Firmware Facts 101

Writing new slight modifications of the Harry Potter story and publishing them on the Internet. Ooh boy. That will get you in a heap of trouble. Why don't you try it.
I think the view that there is something unethical about this
firmware is way over the line between a civil society and a fascist
corporate state.
Ahh to be young and idealistic.

--
Paul

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Pbase supporter
Photographs at: http://www.pbase.com/pbleic
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Unless specified otherwise, all images are Copyright 2003, 2004 All rights reserved.
 
The US has global jurisdiction. We have always and prudently retained our sovereign rights of self-defense and self-interest (like oil). Although we do give lip service to the UN et. al. out of courtesy and to promote mutual cooperation.

As the sole super power we have the ability to project our power on globally and that ability is why everyone 'hates' the US.

If we deemed that wasia's hacking of Canon's copyrights were an imminent treat to the US's national security, some covert ops might wax his ass tomorrow. Russian Federation or not.

KC
If Wasia can proof that he has not modified any part of the "code"
and these crippled functions he has enabled are already in your
camera. Then, I don't think he is in violation of the copyright
law.
Wasia has modified the code to activate other parts of the code.
This is ok. What might put him in violation of copyright is the
fact that he is districuting copyright material. I doubt, however,
that Canon would attempt to sue him. Does Russia have a tort
system? What would the damages be? This is all highly unlikely.
Wasia is wrong to distribute copyright material w/o authorization,
but this can be workedaround very easily. Wasia can simply write a
small utility that patch the 10 or 20 bytes of data into the
official Canon firmware that you and I download from the Canon's
official web site. Again, there is nothing Canon can do to Wasia.
Yes he could. People on this forum will jump on you over this
because in the download agreement from Canon persumes you agree not
to modifiy the software. However this is an agreement and not law.
It means about as much as the "I will not sue Major League
Baseball" does on the back of your ticket stub.
The only way Canon can nail him is to encrypt the firmware, now, if
Wasia patches the firmware, Canon can take him to court under the
DMCA. (The DMCA makes is a crime to "circumvent" copyright
protection systems. )
He is not circumventing a copyright protection scheme (ie. DBS
smart-card). Also, do you think a plaintiff from Japan is going to
sue a Russian for action he did in Russia in a US court? There is
no jurisidctional nexus here for the DCMA to apply. This may be a
surprise to some but the US government does not have jurisdiction
outside of the United States.

Steven
On the other hand if you were to hack the DBS card to activate all
channels but also pay for all channels (thus obtaining
authorization) there would be no harm, no foul, no damages to the
rights holders.

The real issue of legality here is Canon's copyright. Wasia is
distributing copyright material w/o authorization. As to whether
this is something that the Russian Federation enforces is another
question.
That is certainly illegal..what's the difference?
You think microsoft would keep quiet if I modified their source in
windows to enhance things and re distribute it freely?
Bingo! The issue is you redisributing copyright material. Nothing
prevents you from modifying your own copy of Windows. The arm of
the law does not extend into your house that way. Well...there is
the potential issue of you inadvertantly infringing upon a patent
but this really isn't enforcable.
Whatever..you know I think the hack is cool and I am not against it
one little bit. But I do know right from wrong. I never said I was
a saint, or follow all the rules, but laws are laws and this IS
Illegal...
So many people on this forum like to look at the law in such black
and white terms..either illegal or not illegal. Well a lot of
things are illegal murder is illegal, robbery is illegal and in
many cities spiting on the street is illegal. The reality is that
we all violate many laws every day--often laws that we (or even the
police) may not know exist!

Think more about the bigger picture and why the law exists. If I
choose to modify a few strings of my 300D frimware, I am not
injuring Canon, I am not injuring anyone else. Please, lets all
keep things in perspective.

Steven
 
I think it's obvious that USE of the firmware isn't illegal.

That aside:

It's ludicrous to agrue this on a photography forum populated by people who make their living (Phil too) from selling basically intellectual propery that requires strong copyright laws and enforcement to prevent the undermining of their livelyhoods.

Of course there will be and IS a strong lobby against anything that might be construed as a (cpyrt) violation.

Sound reasoning and the opinion of legal experts will never prevail against such dogma.

Give it up!
Seperate the morailty and the legality ... and argue either point
on fact.
A lot of folks on here suffer from:
A tendency towards ad hominem attacks.
Why cant ppl just enjoy their cameras and shut up already?
Good idea. Let's start with you and your legal opinions. In what
state are you licensed to practice law again?
-harry
--
Complete media development ranging from web presence to digital and
traditional photography. See http://cjkcybermedia.com and
http://gallery.cjkcybermedia.com
 
Writing new slight modifications of the Harry Potter story and
publishing them on the Internet. Ooh boy. That will get you in a
heap of trouble. Why don't you try it.
This is quite common behavior on fan sites. I don't know about Harry Potter, but I've stumbled across fan sites that maintain collections of fan authored new content, when searching for information about fiction that I'm interested.

