[bambax]

The article is very long; that part is fascinating and a fantastic suggestion:

> Europe and Canada have passed strong right-to-repair legislation, but those efforts ""have been hamstrung by the anti-circumvention laws"" (like the DMCA). (...) That raises the question of why these countries don't repeal their versions of the DMCA.

> The answer is tariffs, it seems. The US trade representative has long threatened countries with tariffs if they did not have such a law on their books. ""Happy 'Liberation Day' everyone"", he said with a smile, which resulted in laughter, cheering, and applause. The response of most countries when faced with the US tariffs (or threats thereof) has been to impose retaliatory tariffs, making US products more expensive for their citizens, which is a weird way to punish Americans. (...)

> What would be better is for the countries to break the monopolies of the US tech giants by making it legal to reverse-engineer, jailbreak, and modify American products and services. (...)

> Or, let a Canadian company set up an App Store that only charges 3% for payment processing, which will give any content producer an immediate 25% raise, so publishers will flock to it. The same could be done for car and tractor diagnostic devices and more.

Europe should do this now; it would be incredibly good -- and incredibly fun.

[tgv]

There already are alternative app stores for iOS and Android. They don't seem to do well. There's no "flocking."

[isodev]

I believe F-Droid is doing quite ok. So is the Galaxy Store. On iOS, Apple created a very complicated process which is region and even country-specific. Hopefully this will change once the EU, the US, Japan and everyone else currently suing Apple is done with them. But I do share the sentiment from the article - I wish it wasn't necessary to escalate such matters to the level of regulation

[krzyk]

So the inevitable end of the world that Apple App store apologists predicated didn't happen.

[Voultapher]

At least on iOS Apple has just been fined 500 million - as a start - because the way they implemented third-party app stores was so blatantly against the DMA. I think we simply don't yet know how users and corporations will react to it.

[Mindwipe]

> That raises the question of why these countries don't repeal their versions of the DMCA. > The answer is tariffs, it seems.

No it isn't.

Like literally, the US and it's tariff madness has literally nothing to do with it. The EU and Canada are both signatories to the WIPO Copyright Treaty, and signatories of the WTO provisions that include continued operation to it. They are international treaties with a wide degree of international support, not US inventions. Christ, Europe had a lot more to do with the wording of the anticircumvention provisions in the WIPO treaty than the US did.

People should stop taking Doctorow seriously. He has a long track record of making shit up that is what his audience wants to hear.

[rwmj]

Because of course we can never change international treaties.

[like_any_other]

They can be, but the point remains that it is not US tariffs forcing Europe into them - it is the doing of their own governments (whose preferences should not be confused with those of their citizens).

[Teever]

The assumption underlying this is that the governments that implement the WIPO treaty are doing so without duress or threat of tariffs from the United States which may or may not be true. We'll never know.

But what we do know is that the EU has recently put regulations in place that allow them to curtail the IP privileges given to companies in countries that they feel economically threatened by.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Coercion_Instrument

It will be interesting to see them use this or if the mere existence of the law is and the mere possibility of use is them using it.

[hoseja]

You do realize that US still enjoys its cryptohegemony. CIA surely has a lot of levers to ensure uppity euros don't undermine profits.

[schnitzelstoat]

I agree with him that the retaliatory tariffs don't make much sense but equally basically throwing out copyright law would be crazy, as the US would likely respond in kind and it'd probably hurt Europe more in the long run.

They should stop the anti-competitive practices that prevent third-party app stores and so on though.

[bambax]

Anti-circumvention laws are not the same thing as copyright. Not in the least. And it's very debatable that copyright should be used for tractors, for example.

If you invent a new engine you can patent it. But if you make an engine that works like any other engine, why should society help you prevent your customers from tinkering with it?

[amiga386]

It's not advocating throwing out copyright; it's advocating killing the laws enabling DRM. Imagine!

No laws against removing the region lock on your DVD player.

No laws against fixing your tractor with 3rd party parts.

When Amazon deletes Nineteen Eighty-Four from your Kindle, you can put it right back.

When a games company "turns off" the game you bought, turn it right back on again.

[like_any_other]

Getting rid of circumvention and reverse-engineering bans is not remotely "copyright law". It is restoring basic ownership rights to our own property.

[Mindwipe]

You would effectively have to exit all international copyright law treaties to do so, which is defacto removing any international recognition of copyright for works from your country.

[like_any_other]

Copyright is covered by the Berne convention, which prohibits neither circumvention nor reverse-engineering, so even in this "what you're proposing couldn't easily be done without also doing this other thing, so I'm going to pretend you've proposed that other thing also, but I won't say so explicitly" interpretation, that is not true.

[Mindwipe]

The Berne Convention has been modified multiple times, including by the WIPO Copyright Treaty, which incorporates a requirement for all signatories to implement an anti-circumvention law.

https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wct/

[like_any_other]

No, the WIPO Copyright Treaty is separate from the Berne Convention, and did not modify it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty

Furthermore, this whole discussion began with claiming it's impossible to undo anti-circumvention/reverse-engineering, without abandoning copyright entirely, because international treaties. Yet these treaties were modified multiple times, as well as new ones entered into. If it's possible to change these treaties to further encroach IP laws into our lives, why would it not be possible to change them in the other direction?

[ycombinatrix]

>"what you're proposing couldn't easily be done without also doing this other thing, so I'm going to pretend you've proposed that other thing also, but I won't say so explicitly"

that sir, is a strawman argument

[rwmj]

Not really. A digital lock is not a creative endeavour in the same way we think of books or records.

[esseph]

Cryptography isn't creative?

[rwmj]

These digital locks aren't usually inventing creative new cryptography (at least not the ones which are secure).

[isodev]

> basically throwing out copyright law would be crazy

Slightly off topic, but aren't we in the process of "throwing out copyright law" for the purposes of LLMs a.k.a the "automated" version of enshitification anyway? We've stretched "fair use" so much already, it won't be too big of a challenge to fit reverse engineering (removing DRM) into it.