#section-1201 — Public Fediverse posts

But *zero* app users have installed ad-blockers, because reverse-engineering an app requires that you bypass its encryption, triggering liability under #Section1201 of the #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct. This law provides for a $500,000 fine and a 5-year prison sentence for "circumvention" of access controls:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

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This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes.

It doesn't help that UEFI - and other trusted computing modules - are covered by #Section1201 of the #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct (#DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system.

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To put an ad-blocker in an app, you have to reverse-engineer it. To do that, you'll have to decrypt and decompile it. That step is a felony under #Section1201 of the #DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. Beyond that, ad-blocking an app would give rise to liability under the #ComputerFraudAndAbuseAct (a law inspired by the movie *Wargames*!), under "tortious interference" claims, under trademark, copyright and patent.

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Why? Because Audible - Amazon's monopoly gatekeeper to the audiobook world, with more than 90% of the market - refuses to carry my work.

Audible uses #DigitalRightsManagement to lock every audiobook they sell to their platform. Legally, only an Audible-authorized app can decrypt and play the audiobooks they sell you. Distributing a tool that removes Audible DRM is a felony under #Section1201 of the 1998 #DMCA.

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But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under #Section1201 of the #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

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Trafficking in tools to break a digital lock is a felony under #Section1201 of the #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct, carrying a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine.

In other words, it's not just that tech isn't regulated, allowing for endless twiddling against your privacy, consumer rights and labor rights. It's that tech is *badly* regulated, to permit unlimited twiddling by tech companies to take away your rightsand to prohibit any twiddling by you to take them back.

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Amazon can do this because the Alexa's operating system sits behind a cryptographic lock, and any tool that bypasses that lock is a felony under #Section1201 of the #DMCA, punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that it's literally a crime to provide a rival OS that lets users retain functionality that Amazon no longer supports.

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Shredding parts and cooking up bogus trademark claims is just for starters, though. For Apple, the true anti-repair innovation comes from the most pernicious US tech law: #Section1201 of the #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct (#DMCA).

#DMCA1201 is an #AntiCircumvention law. It bans the distribution of any tool that bypasses "an effective means of access control."

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There are only laws, like the #Section1201 of the #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct, that make writing and distributing those programs a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine (for a first offense).

That is to say, the War On General Purpose Computing is only incidentally a *technical* fight: it is primarily a *legal* fight.

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For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.

But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, #Section1201 of the #DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legit purposes. That means your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how the surveillance works, the maker can be incredibly sloppy with the personal info they harvest:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html

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Facebook viciously attacked the NYU project, falsely smearing it as a privacy risk (the plugin was open source and was independently audited by #Mozilla researchers, who confirmed that it didn't collect any personal information). When that didn't work, they sent a stream of legal threats, claiming that NYU was trafficking in a "circumvention device" as defined by #Section1201 of the #dmca a felony carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine - for a first offense.

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Apple uses #DRM to lock people into using its #AppStore, threatening anyone who reverse-engineers its devices to add competing stores with 5 year prison sentences under #Section1201 of the #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct (#DMCA).

Google's #Android *does* have a facility for "side-loading" apps that aren't in its app store, but the company uses a web of commercial requirements and technological tricks to prevent a competitor from emerging:

https://theplatformlaw.blog/2023/05/24/why-the-proposed-commitments-offered-by-google-to-the-uk-competition-authority-regarding-in-app-purchases-are-wrong-and-will-make-the-situation-of-app-developers-worse/

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Shortly thereafter, I got a legal threat from #LindaKwak, Bird's Senior Corporate Counsel, claiming that publishing a link to a website that sells you a product you install by unscrewing one board and inserting another was a violation of #Section1201 of the #DMCA, which was an *astonishingly* stupid claim:

https://www.eff.org/document/bird-rides-takedown-boing-boing-dec-20-2018

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With digital items, Amazon has a *double* lock-in, thanks to #DigitalRightsManagement (#DRM). Under #Section1201 of 1998's #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct (#DMCA), it's a felony to provide someone with a tool to remove DRM, *even if no one ever uses that tool to infringe copyright*. That means that if Amazon sells you one of my books wrapped in its DRM, you can't play it unless you use an Amazon-authorized player.

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Trafficking in a tool to bypass EME and reconfigure your browser to suit your needs, rather than Netflix's, is a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine, under #Section1201 of the DMCA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

This is the supreme irony of twiddling: #BigTech companies *love* to twiddle *you*, but if you touch your own knob, they call it a crime.

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But now that Netflix has come for your family, don't even *think* about giving Netfix some of what it gave to the MPAA.

As a technical matter, it's not that hard to modify Netflix's app so that every stream you pull seems to come from your house, no matter where you are. But doing so requires reverse-engineering Netflix's app, and that would violate #DMCA #Section1201, #CFAA, and eleventy-seven other horrible laws. Netflix's lawyers would nuke you until the rubble bounced.

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