I'm not going to offer any opinions about the legality of fan authored variationware (other than mentioning "parody") but I wonder, what do the copyright holders do? Do they generally ignore variationware sites? Or do they clamp down on them. I don't know. But knowing this might provide guidance towards this firmware modification situation that we have been discussing.

Wayne Larmon
 
if they didn't want to have their firmware hacked, surely they could have programed various authentication methods as well as honeypots/traps such that trying to get a feature running (eg: MLU) where it shouldn't will cause the hardware to fail/explode

Assume that Canon said they would honor the warranty if you install some hacked firmware and then all of the sudden every camera with the hack blew up.
[ quote]

and since they didn't.
 
at least in England.

"A spokesperson for the company said: ..... any Canon digital camera with third party firmware installed will not be covered by Canon's warranty."

Does England have any law that is the equivilent of the US Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act? This law looks like it prohibits companies from voiding warrenties because of using third party components unless the company has proved that said third party component will actually cause a problem and the company hase already filed proof with the FTC.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/warranty.htm#Magnuson-Moss

Look at the section on "Tie in sales."

IANAL. Could any real lawyers comment on this?

Wayne Larmon
 
IMHO, regardless of whether the user installs the hacked firmware
or not, the hardware should still be covered if there is a hardware
related issue. Of course, if the problem is related to the hack
then Canon should charge the customer for services rendered.

This entire scenario, which consumes this forum's, mine and yours,
bandwidth has yet to be tested. What needs to happen is someone's
camera to fail and have it sent to Canon with the hack on it and
see what happends.
i would like to see the rusults of that one as well..

--
Dale Broughman
http://www.thebroughmans.com
Gallery: http://66.227.157.200:1980/photos/listpics.asp
 
We could have been Fine with the hacked firmware, but noo!!!! We could not leave well enough alone and had to bring this to the attention of Canon. What else could they say? (Sure!!! Feel free to hack our firmware to hell and back!!! Oh,as a matter of fact, we will be glad to send you all of our source code for you to hack up.)

Now they will be checking the firmware of every camera that will be sent to them for repair. Regardless if the firmware is the problem or not they will deny warranty work for legitimate hardware issues if the firmware has been modified.

I’m also sure they will also file a law suite against WASIA

I guess on a brighter side, this may force Canon to release new Official firmware for the D-Rebel, but I bet it will not fully unlock all the capabilities like WASIA is working on.

Just my 2 ($%#$%^&) cents

--

'It’s Easy To Make A Small Fortune In Photography, You Just Have To Start Out With A Large Fortune'.

http://www.pbase.com/mmiller6
 
i have a 10D and get constant exposure with flashes, both internal and external. and i dont have to use FEC. the only time i get screwed up flash exposure is when i do something wrong. i dontmind the 300D, i just dont use it cause of the limited buffer and FPS, plus, it feels weak and flimsy. im about to add a 2nd body to my gear, and it will most likely be a 10D for those reasons.
can u please explain to me y everyone gets so annoyed at canon for
stripping the firmware down, u knew it was stripped when u bought
it, u had the choice to buy a 10D, but u didn,t so y do ppl keep
complaining?
 
We could have been Fine with the hacked firmware, but noo!!!! We
could not leave well enough alone and had to bring this to the
attention of Canon.
The issue is if the tie in sales provision of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act applies to this instancer of running non-OEM software. And if other countries have similar consumer protection laws.

Again, can any real lawyers comment on this?

Wayne Larmon
 
if they didn't want to have their firmware hacked, surely they
could have programed various authentication methods...
BTW, it's standard operating procedure for firmware developers to include a checksum in the header of an upgradeable firmware image to prevent an embedded device from attempting to install a corrupted image. If the "hacker dude" was able to change 1 byte and download the changed firmware, that suggests that the firmware lacks such a mechanism, unless the Russian dude also figured out where the checksum was and how to recompute it.

This would be very lame.
-harry
 
We could have been Fine with the hacked firmware, but noo!!!! We
could not leave well enough alone and had to bring this to the
attention of Canon.
The issue is if the tie in sales provision of the Magnuson-Moss
Warranty Act applies to this instancer of running non-OEM software.
And if other countries have similar consumer protection laws.

Again, can any real lawyers comment on this?

Wayne Larmon
 
I'm not a lawyer, and not suggesting this one way or the other, but would replacing firmaware be considered using third party components? It might be considered modifying the product itself, and I don't know if that is considered the same thing.
at least in England.

