Why do we destroy CueCats?

Of all the issues in the CueCat controversy, I'm most bothered by the trend that I see in DigitalConvergence's Draconian license agreement for the CueCat (claiming the device is "only on loan and may be recalled at any time") and the various ways in which DC has tried to discourage or prevent reverse-engineering or uses of the CueCat other than the ones "intended" by DC (see the Doug Davis [CTO of DC] quote at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,39139,00.html ).

As an engineer, I personally believe that reverse-engineering (the ability to take something apart, talk about it and use that knowledge in building other products) is an increasingly important form of free speech, and should receive the highest degree of protection in a society increasingly dependent on technology. You only have to look at the forecasts for nanotech (at, say, The Foresight Institute) ) or the current state of computer and Internet (in)security to see this. This is also one of the central issues in the DVD/DeCSS controversy. It comes down to the question -- if a company sells a product (or in DC's case, spams people with it) how much control can that company have over the product, over how people use it, take it apart, talk about it, publish about it, excerpt from it, etc.

Imagine one day, attempting to start your car. A dialog appears on the vehicle's in-dash LCD: "The liability agreement for this vehicle has changed. Press "I agree" to accept the new agreement and start your car." What will you do? This scenario is already common on many web-sites and I don't think this is as far-fetched as it may seem -- microprocessors are becoming smaller, cheaper and more ubiquitous every day. The US House has passed a bill adding weight to these "click signatures" ( ref ). Once a wireless data infrastructure is in place, it will be possible to register each customer's agreement or disagreement ... and enable or disable their product or service individually. And, at least as DC apparently interprets the law, it would be illegal for anyone attempting to circumvent this dialog and use their car without agreeing merely by incorporating a brain-dead XOR encryption. All of this represents a huge shift of power to manufacturers. This is power they didn't have before, and while they might like to have it, I don't believe they need it to conduct their business, nor that it's in society's best interest for them to have this power. IMHO.

Of course, the CueCat raises other issues or causes for concern:

• Privacy and consumer tracking (interestingly, Qode , is similar to the CueCat but emphasizes the users anonymity);
• the fact that while DC claims the CueCat takes you "exactly where you want to go" you are in fact taken wherever the advertiser wants you to go;
• DC's heavy-handed legal response;
• DC's technical blunder in leaking their customer database;
• DC's patent on "controlling a computer with an audio signal" ( ref ) which in my humble opinion isn't much more than patenting the concept of looking up a datum in a table.

DC isn't the only company or organization raising these issues today but the CueCat seems to touch more hot issues than any other single product, and the more DC attempted to control the situation and control how the CueCat was used, the more we were motivated to use it in perverse ways as a matter of principle.