FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

FC: Motorola scheme uses GPS to disable grey-market impo

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 08:26:57 -0500 To: politech@politechbot.com From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: FC: Motorola scheme uses GPS to disable grey-market imports Send reply to: declan@well.com

[Forwarded from IP. It seems to me that not only is this scheme a bad idea in this particular area, but it is a bad idea in general. I assembled my Canon EOS camera system from mostly grey-market parts, bought legally from B&H in NYC, a large and very reputable retailer. I've found grey-market parts to be about 10-15 percent cheaper and identical quality. The general case, it strikes me without thinking about this overmuch, is that grey market imports encourage arbitrage and price competition. Of course Motorola should have the right to do this -- but we don't have to do anything to encourage 'em, and we should have the right to try to disable their GPS receivers. :) --Declan]

********

>Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 11:41:01 -0800 (PST)
>From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
>
>This is beyond amazing.  It's an anti-parallel import scheme that
>raises a lot of the same issues as all this DRM business, plus a slew
>of privacy concerns.  You may be saying goodbye to your imported
>European region-free DVD player, your Japanese SDMI-free MP3 player,
>etc., real soon now.
>
>http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999452
>
>Motorola wants to pork your consumer rights, because "[i]t is often
>desirable to control the marketing or use of products differently in
>different areas".
>
>I'm apoplectic at the sheer chutzpah.
>
>--
>Stanton McCandlish      mech@eff.org       http://www.eff.org/~mech
>Online Communications Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation voice:
>+1 415 436 9333 x105    fax: +1 415 436 9333 PGPfone: 204.253.162.21

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