"A spokesperson for the company said: ..... any Canon digital
camera with third party firmware installed will not be covered by
Canon's warranty."

Does England have any law that is the equivilent of the US
Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act? This law looks like it prohibits
companies from voiding warrenties because of using third party
components unless the company has proved that said third party
component will actually cause a problem and the company hase
already filed proof with the FTC.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/warranty.htm#Magnuson-Moss

Look at the section on "Tie in sales."

IANAL. Could any real lawyers comment on this?

Wayne Larmon
 
We could have been Fine with the hacked firmware, but noo!!!! We
could not leave well enough alone and had to bring this to the
attention of Canon. What else could they say? (Sure!!! Feel free
to hack our firmware to hell and back!!! Oh,as a matter of fact, we
will be glad to send you all of our source code for you to hack up.)

Now they will be checking the firmware of every camera that will be
sent to them for repair. Regardless if the firmware is the problem
or not they will deny warranty work for legitimate hardware issues
if the firmware has been modified.

I’m also sure they will also file a law suite against WASIA

I guess on a brighter side, this may force Canon to release new
Official firmware for the D-Rebel, but I bet it will not fully
unlock all the capabilities like WASIA is working on.

Just my 2 ($%#$%^&) cents

--
'It’s Easy To Make A Small Fortune In Photography, You Just Have To
Start Out With A Large Fortune'.

http://www.pbase.com/mmiller6
--
http://www.pbase.com/klopus
 
i have a 10D and get constant exposure with flashes, both internal
and external. and i dont have to use FEC. the only time i get
screwed up flash exposure is when i do something wrong. i dontmind
the 300D, i just dont use it cause of the limited buffer and FPS,
plus, it feels weak and flimsy. im about to add a 2nd body to my
gear, and it will most likely be a 10D for those reasons.
Since I mostly use the camera when hiking (usually up a mountain!), the light weight and small size of the 300D are a big plus. When I bought mine, the price difference between it and a 10D was absolutely not an issue.

This is why I hope the 1.6x crop factor stays with us, and all the manufacturers start making lighter lenses for such cameras :-)
 
I would think the truth is somewhere between your and my anaologies :-) Yes, the hack makes the 300D more like a 10D, but does it make it close enough to affect a buying decision?

IMHO the ethical issue hinges on whether Canon will lose revenue (due to 300D sales vs 10D sales) or gain (due to 300D sales vs D70 sales). I have no personal qualms about using the hack, since I bought the 300D mainly for size/weight reasons. Features alone could not make me buy a more expensive Canon camera. In fact, I almost bought a Pentax *istD instead - knowing about the hack would have made the decision easier.
Distributing the code that is copied and modified by only one bit,
violates intellectual property rights and many laws. Period.

That it is easy, cheap, and (so far) without retribution from Canon
is another issue altogether.

if someday somebody copies your photos and distributes them with or
without mods, don't whine.
I'd say that the analogy would be closer if someone distributed a
modified copy of your photos only to those who had already bought
the photo from yourself.
Some people might see that as a problem, and others might not.
 
I'm not a lawyer, and not suggesting this one way or the other, but
would replacing firmaware be considered using third party
components? It might be considered modifying the product itself,
and I don't know if that is considered the same thing.
Modifying the product does not invalidate a warranty unless the company can prove that the modification causes the failure. The reason why the Magnuson-Moss act was created was because of auto companies voiding warranties when people did their own modifications (i.e. installing their own radios instead of going with the factory radio.) So an auto company wold have to prove that an after market radio would cause, for instance, the transmission to fail.

In the case of the Wasia firmware modification, Canon would have to prove that their own code causes failures. (The Wasia changes enables already existing 10D code, for the most part.)

Wayne Larmon
at least in England.

"A spokesperson for the company said: ..... any Canon digital
camera with third party firmware installed will not be covered by
Canon's warranty."

Does England have any law that is the equivilent of the US
Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act? This law looks like it prohibits
companies from voiding warrenties because of using third party
components unless the company has proved that said third party
component will actually cause a problem and the company hase
already filed proof with the FTC.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/warranty.htm#Magnuson-Moss

Look at the section on "Tie in sales."

IANAL. Could any real lawyers comment on this?

Wayne Larmon
 
Canon has known about this for months, since it was first published. It has been discussed in major websites several times. Please.

PS - there won't be any "unlocking" of features by Canon.

--
Paul

------------------------------------------------
Pbase supporter
Photographs at: http://www.pbase.com/pbleic
--------------------------------------------------

Unless specified otherwise, all images are Copyright 2003, 2004 All rights reserved.
 

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