If I only had more space at home:
The code that runs Redbox DVD rental machines has been dumped online, and, in the wake of the company’s bankruptcy, a community of tinkerers and reverse engineers are probing the operating system to learn how it works. Naturally, one of the first things people did was make one of the machines run Doom. … But in recent days, people have realized that they can, in some cases, get free Redbox kiosks. In an August filing, Walgreens told the bankruptcy court that it has 5,400 abandoned kiosks at its stores, and that it is spending $184,000 a month keeping them powered. “Walgreens should not be required to continue to ‘store’ and power Redbox kiosks across the country without any form of payment,” the company wrote. And so tinkerers and reverse engineers have begun asking stores whether they can take the devices off their hands.
This would be a fun and fascinating side project!
A concerning problem occurs when a company which makes a hardware product goes bankrupt, or simply stops supporting that hardware for any reason. We saw it with Spotify’s CarThing. We’re seeing it here with Redbox’s bankruptcy. It’s a waste to simply brick the hardware and toss it into the landfill.
It’s great that folks who want to snag a Redbox machine (hopefully, with permission!) can do so. And it’s great that the software which runs those machines is being dissected so at-home tinkering can occur. What would reassure these audiences, though, is a federal law which makes it entirely legal to reverse engineer abandoned hardware and accompanying software products – without fear of being slapped with a lawsuit.