iPhone Owners Demand To See Apple Source Code

CWmike writes "iPhone owners charging Apple and AT&T with breaking antitrust laws asked a federal judge this week to force Apple to hand over the iPhone source code, court documents show. The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2007, accuses Apple and AT&T of violating antitrust laws, including the Sherman Act, by agreeing to a multi-year deal that locks US iPhone owners into using the mobile carrier. On Wednesday, the plaintiffs asked US District Court Judge James Ware to compel Apple to produce the source code for the iPhone 1.1.1 software, an update that Apple issued in September 2007. The update crippled iPhones that had been unlocked, or 'jailbroken,' so that they could be used with mobile providers other than AT&T. The iPhone 1.1.1 'bricked' those first-generation iPhones that had been hacked, rendering them useless and wiping all personal data from the device. The plaintiffs say that the source code is necessary to determine whether all iPhones were given the same 1.1.1 update, and whether it was designed to brick all or just some hacked iPhones."

Comments

And I demand a pony and some ice cream!

[Kenja]

So long as we're demanding things we're not going to get, go for broke I say.

Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now, the iPhone is only unique in that its popular so people actually care that only one service provider can support it. I'll bet a cookie that the terms of the service agreement let Apple & AT&T do more or less what ever they want with what is legally still their hardware.

So even if it comes out of all of this that the "bricking" was targeted, I doubt it will change anything in the end.

Re:And I demand a pony and some ice cream!

[mysidia]

Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now, the iPhone is only unique in that its popular so people actually care that only one service provider can support it.

Just because phones have been wired to contracts for years, doesn't mean it was ever legal, or that it failed to be illegal product tying.

It may very well be that it wasn't an issue until now, or there wasn't enough outrage or damage to actually bring the matter to the courts.

The iPhone is certainly a very unique product compared to most phones.

Also, even in the past when phones were tied to a contract, it was possible to unlock them and use the phones with other service, without arbitrary restrictions imposed by the manufacturer.

And certainly the manufacturer did not come back and set out to brick unlocked devices in a new sw update.

Re:And I demand a pony and some ice cream!

[MeNeXT]

I'll bet a cookie that the terms of the service agreement let Apple & AT&T do more or less what ever they want with what is legally still their hardware.

No it's not. It was sold. So it is NOT their hardware. How hard is this to understand. If you do not wish to sell the hardware make sure that you specify that it is NOT sold, so the consumer is not under the impression that he bought it!!!!!

I want my cookie now....

Re:And I demand a pony and some ice cream!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is not legally still their hardware. There is this magical legal doctrine, called first sale. Once you purchase the hardware, you own the hardware. Breaking a contract is not illegal insofar as you are willing to pay the damages provided for in that contract (this would likely be the early termination fee).

You own the phone, they own the service. You don't need to keep both. When you drop your contract with AT&T, they do not get to show up and demand your phone. You keep it, you pay your termination fee, and you both go on your merry way.

Contract terms do not change the law, they create a private agreement enforceable only between two parties. AT&T has the right to boot people off of their network, but to mess with the phones that these people own under the law.

By intentionally "bricking" the phones, then Apple or AT&T may have violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and may also have committed conversion (the fancy term for theft or destruction of another persons property).

IANAL But I play one on TV.
YMMV.

Re:And I demand a pony and some ice cream!

[Anonymous Coward]

Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now, the iPhone is only unique in that its popular so people actually care that only one service provider can support it

That's not true, it has nothing to do with popularity. The iPhone is the ONLY phone that AT&T will not unlock under any circumstance, even after the contract has expired. It's simply unacceptable.

Lawsuits are really getting asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawsuits are really getting asinine. There has to be some sort of additional punitive costs associated with stupid lawsuits like this. People do not honor the EULA, jailbreak their iPhones into iBricks and then cry out loud apple bricked their jailbroken devices. If you jailbreak - why the hell you have apple software to update your device?

Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine

[nine-times]

On the other hand, consider the following formulation: You buy a product. It's your property. The person who sold it to you doesn't like the way you're using it, so they break the product you bought. They don't compensate you for your lost product or offer a refund.

Are you of the opinion that this is generally acceptable behavior on the part of the vendor?

Now yes, it's more complicated than that. You have software licensing terms, and you have warranty terms. People arguably broke their own phones while voiding their warranty. And IIRC, Apple wasn't very strict about refusing to replace bricked phones.

Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine

[Zerth]

I agree that anyone who jailbroke their phone was an idiot for allowing updates.

On the other hand, the difference between "Ooops, your changed binary got patched in the wrong place" and "if AuthenticBinary() then NukeDevice() else Patch()" is roughly the same as what happens to a burglar when he steps on the broken glass after breaking into my house Vs me planting bear traps next to each of my windows.

The first is schadenfreude, the latter legally actionable.

Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine

[Anachragnome]

Regardless, if Apple and AT&T are guilty of anti-trust law violations, it only seems appropriate that their products are what expose them.

Did it ever occur to you that the EULA could have been DESIGNED to obscure such violations?

EULAs are bullshit. Corporations use them to deny customers LEGAL rights, intentionally complicate them with endless legalese, obfuscate their own questionable actions, and very often, use them as a place to bury shit that they simply do not want the customer to know yet are compelled by LAW to disclose.

And, yeah, people need to learn to read them before hitting the "accept" button. I am fully convinced that if everyone did, about 50% of the EULAs out there would NOT be accepted.

Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine

[jockeys]

You buy a product. It's your property. The person who sold it to you doesn't like the way you're using it, so they break the product you bought.

Consider further: before buying the product, the vendor offers to pay for half of the product (making it much more accessible) if you sign a contract to use it the way they tell you to use it, for two whole years.

I'm not an Apple fanboy by any stretch, but people shouldn't sign the contract if they don't agree to the terms. 'Nuff said.

Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine

[Anachragnome]

On numerous occasions I have seen people get frustrated when installing an App/Game.

"What the fuck? The "agree" button is all grayed out. It won't let me click it!"

The problem? The developers made it so you had to actually scroll down the slider on the EULA before the "accept" button was functional. In short, they were frustrated because they DID NOT READ THE EULA, even after the the developers attempted to get them to do exactly that.

I once wrote a paper for a class on the very subject, "accept" buttons and EULAs. I followed up by doing a short poll of the class(hand up, or not) by asking a simple question.

"Do you read the EULAs provided with products?"

Not a single hand went up out of approx. 25 students. Take that as you will. I take it as just another reason why EULAs are totally ineffective in terms of what they are supposed to achieve, and as such, should be abandoned for such purposes.

Furthermore, I asked the students WHY they did not read the EULAs. Number one answer?

"I paid for it, what does it matter?"

Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine

[BobMcD]

I'd take it one farther than that. Consider also: Years down the road, AT&T gets out of the wireless phone business. Your iPhone still works great, and you're really attached to it. Even though the contract is expired and the service provider who's interests were being protected is defunct, you STILL cannot make use of something YOU legally own.

Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine

[PitaBred]

When you have an EULA for every device that says effectively the same thing, no matter from what manufacturer, do you really have a choice?

Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine

[Beardo the Bearded]

I'm an Electrical Engineer with two kids. I have never owned a cell phone and I have never missed having one. I've been offended by the "go fuck yourself" fees that the carriers put on the bills. 911 / system access / wireless access -- they're all just bullshit fees that only go to the bottom line. So really, anyone with a cell is a victim of marketing. (You might as well be wearing Axe.)

I've been called out on not owning a cell more than once -- "What? your wife could go into labour at any moment and you don't have a cell?"

"She knows where I am and they have a phone here."

"What if there's an emergency?"

"If it's big enough, cells won't work. Just out of curiousity, do you have pre-arranged meeting areas if there IS a big emergency? Do you have 72 hours of food and water at your house?"

Re:Wow

[clone53421]

No kidding. The day Apple has to hand over their source code? That’d be a cold day in Hell...

Re:Shooting the moon or their foot

[nametaken]

I'm not sure it'd be totally irrelevant. If you'd go so far as to brick my phone as an "f-you" to protect your partners network exclusivity, I'd guess that maybe that's an argument for unfair collusion of the antitrust sort? I am not a lawyer, of course.

Not necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

The plaintiffs say that the source code is necessary to determine whether all iPhones were given the same 1.1.1 update, and whether it was designed to brick all or just some hacked iPhones

That's obviously false, as any decent programmer can tell you. The plaintiffs should stop being lazy, disassemble the code, and find out for themselves.

It doesn't seem that unlikely to me.

[pavon]

It is known that this update caused problems on these phones. If it was intentional it would (supposedly) be a violation of the law. Assuming the judge thinks that the plaintiff's case has merit, and Apple cannot provide any other sort of evidence to the contrary, then it seems perfectly reasonable for the him to require that code be submitted as evidence. That doesn't mean that it will be open to the world, just to those people involved in the case who need to see it.

Re:Same concept between the modded xboxes and this

[im_thatoneguy]

I believe there is an important difference:

XBox: Hack xbox, get banned from server (offline only).
iPhone: Hack iphone, phone no longer boots at all.

Wasted effort in the wrong place.

[aristotle-dude]

Why don't they instead petition the FCC to force all carriers to only sell unlocked phones in the US?

Why not force the carriers to offer official unlocks for all currently locked phones?

I've been making some humble efforts on behalf of my fellow Canadians with Fido and the CRTC.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=817293

I was able to get as far as getting a phone call from the office of the president of my carrier Fido. If enough people did the same with their carriers and their country's regulatory body, we might actually get somewhere.

