Slashdot Mirror
We Should Be Allowed To Unlock Everything We Own
An anonymous reader writes "When cell phone unlocking became illegal last month, it set off a firestorm of debate over what rights people should have for phones they have legally purchased. But this is really just one facet of a much larger problem with property rights in general. 'Silicon permeates and powers almost everything we own. This is a property rights issue, and current copyright law gets it backwards, turning regular people — like students, researchers, and small business owners — into criminals. Fortune 500 telecom manufacturer Avaya, for example, is known for suing service companies, accusing them of violating copyright for simply using a password to log in to their phone systems. That's right: typing in a password is considered "reproducing copyrighted material." Manufacturers have systematically used copyright in this manner over the past 20 years to limit our access to information. Technology has moved too fast for copyright laws to keep pace, so corporations have been exploiting the lag to create information monopolies at our expense and for their profit. After years of extensions and so-called improvements, copyright has turned Mickey Mouse into a monster who can never die.' We need to win the fight for unlocking phones, and then keep pushing until we actually own the objects we own again."
thats right brother yell it in the streets spread the good word
Our property is our property, and we should be able to do with it as we please. Further, breaking encryption is just math. Prohibitions on any sort of math amounts to thought crime. They want to make it illegal to figure things out.
The standard excuse for all this bad policy is that without DRM, our music, movies, and video gaming industries would collapse. I say, let them. It's just entertainment, which is a surprisingly small part of the economy (Google could buy the RIAA outright easily). Much better to let that happen than to enshrine bad policy as law for decades to come. And I'm willing to bet that people will find ways to entertain themselves anyway.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
>We Should Be Allowed To Unlock Everything We Own
I think there is a misconception here: You only own everything you are able to unlock.
If you can't do that, you don't "own" it, you're "owned".
Sometimes reading the documentation with a "product purchase" can enlight you. The fact that you pay for something doesn't mean it's truly yours. Sometimes it means you are allowed to use it under some restrictions. It's called EULA. If you own an XBOX, an iPhone or a Wii, you'd already know about it!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Politics, make it a policy issue. Get voters to tell politicians that it matters to them. Not as impossible as it seems, take for example the proliferation of Pirate Parties across Europe and the efforts of groups like the FFII, which have been highly effective in stopping software patents and other silliness in the EU to date. I don't think a dedicated technology party is going to be of much use in the US mind you, try an effective lobbying group instead. Lobbying works because lobbyists confine the knowledge of politicians to what they want them to know. Presenting a different view is often all it takes to shake things up a bit.
Can someone explain to me what the fuss is about unlocking?
If I understand it right, you are not allowed to unlock a phone which you are buying with monthly contract.
Well, makes sense to me, you haven't paid the device fully, it's not yours to hack.
Once you've paid the (24 month?) contract you're free to do what you want with the device.
If you don't like those terms why did you even buy the phone with contract rather than directly with cash?
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
0. The freedom to use software however you wish.
1. The freedom to change software to suit your needs.
2. The freedom to distribute the software to anyone else, and in
doing so "to help your neighbor".
3. The freedom to distribute altered versions of the software,
and in doing so cultivate a community centered around the evolution of the
software.
Call it what you will, unlocking is an expression of Freedoms 1 and 2.
Nope.
Unless there is a contract negotiation, there is no contract.
Therefore it is a personal property sale. Pretending that personal property is an implied contract is precisely the sort of NONSENSE that this article is complaining about. It's just a way for powerful corporations to subvert your property rights and abuse all of us.
It's high time that citizens started pushing back.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's what the contract break fee is for, to pay that back. The customer owns the phone at all points along there, if they didn't, then the carier would have to pay to replace it if it broke. The customer owns the phone, they're just financing it via a non-optional rider to their plan.
Seriously Boycott Apple and Microsoft, that are locking hardware. Its not hard to support companies that have open hardware. The fact that your xbox, and iDevices are locked down is only part of the problem...and soon your general purpose computer.
I'm sorry your favourite abusive mega corporation wants to lock you into their self styled ecosystem. Its easy to walk away...I did.
This sentiment is so wrong on so many levels. Stuff should not be "locked" in the first place.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
This tactic of hoarding information and claiming copyright - aka Divine mandate - is called shamanism. It's a very VERY old tactic. Copyright is just a new twist on the tactic that lets opportunists without a Divine birthright get in on the action.
