Scientific American: Explore!: Teaching Robot Dogs New Tricks: January 21, 2002

Aibo, the Sony Corporation's popular robot dog, has delighted scores of critics and consumers since its introduction. But the plastic pup has also caused its creators some grief. Sony is currently struggling to resolve a copyright dispute that centers on the work of a quirky hacker known only as AiboPet. The controversy poses serious questions about the proper use of robots in homes and exposes a potentially stifling effect of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998.
The copyright at the heart of the case protects Aibo's encrypted brain. AiboPet violated that copyright when he cracked the robot's source code to reverse-engineer software that allows Aibo owners to teach their pets to dance, speak, obey wireless commands and share the color video that serves as their vision, among other things. None of the programs are usable without Sony hardware and software. They earned AiboPet no money. He never revealed the encryption code or the program he used to defeat it. Still, because the DMCA makes it illegal to break any encrypted digital code, AiboPet's actions made him a criminal. The fun began when Sony decided to treat him like one.