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It's not misleading, transmission of the internet IS the internet; the internet is nothing more than a huge network. By controlling the transmission of the internet, a future, less benign FCC could easily abuse this. Remember how easily the FCC increased it's power unchecked during the Bush years? Even if its was unconstitutional, the Executive Branch protected it from the courts. That is scary.

FWIW, the EFF is what convinced me of this. If the EFF (one of the biggest proponents of a neutral internet) are skeptical, than so am I.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/net-neutrality-fcc-perils-and-promise
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/court-rejects-fcc-authority-over-internet

It's not misleading, transmission of the internet IS the internet; the internet is nothing more than a huge network. By controlling the transmission of the internet, a future, less benign FCC could easily abuse this. Remember how easily the FCC increased it's power unchecked during the Bush years? Even if its was unconstitutional, the Executive Branch protected it from the courts. That is scary.

FWIW, the EFF is what convinced me of this. If the EFF (one of the biggest proponents of a neutral internet) are skeptical, than so am I.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/net-neutrality-fcc-perils-and-promise
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/court-rejects-fcc-authority-over-internet

I'm just curious how long it will be before someone feels compelled to jailbreak their printer.

Printers already have 1) the code that prints the secret pattern of little yellow dots that identifies the printer to law enforcement, 2) the code that recognizes the pattern in European Union money and won't print that, and 3) the code that recognizes the proprietary ink cartridges.

With newer printers, you're pwned.

GP: "Today's S. Ct. decision in Quon v Ontario at http://eff.org/r.4mq (pdf) assumes w/o deciding that 4th am protects privacy of txt msgs (yay!)"

No, they didn't. The 4th amendment only applies to the actions of the government, including (potentially) government employers. It has no direct relevance to the actions of private employers or others. There are separate laws that deal with the latter (the ECPA and SCA in this case), the Constitution has nothing to do with it.

Not only that, the Court held today and has previously held that government employers (which the 4th amendment does apply to) have wide exceptions to the 4th amendment in their role in that capacity.

They seem to think this is a positive ruling, which is at odds with this slashdot post.

It's not at odds. It only seems that way:

"Today's S. Ct. decision in Quon v Ontario at http://eff.org/r.4mq (pdf) assumes w/o deciding that 4th am protects privacy of txt msgs (yay!)"

That's completely accurate. The opinion holds that it is assumed but not decided that Quon had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the text messages (see e.g. III-A [p. 9]).

A REOP doesn't mean you can't be searched. It means that searches have to comply with the Fourth Amendment. This search did comply, given the workplace exception, pp. 15-16, and therefore the city is entitled to conduct such audits of the equipment it pays for.

I'm confused by what the EFF just twittered. They seem to think this is a positive ruling, which is at odds with this slashdot post. "Today's S. Ct. decision in Quon v Ontario at http://eff.org/r.4mq (pdf) assumes w/o deciding that 4th am protects privacy of txt msgs (yay!)"

Unless you're a multi-billion dollar corporation, you have no legal way to really influence your own government, let alone influence the internationals deciding treaties in secret behind closed doors.

Which is exactly what they want you to think. The reality is that you can make a difference. Let your legislators know your own personal opinion of the ACTA. They are your government representation and are supposed to be voting in your interest. If you can't take the time to firmly and politely inform them of your interests, then yes, the multi-billion dollar corporations who have the other ear are going to win instead.

You can also donate to organizations (possibly the EFF) who persuade and litigate important legal matters such as this.

There's no certainty that all the lobbying and writing campaigns in the world will stop ACTA, but sitting back and just complaining about it on the Internet guarantees the eventual erosion of all your personal rights.

The EFF is doing a little more in the way of advocacy, but for some reason the Obama administration has decided to defend the Bush administration classification of information related to ACTA.

The EFF and Public Knowledge announced today that they dropped a lawsuit against the US Trade Representative to release background documents related to ACTA.

Yes. Jailbreak your iPhone and download it from someone else. Neither act is illegal.

That's not what Apple says.

I wouldn't know. I am not a lawyer or even an armchair lawyer.

I'm not a lawyer either, hence why I'm not saying that Apple is right there. I hope they are wrong, in fact. But they've made that claim, and they are known as a relatively lawsuit-happy company, so it's worth keeping it in mind.

