Today I want to announce a tour that

we're doing here at Fulu Foundation.

We're going to be visiting a bunch of

cities all over the United States to try

and get people galvanized and excited,

bring people together that care about

ownership to push back against

anti-ownership laws that exist in the

United States. We are doing everything

that we can to reform, repeal, push back

against these laws wherever we can. But

we can't do that by oursel. We need the

help of everybody else on this channel.

For the past 14 years, you have never

seen me, not once, say, "By the way,

check out Tunnel Bear. Check out Raycon.

Hey, this hotel gave me a free room, so

I'm going to pretend that they're

actually a good hotel and try and get my

audience to pay for overpriced [ __ ] I

never say ring that bell, like and

subscribe. You never hear that from me.

But the one thing that I will ask you to

do is consider showing up for this. And

if you're not able to show up, at the

very least when we release a call to

action in your particular area, in your

particular congressional district, that

you answer the call and you do the

things that we ask you to do to push

back against these in an organized way.

I'm showing up in California next week.

I'm going to be flying out on Monday.

going to be showing up on Tuesday

morning in the California in Sacramento

and the Senate building. I hope as many

people show up as possible who care

about 3D printing not being destroyed by

a law that requires that the 3D printer

connect to a [ __ ] government database

to try and figure out if the things that

you're printing a gun, which again, as I

went over, if you have a cold shoe mount

to a camera, if you have a case to a

Raspberry Pi, if you have a flashlight,

there's there's so many places for this

to go wrong. I'm showing up there to

record all the heroes that have decided

to take time out of their day to explain

why this is a horrible bill and try to

get as many people to show up as

possible to push back against it. And I

we're also going to be doing that with

section 121 of the DMCA and many other

anti-ownership laws. One of the things I

learned while watching the push for that

bill is that while the group that is

doing it has a lot of money, it's a very

small number of people that are actually

getting a [ __ ] ton done. Because while

our side, the pro ownership side, the

pro repair side, the pro- freedom side

is often very black pill deniialistic

and believes eh, you know, they're never

going to listen to us. What's the point?

The anti-freedom side, the

anti-ownership side, the anti-consumer

right side, they are very [ __ ]

motivated all the time. I don't want my

legacy in life to be that I increase the

sales of ExpressVPN or Audible or that

there are more [ __ ] AI battery banks

that have have sold. I want it to be

that I'm passing on a world that I'm

proud of to my future children. going to

be repeating this all across the

country. I will let you know in the

YouTube community post as well as in

YouTube videos when you can expect to

see these and I hope to see you there.

That was a lot.

How's everybody doing?

>> Yeah, a little more than that. Come on.

How's everybody doing?

>> Yeah, there we go. Well, that's what I

like to hear. Um, hi everybody. My name

is Kevin O'Reilly. I'm the executive

director with Fulu Foundation. And first

of all, I want to thank all of you for

taking some time out of your holiday

weekend to be here with us today. Um,

the reason that we're here is because

something about our relationship with

our technology has changed, right? Uh,

we have all lived through a time of

incredible technological innovation and

progress. And I'd argue that many of us

in this room have been some of the eager

adopters and maybe even advocates for

that tech. Uh but what's become clear is

that the companies that make that tech

are no longer showing us the same

respect. Right? It used to be that when

you bought something, you owned it and

that ownership came with control. So

that meant that, you know, the maker of

your television or your tractor or your

pickup truck had no ability and no right

to tell you how to use it, when or where

to get it fixed, which features you had

access to, right? It was your thing.

When you bought a uh a video game, you

got the disc, you could play it for as

long as you wanted. Um, that's shifted.

And this conception of ownership right

now is under attack. So these days, if

you want to get your Kawasaki's oil

changed, you've got to go to the

dealership, right? If you want to use

your BMW's heated seats, you got to fork

over a monthly subscription. And if you

just don't want your TV to spy on you

and then sell that data to advertisers,

you've got to navigate through five to

10 screens of legal ease and hope that

the manufacturer honors your request.

That's ridiculous. It's not right.

Right. Uh as owners, we deserve the

right to call the shots. We deserve the

ability to make our technology work for

us. We deserve the right to repair. And

for goodness sake, we deserve to own our

[ __ ]

YEAH.

SO, today you're going to be hearing

from a few folks that are leading the

push for ownership, for control, for

privacy. Um, you're going to be hearing

a lot about the Digital Millennium

Copyright Act or the DMCA.