Call it what it is!

[BigCorpsSUCK]

It would save these Big companies (Apple, Microsoft, Sony, etc) a lot of grief from the public if they would just say that you are leasing the hardware and not buying it! Selling it to you give one the impression that you can do whatever you want with the hardware. Which is not the case. They produce the hardware and want to control how is used for the life of the device. Which they want to control as well.

Re:Call it what it is!

[coolsnowmen]

I don't own an iphone, but I know I signed no such licensing agreement when I bought my xbox360. I'm betting if MS actually bricked xbox360s they'd be in a lot more [legal] trouble.

Re:Shooting the moon or their foot

[Anonymous Coward]

They have to know that they're never going to get the source code. A) It'd be an incredibly earth-shattering precedent, and B) it's beside the point to what they're charging. It doesn't matter of Apple and AT&T colluded to brick one hacked phone, odd-numbered hacked-phones, or even hacked phones on Verizon's network. If the issue is the practice of tying the purchase of an iPhone to the purchase of an AT&T service plan, the source code is not relevant. It's a contractual question, not a technical one. This kind of tangential waste of time on a pointless bit of discovery that's obviously not germane to the charges, but only serves to yank the chain of the defendant, could backfire by pissing off the judge.

It isn't an earth shattering precedent. There was a case earlier this year involving the source code for a breathalyzer machine. It was covered here on /.. This is by far not the only case where "trade secretes" have been so examined. Another example would be the case between Waste Management and SAP.

As for B, this is NOT a contractual issue. The issue is that the plaintiffs have accused Apple of violating Federal anti-trust laws. As evidence, they suggest that the source code for the patch was predatory towards non-AT&T customers. Furthermore, if the source code does demonstrate that Apple acted in such a way, I can not imagine how Apple will prevail in this case.

You need the source code to determine this?

[BlueBoxSW.com]

Really? You need the source code to determine the phone was locked into a carrier?

How about reading the service agreement.

Re:I agree

[Ronin Developer]

I doubt this happened given that "at the time of the first iPhone release" and, just like now, the iPhone is a GSM based phone. Verizon is CDMA. These negotiations would have had to occur when Apple was designing the iPhone.

This doesn't invalidate the rest of the terms you describe. But, the iPhone would have needed to be designed for CDMA - you just can't swap out cellular systems like we can with a hard drive. The entire circuit board would need to be redesigned so that it would pass FCC certification (and carrier requirements). Not something you do over night.

Re:Hahahahaha!

[Anonymous Coward]

So... Apple says "Don't Jailbreak your phone" and as one of the reason says "We don't QA test against that". Then people do it anyhow, and updates break their phone (as warned). And those people sue, believing that the bugs that Apple said they couldn't test against were intentional?

Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

Funny stuff.

Why? If it's true, Apple *should* be challenged in court. It's not like the people suing are going to win unless they can clearly prove that it was intentional.

Re:1.1.1 brick not purposeful

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple never deliberately tried to break anyone with an unlock, it just so happens that the unlockers had damaged their seczones and prevented the update from being applied cleanly.

The *entire point* of this story is that they want to see the source code so they can discover if that's the case or not.

and we may just get it

[jipn4]

Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now,

That doesn't make it right. In fact, in many countries, what Apple is doing with the iPhone is illegal and Apple must sell them without a contract, or unlocked with a contract.

I'll bet a cookie that the terms of the service agreement let Apple & AT&T do more or less what ever they want with what is legally still their hardware.

Legally? Are you kidding? You paid for the phone, it's yours. Yes, even with a contract, because if you break the contract (or the phone), you have to pay the difference. It's your phone.

the iPhone is only unique in that its popular so people actually care

And that seems like the perfect opportunity to get something changed in the US phone market, because the US cell phone market is extremely inefficient and overpriced. And Apple, far from changing this, has been perpetuating the problem.

Booo- F'in' - Hoooooo

[Marble68]

I am so sick of these arrogant dumbasses who got their Jesus phone only to violate the TOS, etc. because it wasn't *exactly* what they wanted.

So, they intentionally violated the license - intentionally altered the source the device runs despite it being unsupported - and now *demand* to see source code?

I agree with a previous post - they should ask for a pony and ice cream while they're at it.

A large ping cylindrical member of the male anatomy should be repeatedly slapped back and forth across their foreheads.

If you have to hack it to like it - then how great is it?

Is hacking it a violation of the DMCA? Could it be construed as one?

Apple fanboy conversation:

"look, look how superior my iphone is"
"Wow, all those apps must have been expensive! That's super cool!"
"Naw, I hacked it so it's actually the phone that I want. So I can install anything, like on a windows mobile smartphone!"
"Uh; Soooo, it's not the iphone that's the Jesus phone, but the *hacked* iphone...? So... the iphone sucks if it's not hacked?"