How about really giving customers unlimited bandwidth? If they lack the infrastructure to support what they claim, then they should get better lines.
Because your monthly subscription would be about 20 times what you pay now.
Besides, why should people who use 100MB a month pay the same as someone saturating their 8Mb connection the whole time? The *vast* majority of customers don't need "unlimited" bandwidth and sure as hell don't want to pay for it.
In what way am I misusing the verb "take"? You make a copy of someone's copyrighted media file and you TAKE the copy with you. You have TAKEN the copy. You don't have permission to TAKE the copy.
The physical location of the copy is irrelevant - the law makes no reference to it. Also, you don't need permission to take _your_ copy of something somewhere. The issue at hand is that you didn't have permission to make your copy in the first place.
I'm not talking law statutes here, so don't waste time with that argument in an attempt to save yourself. I'm talking common sense.
So what are you talking about? You seem to be talking about theft (a legal construct) and copyright (also a legal construct). Given that everything you are discussing happens to be a legal construct, claiming that the legal definitions don't apply seems to be somewhat silly.
If I'm on another planet where no laws apply and I take something (even a copy of something) without permission then it is stealing and there's no way to avoid that reality.
Why? The term "stealing" refers to a legal concept. If there were different legal concepts then the concept of "stealing" may not exist.
Your attempt to narrowly define this to save face is ridiculous.
What purpose does your overly broad definition serve? They are different crimes with different punishments. If anything, grouping them together just serves to devalue the idea of theft since depriving the owner of their property is far worse for the owner than infringing their copyright.
No, the owner in this case is the copyright holder. The consumer does not own the media file, they have only purchased the right to view/listen to it.
The law disagrees with you. If you go into a shop and buy a CD then you are the legal owner the CD and the contents. What you do not own is the copyright, and this prevents you from creating copies of your property. The only way around this is to require the customer to buy a _licence_ rather than the CD itself, but this is not what currently happens. When I go into the music store and hand over some cash, I am not presented with a licence to sign, I am presented with a CD which is now my legal property.
Libelous? Is this another of your quasi-law discussion?
During this discussion you have, on several occasions, accused me of theft and copyright infringement. Unless you can present evidence for these accusations they constitute libel. You have also repeatedly called me a liar.
Wrong. If I have a piece of paper and you copy it and take the copy with you then you've (ready this carefully) TAKEN A COPY!!!
No, you have made a copy. It seems that you are misusing the verb "to take".
Stealing is taking something without permission.
Correct. However, no taking is involved when infringing copyrights so my point still stands.
And again this was never a legal argument, it was a common sense definition of stealing.
The definition of a crime is given by the law which makes it a crime. Were it not for the law it would not be a crime. Thus the only sensible definition to use when discussing laws is the legal definition.
Right, and then you TOOK that copy without permission from the owners. The copy didn't walk out the door itself did it? No, you TOOK it out the door! Ta da!!! . . . STEALING.
No, the owners of the thing I copied (for example, the original CD) may well have given permission even though they are not the copyright holder. In any case, the location of the copy is irrelevant.
Well, you're also the person who would think that taking a copy of something without permission is not taking something, so your opinion means little to me.
I see, so you're basically declaring yourself to be right because the definitions used by the rest of the world mean little to you? Feel free to stay locked up in a little room where the only world view that matters is your own.
You're backed into a corner on this and despite all 3 dictionary defintions you're still trying not to lose.
The dictionary definition you cited isn't exactly from a well recognised dictionary. Both the OED and Websters provide definitions that support my interpretation, as do the legal definitions.
Rather than wasting time on a losing argument you'd be better served re-working your web page. It looks like your 8 year old nephew put it up. If this is the extent of your coding expertise then I'm not surprised that you can't read and understand a simple definition from a dictionary.
You've lost, plain and simple. You know you've lost this one and it must really burn you. HAHAHAHAHAHA!
I suggest you work on your debating skills. During this discussion you have continually spent almost as much time making baseless libelous accusations and childish personal attacks against me as you have presenting your case. When debating, attempting to defame your opposition does not cast you in the best light since it shows that you believe your case to not be strong enough to stand on it's own merits and feel you must try to discredit your opposition in order to distract from the weakness of your case.
The above is a perfect example of such distraction tactics - the discussion has nothing to do with web pages so the only reason you feel the need to even mention the subject must be to distract attention from the discussion in hand?
No, you have made a copy. You can't have taken it since the owner is still in possession of theirs.
You're wrong and you know it.
The dictionary definitions and the legal definitions all disagree with you.
This was a common sense argument that you've stolen something without permission.
No, you have made a copy of a copyrighted work without permission. The law is quite clear on this - it is called "copyright infringement", not "theft" or "stealing", since the owner still has possession and use of their copy of the work.
Trying to argue you way out of this one makes you look like more of a fool.
I would think that the person disagreeing with the legal definition of the illegal act they are talking about is the one looking like a fool.
OED: 1 take (something) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it. 2 give or take surreptitiously or without permission.
Websters: 1: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice
If you infringe a copyright you have not _taken_ anything - you have made a copy. Additionally, the legal definition is rather more clear cut: "the wrongful or willful taking of money or property belonging to someone else with intent to deprive the owner of its use or benefit either temporarily or permanently."
So according to your logic, all I have to do it change the wording in the GPL, then i can do anything with the software I want to?
No, the GPL is a distribution licence which is a fundamentally different thing than an EULA:
Without a distribution licence, you have no rights to distribute a copyrighted work (your rights are restricted by the copyright law of the land). The GPL grants you rights to distribute the work on the condition that you agree to the licence. Thus you can either decline the licence and not distribute work, or you can accept the licence and distribute it in accordance with the licence. The GPL says nothing about how you _use_ the software, only how you distribute it.
On the other hand, if you have a piece of software (e.g. you purchased it, or you downloaded it) you have lots of rights - you can basically use it how you see fit. The person who distributed it to you (i.e. created the copy) must, of course, have a distribution licence, but that is not relevant to the discussion. The EULA *revokes* some of the rights you have. If you didn't agree to the licence then your rights are all still intact, which includes the right to modify your property (the software). The *only* thing making you agree to the licence is the fact that the software is built so that you must click the "I agree" button in order to use it. So the premise was that before agreeing to the EULA you have the right to modify your property (the software) and remove the technological restriction which requires you to click "I agree" - thus you would be able to use the software without ever having agreed to the licence and all your rights would still be intact.
Note the very distinct difference between the way these licences work - a distribution licence grants you rights and if you don't agree to it then the work is treated as any copyrighted work without a distribution licence - i.e. you cannot distribute it. An EULA revokes rights you already had and if you don't agree to it then the work is treated as any other legitimate copy of a copyrighted work you have purchased (for example, the same as a book - the only restrictions imposed on you are those imposed by the law of the land).
If either of my parents purchased music through iTunes (and did not have me as a resource) then they would in fact be 100% constrained to any and all of the DRM for the tracks.
But it sounds like your parents are not the sort of people who would be infringing copyright anyway. i.e. the DRM serves no useful purpose and yet may still cause problems for them when they are making legitimate use of the tracks.
The copyright infringers fall into 3 camps:
1. People who purchase material and share it 2. People who download material and use it for their own use 3. People who download material and share it
DRM doesn't affect (2) and (3) at all - once the material is being shared the DRM has been removed so is a non-issue.
DRM does affect (1), but unless you can stop *everyone* from circumventing it (something I don't believe to be possible) then the material will still be available so at best you're just pushing a few people from (1) into (3) - it doesn't affect the overall amount of infringement going on.
However, you mentioned convenience. DRM reduces convenience for people paying for the content. Of course some people might not realise why they are having problems, but some will and they will be pushed more towards doing (2) because it is more convenient than dealing with the DRM on legitimately purchased material.
But when you are selling content, it makes no sense whatsoever.
Actually, it does make sense. If it is available through many channels, those channels will compete with each other and drive the price of the product down. On the other hand, making it available through a single channel will allow prices to remain high through a lack of competition.
The problem is that the content producers want to have their cake and eat it - they want high prices, yet also a large volume. In their efforts to maintain high prices by restricting distribution they have made it too hard or expensive for customers to legitimately buy the content. If there were no other way to get it then more customers might choose the legitimate channel, but with the ease of copyright infringement over the internet people will choose the (significantly) easier option and ignore the legitimate product.
This is, of course, made worse by DRM systems since the black market version is now of _higher_ quality than the legitimate version because the DRM has been removed. For example, the black market DVDs no longer force you to sit through long videos telling you how stealing is wrong.
Content producers need to realise that you can't stop all copyright infringement, but given a quality product at a reasonable price the majority of people will choose to go the legitimate route.
Remember that even if your DRM system is so good that the majority of people can't circumvent it, that doesn't matter - it only takes a single person to circumvent it, strip the DRM and post the resulting content and all your potential customers can now download the un-DRMed version with ease.
shouldn't they be able to deploy a wide range of ever-changing DRM systems?