That's the right answer. That's the

right response. Um, right. This law that

has made true ownership into a federal

crime with penalties of up to 5 years in

prison and $500,000 in fines. Uh, and

then after that, each one of you is

going to take action. You're going to be

writing a postcard to your member of

Congress because the only way that we're

going to be able to change this is if we

all come together and demand that kind

of change. So, thank you again for being

here. Now the person involve come here

to see Lewis Rossman, president of Fulu,

YouTube activist, many, many things.

Lewis, take it away. How about a round

of applause for Lewis? HUH?

All right. Beautiful. It works. All

right. So, today I thought we'd start

out with the primary problem, which is

what we've been talking about,

ownership. So, I thought we'd start by

defining the problem. Let's let's define

what purchase used to mean in the 14th

century. In the 14th century, purchase

meant to acquire in exchange for payment

in money or an equivalent. The action or

act of obtaining something in exchange

for payment for money or in equivalent

buying. That was the 14th century

definition. Let's read the 21st century

definition from Sony. Sony. Due to

updated licensing arrangements as of

December 31st, 2023, due to our content

licensing arrangements with content

providers, you will no longer be able to

watch any of your previously purchased

Discovery content and the content will

be removed from your video library. We

sincerely thank you for your continued

support. They didn't say stream. They

didn't say rent. They said purchase. And

then they just took it away because that

is what is normal. Now, another word

that I think is really important is

lifetime. I much prefer the 14th century

definition. The 14th century definition

from Oxford English dictionary is the

duration of a person's or animals life.

The period of time over which a person's

life extends. Person's life. Let's see

what it means in the 21st century.

Anybody here have to buy textbooks for

college? Anybody here try to buy a used

textbook, but the teacher tells you the

questions are different from last year's

even though calculus hasn't changed in

70 years? Yeah. Yeah. So, let's take a

look at what Vital Source says. Now, you

have three different licenses. You have

the $62 for 180 days, $86 for a year, or

$110 for a lifetime. Now, let's see.

What do you think lifetime means to

vital source? Any guesses?

>> Products labeled as lifetime typically

mean five years typically, not even

five, they're not committing of online

access and permanent downloads to a

supported device, which means if they do

not make that app for this version of

Android anymore, sucks for you. This is

not a PDF file or a document file that

you download. This is a book that you

paid $200 or $400 for for a lifetime

license that you now have access to for

again up up to 5 years, which means

could be two weeks.

Books. Speaking of books, Amazon used to

allow you to purchase books and then

download them. And many of these books

were advertised as not having digital

rights management. Starting February 26,

2025, the download and transfer via USB

option will no longer be available. And

there are books on Amazon right now that

are being sold without digital rights

management. Yet, when you buy it, you

cannot download it, even though the

actual advertising on Amazon's site said

you were allowed to download the book.

Now, my personal favorite was the $400

baby monitor. How many people here have

bought a baby monitor for their family

or their kids or seen one?

Okay, not a lot of people with kids

here, but for the usual price for this

thing is usually 30 to 50 bucks, maybe

80 bucks after the Iran war. This is

$400 for a baby monitor. Now, what do

you think the company did when they

started having financial issues? You

they started trying to make a better

product. Did they try to figure out new

ways to attract consumers? Oh, [ __ ] no.

What they did is they sent out a

firmware update that turned it into a

subscription. Live breathing and sleep

tracking are available with a Meiku

membership. My $400 baby monitor has

locked previously features behind a

subscription payw wall. One of my

personal favorites is that they do this

with wheelchairs. Somebody had a

wheelchair that used to be able to go 8

km an hour and now it's only able to go

5 to 6 km an hour unless they pay to

unlock these new features because being

able to catch the bus is apparently

worth a subscription. So, they actually

did this to somebody with multiple

scerosis. Lovely. Now, this hit a

crescendo for me when there's a company

called Future Home that makes these

smart home products like thermostats,

things for your water heater, everything

else. They were having financial issues

and instead of try to make a better

product, they sent out a firmware update

to all these devices so that if you

wanted to be able to use it the way you

could before, you had to pay them $117 a

year to use the thermostat that you you

that you already paid for. And this is

the point where this just kind of

reached a crescendo for me and I

realized something has to change. So

when I started this channel, I did a lot

of videos of fixing motherboards and

fixing things at component level. And

what I and at some point I got a phone

call from a lawyer from Kilpatrick and

Townson. It was a very very kind and

polite person from Apple calling out

asking if I could just take down this

one troublesome video that I had of and

I'm like why? I like well we really like

your content. It's just that one piece

you used this little piece of um

copyrighted or trade secret work which

was a schematic that showed how the

motherboard was put together. So, if I'm

going to fix a motherboard, I need to

know how the motherboard is put

together. And in the on the bottom

corner of the motherboard, it usually

says something like this that lets me

know what they were mad at. Notice a

proprietary property. Do not copy or

reproduce it. Don't reveal or publish it

and holder in part. And there were there

were a few million people on YouTube

watching me fix things. So, I I spoke to

a lawyer and the lawyer told me, "Wow,

you have no case. Like, look at what

you're putting on the screen over here.

