Comment by matheusmoreira
1 day ago
> Should service providers be forced (e.g. by regulation) to support consumer hardware stacks they prefer not to?
Yes.
Well, sort of. They don't actually have to do anything. Nobody wants to force them to work for us, that's slavery.
Just don't get in our way when we start writing and using our own software. That's the "support" we want. Just stay out of our way. Leave us alone, without actively discriminating against us for it.
For example, companies wielding DMCA "anti-circumvention" section 1201 [0] to put people in jail.
Or tricks like Nintendo designing their hardware only boot games which show the Nintendo logo on the screen, so that they can shut down any third-party games for trademark infringement.
[0] https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-fifteen-ye...
DMCA anti-circumvention laws have made it attractive to add computers to otherwise simple products in order to reify a business model. Breaking those locks by doing things such as using "pirate" ink cartridge turns legitimate competition into a violation the DMCA. We live in the era of felony contempt of business model:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
The trademark security system you mentioned produced such wonderful case law. Not only was it found that this "infringement" was fair use, judges decided that it was the trademark holders themselves who were at fault for creating this stupid system where competitors had to infringe their trademarks in order to create perfectly legal interoperable software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
> Accolade's decompilation of the Sega software constituted fair use.
> the use of the software was non-exploitative, despite being commercial
> the trademark infringement, being required by the TMSS for a Genesis game to run on the system, was inadvertently triggered by a fair use act and the fault of Sega for causing false labeling
That's what the world was like before the DMCA. Corporations would invent all this "clever" nonsense and they'd get destroyed in court. Not anymore.