I remember when people were not using the iphone SDK to create applications on the iphone when it didn't have official 3rd party support for applications.

Didn't it require jailbreaking? If so, see point #1.

If this is so much of a problem, then developers and users will move to a more liberal system. However, seeing Apple's current dominance it seems that users are pretty comfy with Apple DRM, since they won't give up their iPhones over it.

But of course users are comfy with Apple's DRM! After all, it's the same people who vote for slogans such as "please think of the children" and "OMG, terrorists! fuck the Constitution" when it comes to politics. Comfort and "safety" have overridden freedom in our society's consciousness a long time ago in virtually all spheres of public life, so why this should be an exception?

The problem I personally have with this is that, if iPhone model becomes dominant (it's already mainstream), then the rest of us will have to choose between freedom and convenience for real - like Linux users do today - and not hypothetically, as in most Apple fanbois' drivel.

Simply put, if 99% people are happy with a locked-down iPhone, then that's who the market will cater to - and any remaining niche solutions will either be prohibitively expensive, or not broadly available, or incompatible with media targeting mainstream.

On the other hand, a lot of iPhone users don't even realize that their platform is locked down. They don't know what applications they could have access to if not for Apple's restrictive policies. So educating them on that is a legitimate approach towards postponing the dominance of the "walled garden" model.

there are MANY of us that have
1) no secrets
2) very little to no privacy
3) all the interest in the world to share our experience with the most people we can in our lives and we sure are perfectly happy about it.

Seriously? No secrets at all, and almost no privacy? Okay, why don't you share your SSN with us? Or how about your home address and the date of your next vacation? And do you have a girlfriend? (You're posting on slashdot, odds are that you're male.) Why don't you post some nude photos of her for our enjoyment? And can i have her phone number?

You must be okay with all that, right? And there are "MANY" more people like that? And this isn't a strawman argument, if you don't agree with that then what you said above isn't true, and we're just debating _how_ _much_ privacy we need, not if we need it at all.

On a more serious note, if there _are_ "MANY" people who already feel that way, why do we need his help to understand that we don't need privacy?

Furthermore, if "he has no interest in removing privacy from people," then why does he keep removing our privacy? And then only letting us (somewhat) restore it after the fact?

Or is this supposed to be a case where if he does it to us but can convince us that we really wanted it all along after the fact, then it's not a bad thing? "No" doesn't mean "no," it just means we haven't been enlightened yet? If you try that approach with most things in real life you would probably end up facing criminal charges pretty quickly.

Must be the same genuises who designed the EFF NSA shirt.

Can you spot the AT&T logo?

It's not ownership of the copy of the game you've bought that's being contested; it's the right to play it on Blizzard's own servers.

Except it is entirely about who own the local copy of the game. If the I OWN the box copy of WoW that I buy in the store, then Blizzard looses all but one of its claims. Read the EFF's summary, it says all of this better than I can. Here is one excerpt:

If you own your software, you have the right to resell it and the right to make copies and adaptations as necessary to use it. If you don't, well, then you face a possible copyright lawsuit for transgressing any limitations the vendor puts in the license agreement.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/you-bought-it-you-own-it-mdy-v-blizzard-appealed

However, Blizzard is not talking about going into anybody's home and taking away their physical copy of the game, or requiring them to delete it from their hard drive.

We are actually. Blizzards asserts that you are forever bound by the EULA because you NEVER own any software product purchased from Blizzard. If you read the EULA you will find that if at any point you end the license agreement you must destroy all copies - including physical copies - of WoW. If you fail to do so you are committing copyright infringement and may be liable for massive damages. Here is the section from the EULA:

7 Termination.
This License Agreement is effective until terminated. You may terminate the License Agreement at any time by (i) permanently destroying all copies of the Game in your possession or control; (ii) removing the Game Client from your hard drive; and (iii) notifying Blizzard of your intention to terminate this License Agreement. Blizzard may terminate this Agreement at any time for any reason or no reason. Upon termination for any reason, all licenses granted herein shall immediately terminate and you must immediately and permanently destroy all copies of the Game in your possession and control and remove the Game Client from your hard drive.