You have absolutely no case. You are

clearly breaking the law. What are you

doing?" But I'm looking at my comments

and there's hundreds of thousands of

people saying, "Thank you. Apple wanted

$700 to fix this. I just fixed it myself

for $15. Thank you. I started a business

doing this. I no longer work at Walmart

and make minimum wage. This is great."

And I thought to myself, if I'm actually

helping enough people, if I'm doing the

right thing for the right reasons, then

the fact that I'm I'm breaking the law

is not the issue. It's the law that's

the issue, not me. So, I paid my lawyer

and I told him politely, I tell them I'm

not taking the video down. He's like,

"What?" like, yeah, tell them if they

want the video taken down, they can file

the claim. And the thing is, when you

file a DMCA claim to have a video taken

down, you have to say why. You have to

say the time stamp, but you also have to

say the section that was offending and

why. And I wanted Apple to have to put

in writing a company that has a

department and a director of

sustainability and environmental

justice. I wanted them to say that at 55

seconds to 1 minute, Lewis Rossman shows

where the fuse is and we don't want our

customers knowing where it is. Put that

[ __ ] on paper. Now, there's this idea

that I have where I try to frame my life

where if I win, I win. And if I lose, I

win. If I win, they leave me alone. I

get to keep making videos for the next

five or 10 years and promoting right to

repair. If I lose and they file a claim,

now again, this trillion dollar company

with the director of sustainability and

environmental justice is now going to

have to explain to the world that they

really don't like you knowing where a

fuse is in your product. And I decided

to take that principle to the issue of

ownership. So, let's see what we did

with the future home thermostat. with

this. I knew somebody who worked at the

company. I knew a few people who knew

how this stuff worked, knew how to

release a workaround to it. They just

needed a little push. So, we put out a

bounty program of $5,000. And I said,

"If somebody unbricks this thermostat,

if you return it to the functionality

that it had before, we will give you

$5,000." And that little push worked

because very shortly thereafter, the CEO

of Future Home said, "This is illegal

hacking." So, let me get this straight.

When you push out a firmware update to a

product because you went bankrupt,

saying, "We want $117 a year from all of

you, just holding you hostage, holding

you ransom," that's a business model.

But when I say, "I'm going to give you

back access to the product that you

already bought and paid for," that is

illegal hacking. Now, somebody wound up

coming up with a solution, a very nice

open- source solution to this, and they

won the bounty, and it was a great

solution. A lot of people are now using

their thermostat without paying that

corrupt [ __ ] $17 a year. Now, the

thing is, what he said is not true. That

is not considered illegal hacking in the

country of Norway. It's not. However, it

is considered illegal hacking in the

country of America because in the US we

have a law called section 121 of the

DMCA which says if you bypass a

technical protection measure to get

access to a work that the company

doesn't want you to have access to, even

if it's for the purpose of repair, even

if for you to make the device that you

already bought and own work again after

the manufacturer has bricked it, doesn't

matter. You're technically allowed to

fix it for yourself, but you can't show

other people how to do it. So, this is

kind of like saying you're allowed to

work on your own can. So you just can't

treat other people. How many people here

know how to reprogram the firmware in

their thermostat after the manufacturer

bricks it? Some maybe one or two, but

most people don't know how to do that.

You're not going to become an expert in

that. So by saying that you can't share

the solution with others and making it

illegal, you've effectively said

technically you can fix it, but who

who's going to do that if you can't

share it? So we started to get known as

the group that was paying bounties for

unlocking these devices and offering to

unlock these devices for people u who

have been screwed by this. One of the

examples afterwards was the Nest

thermostat. The Nest thermostat had

anybody here have a Nest in their house.

Yeah. So for the older ones, they said,

"This is just not going to work

anymore." What I found offensive about

this is that there is no

expiration date on the box. Like you

probably say, "Here's how long my eggs

are good for on your carton." Many, but

there are no Okay, bad example. Small

bad example. Small far. A lot of stuff

in your grocery store says when it

expires, but this does not. But none of

these products said when they expire and

it had an expiration date. So we put up

another bounty again. This one was for

$14,772.

