Not Normal  🔗 **Source:** [Not Normal](https://share.snipd.com/episode/417d5717-8b22-4a3b-8530-eb8a55b84557) ## Highlights - **How DMCA 1201 Turned Access Controls Into Legal Muscle** - DMCA 1201 transformed access controls into legal power to ban uses manufacturers dislike. - Cory Doctorow traces how digital scrambling on DVDs created felony penalties for otherwise legal actions like ripping or watching imported discs. Transcript: Cory Doctorow Norms change. That's a foundation of science fictional thinking. All laws are local, and no law knows how local it is. It's not unusual for the bedrock ethos of your childhood to be overturned by your dotage. As Douglas Adams put it, one, anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Two, anything that is invented between when you're 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it. Three, anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things. So I'm keenly aware that when a 54-year man like me rails against some modern commonplace, it is very likely that he, I, is, am, wrong, and that the infernal innovation is good, actually, And he, I, is, am, simply out of touch. On balance of probabilities, then, I'm probably wrong about the subject of this article, but I don't think I am. Back in 1998, Bill Clinton signed a very abnormal law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. Under section 1201 of the DMCA, it's a felony to modify your own property, so it works in ways the manufacturer disapproves of, irrespective of whether the stuff you want to do is otherwise Legal. 1998, it was possible to pretend that this was only a little abnormal. DMCA 1201 kicks in only when someone modifies a digital product or service, and only when that digital doodad has an access control that attempts to prevent modification. In the late 1990s, this rule touched only a few products, like DVD players. DVDs are digital. The digital files on a DVD are scrambled. They require a key to de-scramble them. That is, they have an access control. So a DVD is digital and it has an access control. There are lots of things you can legally do with a DVD. For example, you can rip it to your computer just like you do with an audio CD. Audio CDs are digital, but they're not scrambled, so DMCA 1201 doesn't apply to them. But the movie studios didn't want you to do this. This was the home taping is killing music crowd, the you wouldn't steal a car people. They couldn't get Congress to pass a law banning you from ripping your discs, but they didn't need to. DMCA 1201 means that once they add an access control to their product, it's illegal to do anything they don't like with it. ([Time 0:03:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/73ecd4d6-3bd3-46d6-91c9-334f113003d9)) - **Embedded Computers Make Everyday Items Legally Controlled** - Cheap, ubiquitous embedded computers let manufacturers add access controls to everyday items. - Doctorow warns this makes many devices subject to DMCA-style restrictions once they contain an access control chip. Transcript: Cory Doctorow If you were paying attention in 1998, you could see what was coming. Computers were getting much cheaper and much smaller. From cars to toasters, from speakers to TVs, we were shoveling them into our devices, and it doesn't take a lot of expense or engineering to add an access control to any of these computers. That meant that DMCA 1201 was about to metastasize. Once you put a computer in a thermostat, or a bassinet, or a stovetop, or a hearing aid, you can add an access control and make it a felony to use it in ways the manufacturer disprefers. You can make it illegal to use cheap batteries or a different app store. You can add little chips to parts, everything from a fuel pump to a touchscreen, and make it illegal to manufacture a working generic part because the generic part has to bypass the access Control on the device that checks to see whether it's the manufacturer's own part. ([Time 0:08:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d4df604d-7317-48d1-ad56-d2999a240ce8)) - **Real Examples Of Manufacturer Lock-In Rackets** - Companies exploit access controls to lock replacement parts and features behind vendor payments. - Doctorow cites GE charcoal fridge filter markups, Medtronic ventilator service locks, Mercedes rented accelerator pedals, and Tesla battery subscription limits. Transcript: Cory Doctorow This scam is used by GE to force you to pay a 10,000% margin for the charcoal filter in your fridge's water chiller. It's used by Medtronic to force hospitals to pay for a service call to fix their ventilators rather than having their own technicians fix them when they're needed. It's used by Mercedes to rent you the accelerator pedal in your own car, which unlocks only half of your engine's power unless you pay a monthly subscription. Tesla does it too, letting you use only half of the charge in your battery unless you subscribe to the other half. ([Time 0:09:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/89493f44-55e3-4968-bba1-975f45b592b7)) - **Why Criminalizing Owner Use Breaks Property Norms** - Doctorow argues it's abnormal to criminalize uses of property that owners choose and that ownership historically granted broad rights. - He invokes Blackstone to show ownership traditionally meant 'sole and despotic dominion' over external things. Transcript: Cory Doctorow It's not normal to own something and for it to be a crime to use it in ways that benefit you, even if it makes the manufacturer sad. It's not normal to have a book you can't sell or loan or give away. We've been selling and loaning and giving away our books for millennia. These practices predate publishing. They predate printing. They predate binding. They predate paper. It's not normal for the government to hand over its legal and judicial apparatus to corporations that sell you things, but still demand to dictate how you use the things you buy. I'm not the world's biggest private property stand, but this is what it means to own property. To quote Blackstone from 1753, there is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections of mankind as the right of property, or that sole and despotic Dominion which one man claims exercises over the external things of the world in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. You get to decide what you do with your stuff. ([Time 0:09:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ea03cd59-ce9c-4cd4-815d-6de1b4e9a9fd)) - **Push Back Against Normalized Manufacturer Control** - Resist the normalization of manufacturer control over device use and repair. - Doctorow urges awareness and implies supporting right-to-repair and policies that restore owner choice against corporate carve-outs. Transcript: Cory Doctorow For a decade, states have tried, with limited success, to pass right-to laws that require automakers to end the sleazy little racket of charging mechanics $10,000 a year for a diagnostic Tool that turns your check engine light into an actual error message. Every time one of these bills comes up for debate, the automakers howl bloody murder, and seemingly reasonable people say things like, they got a point, why shouldn't you be forced To use the manufacturer's repair depot if that's what they want? This has been normalized, but it is not normal. The idea that you can own something and thus decide how you use it, even if the manufacturer disagrees, was with us for a millennia. It can't be overturned in a handful of years by a cabal of inbred monopolists. It's not normal. What is normal is the idea that your stuff is yours and you should have the final say over it. That's not a radical idea. It's just normal. ([Time 0:11:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b4b7b29a-67de-4803-b750-75cefecf341d))