
EFF Wins Renewal of Smartphone Jailbreaking Rights - enobrev
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-renewal-smartphone-jailbreaking-rights-plus-new-legal-protections-video
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joe_the_user
Wow,

The whole "rights renewal" celebration just reinforces to me how sinister the
DMCA actually is - all these "rights" depend on Library of Congress
administrative rulings and thus are inherently revocable, in contrast to how
they ought to be; _inalienable_ and all that.

~~~
Mythbusters
DMCA is ineffective anyways in doing what it was designed to do. Don't know
why they have kept it around. Just search for NFL on youtube and you'd know
what I mean

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denzil_correa
_If you bought your gadget, you own it, and you should be able to install
whatever software you please without facing potential legal threat_

Such a simple thing but the folks who bought DMCA would never get it. Sigh!

~~~
lukifer
Devil's advocate: what if locked-down devices can open up new businesses that
would not exist otherwise? Say, free cell phones in the developing world which
are forcibly tied to a particular carrier and ecosystem to make up the cost?

Ownership is a fuzzy concept, especially in the days of intellectual property.
It's a mish-mash of natural law, social contract, precedent, and state
violence. If I "own" an MP3, why can't I remix and share it? If I "own" a
piece of software, how come I don't get its source code to alter as I wish?

We have a historical bias that customers own the atoms, but creators own the
ideas. But this is an arbitrary line that culture invented as an economic
compromise, not an intrinsic law of the universe.

Having said all that, I'd prefer our culture side more with consumer rights,
even at the cost of closing business opportunities. I'd love it if Apple-style
vendor lock-in was illegal, fair use was more rigorously defended, copyrights
were shortened, etc. But in any case, we should take ownership of our cultural
trade-offs, instead of assuming that our animal instincts regarding "property"
are inherently correct.

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jrockway
Selling humans as food would "open up new business that would not exist
otherwise", but we're not going to do that, are we? So we might as well have
phones that can run free software too. Not everything is about "business
opportunities"; human rights come first.

~~~
lukifer
That's the extreme end of the spectrum; a similar issue that is less obvious
is whether the sale of human organs should be legal. Some claim that a
legitimate market for organs would result in more saved lives, and less black-
market violence; on the other hand, there is obvious potential for
dehumanization and perverse incentives, to say the least.

> So we might as well have phones that can run free software too. Not
> everything is about "business opportunities"; human rights come first.

I agree with this on paper, but on a long timeline, human rights are best
served by technological progress, which tends to be accelerated through well-
balanced profit motives. (Note that this may or may not involve greed;
sometimes a profit motive is simply "now I can afford to pay the 500 people
needed to get this thing off the ground".)

All told, I agree with you; I'm deeply frustrated that democratic socialism is
so thoroughly demonized in the US, and that corporate profits come first, with
human rights as a distant second (or worse). But humans trading with one
another has been an incredibly potent wealth generation machine, usually
benefitting even the very poor. And trade cannot happen without ownership. I
want Star Trek Communism as much as anybody, but we're not there yet.

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britta
Here's another discussion from a couple days ago about these DMCA exemption
rulings: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4700010>

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hayksaakian
Except tablets, because herp derp DRM