So by the same token, Blizzard isn't contesting anybody's ownership of the game - just the right to play it on Blizzard servers.

Except they are entirely contesting ownership of the game. They have stated emphatically that you NEVER own any Blizzard game EVER.

As a former WoW player (quit cold-turkey 6 weeks ago due to needing my life back) I'm supportive of Blizzard. Stuff like Glider just ruins the experience for legitimate players and I'm glad they take steps to guard against that.

I hope you "immediately and permanently destroy(ed) all copies of the Game in your possession and control" when you stopped playing WoW in accordance with the EULA.

For folks who want to record the cops (or anyone else) and be sure that the footage will get to the world instead of being destroyed when they steal your camera phone: check out the Gandhicam project. This is an app for your Android phone that lets you take pictures or video and automatically send it to the net, either by HTTP upload or by email.

This doesn't stop them from filing criminal charges afterward, but that's why you donate to the ACLU and the EFF.

EFF is looking for people to contact their representatives in the US, especially if you are in a state with a senator on the Finance committee, or the House Ways and Means / Trade subcommittee.

Apple is certainly trying to make jailbreaking illegal.

Moreover, I believe that any TOS stripping people of their right to use a product legally bought in any way they wish without hurting others is legally questionable. Are you saying Apple can write anything in their TOS and that if I bought the product I'm legally bound by it? What if they insert a clause saying I have to pay them $10,000 whenever they want?

A cynic would suggest that what our "analyst" friends are actually so butthurt about is the fact that all those sweet, sweet shares are locked up in some oddball quasi-coop/quasi-privately-held arrangement, rather than floating around on stock exchanges, where they can be traded and hedged and sliced and diced (for a variety of nice commissions) by the more and less blatantly parasitic middlemen who live there.

Rather analogous to the swarms of "social security reformers" who talk a lot about cash-flow and solvency; but are basically pissed off that all those billions aren't being overseen by Wall Street, for an appropriate fee...

Now, as a separate issue, it seems quite plausible that Huawei's stuff is bugged. A certain "coziness" seems to be virtually inevitable between strategic corporations and the state's military and intelligence arms. That was certainly the case in the (formally) much less government dominated economy of the US during the cold war, I have no reason to suspect that it isn't the case in china now. However, stuff doesn't get bugged because sinister agents of the state buy 51% of the shares, and then introduce a "motion to bug hardware shipped to capitalist running dogs" at the next shareholder meeting. There are much subtler and more tactful ways of getting that done.

Consider, for instance, the tracking codes produced by numerous models of color laser printer, built around print engines produced by a number of different companies, ostensibly as an "anti-counterfeiting measure". This occurred despite the fact that the US Secret Service has no ownership stake in any of the companies involved. Exactly what inducements where used is unknown; but anybody who thinks that stock ownership is particularly relevant is a moron.

They make good games. But their handling of the bnetd was pretty lame.

We used bnetd for our group games for a good while, and even hacked it up to show ladder stats, all kinds of achievements (which player had the highest mining, or DPS, or kills, etc.), and so forth back before that sort of thing became available, popular, or even expected. Neat stuff.

To this day I think one of my friends still donates an equal amount to the EFF any time he buys a Blizzard game.

If you must rely on anonimity [sic] to have free soeech [sic], then you already don't have much of it.

So, that's a reason to take away what's left? America is rapidly becoming as restrictive and paranoid as China and Iran because morons like you stand by while the government takes away your freedoms. That's about as stupid as saying "if you have nothing to hide why are you worried about privacy".

Certainly, let's not forget that the courts have consistently upheld anonymous speech.

Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.

You sir, are an idiot, who may one day have to understand the repercussions of allowing the government to take away your freedoms and not fight it. You won't like it.

Do they not teach this stuff in civics classes nowadays? Or do you kids figure that if you have your Facebook, everything is fine?

Quite frankly, if you don't know what they are and why you have them, you don't deserve your freedoms.

From the EFF reports it appears that OkiData and Samsung are the only privacy protecting manufacturers (at least as of the time of the report). http://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots

I'm pretty sure all color printers 'hide' something in each print, and I wouldn't be surprised if digital cameras did too.

Yes, they do (well, actually just laser color printers).

Jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, says Apple in comments filed with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking. This marks the first formal public statement by Apple about its legal stance on iPhone jailbreaking.

Link to full article on EFF

O RLY?
What's preventing the developers from posting source on their web site like the other GPL apps on the app store?

Apple's restrictive licensing terms. Link stolen from TF blurb.

Perhaps if one of your friends comments on that status and they are friends with your non-friend coworkers, your coworkers can then view your status. I haven't verified this, but developments in Facebook's privacy policy make it seem plausible at least.

at WORST it's a warranty violation, not even covered by any law federal or otherwise!

Apple disagrees.

Just like the iPhone (only you don't have to go so far as doing custom ROM's, you just jailbreak the OS so it's actually in some ways simpler).

That depends on the state of jailbreaking at any specific time. Right now it's easy; it's been difficult or impossible in the past and will likely be so again when Apple "fixes" the current "exploit". And there are lots of things Android does out of the box without rooting that you'd need to jailbreak an iPhone for.

If you're a hacker, you can enter into a perpetual cat and mouse game with a company that considers you to be a criminal, or you can choose a platform that welcomes you. Not a hard decision for me.

Of course they don't give a damn about the serial numbers that each copier embeds in every page they print.

Using Panopticlick as a measurement tool, my computer went from being identifiably unique as 1 in 900,000 all the way down to 1 in 13,000 simply by enabling noscript. The most telling feature with noscript on was my User Agent string, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729), which if I was paranoid enough I could modify to something much more common, like internet explorer.

Yes, I can't imagine why anyone would have a problem with the SS. They have a spotless record!

Try allowing Noscript on that site? I was listed as 1 in 4 too until I enabled scripting on that website and ran the test again. Then I came out to be 1 in 1,000,000. I'd say that's more unique than I'd like to be.

Test yourself here if you haven't already.

That's just the User-Agent string. The actual fingerprint consists of that and a big bunch of other headers your browser sends out with each request. Language, preferred encoding, plugins; screen resolution, your installed fonts and so on.Changing your standard browser's user-agent to something like you quoted above is a surefire way to be even more unique.
Check the panopticlick page for your details. Keep in mind their "bits of identifying information" only apply to a single header. A bit of work and identifying over all of these fields is easily done. Throw in a bit of extra work and users can be singled out even after they change one or two of 'em.
Summing all the lines together, I can get some 70 bits of identifying info out of my (almost worst-case) setup: Ubuntu 9.10 running a snapshot of Opera 10.54 with a couple of extra fonts and a weird screen resolution.Cut away user-agent and plugins and we're still at some 35, more than IPv4 addresses out there.

If you have a cell phone, they may already be tracking you: http://www.eff.org/issues/cell-tracking

Assuming you're important enough, that is.

Support your right to repair: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro

I "accidentally" put a rootkit into that music CD you just tried to play.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro

"My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. -- And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. -- Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion. -- We shall prevail!" -- Apple, 1984. That's the copy from the famous Apple ad with the guy speaking to an audience of people in grey from a big screen.

The Apple fanboys hate that paragraph (and will mod it down to "Troll" in about 30 minutes). But that's a clear statement of Apple's "walled garden" approach. They even use the same terminology: "A garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths". As for the "Information Purification Directive", see the the EFF's analysis of the Apple iPhone Developer Agreement. Apple tries to keep the Developer Agreement secret, but they accepted a NASA app, which made it subject to a FOIA request, and now anyone can read it.

Well fuck us for giving a damn and materially supporting orgs like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

My Facebook profile contains nothing that I wouldn't want my mom, boss, pastor, or future employer to see.

Or so you think, but consider this:

EFF's Panopticlick Demo Uses browser headers to identify you even with cookies. Now imagine some site, maybe a spammer or phisher honeypot site, or just a asshole gaming site that got the idea that it needed to track everything about you and got compromised one day.

Of course facebook must surely be tracking that too and it will want to correlate it with has many websites as posible, those websites will be wanting the same and I'm sure they'll find some agreement.

Add to that that you only need one of your friends to fill the wrong quiz for all of your data to be spilled in "public".

Congratulations, now someone has made a link to both, your employer and that 4chan photo of you bragging about writing a virus when you were just a 10yo script kiddie.

Did you had a career change in mind?