Now the thing is I as listen as as a

like large follower YouTuber, I would

never tell people to break the law. I

can't do that. But I also can't tell

people whether or not they're going to

release the solution afterwards. I'm not

your mom. I'm not your dad. I'm a

YouTuber. So if people and the way I see

this is if we win and somebody releases

a solution, hundreds of thousands of

people get back access to what they

bought and paid for. And if they decide,

you know what, I'm not going to release

the solution after I win the bounty, we

also win. The reason for that is because

now we can point to the fact that this

law exists. I would be able to show

millions of people how to make their

thermostat work again instead of having

to throw it away. But I can't because

this is here. And that's the purpose of

what we were doing with this bounty

program. And I'm going to talk about

some of those laws and some of the

excuses that people make for them

shortly. So somebody came out with a

solution, the Nest thermostat jailbreak.

This is on the no longer evil website

making a nice poking jab at Google

getting rid of the don't be evil slogan

around 2008 or 2009. There's a couple of

other examples of this. There's a

company called Echelon. They make these

exercise bikes. It's kind of like cheap

version of Pelaton. And they're sent out

a firmware update that stopped it from

being able to work with third party

apps. Would surprise anybody here that

at the time that they sent out a

firmware update that stopped you from

using other people's apps, their apps

were trying to sell you on

subscriptions. Would that surprise

anybody here? Yeah. Anyway, somebody

came out with a way to use it with third

party applications again, the same way

that you could when you bought the bike,

but he decided not to release it after

winning the bounty because he did not

feel like dealing with a 30-year-old law

that could subject him to 3 to 5 years

in federal prison. And again, I don't

blame him. I don't blame him. Now, the

reason that this is important and the

reason that we win, even if this man

does not release it, is because allow it

allows us to push back against the

opposition's most common talking point

that this is a solution in search of a

problem that does not exist. When I go

around the country and I I talk about

this issue, I'll often meet people that

say this.

Let's Here we go.

>> My name is Samantha Kershel and I'm the

executive director for TechNet.

Respectfully, we are testifying in

opposition to Senate Bill 5799 today. Uh

we believe this legislation is in search

of a problem that does not exist.

>> Something that's resonated with me is

something that you heard early on here

is this is legislation in search of a

problem. Now, I got in trouble after

releasing this because it had her name

in the title and apparently she said

she's getting all these types of

messages online and and I figured it out

right before this hearing that we went

to. She had tweeted and I quote, "I'm

experiencing phone issues. The phone is

on but the screen is black. I've tried

everything. It's time for and when you

click this, it's like five or seven

years ago, so I don't have the link

anymore, but it said something along the

lines of me to figure out how to fix my

phone." Life comes at you fast. if I

guess with the salary that she's getting

to lobby against consumer rights for

Samsung and Apple, she could probably

just afford to buy a new one. But they

will often say that what we're talking

about is not really a problem. None of

this stuff is a problem. We're just kind

of making it up. And one of the things

that we're trying to do here is

demonstrate every single way that this

particular law is a problem, that this

does exist. U now I'm very biased in

favor of right to repair. So I don't

want you to listen to what I have to

think about these laws. I'd rather you

listen to the person who actually wrote

it about 35 years ago. This is Bruce

Leman. He is the architect of the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And I

want you to hear what he has to say

about this law.

>> Unfortunately, at least in some areas,

our policies haven't worked out too

well. Our attempts at copyright control,

at least thus far, have not been

successful. But I don't just blame

teenagers and and college students. I

really blame the the moguls in the music

industry because had they been thinking

about these business models

when we were doing our work in 1994 in

the Clinton administration, had they

been developing effective online

distribution models when the internet

first came into business? said they've

been talking to Steve Casease when AOL

first started to become a big deal and

really seriously developing an online

business model perhaps we would not be

in the situation that we are but the

culture of that industry was such that

you know those people were concerned

principally with uh you know and their

talents were developing talent

understanding public taste they didn't

know anything about distribution or

technology or anything like that the

minions dealt with that well their

industry has paid the price. Hopefully

there's not any, you know, I won't be

quoted in the US, but I'm afraid our

Clinton administration policies didn't

work out very well. Now, a lot of people

accused me at the time of doing an end

run around Congress and everybody else

by negotiating these treaties and then

coming back and saying, "Well, we have

because we submitted this to Congress

before the treaties uh process was

complete and then coming back and

saying, well, now you have to do this,

Congress, because we've agreed to a

treaty." And I would say that they're

probably right that it was an end run

and it was partly deliberate.

