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The Aibo is dancing again

A couple of days ago, Engadget reported that the results of the Daft Punk Aibo Dance Competition are in: info and videos of dancing robot dogs on aibo-does-daftpunk (warning: sound). All very nice, but kind of ironic—back in 2001, Sony threatened to sue a software developer for doing exactly this: making his Aibo dance (jazz, not Daft Punk).

Sony claimed that AiboPet, the person running the AiboHack site, violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA by offering free downloads of his homebrew jazz dance software. The main argument was that AiboPet’s software was working because it circumvented the copy control mechanism on Sony Memory Sticks, which can be used to extend the Aibo’s predefined set of capacities. A quote from the original notice:

(ii) your site provides the means to circumvent the copy protection protocol of Sony’s AIBO(tm) Memory Stick(tm) to allow access to Sony AIBO-ware software

Note that the circumvention issue here has nothing to do with creating unauthorized software copies or the like, but instead, is indicative of Sony’s intent to control the aftermarket of software running on the Aibo platform.

However, after Aibohack.com was closed down, Sony faced harsh criticism from the Aibo tinkering community. A couple of months later, the company took a U-turn and changed its policy, allowing people to hack their robot dogs and even providing an Aibo development kit.

Just thought you’d enjoy this piece of background info before watching movie clips of the Aibo headbanging on Daft Punk’s “Technology” ;-). My favorite clip is Mister’s, which ended up third.