Of course I don't think there is much I've done that could be use against me nor I have any big enemies, today. But I may get an enemy in the future and... what were the Cardinal's words again...?

My opinion is that if you post personally identifiable information to a public website

Part of the problem is that these are not entirely "public" websites, and there were promises about your privacy in Facebook's published policies. Over time those policies have changed, and by consequence the level of privacy has changed despite what was originally promised. If privacy changes are retrospective in effect to their application to your submitted information that's very, very bad. If your argument is that nobody should have any expectation of privacy even on a website with a published privacy policy and "privacy controls", I think that your argument is wrong and instead companies who don't stick to their own promises should face some consequences, as their users inevitably will.

I suggest you take a look at this timeline from the EFF:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline

Last year, which seems like the last time this bubbled up, Facebook took input from its members and eventually came up with a statement of Facebook Principles, which its members voted in favor of adopting by about a 3:1 margin. So what happened to that?

Well, as Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out today, Facebook's management didn't even pay lip service to those principles when it came up with the latest evolution of its privacy policy and things like Instant Personalization.

I haven't decided if this is a separate reason to dislike Facebook or part of the same reason for disliking Facebook. One thing I have decided: I'm glad I blew up my Facebook account.

Last year, which seems like the last time this bubbled up, Facebook took input from its members and eventually came up with a statement of Facebook Principles, which its members voted in favor of adopting by about a 3:1 margin. So what happened to that?

Well, as Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out today, Facebook's management didn't even pay lip service to those principles when it came up with the latest evolution of its privacy policy and things like Instant Personalization.

I haven't decided if this is a separate reason to dislike Facebook or part of the same reason for disliking Facebook. One thing I have decided: I'm glad I blew up my Facebook account.

Last year, which seems like the last time this bubbled up, Facebook took input from its members and eventually came up with a statement of Facebook Principles, which its members voted in favor of adopting by about a 3:1 margin. So what happened to that?

Well, as Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out today, Facebook's management didn't even pay lip service to those principles when it came up with the latest evolution of its privacy policy and things like Instant Personalization.

I haven't decided if this is a separate reason to dislike Facebook or part of the same reason for disliking Facebook. One thing I have decided: I'm glad I blew up my Facebook account.

Last year, which seems like the last time this bubbled up, Facebook took input from its members and eventually came up with a statement of Facebook Principles, which its members voted in favor of adopting by about a 3:1 margin. So what happened to that?

Well, as Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out today, Facebook's management didn't even pay lip service to those principles when it came up with the latest evolution of its privacy policy and things like Instant Personalization.

I haven't decided if this is a separate reason to dislike Facebook or part of the same reason for disliking Facebook. One thing I have decided: I'm glad I blew up my Facebook account.

"Big telcom", "conservative astroturfing groups", "seeding the Tea-Party movement". But ThinkProgress is a "political blog" without a trace of agenda. I'm sorry, Politico is a political blog, ThinkProgress is a partisan blog. Why all the weasel-words for those on the right-wing, but hide the political leanings of those on the left? I really get sick of having to deal with the spin of kdawson's posts - why can't we simply get it without all the cynicism and political slants?

I'm interested in the net-neutrality debate. I don't see a problem against declaring internet providers to be common carriers. In fact, I think I'd prefer it if they didn't interrogate packets - you just pay for bandwidth. But that doesn't mean I want to see the FCC step in and decide it can regulate how they operate. I certainly don't trust the FCC more than the industry. I share the opinion of the EFF on that matter.

I remember just a few years ago, when people were screaming bloody murder about the "overreach" of the FCC regarding enforcing decency regulations on the networks. But, now they're playing the part of savior? No, something is wrong here. The FCC didn't fundamentally change overnight into the model regulatory agency. The only thing that changed was which political party is in charge. That arrangement is going to change again. If you can live with the current party regulating the internet, can you live with the other party regulating the internet?

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe the FCC is a fundamentally better place for the evolution of network connectivity to be controlled from. But I don't think so. And all this partisan static coming from kdawson and his ilk doesn't set my mind at ease, nor does it better educate me on the issue. All it does is make me think that he and the other pro-net neutrality people are just partisan hacks looking for short-term political gains. That may be uncharitable, but then again, so is his treatment of those who disagree with him.