Information has always been a commodity, for better or worse and "right" or wrong.
There's nothing 'obviously' about this. It's not a grey area. Either you limit everything or you limit nothing.
Medical devices, utility meters, safety systems, casino games, ATMs, airplane navigation systems should all be secured, by the hardware, in such a way that NOBODY can unlock them once they leave the manufacturer's hands. Pretending that some copyright law will protect these devices does nothing more than feed homeless lawyers.
Especially sensitive devices such as medical and safety relevant devices should not be a black box where it is illegal to look into the inner workings. While third-party liability is nice this is still just based on trust and not on tests. My trust into these system would increase quite a bit if a hacker plays around with a utility meter and finds no obvious vulnerability.
I want all my devices unlocked, the liability can be linked to a tamperproof soft/hardware seal as it is already done today. This is fine with me, I do not expect the manufacturer to be liable if I took it apart, hacked it and reassembled it but I do not see any advantage in making hacking illegal.
Apples and oranges.
Opening the hood on a car is necessary simply to put in windshield washer fluid... a very mundane tasks that the manufacturer does not need (nor want) to be involved with.
If you insist on car analogy, it would be more like you shouldn't be allowed replace engine components with your own on a car you are leasing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
NBC isn't one of the major record labels. Like Warner, Universal spun off its music operation years ago. The only major record label owned by a movie studio nowadays is Sony Music.
Strange, I'm paying a mortgage on my home, and many people pay for their car in instalments. So should we then be prevented from renovating or modifying the a vehicle with after-market components?
If you break it, you still have to pay for it.
Are you aware that most labels do in fact control distribution as well as marketing and in many cases production? Do you even know what a record label is, or anything about contract grants and copyright law?
Write failed: Broken pipe
True it would not give them access to existing stuff and its true lots of revenue is derived from the back catalogs, so no its not as if the existing record companies would collapse over night but as Google becomes the producer/publisher for an ever growing slice of new content; and lands more and more of the contracts with the already big name artists; the revenue to old records companies will slowly start to dry up.
Additionally Google probably snap up rights valuable back catalogs from struggling labels in need of quick cash. If Apple gets in on the game with the billions sitting in cash; they can both finance a lot of production and buy up valuable blocs of IP (as long as they are very very careful and smart about the later).
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
"Even if Google starts its own record label, that doesn't automatically give Google the right to distribute recordings of copyrighted musical compositions."
Uhhh, they have every right if said copyrighted recordings are MADE BY THEM.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So, what's to stop Google from getting into the music publishing business too?
They could cover all the bases on media, from publishing, to distribution, etc, and all new media going forward could have the old way, or the new Google way going forward.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"Which drone shall we send to prison for this one, Sir?"
"Hmmm.... who is that simian at the console there in Sector 7G?"
There are two separate copyrighted works involved: a "musical work", or the composition itself, and a "sound recording", or a performance of that composition fixed in a medium. Record labels are owners of copyright in sound recordings; music publishers are owners of copyright in musical works. I think I understand much of copyright law, but I'll admit that I'm unaware of the specific contract grants that are commonplace between music publishers and record labels.
People actually believe that property rights still exist? Ever since that VT Eminent Domain ruling, property rights is virtually dead, since anybody can cite that as a precedent for making the case that it doesn't exist, before proceding to confiscate someone's property.
So with property rights alreay pawned, this issue should come as no surprised. But honestly, the way cell phones are sold by carriers is an exercise in sophistry. The reason for locking is so that the subscribers can't switch carriers and keep the same phone, the expense of which is borne by the original carrier. But a cleaner way to do that - and get unlocked phones would be to pay the full price of the phone, whatever it is - $500, $800, $1000, whatever it is, and then get an unlocked phone which one can use with any carrier whatsoever. The way it is done in other countries.
Problem here - since the average American can't afford those sort of prices, they get the discounted phones, and then the carriers have to lock those to ensure that they don't take a bath in red ink. Are the advocates of 'freedom' and 'property rights' gonna put their money where their mouth is, and pay whatever an actual phone costs, which would satisfy their desire that it be unlocked?
Done it, plenty of times, all of them on youtube.
They've all survived DMCA requests.
I can copyright my particular performance of any song, especially when changes are made (Playing major instead of originally-composed minor, shifted tunings that affect the entire timbre and pitch of the song, etc.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.