But first: I'm calling for Federal legislation to protect hackers like George Hotz - people who work to free equipment that they legally purchased - from threats of and actual law suits.
Hotz's good work seems to have unlocked all sorts of legal hounds, baying about dire consequences to hackers.
A little spin through history:
Although the Romans understood authorial attribution - plagiarism comes from the Latin for kidnapped - the notion of copyright as a legally enforceable right didn’t really begin until the printing press, and the monarchs who at first controlled their printers. Copyright was literally the right that monarchs dispensed to make copies. It took until 1710 and the Statute of Anne for England to make copyright a creator’s right.
And, of course, the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Invention made both copyright and patent often into corporate things.
Even so, corporations gave and give a huge amount of information away for free - that happens every time you hear a song on the radio.
Now, Apple could try to make its iPhones unhackable. But the idea that people who own a piece of property - such as an iPhone - could be sued for using it in a way sellers did not intend is ... plain and simply immoral and absurd.
George Hotz is technically protected under the current law. But apparently that's not good enough stop attorneys et al from offering grave predictions and perhaps thinly veiled threats - see The Boys From The DMCA Are Coming, for example - so let's push right back, and get our next Congress to pass a law which makes it always legal for people to do whatever they please to anything they legally purchase.
It's not a very radical concept, really.
And years from now, people will look back and wonder at how we ever got to the point where control over what you purchase was ever debatable.
6 comments:
It seems that people are having the same kinds of problems with software/games/music they have bought... the DRM and copy protection schemes included on the media are destroying their computers.
There is something wrong with a system when a paying customer is treated such a way. I disagree with the argument that these companies put forth that you are merely buying a license to view and use their work. I believe that you are indeed buying a copy of the media itself, and you should be able to do with it what you wish WITHIN REASON.
Absolutely - and about the only reasonable exception I would see would be - don't make a weapon out of it (like a cell phone for igniting a bomb) - which would be illegal, anyway.
Nice shirt, btw...
I'm a little confused. The kid is using a different carrier with the Iphone. You know I am a tech- not. I don't want to sound stupid but caan you explain in my terms professor
Sure - it's complicated because Apple and ATT&T have made it that way.
Here's the story: most cell phones today, including iPhone, have "sim" cards, on which all the numbers are stored. When you buy a new phone, and want to switch carriers, you just put the old sim card into the new phone.
Apple "locked" the iPhone, making it not easy for anyone to put anything other than an AT&T sim card into the iPhone.
But, legally, people have the right to put whatever card they want into their phone. So George Hotz figured out how to put in his T-Mobile card.
AT&T isn't happy, and is grumbling about figuring out other ways of going after these legal hackers.
That's why I want a Fed law to completely protect them.
Thanks for clarifying this I knew about sim cards but didn't realize you coould fit into different makers phone . I know that didn't sound right hard to explain. I think the law would be a good thing. Although when you buy a game system you know you can't play an xbox on a playstation. Is it the same principle?
I think a better analogy is buying a DVD player in North America that will only play Region 1 DVD's and entering a code on the remote to make it region-free so it can play DVDs from anywhere in the world.
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