Why I’m Suing the US Government
Good.<p>My wife is a speech therapist and uses a system that is designed to help people who have had strokes regain their voice.<p>It comprises a piece of software that comes with a &quot;specially calibrated USB microphone&quot;. The microphone is actually a Samson laptop USB mic that had the voice improvement systems logo stuck on it.<p>The system came with lots of legal warnings about not copying, not telling unqualified people about how it worked and not to use an unapproved microphone. The DMCA was specifically mentioned.<p>One day the mic failed (the program requires patients to shout aggressively at the mic) so my wife went off looking for a replacement. We had a few USB mics that we tried and and the application refused to acknowledge their existence even though they showed up in Windows. It became obvious that the software was checking the USB device ID. My wife went to the company that ran the system to get a replacement, but they said she had to buy a new copy of the software as well - total cost $659. So we took a chance and ordered a new Samson USB mic from Amazon for €30.00, but when it arrived it didn&#x27;t work. It was the same model, but was a few generations ahead and therefore had a different USB device ID. My wife has some colleagues with the same package so I tested their mics and they had different USB device IDs and it became obvious that when Samson released a revision of the mic the company offering the system simply recompiled the code with he new device ID baked in and then re-branded the mic.<p>So, not wanting to shell out $659 for a whole new package I took the old and new mics apart desoldered the cartridges from both mics and put the new one in the body of the failed mic. It worked! Now technically this would be a violation of 1201 in the sense that the individual copy of the software they sold you was tied to the specific mic they sold you at the same time - they said so in the EULA. But lets be honest that&#x27;s just nonsense. They were simply trying to sell more stuff - a tactic that seems fairly common in various fields of professional therapy.<p>This is the sort of problem caused by 1201. If we lived in the US we would have been in breach of the DMCA even though we copied nothing.<p>Also, the software is as ugly as sin.