The CueCat doesn't look like much when you first pull it out of its transparent shipping bag.
It's a kind of low-budget barcode scanner, cheaply constructed of white plastic. Two wires trail from the tail end of its vaguely feline shape, like a mutant housecat.
The smeared logo on one side is so poorly silk-screened that it looks as if it could come off in your hand.
Luckily, the CueCat doesn't cost anything. Its manufacturer, Texas-based startup Digital Convergence, has been giving the device away with the latest Radio Shack catalog, and sending it to subscribers of Forbes and Wired.
And it's a good thing; based on looks alone, your first reaction might be to just toss it into the wastebasket.
And yet this unimpressive little gadget has recently become the heart of a controversy involving independent software developers. The outcome could potentially set a new precedent in how consumers control and use the products they bring home.
The idea behind the CueCat is simple enough. Once you connect it between your Windows PC and a keyboard, you can use it to scan special barcodes printed on magazine ads or catalogs.
Digital Convergence's software will redirect your Web browser, based on these codes, to a page containing more information about the product advertised. It's meant to be a new convenience for the PC-enabled age.
In practice, though, scanning the barcode at the bottom of an ad with a CueCat doesn't make your life a whole lot easier. By the time you drag the magazine from the bathroom to your computer and fire up the reader, you may as well have just typed in the company's printed URL yourself.
To programmers Pierre-Philippe Coupard and Michael Rothwell, however, this scenario was only one possibility. They knew a clever gadget when they saw one. And so, each got to work writing their own software for the CueCat.
What Coupard and Rothwell realized was that the CueCat, despite its sloppy construction, was a working barcode reader which would work on any ISBN and UPC codes, like the ones found on the backs of books and all kinds of packaged products.
Enterprising users could benefit from this in many ways. For starters, you're 10x more likely to get your products racked in stores if you have a barcode on them. But if your barcode reads wrong — particularly if you have a price code that doesn't get read properly — it can cost you major cash.
The CueCat would enable you to verify your barcode on the printer's proofs (or what-have-you) before you go to press.
Likewise, a clever small store owner could make a pretty good barcode inventory system with an old PC and a CueCat.
And, some users have figured out a way to look up ISBN numbers by going to Amazon.com's Web site. Retailers could potentially run small book or record stores and scan bar codes with their free CueCats, and know what they're selling by cross-referencing it with Amazon, or some other online database.
They wouldn't even need to key in their own database of products. That seems like a pretty powerful tool for a reseller.
All that was missing from making these scenarios a reality was the software to make the CueCat work. And that's what Pierre-Philippe Coupard provided when he wrote his CueCat interface, called a "device driver," for the Linux operating system.
Coupard first made an early version of his code available to the public on his company's Web site in late August. But by the first of September, hackers following his progress noted a disturbing development: The code was gone. In its place was the following notice:
"...Digital Convergence has contacted us regarding the CueCat driver and asserted that it infringes intellectual property rights of Digital Convergence. Although we disagree with Digital Convergence's position, we have removed the driver from our site pending resolution of this disagreement..."
When pressured by the Linux community, Digital Convergence spoke out on the subject. The company had indeed sent a letter to Coupard insisting that his Linux driver code be removed, and they weren't backing down.
"Had [we] been approached by developers we would have been (and still will be) happy to work with them in a constructive direction," Digital Convergence's Doug Davis told the Linux-friendly news site, Slashdot. "Instead, our products were reversed engineered and what has occurred is a public display of what is clearly our intellectual property."
Reading between the lines, it seems clear that Digital Convergence objects to any use of the CueCat that circumvents its own software. And who can blame them? Without the links to online ad content, their revenue stream dries up. Once that happens, no more CueCat.
Tough luck, says Michael Rothwell. Rothwell received a similar legal-sounding letter from Digital Convergence regarding his own software, a GUI toolkit for reading barcodes under Linux.
But after consulting his own attorney, Rothwell decided to leave his software readily available. He took the additional step of posting Coupard's code alongside his own. Thus, the battle lines were drawn.
Rothwell insists he's doing nothing wrong; he's entitled to do with his CueCat as he pleases. Reverse engineering — the process of independently figuring out how something works — is legal. Free operating systems like Linux virtually owe their existence to this precedent, since it has allowed them to make use of things like hard drive controllers and video cards.
That doesn't mean a hardware manufacturer has to like it when its product is reverse engineered. But legally, there's not a whole lot they can do about it.
Of course, that's not going to stop Digital Convergence from trying. What's disturbing, however, is the way they're going about it.
The company modified the language of the CueCat's license agreement after the onset of the controversy. The text of the agreement now asserts that the CueCat "is only on loan to you from Digital Convergence and may be recalled at any time." It implies that such a recall might be initiated any time the device is used in a way in which Digital Convergence doesn't approve.
United States Code, Title 39, Section 3009 is quite explicit on this point. By law, a consumer is free to treat any unsolicited products received by postal mail as a gift. The merchandise in question may be disposed of or used however the recipient sees fit — including, as Rothwell and Coupard have done, finding new, constructive uses for it.
But Digital Convergence is trying to extend the terms of its license agreement, the type of agreement that's often used in the software industry, to include their freely distributed hardware. By installing the hardware, they claim, you agree to the license — and so, waive your right to use the CueCat for purposes they haven't approved.
If Digital Convergence succeeds, it could create a dangerous precedent for consumers. Imagine owning a telephone but being told you could only use certain long-distance carriers, and not others.
A television manufacturer might require you only watch certain networks, or that you not connect the set to certain types of satellite receivers. Either of these might be possible, if every manufacturer were allowed the same broad-ranging usage licenses that the software industry enjoys.
The CueCat controversy only serves to underscore a much broader debate about "shrinkwrap licenses" and their dangerous implications to the consumer. Because of this, the Linux programmers working with the hardware deserve our support.
The issue isn't whether you're interested in a free handheld barcode scanner; you don't have to be. But you shouldn't be willing to give up hard-earned consumer rights in trade for a shoddily constructed piece of white plastic.