>> And the final statute that comes out,

you know, with a guy who was the head of

then the biggest record company in the

world, Warner Records, and he was very

nice guy. And he wrote a book a few

years later after he retired and

confirmed what I always thought to be

the case about record industry

executives. record industry executives

are imprasarios and the typical the best

the most successful record industry

executives I would characterize as

45year-old man who can think like a

17-year-old girl and likes to hang out

at 3:00 in the morning and do drugs with

rock stars and he basically admitted to

all of that in his book that he wrote

several years later unfortunately that

is not a way that is not a mindset a

part of the brain that does very well at

evolving new business models for highly

complex technologies.

>> So, let's get this straight. He admits

that it is a horrible law that didn't do

what it was supposed to. Check. He

admits and laughs about the fact that he

snuck this into a treaty to trick

Congress into passing it. And he admits

that the entire business model was based

on junkies that should not have the

ability to legislate technology. And

yet, 29 years later, this law is still

the reason that a man is afraid that if

he shows you how to make your exercise

bike work again, that he will go to

federal prison. Only in America. What

we're doing here is we are trying to fix

this law and we are trying to also

reform it and similar laws like it

because this law came out at a time when

your refrigerator, your car, your

exercise bike, your baby monitor did not

connect to the internet and we lived in

a world where when you bought something,

you actually owned it. The 14th century

definition applied to ownership, not the

new we can take it away from you

afterwards thing. And the reason that

we're starting this off in Austin, as

Kevin Welch said, is that most I think

most people, like deep down, be honest,

you probably believe there's really no

point to showing up. I'm going to email

my congress person. I'm going to email

my city council person. They go, "Yeah,

whatever. Who cares?" And they're going

to do what they want to do anyway. But

they wanted to spend about $2 million to

put AI surveillance cameras in almost

every single park in Austin. And they

were about to get that through. And then

a bunch of people here showed up in

front of city hall. And you didn't

curse, you didn't scream, you didn't

yell, you didn't throw stuff. You were

just polite, kind, and courteous. But

you made it obvious that you're not

going to go until they do what it is

that they should be doing. And you made

change. Those cameras are not here. They

they didn't spend the money on it. And

the point is that it doesn't take a lot

of people showing up. It takes maybe.1%

of the people that care about an issue

to actually show up and get involved to

do something about it and to make real

change. And that's what we're going to

be asking of all of you. So right by

there, there's a going to be a QR code

for a chat server that we have. It's

Zulip. It's kind of like Slack or Teams

or Discord, but open source. so that

when these issues come up, I want you to

be sharing them with us because I can

only read through I can only keep up

with so many of of the echelons and the

nests and the wheelchairs. I want to

know when these issues show up in your

life so that we can push back against

them so that we can update our bounty

program and more so when opportunities

show themselves for us to be able to

collectively push back against these

laws and reform them. I want to get all

of you involved the same way that

happens in front of city hall here with

the flock cameras where we were able to

get rid of them and the live view

cameras. I want to be able to do the

same thing with this. Are you with me?

>> Yeah.

>> Thank you.

>> Yeah.

>> Cool. All right. So, on that note, let's

write some letters to uh Congressman uh

Mr. Casar. So, we've got

we're going to have Maria and Stephie

from our team um who are going to be

coming by to drop off some postcards and

each one of you is just going to take a

couple minutes, write a couple

sentences, right? A little bit of

friction, not just an email. You're

going to actually put the personal touch

on it and say why it's important to you

that we change this law. So, let me pull

up an example here that we've got. So,

we've got some basic instructs, right?

So, address the postcard to your member

of Congress. We've got a some like

labels for you to put those on. They

might already be on there. Maybe share a

story or a reason as to why you care

about being able to own your [ __ ] You

care about being able to repair your

stuff. You care about being able to

continue to play your video games. And

then make sure to say about talk about

the need to reform the DMCA. Encourage

your member to sign support the Freedom

to Fix Act. So, this is our current

legislative priority. So, while Lewis is

doing all of his good work to make sure

that consumers are aware of these kind

of practices, a big part of my job is

heading to DC and finding ways for us to

make steps forward. So, the Freedom to

Fix Act is would make it so that at the

very least bypassing a digital lock for

the purpose of repair would no longer be

a federal crime, right? So, that Cody

Kosmba who developed the no longer evil

solution for your Nest thermostat

couldn't become a federal criminal. I

think that's just crazy. So ask them to

support the freedom to fix and then add

your name, add your address so that they

know that you are a constituent because

that is really important. So when you're

done, we've got a box over here by the

merch table that you can drop them off.

We'll make sure those get in the