Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat The Philosophy of Tweaking Equipment

Just considering these points:

1) As per my post above about the programs being sold as part of the product and not a separate entity.

2) Licence agreements do not apply to embedded programs unless specifically mentioned at point of sale or use.

3) If you change the PSU in your kit then you are defeating the designer's original design intention. For example, this might render the equipment unsafe and non-compliant to the EMC directive. If you change a bit of code in your microprocessor this may have similar or other effects as Gianni implies above. In neither case is IP the real issue.

4) If you do either of the above for commercial gain then you may be subject to action by the manufacturer or the authorities for infringing regulations or their registered design etc.

5) In the case of Meridian, they should only really be concerned about the scenario in point 4 if it has any meaningful commercial impact on them. If a patent or copyright infringement case goes to court then any damages awarded will reflect the likely loss suffered by the complainant. Litigating because you don't like something is poor business.

Hardware tweaking seems fine to me if undertaken at the owner's risk. For such actions to invalidate a warranty is perfectly fair.

Appropriating and modifying software is stealing, pure and simple. Whether or not it is easy to do, or whether everyone else in the world does it, does not alter the situation.

+1

Appropriating, modifying and then selling...

Tintin

+1 as may be obvious from my polemic above!

This is a fascinating thread.

For me, personally, I see no fundamental difference between hardware and software modifications. As somebody pointed out earlier, the latter is a more recent phenomenon than the former, so attitiudes and 'tacit' accpetance are less mature. I remember years ago, a hardware manufacturer being outraged at a modification that had been done to 'his' equipment - I suspect that same person would have amuch more measured reaction today.

OK, you blow your warranty either way, and certainly should not be looking for free repairs to fix self-inflicted problems, but as long as you are not looking to sell modified firmware, I see little to differentiate to two cases.

Further, the example of the 3rd party PSU doesn't really stand up to logical scrutiny either. While I agree that the need arose from a poorly performing original part, one could make a similar argument for 800, for example, where Meridian have chosen not to enhance firmware with more recent innovations.

It would be interesting to see how many of the folks here who find software modification to be a far more eggegious offense than changing hardware are in fact in the software industry .

Put another way, I suspect a group of hardware engineers would answer the same question very differently than a group of software engineers. It is, so very often, a matter of perspective on who's lunch is getting eaten.

Although not a perfect analogy, this topic reminds me of debates I have had with people over the years about bootleg recordings. My view is that as long as I don't try to sell them, what is the harm. And if the band comses out with an official version (always with far better sound quality) the bootleg goes bye bye.

The point made above, that modified software can float around the web and between board members uncontrolled, whereas modified hardware is a one off risk to the owner of the device, seems to me quite an important one.

No-one is selling modified Meridian firmware, are they?

Technically, no.

It is a good point, I agree, I'm just not sure that it is something, really, to worry about.

Speaking as one of the guilty parties, I'd like to say that in this context, I don't believe we should distinguish between hardware and software modification. They are either both bad, or both good, depending on your approach and your priorities.

Bob Stuart gave a good rebuttal to what Erwin had been doing this year, and talked about all the good things Meridian do to ensure their software performs and functions as well as possible. If you don't develop, test, document and support software properly, all sorts of things can go wrong when someone outside of the factory tackles the job.

However, I think those arguments tend to apply to hardware modifications as well. Electronics have to comply with a lot of regulations before they can go on sale, and the manufacturer is responsible for ensuring its equipment is safe to use. The person that modifies his equipment doesn't have the same obligations, and can't possibly provide the same level of assurance that the modified equipment won't burst into flames while you're out the house. There are lots of other, lesser, evils to avoid as well.

The response is the same - its the owner that is taking the risk

The other issue is licensing. If you build a PC from scratch, you realise that software can be expensive. That's partly because it IS expensive to develop, and partly because consumers CAN be persuaded to pay for it. If you take someone else's software, modify it and re-sell it, then you're infringing their IP. What Erwin has carefully avoided is distributing or selling Meridian's software. He only produces his own SW, which has to use whatever Merdian SW the user must already be using - SW that is already there. Its not the same as pirating MS Office or whatever you may chose to add to an empty PC.

Meridian products aren't sold without software, so there's no underworld supply chain for us to buy cheap Meridian software. In practice we always have it anyway, and Merdian have distributed it for free, so there's no money to be made from what they've done. Anyway, that doesn't seem to be the motivation for Erwin, as he distributed his apodising SW for free, and isn't taking any sales away from Meridian. If Meridian happened to charge for their SW, that would be a different matter, but they don't. Its just a part of the equipment, like the power supply.

Modifying equipment isn't for everybody. Some people won't accept the risks or the potential unreliability, which is fair enough, but that's not a major concern for me. But if you say that modifying software is wrong, then in this context, I think you'd have to say that modifying hardware is wrong as well. And my view on that is that its my hardware, and I'll do what I like with it.

Nick

Is the situation a little more complicated than you suggest?