This is significantly dangerous for the consumer since it means that the consumer's right to access their legally purchased content may be revoked at any time. For example - if the DRM server becomes inaccessible you really don't want all your content to be revoked (if the rights holder has gone bankrupt, for example, they aren't going to care that none of their customers can access their content any more).
Sadly many of the public who I have talked with about DRM seem to think this is a problem. Usually they say something along the lines of "I don't care if I lose access to my music in 10 years, after all it's 10 years old so not important" - I don't know about anyone else, but I still listen to music I purchased well over 10 years ago.
Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way
There is another very important difference - the locks on cars, homes, etc is there to benefit the user of the car, home, etc. Whereas the locks on content are there to benefit the rights holder and serve no benefit to the user - in fact, in many cases DRM is very detrimental to the user since it prevents them from doing things they have a right to do (either because the copyright holder doesn't want them to do those things, or because the copyright holder doesn't believe a enough people want to do that for it to be worth their while implementing support).
A good example is the "DRM" on DVDs, Bluray discs, etc. which prevents the owners of those items from exercising their rights to make fair-use copies, play the media on a platform of their choosing (for example, using Free software or to a TV that doesn't do HDCP), import discs from other regions and skip certain sections of the recording.
I'm also unconvinced that the DRM is being broken by people wanting to infringe the copyright. I suspect a lot of the DRM cracking is driven by people wanting to exercise their legitimate rights on content they are purchasing.
In my opinion, no amount of DRM will make a significant impact on copyright infringement. The only thing it does is inconveniences the legitimate consumers, rakes in licence fees for the DRM system's central authority, and (in the case of region coding) restricts international trade (which is legally quite dubious).
Sorry. If you have a copy of Windows XP, for example, you do NOT own it. You purchase a license to use a copy in the manner that Microsoft has dictated in it's End Use License Agreement
It seems unlikely that this is true, given that you did not agree to the EULA at time of purchase. In reality, you purchase a copy (thus you own it) but there is a technological restriction that prevents you from actually making use of it until you agree to some restrictions (the EULA).
Which raises the question - enforcing the EULA presumably requires the copyright holder to prove you actually agreed to it. How can they do this? I mean, the possibilities that spring to mind are:
You removed the technological restriction (which would be allowable if you didn't already agree to a licence preventing you from doing this) rather than hitting the "I Agree" button.
You modified the wording of the licence you were agreeing to before hitting "I Agree"
Someone else agreed to the licence (e.g. the shop you bought the computer from, your brother/sister/dog, etc.) which would mean the restrictions apply to whoever agreed rather than to you
Networks don't tend to do "unlimited data", but having a bandwidth limit that is high enough that people won't realistically hit it through GPRS and EDGE use is pretty standard here.
I know that carriers don't just make changes like that unless it benefits them (being the exclusive carrier of the most anticipated phone) and that's probably why the exclusive contracts.
Supporting the advanced features of "the most anticipated phone" (and thus attracting the owners of said phone to your network) seems like motivation to me.
As I said before, proprietary protocols are not necessarily bad
I don't think I've said that. I've said that inventing your own protocols (if an existing protocol doesn't do what you need) isn't necessarily bad. I do believe that protocol specifications should be openly available to allow interoperability though. Restricting interoperability can only ever be bad for the consumers.
If the money for your paycheck was stolen from your employer before it had been given to you then you'd darn well change your tune.
No I wouldn't - if it hadn't already been given to me then it was stolen from the employer, not from me. It would still be the employer's responsibility to pay me as per my contract with them.
not paying for a copyrighted work is still stealing. I don't care how the law might separate them
Copyright infringement and stealing are quite clearly handled by separate laws. You may not care about how the law works but were it not for the law there would be no such thing as copyright infringement since copyright itself is a legal construct.
Not really the same is it?
Why not? If I hadn't taken the photo of your car I might have purchased one from you. Doesn't sound a lot different to copyright infringement to me from the "it's stealing" perspective.
You know you are morally obligated to pay for that item because the people who own it (yes, the shitty media cartels) have not given you permission to take it for free. Because of that it is stealing.
You are indeed obligated to pay for a copy of the content, but not doing so does not constitute stealing. The law is quite clear, copyright infringement and theft are not the same offenses and have very different penalties.
I don't care about the law on this, it is
What else is there to define what we are and are not allowed to do, other than the law? As I already mentioned above, were it not for the law there would be no copyright and no requirement to pay for a copy of anything. The meaning of the terms "theft" and "stealing" are defined by the law and the law states that copyright infringement isn't stealing.
Or, conversely, you have something your shouldnt' have.
Having something you shouldn't have does not constitute stealing. Stealing is clearly defined as taking someone's property without consent so that they are deprived of it. No matter how you spin it, if you have infringed a copyright you have not deprived someone of *their* property - the licence fee was never owned by them so cannot be deemed as having been stolen.
What percentage of users will utilize stuff like this. Less than 1%?
From personal experience I can tell you that the number of people who run 3rd party apps on phones is _significantly_ higher than 1% (and yes, this includes, but is not limited to, SSH).
I find it hard to believe you can get 18 hours of USE out of a phone battery. Your phone battery must be the size of a car battery?
You've been making stuff up left and right and you know it.
Having and expressing a personal opinion does not constitute "making stuff up".
Then it sounds like Europe needs to enforce it's laws. Write to them instead.
My point is that your "Apple needs exclusive contracts" argument doesn't really hold water when they go about using them in places where they quite blatantly don't need them. I certainly don't consider Apple to be an especially ethical organisation when it chooses to break the law because the commercial gain outweighs the possible legal action.
So Apple has to make a version of iTunes (which you complain you don't like) for every also-ran OS?
No, as I have been saying from the start, they need to either allow the use of standard protocols or freely publish their proprietary protocols. Personally I would prefer them to allow the use of a standardised protocol such as USB Mass Storage since that would allow the device to be accessed without installing any further software.
You're not giving them money that's due to them. That's stealing.
No, it isn't. Stealing is taking from their possession something that someone owns. They do not own the money until it has been given to them, thus if they are never given the money no theft has occurred. This is quite a clear legal construct I'm afraid - just because certain organisations choose to promote the idea that copyright infringement is stealing doesn't make it true.
Wrap it up any way you want but you've taken something that belongs to them.
No you haven't - if you copy a CD the owner of the CD still has it, you haven't taken it. You have infringed the copyright of the content, you have not stolen the CD.
That's like saying it's entirely possible the jewel thief wouldn't have paid for the jewels if he wouldn't have stolen the jewels first.
If you steal some jewels you are guilty of stealing the jewels - you are not guilty of stealing the money you would have paid if you had bought them. Thus if you copy some copyrighted material you cannot be guilty of stealing some money and you can't be guilty of stealing the content itself since the owner still has the content. A copyright infringer is no more stealing content than someone taking a photo of your car is stealing your car.
Use the same protocols 3rd party accessory makers use which Apple provides them. Not so tough.
Please point me at the official website where I can download the protocol specs.
And as for hacking it, I don't recall seeing anywhere that they said they aren't happy about people hacking it
Well, they put out a warning that an update would brick hacked phones, and then when they released the update it did. So even if they didn't engineer the update to do this they certainly knew about the problem and did nothing. (You, of course will claim that Apple have no obligation to support hacked devices, and you'd be right. However, it is rather suspicious that they announced there would be a problem but did nothing to resolve it, preferring to let their customers brick their phones.)
Other than that, they have openly indicated that they are opposed to people hacking the phones. From a BBC article in September:
At the launch of the iPhone in the UK, Apple boss Steve Jobs admitted that the firm was engaged in a "game of cat and mouse" with the hackers.
You said they lock people out. I'm citing plenty of examples that refute your statement. The desktop OS and the available SDK is one example. Your claims of Apple lockout are what I was addressing and you know it. Please stop trying to change the argument when you know what I meant.
Not once have I said that Apple lock people out of their desktop OS.
Note the question mark when I originally asked it? Do you understand punctuation?
Yes, and I answered the question. Never the less, the tone of the question quite clearly indicated that you thought the very idea laughable.
yes, you did.
Maybe you'd like to cite examples.
I backpack a lot and I don't use my phone when I'm out there. It kind of defeats the purpose of going there in the first place.
There are many times when I want to use my phone for something while I am away from civilisation. For example, if I am on a sailing trip I use it to find out current weather conditions and get forecasts - this is quite important when working out where to sail and what sort of kit to use.
And yet you never stated standby time did you. You compared 8 hours of iPhone battery (NOT the standby time numbers I might add) with standby time in another phone?. I know you don't get 100 hours of USE from that phone, you get 100 hours of standby but not USE, so your whole comparison seems to be apples to oranges and not valid.
On a "heavy usage day" I get over 18 hours from my phone (with its 4 year old battery), which includes a good solid 6 hours or so using it as a bluetooth/GSM teather for my notebook.
That is consistent with the rest of your misrepresentations and that is why I call you a liar.
I haven't misrepresented anything - you quoted a battery life without stating under what conditions you were using it, and I quoted the life I get out of my phone complete with information about the conditions I was talking about.
