|
|
|
| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 05 2013 @ 10:00 PM EST |
I surely could have used more obvious sarcasm tags in my original post. But
there's a very big, very real difference between unlocking (the topic of the
link) and custom firmware (citing parent at 5:14pm).
The unlocking petition merely asks wireless providers to release the
technological bonds that enforce a sort of security interest or lien in the
device. In other words, they're being asked to not encumber the exercise of a
property interest to which they are no longer a party. Adverse impacts to
influential industries: negligible. Economic value created in the aftermarket:
modest. Legitimacy of industry complaint: essentially none. It's a no-brainer:
do it.
Blanket rights to install independently developed CFW on any device of interest,
on the other hand, fundamentally breaks business models that depend on loss
leader hardware and sale of licenses to make it up. If someone buys, say, a
PlayStation 4 for general computing and never buys a single licensed game,
Sony's down hundreds of dollars, and the rest of the console industry is in
roughly the same boat. What's more, the tools to make that possible, now
available to the public, would probably be bent to sinister ends easily and
quickly enough. Adverse impacts to influential industries: massive, some
existential threats. Economic value created in the aftermarket: possibly quite
large. Legitimacy of industry complaint: strong. Imagine the lobbying force
that would be deployed by industries defending their "lives", then
figure the likelihood of assembling enough citizens/funds into a comparable
force. If such a thing were to pass, I suspect the most interesting products
would be exempted.
I hope it's not overly cynical to note the limits of the system, or to observe
that "real" capacitors and "real" governments have sometimes
undesirable side effects and distortions not present in the ideal textbook
versions!
-j[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
