can't call it theft if the original is left in place, since one of the key defining definitions of theft is depriving the original owner of the item in question... You could say the writer's exclusivity and control over the writings has been "stolen", I suppose, but not the writings themselves...

Besides, even unpublished works are granted copyright protection, so the above act would be treated pretty much the same as any other act of copyright infringement, I imagine... Copyright doesn't have the same "you must publish before you're protected" rules as patents do...

> at least life+50yrs

It's currently life + 70 years in the US... Anything beyond life of the author just makes a mockery of the whole system, anyway... Because the goal is supposedly to encourage them to create more, and that's rather hard for them to do once they're dead! I don't see how continuing to pay their estate encourages anyone to create anything... In fact, long copyright terms discourage creation: why bother working to create something new, when I can just lie back and rake in the royalties from my old creation for the rest of my life? It's pretty sad and disgusting how twisted the system has become from its original purpose...

Trade secret, and Macaulay

Posted May 1, 2012 14:28 UTC (Tue) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

The mechanism you posit, ``never publishing it'', is also codified, as trade secret (which gets tossed into the intellectual ``property'' bag when people happen to notice it). Basically, if you make a reasonable effort to keep your secret to yourself (NDAs, disclosure only to those who need to know, &c.) law exists to punish those who wrongfully disclose your secret. But if you leave it behind in a taxicab, all bets are off.

As for the life + 70 years doctrine, there's no better antidote than Thomas Macaulay's speeches demonstrating (to my satisfaction, at least) why a fixed term is preferable to one predicated on the life of the author. They're fine examples of 19th-century commentary, meaning they are closely reasoned, but if you take the time to read them, you'll find they're clearly reasoned, and even humorous. (Would that political discourse these days didn't shy from such meaty content.) Anyone who wishes to discuss copyright term should be required to read them before being allowed to offer an opinion.