It's not that you disagree. I'm fine with that. It's that you've been making stuff up to back your arguements. That leads me to believe you're either ignorant or a liar.
I've been doing no such thing.
Then you agree Apple is not to blame for the current state of the US market and they may have had to make an exclusive deal with a carrier to implement the changes they needed as well as having their handset allowed on the carriers network. Thanks. That's the whole point I've been trying to make regarding Apple's deal with AT&T. It has never been about lockout.
If they were only doing it in the US market I might agree with you. However, they are also doing it in the European market where it is illegal. (I.e. they are ignoring their legal obligations because they have determined their commercial gains will be more than any losses due to legal action).
Another admission, thank you. Apple did not "force" anyone. You just stated those people "choose".
People who do not use Windows or OS X certainly do not "choose" not to use iTunes - they are unable to do so.
Yes, it's is. It's a pain because I have no playlists.
Playlists can (and are on other devices) be implemented quite well by text files which can be manipulated by both the player itself and whatever management software you choose to use on the PC side.
most people do NOT want to manage their sync this way.
Which is why I didn't suggest removing iTunes support - just providing access through a standardised protocol *as well*.
99% of the people do NOT want, not would they be able to figure out "automated file management".
I'm pretty sure that over 1% of people would use it were it available. I'm not saying they need to provide the complete iTunes featureset, I'm saying it's something that would be really useful for those times when you don't have access to iTunes.
even though you think it's wrong for others to implement some basic security to prevent hassles
When did I say that?
Right, you've denied them the licensing fee which is money which is their property under the law. Thanks for making my point.
No, it isn't their property until it has been given to them. And it is entirely possible that the infringer would just plain not have purchased the content if they hadn't infringed the copyright.
I don't believe you.
That is your right, but it doesn't make what I said any less true.
You complain that Apple doesn't interface the way you want it to with another system, but why is Apple's responsibility to do that for you.
It isn't Apple's responsibility to make it interface with another system. However, it should be their responsibility to publish the protocols required to do so, so as to allow interoperability.
Tell that to the TONS of 3rd party accessory makers who are using these protocols to interface with the iPod/iPhone
Who have either had to reverse engineer the protocol, or (more likely) have had to pay Apple a licence for the specs (no doubt under NDA).
Well, I'd say his claim has more credibility than yours because Apple has a desktop OS with an SDK and they obviously understand the importance of 3rd party apps.
And they have a phone without an SDK and have publicly said that they aren't happy about people hacking it to allow third party applications.
Despite your false claims they haven't locked people out of their desktop OS have they.
When did I say they did?
I am the original poster and (surprise, you're lying again!) I did NOT imply that "no one uses SSH from their phone". I asked "who the F uses SSH from a phone." That's hardly making the implication you stated. Please stop lying.
How else would you interpret that?
Well well, you just admitted the iPhone was a smartphone.
No, I don't believe I did.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Are you 13 years old or something?
You're nowhere near a power socket. . . right . ..don't tell me, you're in the middle of the Sahara. No, wait, you're on safari in Africa. No, no, I've got it, you're climbing Everest and you need to SSH into work? Nowhere near a power socket. . . Please stop lying.
It's pretty common for me to be out of contact with a power socket for a week or so - there aren't too many sockets around when you're wildcamping at the top of a mountain or otherwise away from civilisation. And there you go talking about SSH again - the battery in your phone enables you do use it for *anything* not just SSH. You're not going to be making many voice calls without a working battery.
My non-smartphone won't last that long without doing any of that functionality so I doubt your 4 year old smartphone lasted that long. Please stop lying.
I'm not lying. If you choose to buy a phone with a crap battery life then that's up to you. Sony quote a standby time of 480 hours for the P900, and whilst I will agree that this is a massive overestimate, I do get well in excess of 100 hours out of it in normal use.
Well you've demonstrated your ignorance on every post, or you're just a blatant liar
It's pretty arrogant to assume someone is ignorant or a liar just because they have different views than yourself.
so I figure your experience at a telco that you mentioned earlier had to be in the janitorial department since you obviously have very little understanding of the issues we've talked about.
At the aforementioned companies I was a network software developer for a number of years. Also, they aren't telcos - maybe you should get some understanding of what you are talking about before you start accusing people of being liars.
You obviously don't understand the US market and it's history and challenges.
Sounds like the US market needs better regulation to me, rather than exclusive deals to further restrict customers.
I don't know if they're free
Exactly my point.
While we're at it, feel free to point me to someone that Apple "forced" to reverse engineer protocols, or someone who was forced to "suffer"
I know a number of people who either choose not to use iTunes because they dislike the interface, or cannot use iTunes because they use Linux. Were it not for people reverse engineering the proprietary protocols then these people would be unable to use an iPod.
And this is a preferable way to load content over iTunes?
I didn't say that did I? Once again you are putting words into my mouth in an effort to support your flawed arguments. It is an *alternative* method, which would be very useful in situations where iTunes is not available.
It's a tedious, manual way to do it.
No it isn't - you can do automated file management over the USB Mass Storage protocol, my MP3 player manages it just fine.
They're designing a consumer product to appeal to a lot of people, not just nerds who use SSH and who want to share files with their friends.
And allowing people to use a standard protocol as well as iTunes would reduce this appeal because...?
They also operate an online store for music and must have reasonable safeguards put in place to prevent filesharing or content providers won't cut deals with them
And here we have it - you're saying that Apple are intentionally restricting the functionality of their product so that they can sell a different product?
You stamp your foot when you don't have complete unfettered access to every feature and yet you wouldn't allow that access on YOUR computer.
I object to manufacturers restricting what I can do with *my* property. My computer happens to be my property so I can do with it what the hell I want.
Copyright infringement IS stealing. You can wrap it any way you want, but you know it is stealing because you're not paying for the content.
No, sorry, you're completely wrong - copyright infringement is wrong but it isn't stealing. The act of stealing denies property from the legitimate owner and is a criminal offense. Copyright infringement does no such thing - it _potentially_ denies them licence fees (which the infringer may or may not have paid anyway, even if they chose not to infringe) but it does not deny them their property. Copyright infringement is a civil offense.
And I'm sure you don't have the rights because you just tried to split legal hairs about copyright infringement vs. stealing and your use of the word "maybe" and your cheesy attempt to pull the Creative Commons license rabbit out of the hat. No, if you had the rights you wouldn't be splitting hairs or making fictional arguments. You're stealing and you're mad at Apple because they haven't made that easy for you.
I am neither stealing, nor infringing copyrights - the only content I share happens to be content which has a Free licence and content that I created. For other content, I purchase it on CD, DVD, etc. and don't share it.
Yet the customers didn't suffer and the strategy was successful. That sounds like Apple knew better than you once again.
Certainly not my interpretation of events - the customers had to suffer not being able to run any third party software (without unofficial hacks that may void their warranty).
that narrow minded European telco janitors like yourself
I beg your pardon? Have you so few valid points that you feel you need to resort to name calling?
Yes, iTunes and a dock.
So once again, I ask how this requires support from the service provider (if you remember, this made up part of your argument as to why Apple needed an exclusivity deal with AT&T). I also feel I should point out that every phone and PDA I've owned for the past 7 years has handled syncing just fine (over a dock or bluetooth) - this is nothing new.
They do have standard protocols to talk to iPods/iPhones. Tons of 3rd party accessory makers utilize them all the time. Apple hasn't "forced" anyone to reverse engineer anything.
Feel free to point me at the freely available official specs for these protocols.
And Apple is to blame for this in what way?
Because they chose to implement the iPod so that it couldn't have music/videos loaded onto it through a standard well supported protocol, such as USB Mass Storage.
Funny that you embrace locking people out of things when it's you or your friends making the decision.
If it happens to be *my* PC I have every right to lock other people out of it. On the other hand, If I own an MP3 player then why should the manufacturer lock me out of my own property?
Either your phone isn't quite so enjoyable to watch a video
Well, given the choice between watching a video on the phone's screen and watching it on a 24" monitor I know which I would choose.
you're sharing files
What's wrong with that?
you shouldn't blame Apple when they don't help you steal content.
By "steal" you presumably mean "infringe copyrights on" - copyright infringement is not stealing, they are completely different laws.
Also, why are you assuming I don't have a legal right to copy the content? Maybe I own the copyright, or the content is distributed under a Free licence such as a Creative Commons licence.
I don't see why you blame Apple for the fact that you can't copy content on to your friends machine. It makes as much sense as blaming Ford for not allowing you to install a Ford part on a BMW car.
So are you now saying that an iPhone and iPod are parts of a bigger product, rather than products in their own right? That's certainly not how they are marketed.
No, not on an ultra secret project where even the hardware and software engineers didn't know the big picture. Apple goes through great pains to hide what they're doing and then they hand it out to a few thousand? Not too smart.
So the customers must suffer purchasing an untested product because of Apple's marketing strategy? That sounds like a pretty bad situation.
