EFF Warns TI Not To Harass Calculator Hobbyists

Ponca City, We love you writes "The EFF has warned Texas Instruments not to pursue legal threats against calculator hobbyists who perform modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators. TI's calculators perform a 'signature check' that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded, but researchers have reverse-engineered signing keys, allowing tinkerers to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators' hardware. In response, TI has unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act require the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys. 'This is not about copyright infringement. This is about running your own software on your own device — a calculator you legally bought,' says EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. 'Yet TI still issued empty legal threats in an attempt to shut down discussion of this legitimate tinkering. Hobbyists are taking their own tools and making them better, in the best tradition of American innovation.'"

Comments

Re:Jailbreaking iPhones?

[recoiledsnake]

Apple is advertising the strength of their App store, showing off the apps available, and then contrasting that to the usefulness of a netbook.

I think Apple's wrong here, a netbook is way more useful, but, they're certainly doing nothing that's immoral or worse than what TI's doing.

http://www.itworld.com/hardware/56567/jobs-iphone-apples-netbook

The reason it's worse than TI is that Apple has positioned the iPhone as a small computer for the general public, and is selling millions. But how many of the millions know that political apps are banned?

http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2008/09/freedomtime-rejected-by-apple-for-app-store/

http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2008/09/steve-jobs-writes-back/

Wow, although I’m not happy with Apple right now, I have to give Apple’s CEO some serious credit for answering the email I wrote yesterday:
Dear Steve,

A quick note to let you know what kinds of apps are being rejected for the App Store.

This app is not defamatory, harmful or speaking untruth. It is lighthearted and humorous. Does it imply critique? Of course it does, but not without crossing any lines of decency or the boundaries agreement.

For a quick screen shot:
http://www.juggleware.com/iphone/freedomtime/

Sincerely,
Alec Vance
juggleware llc

Mr. Jobs replied :

Even though my personal political leanings are democratic, I think this app will be offensive to roughly half our customers. What’s the point?
Steve

So we have an entire computing platform that is politically censored by Jobs' diktat because it could be offensive to some people, forget about all the apps that are arbitrarily rejected for duplicating functionality and other BS and people don't care. Podcaster had good features but was rejected for duplicating functionality.