First I think that you need to differentiate between swapping out a component for a better-performing (?) one in a piece of equipment, and working on the piece of equipment (modifying) without actually changing any of the components.

In the case of firmware, you are working on something that someone else has created. (I suppose that this might compare with board design and layout of hardware.)

So there is the moral problem with firmware that you are taking something created by someone else to appropriate and modify, you are not starting from scratch. And if you then distribute the modified firmware, the issue of theft becomes all the clearer. Whether or not this is done for profit does not really matter.

Im going to bite on this.

As a software developer, published author and designer with nearly 30 years experience, I have been in the position of both sides of the argument.

In my book, everyone has the right to modify things that they own. For hardware, cars, electronics etc, this is fairly straight forward. For software, it is more complex and the ownership and rights of use are varied. However, as far as I am concerned, if you buy a license to use software, or a piece of hardware that contains software, then under fair use, you can personally do as you feel free and accept the consequences. As long as you keep it to yourself.

Where I draw the line though is regarding redistribution of what is the intellectual property of others. And in my book, this is a no no.

For hardware, this is highly unlikely, but for software this is very likely to occur.

If someone say modified a car engine, then posted details of how to on a web site, then there is no breach of the intellectual rights of the manufacturer of the engine. The engine manufacturer may claim breach of copyright or distribution rights, but you are not giving away any secrets developed by the engine manufacturing. Obviously if you stripped the engine down then found a secret part/method then published details of this, then this would be different, but this is not what engine modification is all about. Its about taking what you have and tweaking it to make it more to your liking.

For software though, the likelihood of breaching intellectual property rights is highly likely to happen. For some software, open source, his is allowed and even actively encouraged under the licensing agreement, but most commercial software, the license actively prohibits anything that may put the original developer at a loss. The line between the two may be somewhat blurred, as some commercial software may contain open source and thus, under the terms of the original open source license, derivatives or products that contain it, may also be covered under the license deal of the original open source license. The F80/M80 may fall into this category as, off the top of my head, the underlying OS is open source.

As I said earlier, if the breach is confined to the individual user, and thus, unless they are really stupid and brag about it, they are not going to get caught and really it is fair use.

But once if becomes public, the rules change. If you published some instructions to tell someone how to change the speaker firmware to display a different source name, then that would be fine as the IP of the original manufacturer has not been breached, although the terms of license use may have. But, going back to my original argument, what you do yourself if your own choice. However, if someone then creates a tool to do this, things become a bit blurred.

Georges 3dB fix was a tool to modify a file that was created automatically. There was no financial gain, the tool did not transfer any intellectual property from Meridian and, although the process to create the tool certainly would have breached the license conditions (possibly reverse engineering), the use of the tool by others would simply have been covered under what I term, fair use.

Erwins apodising hack though is quite different. As well as the breach of license reverse engineering etc by Erwin, the use of the tool by others is a flagrant breach of Meridians IP as it is stealing code. This is very different to a user modifying their car engine, or hacking speaker software to change a label.

As for Erwin wanting to charge �299 for an apodising filter for Meridians processors, this goes even further as not only has the license agreement been breached, there is financial gain involved. In my book, this steps way way way over the line.

As I said before, I can see both sides of the argument. Most of my books contained code for people to type in to their computer and run and modify. If someone photocopied the book and passed this on to someone else, the I would possibly be financially disadvantaged and my publisher and I would not like this, and there would be a risk from my publisher of litigation. However, if someone had typed in a program and given it to a friend to use, then as far as I was concerned, this was fair use.

As a software developer, when I have developed for third parties, I have always wavered my intellectual property rights as I was being paid for my time. However, if I developed a product for a third party rather than charge for my time, then I retain the IP for the software or design and thus control over the product.

I also design things for others, like gardens and computer networks and server based systems. Reuse of a design for a network or a server is unlikely to happen as they are bespoke to fit a specific set of business requirements, but theoretically a garden design can be reused. When I undertake a garden design, I am licensing the design to the client. If they want to modify it, then fine, if they want to move to a new house and reuse the design or aspects from it, then fine - like fair use software modification, they take the consequences like plants not behaving as they were intended in the original design . But if they gave the design to their next door neighbour, then that would not be OK.

Apologies for the (typically for me) verbose answer, but imho its not a black and white answer that fits all scenarios.

As for Meridians response to Erwins apodising hack, I am surprised that Meridian took it so lightly and am even more surprised that they are on the surface, taking his alternative version for monetary gain equally as likely. Maybe with the original 5200 drop-in version Meridian were too ashamed of what could be seen either as a major failure in their internal lines of communication or arrogance in failing to acknowledge that a viable alternative was possible.

As for Erwin flouting the hack for personal financial gain, I find this personally distasteful, especially when it is from someone who calls themselves a software developer. As a professional software engineer, I am sure like others on this forum who have made a living from it, the skill, talent, care and time needed to develop robust professional qualify software is not something that I like being trivialised nor made worthless by others stealing our work. The same could be said for many other areas other than software where people spend skill, talent, time and care to produce something only for someone else to profit from it.