Is this the same Microsoft that releases a product that has over 150,000 viruses for it? Not the best example of how to conduct business is it?
Yep, the very same Microsoft - if that's what happens when you actually bother to do product testing I dread to think what happens when you don't.
Again, ultra secret project, so the testing was done in the lab. Why don't you go back and read the article and get back to me.
I already read the article thanks, and I don't consider a marketing strategy to be a good reason for giving customers a potentially sucky experience by doing no serious testing.
I'm unclear on why you're mentioning 802.11 since I said nothing about that in my post. Seems like you're arguing with yourself on this one.
You mentioned syncing data without going over the carrier's network. I presume you must mean 802.11 or Bluetooth unless Apple have found a way to transfer data by magic.
Not to mention which flavor of the ton of Linux versions do you concentrate on? There are bound to be incompatabilities between versions of Linux so that's another reason to avoid that market.
So allow the use of a standard protocol instead of forcing people to reverse engineer a proprietary one.
Installing it is not effort. Talk about making stuff up here. Click a button, it downloads. Click a button, it installs.
Installing it is not effort so long as the sysadmin hasn't locked your machine down (e.g. you're at work), or your friend (if you're using a friend's machine) will let you. Frankly, I don't let my friends install random software on my machines.
Why do you need to access your device from someone else's computer?
To copy music or videos onto it when you're not at home?
They're nuts of they don't make a phone that works in the broadest number of markets possible. 3G would have been the incorrect choice right now. To hamper the iPhones appeal in the US by releasing a phone that didn't have coverage in many markets would have been nuts.
Here you're talking complete crap - using 3G wouldn't have reduced the coverage since 3G phones are quite happy talking GSM when there's no 3G available. Instead, by not implementing 3G they have hampered the iPhones appeal in pretty much every country outside the US.
"Massively overpriced" is a "fact", you say? It sold like hotcakes
Just because people buy into the hype instead of looking to see what the competition is doing doesn't negate the fact that it is far more expensive than competing phones with superior feature sets.
It's considered bad form to follow mock incredulity with an obvious falsehood.
Where's the obvious falsehood? Can't see one - mustn't be that obvious.
but would like to point out that Apple is a newcomer to the celphone industry.
As were all the cited example companies at some point in the past.
You're just making an unsubstantiated claim that Apple NEVER INTENDED to publish an SDK, because that idea is in step with how you imagine Apple to work.
You're just making an unsubstantiated claim that Apple INTENDED to publish an SDK, because that idea is in step with how you imagine Apple to work.
This is the company that runs the most profitable, established online music service
Why do you seem to think that commercial success implies that they must be treating their customers well? Look at Microsoft - they are pretty successful and are the king of vendor-lockin and screwing their customers over.
What exactly are you arguing here?
The examples you have given of my arguments are in fact arguments I never made. It seems you are trying to put words into my mouth in an effort to support your cause.
I see what you did there. You said SSH was common and that you use it all the time and that it saved you bacon, now you're saying you're not talking about SSH.
You appear to be misinterpreting what I said (probably intentionally). The original poster made the implication that no one uses SSH from their phone. This is completely false - lots of people do so. However, the implication was made that using SSH is the *only* point of a smartphone, which is quite clearly a bogus argument. There are many thousands of third party applications for smartphones - SSH is just one of them.
And wow, EVERYONE you know with a smartphone uses third party applications! Good then. Bound to be plenty of developers for the iPhone.
Why will there be plenty of developers? People who use third party software on their phones are not inherently developers (in fact, very few of them are, and even fewer are developers for smartphone platforms). In any case, the aforementioned people don't own an iPhone since it is useless to them if they can't run their third party apps.
Never mind that the charger and charging cable are only a little bit bigger than the phone itself.
And a massive amount of use when you're no where near a power socket.
Are you seriously saying that you'd rather have a 3G phone with a 4-hour battery life and a spare battery in your pocket, than a non-3G phone with an 8 hour battery life?
No, I'm saying I would rather have a 3G phone with a reasonable battery life and the ability to change batteries if I need to. Frankly an 8 hour battery life for a non-3G phone is abysmal - my 4 year old smartphone's battery lasts about a week... oh, and it can play music and videos, surf the web, do calendaring and sync with my computer and work as a bluetooth/GPRS tether for my laptop...
Yes, that's what I'm saying. No company does "widespread consumer testing". Duh. They do testing in a small way, but no company releases their product to 100,000+ consumers to test it.
Why do you need that many customers to do testing? A few thousand would do fine. And before you continue with your "no one does this scale of testing" I point you at the public beta programs run by many hardware and software vendors. For example, Microsoft's beta programs _do_ consist of many tens of thousands of testers.
If Apple didn't bother to test their product properly then that is a serious flaw in their development procedures and needs to be addressed.
Funny, all the phone UIs you just mentioned SUCK. So yes, they obviously were asking for trouble because they didn't get the UI right FIRST. You just made my point for me. Thanks.
So your saying that Apple are far more competent than these companies (better UI) and yet they aren't competent enough to provide a platform they have faith in enough to allow third party developers loose on from the start? The UI has no bearing on the ability to run third party apps.
No, YOU said they lock people out so they have all the control and make all the money. So, they obviously don't care what people want and they'd still be locking people out
What's the point in putting lock on things if the locks don't work - all it was doing was generating bad press for Apple. Apple's initial plan to control the entire software stack failed, so they were left having to try and recover as gracefully as possible.
Folks are camping out to get the things, even without the SDK that you think is so crucial.
Ah yes, people who camp out for days to get their hands on a device that they would be able to just walk into a store and pick up without queuing a few days later - prime examples of people who have thought through their actions rationally.
So looking at all those products that you said Apple locks me into I asked you where the lock was? If AT&T is the only lock you can think of then congratulations, you've made the exception prove the rule.
It wasn't the only example I could think of - I cited several examples.
The AT&T exclusive deal was necessary not to lock people in, but to get a carrier to work with Apple who would allow Apple to implement all the great ideas it has.
You don't need an exclusivity deal for this - if they are really great features and the iPhone is a popular platform the telcos would implement the network-side support off their own backs because they could charge more for it.
Downloading music from iTunes, syncing from the computer, allowing photos to be synced to the computer rather than charging them to send them over the network, etc.
I'm unclear on how making data transfers over 802.11 requires any support from AT&T. Phones have been able to transfer files and synchronise with computers over 802.11 and bluetooth for years (without an exclusive contract with the telco). Nothing new here.
Updating the music without iTunes? You can on iPods and as for either iPhones or iPods, why would you want to? It's easier to do it via iTunes.
1. Because some people think iTunes sucks and want a choice of different applications to do the job 2. Because last time I checked there wasn't a version of iTunes that ran under Linux 3. Not every computer has iTunes installed - installing it is effort if you just want to access your device from someone else's machine as a 1-off thing.
And yes, there are some third party applications that do this stuff, but only because their developers reverse engineered the protocols involved. Apple could have documented the protocols or used standard ones.
Also 3G coverage is not ubiquitous in the US so a 3G only phone would end up hampering the iPhone's sales.
The iPhone is not a US-only phone. If Apple only consider the US market when producing their produc
The main reason it's locked to a single provider (I only know the story in the US) is that Apple is signed into an exclusivity contract with AT&T. I'm sure that's not ideal, from Apple's point of view.
They didn't have to sign an exclusivity deal - other cellphones do just fine without being tied to just one operator. Apple _chose_ to do it, probably because they could convince AT&T to pay them more that way (Apple make some serious amount of money from the kickbacks AT&T give them each time an iphone owner pays their monthly subscription).
If the article these comments relate to has any truth to it, then only about 30 people saw the completed iPhone before its release.
Does anyone consider this a good thing?! I certainly don't consider "oh, and we did no serious testing" to be a great selling point.
I can't see a reason that Apple would *want* to keep people out.
Licensing. If they can charge developers for each 3rd party utility sold then that makes them cash (look at the games console markets - kickbacks to the console manufacturer for every game sold). Also, it's possible that AT&T wanted to have some say on what applications people could use (for example, no VoIP).
I know you'll say something like 'I don't want to have to modify my device' but to tide people over until the official SDK, we have web-based applications (some of which are fantastic, and you wouldn't know weren't native), and we have jailbreaking which so far has appeared to be very simple and safe.
But customers shouldn't _have_ to hack their device in order to run 3rd party software - no smartphones require such things to run third party software (and remember, the hacks have dubious consequences with respect to your warranty and future upgrades).
Again, I know this argument won't quiet you, but on the point of iPod+iTunes, I wouldn't *want* to use my iPod with anything but iTunes
Just because _you_ don't want to do so doesn't mean that it should be made hard. Some of us don't even own a platform that could run iTunes (I have no use for either Windows or OS X). And yeah, people have reverse engineered the protocol and have produced third party utilities, but would it really have killed Apple to allow you to just dump tracks onto it as a USB mass storage device, or at least document the protocols?
in the end what matters to most developers is the size of the target market (in this case ipod touch and iphone owners) - the iphone is out for less then 6 months and THAT is why that 30% statistic I mentioned earlier matters.