What's that got to do with the iPad? There's no law against jailbreaking it.

Apple claims that jailbreaking is a DMCA violation. I don't know how they think that's supposed to work, but you're wholeheartedly welcome to invite being sued by them so that we all can find out.

That's absurd. Apple can claim anything they want. That doesn't mean they have either the grounds to sue, or the desire to sue. I did jailbreak my original iPhone, but reverted it back not too much later, and haven't done so since. Not for fear of the DMCA or Apple, just no need/desire to do so.

Your warning, however, is not in earnest, and you damned well know it. There have been countless confessions of people jailbreaking their iPhones all over the Internet. If Apple was going to sue, they could easily gather enough evidence to file lawsuits. Since that's both never happened, and Apple has never even warned that they intend to ever start doing this, there's no way your warning can be truly honest.

Though I doubt this is the case, check out: http://panopticlick.eff.org/

What's that got to do with the iPad? There's no law against jailbreaking it.

Apple claims that jailbreaking is a DMCA violation. I don't know how they think that's supposed to work, but you're wholeheartedly welcome to invite being sued by them so that we all can find out.

What's that got to do with the iPad? There's no law against jailbreaking it.

That is a questionable claim to make, whether we like it or not.

The DMCA prohibits circumvention of copy and write protection on a broad range of devices, which includes the iPhone and iPad. There are specific exemptions to this, which are generally exemptions to allow circumvention if it is towards increasing interoperability. However, these exemptions are created for specific cases, during a review process that occurs every few years or so. The EFF (god bless them) has been petitioning for the rights to circumvent DVD decryption, and more recently, for Blu-Ray decryption and jailbreaking. They have not been granted these exemptions, yet. It seems the review for last year has been postponed, though, so it doesn't look good.

(See the 1201 copyright site for the current set of rules, and a badly-made website. Or check out the EFF's most recent exemption requests or one of their anti-DMCA articles.)

There is, however, a specific exemption for circumvention to allow phones to work on cell networks they were not locked in to. This is especially ironic; Apple seems to be campaigning more strongly against unlocking, which lets you use the iPhone on other carriers, than jailbreaking, which simply gives you root access. Here, of course, unlocking is legal while jailbreaking may not be. The question to ask, though, is jailbreaking covered because you need a jailbroken phone to unlock it?

I'll let the lawyers and the EFF battle it out. I'll be sitting happy: I've just ported emacs to my iPad, and after I finish porting TeX Live, I'll be able to use it for everything I used my netbook for.

What's that got to do with the iPad? There's no law against jailbreaking it.

That is a questionable claim to make, whether we like it or not.

The DMCA prohibits circumvention of copy and write protection on a broad range of devices, which includes the iPhone and iPad. There are specific exemptions to this, which are generally exemptions to allow circumvention if it is towards increasing interoperability. However, these exemptions are created for specific cases, during a review process that occurs every few years or so. The EFF (god bless them) has been petitioning for the rights to circumvent DVD decryption, and more recently, for Blu-Ray decryption and jailbreaking. They have not been granted these exemptions, yet. It seems the review for last year has been postponed, though, so it doesn't look good.

(See the 1201 copyright site for the current set of rules, and a badly-made website. Or check out the EFF's most recent exemption requests or one of their anti-DMCA articles.)

There is, however, a specific exemption for circumvention to allow phones to work on cell networks they were not locked in to. This is especially ironic; Apple seems to be campaigning more strongly against unlocking, which lets you use the iPhone on other carriers, than jailbreaking, which simply gives you root access. Here, of course, unlocking is legal while jailbreaking may not be. The question to ask, though, is jailbreaking covered because you need a jailbroken phone to unlock it?

I'll let the lawyers and the EFF battle it out. I'll be sitting happy: I've just ported emacs to my iPad, and after I finish porting TeX Live, I'll be able to use it for everything I used my netbook for.

If you so chose the whole 100% of the donation for the bundle could go to Child's Play, a gamer-run charity that donates toys and games to children's wards in hospitals, or the EFF, a non-profit digital civil-liberties group. That answers your question.

And, if Adobe ever releases a version that runs on the iPhone, Apple won't try to stop you.

They just might.