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Exactly! | 128 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Exactly!
Authored by: jbb on Friday, January 25 2013 @ 11:07 PM EST
With a car or home, the lender has a lien on it, until it's paid off. I cannot sell them without the debt being cleared or at least transferred to the satisfaction of the lender.
As you say, there are already mechanism in place to deal with this. That's my point.

IMO adding DRM to physical devices so the owner does not have control is morally reprehensible. But no matter how bad DRM is, it's far worse for the government to make it illegal for the owner to bypass this DRM on her on devices. I agree with you that once the device is fully paid for, there is absolutely no need for the DRM and keeping the DRM in place after that should be illegal but that is not what the law says.

Once I buy a phone, I'm legally allowed to do many things with it such as destroy it. It is "my" phone. Why on earth should it be illegal for me to unlock the phone? I'm still on the hook for the entire cost of the phone. The penalties for early termination are huge. Why should my tax dollars go to fund the enforcement of the Terms of Service? The government is reduced to the level as acting like a hired stooge for the corporations.

The law you support that makes it illegal to break the digital locking of phones also makes it illegal to break digital locks on houses and cars and pacemakers and almost any product that has electronics inside of it. Don't you see how crazy this is? The idea that you don't really own or have control over the things you buy is like something right out of very depressing dystopian science-fiction. Even if there is a time limit on the DRM as you suggest, if the company goes belly up or has a data failure then you're totally out of luck.

Locking information and devices so they are not under the control of the "owner" is somewhat akin to poisoning a water supply. They are both acts that remove resources from general use. They are both detrimental to society as a whole. To use all the potential of a locked down phone you need the digital key. To drink from the poisoned water you need the antidote. Making it illegal to bypass the lock is somewhat akin to making it illegal to remove the poison from the water supply so it is usable again.

I'm not saying companies don't have the right to sell locked-down devices (although in a sane society this would be seen as morally reprehensible). I'm saying that it is crazy for the government to get involved and add criminal penalties to what is essentially a civil matter. On top of that, if the government is to be involved, they should be on the other side ensuring the rights of the owner, not taking them away. The purpose of the law is to protect the weak from the strong. It is a perversion when the system is corrupted into being a club used by the strong to pummel the weak.

---
Our job is to remind ourselves that there are more contexts
than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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