That only applies to commercial developers - non-commercial developers don't care how big the market is - they are writing stuff that _they_ want.
Slashdot Mirror
How about really giving customers unlimited bandwidth? If they lack the infrastructure to support what they claim, then they should get better lines.
Because your monthly subscription would be about 20 times what you pay now.
Besides, why should people who use 100MB a month pay the same as someone saturating their 8Mb connection the whole time? The *vast* majority of customers don't need "unlimited" bandwidth and sure as hell don't want to pay for it.
In what way am I misusing the verb "take"? You make a copy of someone's copyrighted media file and you TAKE the copy with you. You have TAKEN the copy. You don't have permission to TAKE the copy.
The physical location of the copy is irrelevant - the law makes no reference to it. Also, you don't need permission to take _your_ copy of something somewhere. The issue at hand is that you didn't have permission to make your copy in the first place.
I'm not talking law statutes here, so don't waste time with that argument in an attempt to save yourself. I'm talking common sense.
So what are you talking about? You seem to be talking about theft (a legal construct) and copyright (also a legal construct). Given that everything you are discussing happens to be a legal construct, claiming that the legal definitions don't apply seems to be somewhat silly.
If I'm on another planet where no laws apply and I take something (even a copy of something) without permission then it is stealing and there's no way to avoid that reality.
Why? The term "stealing" refers to a legal concept. If there were different legal concepts then the concept of "stealing" may not exist.
Your attempt to narrowly define this to save face is ridiculous.
What purpose does your overly broad definition serve? They are different crimes with different punishments. If anything, grouping them together just serves to devalue the idea of theft since depriving the owner of their property is far worse for the owner than infringing their copyright.
No, the owner in this case is the copyright holder. The consumer does not own the media file, they have only purchased the right to view/listen to it.
The law disagrees with you. If you go into a shop and buy a CD then you are the legal owner the CD and the contents. What you do not own is the copyright, and this prevents you from creating copies of your property. The only way around this is to require the customer to buy a _licence_ rather than the CD itself, but this is not what currently happens. When I go into the music store and hand over some cash, I am not presented with a licence to sign, I am presented with a CD which is now my legal property.
Libelous? Is this another of your quasi-law discussion?
During this discussion you have, on several occasions, accused me of theft and copyright infringement. Unless you can present evidence for these accusations they constitute libel. You have also repeatedly called me a liar.
Wrong. If I have a piece of paper and you copy it and take the copy with you then you've (ready this carefully) TAKEN A COPY!!!
No, you have made a copy. It seems that you are misusing the verb "to take".
Stealing is taking something without permission.
Correct. However, no taking is involved when infringing copyrights so my point still stands.
And again this was never a legal argument, it was a common sense definition of stealing.
The definition of a crime is given by the law which makes it a crime. Were it not for the law it would not be a crime. Thus the only sensible definition to use when discussing laws is the legal definition.
Right, and then you TOOK that copy without permission from the owners. The copy didn't walk out the door itself did it? No, you TOOK it out the door! Ta da!!! . . . STEALING.
No, the owners of the thing I copied (for example, the original CD) may well have given permission even though they are not the copyright holder. In any case, the location of the copy is irrelevant.
Well, you're also the person who would think that taking a copy of something without permission is not taking something, so your opinion means little to me.
I see, so you're basically declaring yourself to be right because the definitions used by the rest of the world mean little to you? Feel free to stay locked up in a little room where the only world view that matters is your own.
You're backed into a corner on this and despite all 3 dictionary defintions you're still trying not to lose.
The dictionary definition you cited isn't exactly from a well recognised dictionary. Both the OED and Websters provide definitions that support my interpretation, as do the legal definitions.
Rather than wasting time on a losing argument you'd be better served re-working your web page. It looks like your 8 year old nephew put it up. If this is the extent of your coding expertise then I'm not surprised that you can't read and understand a simple definition from a dictionary.
You've lost, plain and simple. You know you've lost this one and it must really burn you. HAHAHAHAHAHA!
I suggest you work on your debating skills. During this discussion you have continually spent almost as much time making baseless libelous accusations and childish personal attacks against me as you have presenting your case. When debating, attempting to defame your opposition does not cast you in the best light since it shows that you believe your case to not be strong enough to stand on it's own merits and feel you must try to discredit your opposition in order to distract from the weakness of your case.
The above is a perfect example of such distraction tactics - the discussion has nothing to do with web pages so the only reason you feel the need to even mention the subject must be to distract attention from the discussion in hand?
You've taken a copy.
No, you have made a copy. You can't have taken it since the owner is still in possession of theirs.
You're wrong and you know it.
The dictionary definitions and the legal definitions all disagree with you.
This was a common sense argument that you've stolen something without permission.
No, you have made a copy of a copyrighted work without permission. The law is quite clear on this - it is called "copyright infringement", not "theft" or "stealing", since the owner still has possession and use of their copy of the work.
Trying to argue you way out of this one makes you look like more of a fool.
I would think that the person disagreeing with the legal definition of the illegal act they are talking about is the one looking like a fool.
dictionary.com: steal
The OED and Webster's both disagree with you.
OED: 1 take (something) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it. 2 give or take surreptitiously or without permission.
Websters: 1: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice
If you infringe a copyright you have not _taken_ anything - you have made a copy. Additionally, the legal definition is rather more clear cut: "the wrongful or willful taking of money or property belonging to someone else with intent to deprive the owner of its use or benefit either temporarily or permanently."
So according to your logic, all I have to do it change the wording in the GPL, then i can do anything with the software I want to?
No, the GPL is a distribution licence which is a fundamentally different thing than an EULA:
Without a distribution licence, you have no rights to distribute a copyrighted work (your rights are restricted by the copyright law of the land). The GPL grants you rights to distribute the work on the condition that you agree to the licence. Thus you can either decline the licence and not distribute work, or you can accept the licence and distribute it in accordance with the licence. The GPL says nothing about how you _use_ the software, only how you distribute it.
On the other hand, if you have a piece of software (e.g. you purchased it, or you downloaded it) you have lots of rights - you can basically use it how you see fit. The person who distributed it to you (i.e. created the copy) must, of course, have a distribution licence, but that is not relevant to the discussion. The EULA *revokes* some of the rights you have. If you didn't agree to the licence then your rights are all still intact, which includes the right to modify your property (the software). The *only* thing making you agree to the licence is the fact that the software is built so that you must click the "I agree" button in order to use it. So the premise was that before agreeing to the EULA you have the right to modify your property (the software) and remove the technological restriction which requires you to click "I agree" - thus you would be able to use the software without ever having agreed to the licence and all your rights would still be intact.
Note the very distinct difference between the way these licences work - a distribution licence grants you rights and if you don't agree to it then the work is treated as any copyrighted work without a distribution licence - i.e. you cannot distribute it. An EULA revokes rights you already had and if you don't agree to it then the work is treated as any other legitimate copy of a copyrighted work you have purchased (for example, the same as a book - the only restrictions imposed on you are those imposed by the law of the land).
If either of my parents purchased music through iTunes (and did not have me as a resource) then they would in fact be 100% constrained to any and all of the DRM for the tracks.
But it sounds like your parents are not the sort of people who would be infringing copyright anyway. i.e. the DRM serves no useful purpose and yet may still cause problems for them when they are making legitimate use of the tracks.
The copyright infringers fall into 3 camps:
1. People who purchase material and share it
2. People who download material and use it for their own use
3. People who download material and share it
DRM doesn't affect (2) and (3) at all - once the material is being shared the DRM has been removed so is a non-issue.
DRM does affect (1), but unless you can stop *everyone* from circumventing it (something I don't believe to be possible) then the material will still be available so at best you're just pushing a few people from (1) into (3) - it doesn't affect the overall amount of infringement going on.
However, you mentioned convenience. DRM reduces convenience for people paying for the content. Of course some people might not realise why they are having problems, but some will and they will be pushed more towards doing (2) because it is more convenient than dealing with the DRM on legitimately purchased material.
But when you are selling content, it makes no sense whatsoever.
Actually, it does make sense. If it is available through many channels, those channels will compete with each other and drive the price of the product down. On the other hand, making it available through a single channel will allow prices to remain high through a lack of competition.
The problem is that the content producers want to have their cake and eat it - they want high prices, yet also a large volume. In their efforts to maintain high prices by restricting distribution they have made it too hard or expensive for customers to legitimately buy the content. If there were no other way to get it then more customers might choose the legitimate channel, but with the ease of copyright infringement over the internet people will choose the (significantly) easier option and ignore the legitimate product.
This is, of course, made worse by DRM systems since the black market version is now of _higher_ quality than the legitimate version because the DRM has been removed. For example, the black market DVDs no longer force you to sit through long videos telling you how stealing is wrong.
Content producers need to realise that you can't stop all copyright infringement, but given a quality product at a reasonable price the majority of people will choose to go the legitimate route.
