We talk about the project and understand the situation.
Photo - Alexander Andrews - Unsplash
But this is my calculator
In late May, an enthusiast and YouTube contributor , Neutrino, modified a well-known engineering calculator. He replaced the solar panel of the device with an additional OLED display, and also built a Wi-Fi module there. As a result, the gadget was able to connect to nearby devices and to the Internet.
The appearance of the calculator has hardly changed, but it has acquired additional functions. It now lets you display formulas and cheat sheets on an OLED screen and receive text messages over the network. The display is activated by magnetic sensors built into the housing and an external magnet. If you move it to the left and right next to the calculator, you can navigate the menu. You can see how it works here .
The author posted the project code on GitHub, and large technology platforms like Gizmodo , Interesting Engineering and Hackaday wrote about the development . However, just a few days later, GitHub closed access to the repository due to a complaint about copyright infringement - it was filed by the REACT organization. It is a European anti-counterfeiting network with many technology companies and electronics manufacturers as clients.
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But organizations do not allow their devices to be modified so that they are not associated with new products that can be built on the basis of existing gadgets. Obviously, they also protect the sources of income. Unfortunately, this leads to rather controversial proceedings.
In 2011, Activision charged a specialist who had reverse-engineered their USB device for reading RFID tags on toys of copyright infringement.
They allowed you to unlock additional content in the game. The company was worried that the job of an engineer would make it possible to unlock virtual items illegally. Although the enthusiast did not even try to develop such tools.
Photo - Jungwoo Hong - Unsplash
The Neutrino situation sparked a lively discussion on Hacker News. Residents offered to make a few changes to the DMCA (US copyright law in the digital age) in order to avoid similar situations in the future. In particular, they propose to prohibit the transfer of the right to file complaints to third parties and impose high fines for false accusations. In theory, such measures should protect those who do not pursue selfish goals, but only share interesting projects.
The situation around the calculator is close to that of Right to Repair. For a long time, large vendors have been trying to ban the repair of theirtechnicians by unauthorized workshops. It can be expected that new precedents will arise until comprehensive regulation is worked out - steps are already being taken in this direction .
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