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On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 05:47:32PM -0400, Olin Lathrop wrote:
> Peter Todd wrote:
> > He has a peice of hardware, that allows the customer to accidentally
> > destroy it through a series of commands that really shouldn't be able
> > to do that.
> 
> But that doesn't give him the right to steal.  A better course of action
> would be to demand a refund for returning the product, although Olimex isn't
> obligated to to do that either unless it was specified in the purchase
> agreement or perhaps by consumer product laws in Outer Vulgaria or wherever
> Olimex is.
>
> > He wants to fix that peice of hardware, himself, by rewriting the
> > flash chip that allowed itself to be rewritten with no option of
> > going back.
> 
> But wanting to do something doesn't make it legal or right.

Had he made a backup of the flash chip, restoring it would be 100%
legal. Of course, Microchip says scary things about breaking the code
protection technology, but there isn't actually anything illegal about
that, it's what you do with the firmware.

Asking someone else for a copy, that may not be legal, but I think it is
right and plenty of other people do. Hell, it may very well be legal if
it went to a judge given the circumstances, the legal code is rather
grey. Said judge might not be very impressed that the device is so easy
to break under an easilly anticipated circumstance.

> If he really wants to solve this problem, he needs to convince Olimex it's
> in their best interest to fix it for him.  They've obviously decided that
> giving out the binary publicly isn't worth it.  If in the end he can't get
> satisfaction then the best he can do is chalk it up to a learning experience
> and warn others away from the manufacturer and its product.

Part of the problem is that Olimex doesn't give full information in the
situation. In my case they don't make it clear that it's impossible to
downgrade the firmware for instance. That's just the sort of environment
where your free market approach works less and less. 

- -- 
http://petertodd.org
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