Remember that even if your DRM system is so good that the majority of people can't circumvent it, that doesn't matter - it only takes a single person to circumvent it, strip the DRM and post the resulting content and all your potential customers can now download the un-DRMed version with ease.
shouldn't they be able to deploy a wide range of ever-changing DRM systems?
This is significantly dangerous for the consumer since it means that the consumer's right to access their legally purchased content may be revoked at any time. For example - if the DRM server becomes inaccessible you really don't want all your content to be revoked (if the rights holder has gone bankrupt, for example, they aren't going to care that none of their customers can access their content any more).
Sadly many of the public who I have talked with about DRM seem to think this is a problem. Usually they say something along the lines of "I don't care if I lose access to my music in 10 years, after all it's 10 years old so not important" - I don't know about anyone else, but I still listen to music I purchased well over 10 years ago.
Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way
There is another very important difference - the locks on cars, homes, etc is there to benefit the user of the car, home, etc. Whereas the locks on content are there to benefit the rights holder and serve no benefit to the user - in fact, in many cases DRM is very detrimental to the user since it prevents them from doing things they have a right to do (either because the copyright holder doesn't want them to do those things, or because the copyright holder doesn't believe a enough people want to do that for it to be worth their while implementing support).
A good example is the "DRM" on DVDs, Bluray discs, etc. which prevents the owners of those items from exercising their rights to make fair-use copies, play the media on a platform of their choosing (for example, using Free software or to a TV that doesn't do HDCP), import discs from other regions and skip certain sections of the recording.
I'm also unconvinced that the DRM is being broken by people wanting to infringe the copyright. I suspect a lot of the DRM cracking is driven by people wanting to exercise their legitimate rights on content they are purchasing.
In my opinion, no amount of DRM will make a significant impact on copyright infringement. The only thing it does is inconveniences the legitimate consumers, rakes in licence fees for the DRM system's central authority, and (in the case of region coding) restricts international trade (which is legally quite dubious).
for the simple reason that it is easier for us men to "target"
I remain unconvinced that I want to urinate on a plasma screen, given the voltage that they run at...
It seems unlikely that this is true, given that you did not agree to the EULA at time of purchase. In reality, you purchase a copy (thus you own it) but there is a technological restriction that prevents you from actually making use of it until you agree to some restrictions (the EULA).
Which raises the question - enforcing the EULA presumably requires the copyright holder to prove you actually agreed to it. How can they do this? I mean, the possibilities that spring to mind are:
pricing plans (unlimited data)
Networks don't tend to do "unlimited data", but having a bandwidth limit that is high enough that people won't realistically hit it through GPRS and EDGE use is pretty standard here.
I know that carriers don't just make changes like that unless it benefits them (being the exclusive carrier of the most anticipated phone) and that's probably why the exclusive contracts.
Supporting the advanced features of "the most anticipated phone" (and thus attracting the owners of said phone to your network) seems like motivation to me.
As I said before, proprietary protocols are not necessarily bad
I don't think I've said that. I've said that inventing your own protocols (if an existing protocol doesn't do what you need) isn't necessarily bad. I do believe that protocol specifications should be openly available to allow interoperability though. Restricting interoperability can only ever be bad for the consumers.
If the money for your paycheck was stolen from your employer before it had been given to you then you'd darn well change your tune.
No I wouldn't - if it hadn't already been given to me then it was stolen from the employer, not from me. It would still be the employer's responsibility to pay me as per my contract with them.
not paying for a copyrighted work is still stealing. I don't care how the law might separate them
Copyright infringement and stealing are quite clearly handled by separate laws. You may not care about how the law works but were it not for the law there would be no such thing as copyright infringement since copyright itself is a legal construct.
Not really the same is it?
Why not? If I hadn't taken the photo of your car I might have purchased one from you. Doesn't sound a lot different to copyright infringement to me from the "it's stealing" perspective.
You know you are morally obligated to pay for that item because the people who own it (yes, the shitty media cartels) have not given you permission to take it for free. Because of that it is stealing.
You are indeed obligated to pay for a copy of the content, but not doing so does not constitute stealing. The law is quite clear, copyright infringement and theft are not the same offenses and have very different penalties.
I don't care about the law on this, it is
What else is there to define what we are and are not allowed to do, other than the law? As I already mentioned above, were it not for the law there would be no copyright and no requirement to pay for a copy of anything. The meaning of the terms "theft" and "stealing" are defined by the law and the law states that copyright infringement isn't stealing.
Or, conversely, you have something your shouldnt' have.
Having something you shouldn't have does not constitute stealing. Stealing is clearly defined as taking someone's property without consent so that they are deprived of it. No matter how you spin it, if you have infringed a copyright you have not deprived someone of *their* property - the licence fee was never owned by them so cannot be deemed as having been stolen.
What percentage of users will utilize stuff like this. Less than 1%?
From personal experience I can tell you that the number of people who run 3rd party apps on phones is _significantly_ higher than 1% (and yes, this includes, but is not limited to, SSH).
I find it hard to believe you can get 18 hours of USE out of a phone battery. Your phone battery must be the size of a car battery?
No, it is one of these
You've been making stuff up left and right and you know it.
Having and expressing a personal opinion does not constitute "making stuff up".
Then it sounds like Europe needs to enforce it's laws. Write to them instead.
My point is that your "Apple needs exclusive contracts" argument doesn't really hold water when they go about using them in places where they quite blatantly don't need them. I certainly don't consider Apple to be an especially ethical organisation when it chooses to break the law because the commercial gain outweighs the possible legal action.
So Apple has to make a version of iTunes (which you complain you don't like) for every also-ran OS?
No, as I have been saying from the start, they need to either allow the use of standard protocols or freely publish their proprietary protocols. Personally I would prefer them to allow the use of a standardised protocol such as USB Mass Storage since that would allow the device to be accessed without installing any further software.
You're not giving them money that's due to them. That's stealing.
No, it isn't. Stealing is taking from their possession something that someone owns. They do not own the money until it has been given to them, thus if they are never given the money no theft has occurred. This is quite a clear legal construct I'm afraid - just because certain organisations choose to promote the idea that copyright infringement is stealing doesn't make it true.
Wrap it up any way you want but you've taken something that belongs to them.
No you haven't - if you copy a CD the owner of the CD still has it, you haven't taken it. You have infringed the copyright of the content, you have not stolen the CD.
That's like saying it's entirely possible the jewel thief wouldn't have paid for the jewels if he wouldn't have stolen the jewels first.
If you steal some jewels you are guilty of stealing the jewels - you are not guilty of stealing the money you would have paid if you had bought them. Thus if you copy some copyrighted material you cannot be guilty of stealing some money and you can't be guilty of stealing the content itself since the owner still has the content. A copyright infringer is no more stealing content than someone taking a photo of your car is stealing your car.
Use the same protocols 3rd party accessory makers use which Apple provides them. Not so tough.
Please point me at the official website where I can download the protocol specs.
Well, they put out a warning that an update would brick hacked phones, and then when they released the update it did. So even if they didn't engineer the update to do this they certainly knew about the problem and did nothing. (You, of course will claim that Apple have no obligation to support hacked devices, and you'd be right. However, it is rather suspicious that they announced there would be a problem but did nothing to resolve it, preferring to let their customers brick their phones.)
Other than that, they have openly indicated that they are opposed to people hacking the phones. From a BBC article in September:
You said they lock people out. I'm citing plenty of examples that refute your statement. The desktop OS and the available SDK is one example. Your claims of Apple lockout are what I was addressing and you know it. Please stop trying to change the argument when you know what I meant.
Not once have I said that Apple lock people out of their desktop OS.
Note the question mark when I originally asked it? Do you understand punctuation?
Yes, and I answered the question. Never the less, the tone of the question quite clearly indicated that you thought the very idea laughable.
yes, you did.
Maybe you'd like to cite examples.
I backpack a lot and I don't use my phone when I'm out there. It kind of defeats the purpose of going there in the first place.
There are many times when I want to use my phone for something while I am away from civilisation. For example, if I am on a sailing trip I use it to find out current weather conditions and get forecasts - this is quite important when working out where to sail and what sort of kit to use.
And yet you never stated standby time did you. You compared 8 hours of iPhone battery (NOT the standby time numbers I might add) with standby time in another phone?. I know you don't get 100 hours of USE from that phone, you get 100 hours of standby but not USE, so your whole comparison seems to be apples to oranges and not valid.
On a "heavy usage day" I get over 18 hours from my phone (with its 4 year old battery), which includes a good solid 6 hours or so using it as a bluetooth/GSM teather for my notebook.
That is consistent with the rest of your misrepresentations and that is why I call you a liar.
I haven't misrepresented anything - you quoted a battery life without stating under what conditions you were using it, and I quoted the life I get out of my phone complete with information about the conditions I was talking about.
It's not that you disagree. I'm fine with that. It's that you've been making stuff up to back your arguements. That leads me to believe you're either ignorant or a liar.
I've been doing no such thing.
