Entries for the Catalog of Missing Devices, courtesy of EFF supporters like you
The Catalog of Missing Devices is a tour through some of the legitimate, useful and missing gadgets, tools and services that don't exist but should. They're technologies whose chance to exist was snuffed out by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which makes tampering with "Digital Rights Management" into a legal no-go zone, scaring off toolsmiths, entrepreneurs, and tinkerers.
We're still adding our own designs to the Catalog, but we've also been honored by EFF supporters who've come up with their own additions. One such supporter is Dustin Rodriguez, who sends us these five great ideas for future entries. If you have great ideas for additions, send them to me and maybe you'll see them here on Deeplinks!
- Software Scalpel - Load up the Software Scalpel and start slicing and dicing your favorite application that just has too many menus, too many options, and a cluttered interface! Download interface remixes put together by other users and simplify your apps. Boil them down to concentrated goodness, with just the pieces you actually use!
- Gamewriter - Now available for Xbox and Playstation platforms, coming soon for the Switch! Don't just play video-games, but make them yourself! Create and remix your own game variants! When you need more flexibility, use the included cable to connect your console to your laptop, desktop, or phone and use our easy toolset to develop your family's next hit game.
- MovieMoxie - Insert the best comebacks of all time into conversations with your friends in just a blink! Quote your favorite film line in your SMS chats and we will retrieve the exact clip you're thinking of as a subtitled animated GIF and serve it up to your partner.
- Trailer Twister - Point Trailer Twister at your favorite or not-so-favorite film and choose the genre you wish it had been and watch Trailer Twister generate a pitch-perfect rendition of the film that never was! Tickle your fancy with a trailer that makes Saw look like a rom-com or terrify them with thoughts of a darkly horrific Daddy Day Care!
- Casting Corrector - Using the most recent advances in machine learning with generative neural networks, select your favorite actor or actress (or anyone you have several minutes of footage of!), a target film, and the character that SHOULD have been played by them and our servers will serve up an instantly recast version. Your mom in Serial Mom? Your dad as Rambo? No problem!
Related Updates
WASHINGTON, DC—A 1998 federal law that criminalizes access to digital works for lawful purposes—chilling free expression and impeding scientific research—is unenforceable because it’s too broad and violates the First Amendment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and co-counsel Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati argued in an appeals...
Software robots should not be deciding whether your creative content, whether written words, videos, photos, or music, ought to be pulled off the internet.That’s what we told the U.S. Copyright office in comments we filed February 8 arguing against requiring service providers to embrace “standard technical measures” to address...
Every three years, the public has an opportunity to chip away at the harm inflicted by an offshoot of copyright law that doesn’t respect traditional safeguards such as fair use. This law, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, impedes speech, innovation, and access to knowledge by threatening huge...
Have you tried modifying, repairing, or diagnosing a product but bumped into encryption, a password requirement, or some other technological roadblock that got in the way? EFF wants your stories to help us fight for your right to get around those obstacles.Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)...
In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a sweeping overhaul of U.S. copyright law notionally designed to update the system for the digital era. Though the DMCA contains many controversial sections, one of the most pernicious and problematic elements of the law is Section 1201,...
Correction 12/4/18: This post has been edited to correct the description of the new exemption, and to acknowledge the contributions of SPN, LCA, and Harvard.Online games have finally found their way into the video game preservation exemption to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is...
We’re pleased to announce that the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office have expanded the exemptions to Section 1201 of the DMCA, a dangerous law that inhibits speech, harms competition, and threatens digital security. But the exemptions are still too narrow and too complex for most technology...
Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation won petitions submitted to the Library of Congress that will make it easier for people to legally remove or repair software in the Amazon Echo, in cars, and in personal digital devices, but the library refused to issue the kind of broad, simple and robust...
