Canon legal response [LWN.net]

Canon legal response

Posted Jan 11, 2013 23:32 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Is a disguise necessary?

I imagine that owners of the $6k EOS-1D X will not be happy about having to pay $12k for what is essentially a firmware upgrade (which are usually given for free even for cheap cameras). So yes, a disguise would be necessary to avoid angry customers.

Price discrimination by disabling features in software for the low-end customers (thereby making product available to them that otherwise could not be) is a well-worn business strategy, and that seems to be what is described in the cited article.

You are right. What is novel is the approach that Canon customers cannot legally buy a lowly model and modify it to upgrade to the more costly model. Or perhaps that they cannot share the means to do so -- a bit of software. (Given the amounts of money involved the terms "lowly" and "more costly" are relative.) I suppose there is no infringing code here, so I don't see any legal basis at all -- just intimidation. But you are the lawyer IIRC.

Imagine that you purchase a low-end video recorder and discover that pulling it apart and removing a resistance you get the same features as the high-end model. Can it be made illegal? Now imagine you share how in a forum. Is that illegal? Furthermore, suppose that a company starts selling a special tool to remove the resistance. Is this commercial activity illegal?

The original article speaks about voiding the warranty, which can be reasonable; not about "bringing the might of Canon's legal team" which is outrageous.

Canon legal response

Posted Jan 12, 2013 7:33 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I imagine that owners of the $6k EOS-1D X will not be happy about having to pay $12k for what is essentially a firmware upgrade

Could be, but I suspect this kind of emotional response doesn't have much market significance. Customers who want the camera, and can't get the same thing for less than $12K elsewhere, will get over it.

In the business world at least, this is commonplace. I recently saw a network switch that came in a $3000 12 port model and a $5000 24 port model. The literature was upfront about the fact that the only difference is that with the 24 port model you get a key to type in to enable the upper 12 ports.

I don't often see firmware upgrades distributed for free to existing owners of a product when those upgrades substantially add to the product's capabilities. The manufacturer didn't develop that firmware for charity, after all.

Canon legal response

Posted Jan 12, 2013 8:08 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

But you are the lawyer IIRC.

I am not an IP lawyer, so I'm about as credible on this as you are. (A great example of how screwed up law practice licensing is in the US is that a contract/corporation lawyer like me can legally represent someone in a copyright case, but you can't).

But I've learned a lot about IP law from LWN comments and similar places, and I suspect the legal tool Canon allegedly wields to protect its X market from competition by modders is the right under copyright law to exclude others from preparing a derivative copy. This would be similar to when the copyright owners of the Titanic movie stopped an editor from modifying VHS copies of the movie to make them PG by cutting out two pieces of tape with a knife. (He was doing this as a business, and sold the service of editing a tape owned by the customer).

I understand and support most principles of copyright law, but I have to say I don't get the exclusive right to prepare derivative works.

It could also just be part of the contract of sale - the legally enforceable bargain the parties made when the camera changed hands. Buyers often agree not to reverse engineer, and this isn't much different from that.

Canon legal response

Posted Jan 12, 2013 23:40 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

If the new software is GPL, and reverse-engineered, I don't see how it can be a derivative. It is a new piece of software (or firmware as they are called in cameras) that happens to use the internal processor of a camera. The parts of the original software used are just for interoperability, which is usually legal.

As to the contract of sale, I have never seen any of those for consumers. I just sign on the credit card slip. Perhaps there is a shrink-wrap agreement or something, but I have not seen them on cameras either. How can a court prevent me from doing what I want with my purchase. Also, the original project is not modifying anything, just distributing software (which is not a derivative of the original). Is Canon going to sue its customers, following the RIAA strategy?

I suspect the strategy would be just to sue the Magic Lantern project on whatever grounds allowed by the most absurd legislation they may find, and make them waste time and efforts in the defense. And that this move would not grant Canon much love either.

Canon legal response

Posted Jan 13, 2013 2:48 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

If the new software is GPL, and reverse-engineered[1], I don't see how it can be a derivative.

I agree that the derivative work thing doesn't stop anyone from installing Magic Lantern. I was just commenting on the statement (second hand and anonymous) in the Canonrumors review of the expensive camera that Canon would use legal measures to stop people from converting the cheap camera into the expensive one. You're pointing out that if Canon's power to do that is based on copyright law, then the Canonrumors article is irrelevant to the LWN article about Magic Lantern.

Perhaps there is a shrink-wrap agreement or something, but I have not seen them on cameras either.

Have you bought a camera with $4000 worth of software restrictions (price difference between the expensive and cheap camera)? It's considerably more likely that a purchaser would have to make certain promises to get one of those than to get typical consumer items. Trying to make sense of the "Canon would bring the might of its legal team" statement, I'm surmising that Canon does in fact require this kind of contract.

Canon legal response

Posted Jan 13, 2013 10:45 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

In fact I have never bought such an expensive camera, by an order of magnitude. Perhaps some lucky reader can enlighten us about whether Canon really places burdens before its customers in the form of contract agreements.

Note that the original camera was not sold with software restrictions: the expensive new model is just now being released.

Canon legal response

Posted Jan 15, 2013 15:50 UTC (Tue) by n8willis (editor, #43041) [Link]

Perhaps some lucky reader can enlighten us about whether Canon really places burdens before its customers in the form of contract agreements.

I've never seen or heard anything of the sort. When it comes to "making sense of" the legal-might quote, I think it's what it appears to be: an off-the-cuff remark. Perhaps intended to intimidate; more likely uttered by someone without a studied understanding of copyright law and reverse engineering -- particularly as applied to firmware replacement hacks.

Nate

Canon legal response

Posted Jan 14, 2013 22:52 UTC (Mon) by ssam (subscriber, #46587) [Link]

(i have used magic lantern on a 5DII, but not looked deeply into how it is implemented).

Magic lantern runs along side the original software. The original interface is still there, but hooks are added in, so that additional information can be shown in screen, and buttons can trigger additional features.

see the main picture at http://www.gizmag.com/magic-lantern-canon-eos-7d-cracked/... for an example.

I am not sure i they achieve this by creating a firmware that contains bits of the original software plus extra functions. Or whether magic lantern is more like an extra application running on the system.