Then you agree Apple is not to blame for the current state of the US market and they may have had to make an exclusive deal with a carrier to implement the changes they needed as well as having their handset allowed on the carriers network. Thanks. That's the whole point I've been trying to make regarding Apple's deal with AT&T. It has never been about lockout.
If they were only doing it in the US market I might agree with you. However, they are also doing it in the European market where it is illegal. (I.e. they are ignoring their legal obligations because they have determined their commercial gains will be more than any losses due to legal action).
Another admission, thank you. Apple did not "force" anyone. You just stated those people "choose".
People who do not use Windows or OS X certainly do not "choose" not to use iTunes - they are unable to do so.
Yes, it's is. It's a pain because I have no playlists.
Playlists can (and are on other devices) be implemented quite well by text files which can be manipulated by both the player itself and whatever management software you choose to use on the PC side.
most people do NOT want to manage their sync this way.
Which is why I didn't suggest removing iTunes support - just providing access through a standardised protocol *as well*.
99% of the people do NOT want, not would they be able to figure out "automated file management".
I'm pretty sure that over 1% of people would use it were it available. I'm not saying they need to provide the complete iTunes featureset, I'm saying it's something that would be really useful for those times when you don't have access to iTunes.
even though you think it's wrong for others to implement some basic security to prevent hassles
When did I say that?
Right, you've denied them the licensing fee which is money which is their property under the law. Thanks for making my point.
No, it isn't their property until it has been given to them. And it is entirely possible that the infringer would just plain not have purchased the content if they hadn't infringed the copyright.
I don't believe you.
That is your right, but it doesn't make what I said any less true.
You complain that Apple doesn't interface the way you want it to with another system, but why is Apple's responsibility to do that for you.
It isn't Apple's responsibility to make it interface with another system. However, it should be their responsibility to publish the protocols required to do so, so as to allow interoperability.
Tell that to the TONS of 3rd party accessory makers who are using these protocols to interface with the iPod/iPhone
Who have either had to reverse engineer the protocol, or (more likely) have had to pay Apple a licence for the specs (no doubt under NDA).
Well, I'd say his claim has more credibility than yours because Apple has a desktop OS with an SDK and they obviously understand the importance of 3rd party apps.
.don't tell me, you're in the middle of the Sahara. No, wait, you're on safari in Africa. No, no, I've got it, you're climbing Everest and you need to SSH into work? Nowhere near a power socket. . . Please stop lying.
And they have a phone without an SDK and have publicly said that they aren't happy about people hacking it to allow third party applications.
Despite your false claims they haven't locked people out of their desktop OS have they.
When did I say they did?
I am the original poster and (surprise, you're lying again!) I did NOT imply that "no one uses SSH from their phone". I asked "who the F uses SSH from a phone." That's hardly making the implication you stated. Please stop lying.
How else would you interpret that?
Well well, you just admitted the iPhone was a smartphone.
No, I don't believe I did.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Are you 13 years old or something?
You're nowhere near a power socket. . . right . .
It's pretty common for me to be out of contact with a power socket for a week or so - there aren't too many sockets around when you're wildcamping at the top of a mountain or otherwise away from civilisation. And there you go talking about SSH again - the battery in your phone enables you do use it for *anything* not just SSH. You're not going to be making many voice calls without a working battery.
My non-smartphone won't last that long without doing any of that functionality so I doubt your 4 year old smartphone lasted that long. Please stop lying.
I'm not lying. If you choose to buy a phone with a crap battery life then that's up to you. Sony quote a standby time of 480 hours for the P900, and whilst I will agree that this is a massive overestimate, I do get well in excess of 100 hours out of it in normal use.
Well you've demonstrated your ignorance on every post, or you're just a blatant liar
It's pretty arrogant to assume someone is ignorant or a liar just because they have different views than yourself.
so I figure your experience at a telco that you mentioned earlier had to be in the janitorial department since you obviously have very little understanding of the issues we've talked about.
At the aforementioned companies I was a network software developer for a number of years. Also, they aren't telcos - maybe you should get some understanding of what you are talking about before you start accusing people of being liars.
You obviously don't understand the US market and it's history and challenges.
Sounds like the US market needs better regulation to me, rather than exclusive deals to further restrict customers.
I don't know if they're free
Exactly my point.
While we're at it, feel free to point me to someone that Apple "forced" to reverse engineer protocols, or someone who was forced to "suffer"
I know a number of people who either choose not to use iTunes because they dislike the interface, or cannot use iTunes because they use Linux. Were it not for people reverse engineering the proprietary protocols then these people would be unable to use an iPod.
And this is a preferable way to load content over iTunes?
I didn't say that did I? Once again you are putting words into my mouth in an effort to support your flawed arguments. It is an *alternative* method, which would be very useful in situations where iTunes is not available.
It's a tedious, manual way to do it.
No it isn't - you can do automated file management over the USB Mass Storage protocol, my MP3 player manages it just fine.
They're designing a consumer product to appeal to a lot of people, not just nerds who use SSH and who want to share files with their friends.
And allowing people to use a standard protocol as well as iTunes would reduce this appeal because...?
They also operate an online store for music and must have reasonable safeguards put in place to prevent filesharing or content providers won't cut deals with them
And here we have it - you're saying that Apple are intentionally restricting the functionality of their product so that they can sell a different product?
You stamp your foot when you don't have complete unfettered access to every feature and yet you wouldn't allow that access on YOUR computer.
I object to manufacturers restricting what I can do with *my* property. My computer happens to be my property so I can do with it what the hell I want.
Copyright infringement IS stealing. You can wrap it any way you want, but you know it is stealing because you're not paying for the content.
No, sorry, you're completely wrong - copyright infringement is wrong but it isn't stealing. The act of stealing denies property from the legitimate owner and is a criminal offense. Copyright infringement does no such thing - it _potentially_ denies them licence fees (which the infringer may or may not have paid anyway, even if they chose not to infringe) but it does not deny them their property. Copyright infringement is a civil offense.
And I'm sure you don't have the rights because you just tried to split legal hairs about copyright infringement vs. stealing and your use of the word "maybe" and your cheesy attempt to pull the Creative Commons license rabbit out of the hat. No, if you had the rights you wouldn't be splitting hairs or making fictional arguments. You're stealing and you're mad at Apple because they haven't made that easy for you.
I am neither stealing, nor infringing copyrights - the only content I share happens to be content which has a Free licence and content that I created. For other content, I purchase it on CD, DVD, etc. and don't share it.
What the heck are you talking about? I never sa
Yet the customers didn't suffer and the strategy was successful. That sounds like Apple knew better than you once again.
Certainly not my interpretation of events - the customers had to suffer not being able to run any third party software (without unofficial hacks that may void their warranty).
that narrow minded European telco janitors like yourself
I beg your pardon? Have you so few valid points that you feel you need to resort to name calling?
Yes, iTunes and a dock.
So once again, I ask how this requires support from the service provider (if you remember, this made up part of your argument as to why Apple needed an exclusivity deal with AT&T). I also feel I should point out that every phone and PDA I've owned for the past 7 years has handled syncing just fine (over a dock or bluetooth) - this is nothing new.
They do have standard protocols to talk to iPods/iPhones. Tons of 3rd party accessory makers utilize them all the time. Apple hasn't "forced" anyone to reverse engineer anything.
Feel free to point me at the freely available official specs for these protocols.
And Apple is to blame for this in what way?
Because they chose to implement the iPod so that it couldn't have music/videos loaded onto it through a standard well supported protocol, such as USB Mass Storage.
Funny that you embrace locking people out of things when it's you or your friends making the decision.
If it happens to be *my* PC I have every right to lock other people out of it. On the other hand, If I own an MP3 player then why should the manufacturer lock me out of my own property?
Either your phone isn't quite so enjoyable to watch a video
Well, given the choice between watching a video on the phone's screen and watching it on a 24" monitor I know which I would choose.
you're sharing files
What's wrong with that?
you shouldn't blame Apple when they don't help you steal content.
By "steal" you presumably mean "infringe copyrights on" - copyright infringement is not stealing, they are completely different laws.
Also, why are you assuming I don't have a legal right to copy the content? Maybe I own the copyright, or the content is distributed under a Free licence such as a Creative Commons licence.
I don't see why you blame Apple for the fact that you can't copy content on to your friends machine. It makes as much sense as blaming Ford for not allowing you to install a Ford part on a BMW car.
So are you now saying that an iPhone and iPod are parts of a bigger product, rather than products in their own right? That's certainly not how they are marketed.
No, not on an ultra secret project where even the hardware and software engineers didn't know the big picture. Apple goes through great pains to hide what they're doing and then they hand it out to a few thousand? Not too smart.
So the customers must suffer purchasing an untested product because of Apple's marketing strategy? That sounds like a pretty bad situation.
Is this the same Microsoft that releases a product that has over 150,000 viruses for it? Not the best example of how to conduct business is it?
Yep, the very same Microsoft - if that's what happens when you actually bother to do product testing I dread to think what happens when you don't.
