Canon legal response [LWN.net]

Canon legal response

Posted Jan 13, 2013 2:48 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Canon legal response by man_ls
Parent article: Testing Magic Lantern 2.3

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.

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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