Again, ultra secret project, so the testing was done in the lab. Why don't you go back and read the article and get back to me.
I already read the article thanks, and I don't consider a marketing strategy to be a good reason for giving customers a potentially sucky experience by doing no serious testing.
I'm unclear on why you're mentioning 802.11 since I said nothing about that in my post. Seems like you're arguing with yourself on this one.
You mentioned syncing data without going over the carrier's network. I presume you must mean 802.11 or Bluetooth unless Apple have found a way to transfer data by magic.
Not to mention which flavor of the ton of Linux versions do you concentrate on? There are bound to be incompatabilities between versions of Linux so that's another reason to avoid that market.
So allow the use of a standard protocol instead of forcing people to reverse engineer a proprietary one.
Installing it is not effort. Talk about making stuff up here. Click a button, it downloads. Click a button, it installs.
Installing it is not effort so long as the sysadmin hasn't locked your machine down (e.g. you're at work), or your friend (if you're using a friend's machine) will let you. Frankly, I don't let my friends install random software on my machines.
Why do you need to access your device from someone else's computer?
To copy music or videos onto it when you're not at home?
They're nuts of they don't make a phone that works in the broadest number of markets possible. 3G would have been the incorrect choice right now. To hamper the iPhones appeal in the US by releasing a phone that didn't have coverage in many markets would have been nuts.
Here you're talking complete crap - using 3G wouldn't have reduced the coverage since 3G phones are quite happy talking GSM when there's no 3G available. Instead, by not implementing 3G they have hampered the iPhones appeal in pretty much every country outside the US.
"Massively overpriced" is a "fact", you say? It sold like hotcakes
Just because people buy into the hype instead of looking to see what the competition is doing doesn't negate the fact that it is far more expensive than competing phones with superior feature sets.
It's considered bad form to follow mock incredulity with an obvious falsehood.
Where's the obvious falsehood? Can't see one - mustn't be that obvious.
but would like to point out that Apple is a newcomer to the celphone industry.
As were all the cited example companies at some point in the past.
You're just making an unsubstantiated claim that Apple NEVER INTENDED to publish an SDK, because that idea is in step with how you imagine Apple to work.
You're just making an unsubstantiated claim that Apple INTENDED to publish an SDK, because that idea is in step with how you imagine Apple to work.
This is the company that runs the most profitable, established online music service
Why do you seem to think that commercial success implies that they must be treating their customers well? Look at Microsoft - they are pretty successful and are the king of vendor-lockin and screwing their customers over.
What exactly are you arguing here?
The examples you have given of my arguments are in fact arguments I never made. It seems you are trying to put words into my mouth in an effort to support your cause.
I see what you did there. You said SSH was common and that you use it all the time and that it saved you bacon, now you're saying you're not talking about SSH.
You appear to be misinterpreting what I said (probably intentionally). The original poster made the implication that no one uses SSH from their phone. This is completely false - lots of people do so. However, the implication was made that using SSH is the *only* point of a smartphone, which is quite clearly a bogus argument. There are many thousands of third party applications for smartphones - SSH is just one of them.
And wow, EVERYONE you know with a smartphone uses third party applications! Good then. Bound to be plenty of developers for the iPhone.
Why will there be plenty of developers? People who use third party software on their phones are not inherently developers (in fact, very few of them are, and even fewer are developers for smartphone platforms). In any case, the aforementioned people don't own an iPhone since it is useless to them if they can't run their third party apps.
Never mind that the charger and charging cable are only a little bit bigger than the phone itself.
And a massive amount of use when you're no where near a power socket.
Are you seriously saying that you'd rather have a 3G phone with a 4-hour battery life and a spare battery in your pocket, than a non-3G phone with an 8 hour battery life?
No, I'm saying I would rather have a 3G phone with a reasonable battery life and the ability to change batteries if I need to. Frankly an 8 hour battery life for a non-3G phone is abysmal - my 4 year old smartphone's battery lasts about a week... oh, and it can play music and videos, surf the web, do calendaring and sync with my computer and work as a bluetooth/GPRS tether for my laptop...
Yes, that's what I'm saying. No company does "widespread consumer testing". Duh. They do testing in a small way, but no company releases their product to 100,000+ consumers to test it.
Why do you need that many customers to do testing? A few thousand would do fine. And before you continue with your "no one does this scale of testing" I point you at the public beta programs run by many hardware and software vendors. For example, Microsoft's beta programs _do_ consist of many tens of thousands of testers.
If Apple didn't bother to test their product properly then that is a serious flaw in their development procedures and needs to be addressed.
Funny, all the phone UIs you just mentioned SUCK. So yes, they obviously were asking for trouble because they didn't get the UI right FIRST. You just made my point for me. Thanks.
So your saying that Apple are far more competent than these companies (better UI) and yet they aren't competent enough to provide a platform they have faith in enough to allow third party developers loose on from the start? The UI has no bearing on the ability to run third party apps.
No, YOU said they lock people out so they have all the control and make all the money. So, they obviously don't care what people want and they'd still be locking people out
What's the point in putting lock on things if the locks don't work - all it was doing was generating bad press for Apple. Apple's initial plan to control the entire software stack failed, so they were left having to try and recover as gracefully as possible.
Folks are camping out to get the things, even without the SDK that you think is so crucial.
Ah yes, people who camp out for days to get their hands on a device that they would be able to just walk into a store and pick up without queuing a few days later - prime examples of people who have thought through their actions rationally.
So looking at all those products that you said Apple locks me into I asked you where the lock was? If AT&T is the only lock you can think of then congratulations, you've made the exception prove the rule.
It wasn't the only example I could think of - I cited several examples.
The AT&T exclusive deal was necessary not to lock people in, but to get a carrier to work with Apple who would allow Apple to implement all the great ideas it has.
You don't need an exclusivity deal for this - if they are really great features and the iPhone is a popular platform the telcos would implement the network-side support off their own backs because they could charge more for it.
Downloading music from iTunes, syncing from the computer, allowing photos to be synced to the computer rather than charging them to send them over the network, etc.
I'm unclear on how making data transfers over 802.11 requires any support from AT&T. Phones have been able to transfer files and synchronise with computers over 802.11 and bluetooth for years (without an exclusive contract with the telco). Nothing new here.
Updating the music without iTunes? You can on iPods and as for either iPhones or iPods, why would you want to? It's easier to do it via iTunes.
1. Because some people think iTunes sucks and want a choice of different applications to do the job
2. Because last time I checked there wasn't a version of iTunes that ran under Linux
3. Not every computer has iTunes installed - installing it is effort if you just want to access your device from someone else's machine as a 1-off thing.
And yes, there are some third party applications that do this stuff, but only because their developers reverse engineered the protocols involved. Apple could have documented the protocols or used standard ones.
Also 3G coverage is not ubiquitous in the US so a 3G only phone would end up hampering the iPhone's sales.
The iPhone is not a US-only phone. If Apple only consider the US market when producing their produc
The main reason it's locked to a single provider (I only know the story in the US) is that Apple is signed into an exclusivity contract with AT&T. I'm sure that's not ideal, from Apple's point of view.
They didn't have to sign an exclusivity deal - other cellphones do just fine without being tied to just one operator. Apple _chose_ to do it, probably because they could convince AT&T to pay them more that way (Apple make some serious amount of money from the kickbacks AT&T give them each time an iphone owner pays their monthly subscription).
If the article these comments relate to has any truth to it, then only about 30 people saw the completed iPhone before its release.
Does anyone consider this a good thing?! I certainly don't consider "oh, and we did no serious testing" to be a great selling point.
I can't see a reason that Apple would *want* to keep people out.
Licensing. If they can charge developers for each 3rd party utility sold then that makes them cash (look at the games console markets - kickbacks to the console manufacturer for every game sold). Also, it's possible that AT&T wanted to have some say on what applications people could use (for example, no VoIP).
I know you'll say something like 'I don't want to have to modify my device' but to tide people over until the official SDK, we have web-based applications (some of which are fantastic, and you wouldn't know weren't native), and we have jailbreaking which so far has appeared to be very simple and safe.
But customers shouldn't _have_ to hack their device in order to run 3rd party software - no smartphones require such things to run third party software (and remember, the hacks have dubious consequences with respect to your warranty and future upgrades).
Again, I know this argument won't quiet you, but on the point of iPod+iTunes, I wouldn't *want* to use my iPod with anything but iTunes
Just because _you_ don't want to do so doesn't mean that it should be made hard. Some of us don't even own a platform that could run iTunes (I have no use for either Windows or OS X). And yeah, people have reverse engineered the protocol and have produced third party utilities, but would it really have killed Apple to allow you to just dump tracks onto it as a USB mass storage device, or at least document the protocols?
in the end what matters to most developers is the size of the target market (in this case ipod touch and iphone owners) - the iphone is out for less then 6 months and THAT is why that 30% statistic I mentioned earlier matters.
That only applies to commercial developers - non-commercial developers don't care how big the market is - they are writing stuff that _they_ want.