Speaking of forcing companies into doing whatever a national government sees as its political policy ...
How about the US forcing other companies (Huawei) into not doing business with countries it doesn't like (Iran) and attempting to extradite foreign individuals (CFO of Huawei) to advance that aim.
I'm not saying what CCP is doing is correct but the US has been doing the same shit for decades. Governments have always used companies as pawns for political purpose.
The restrictions on H1Bs is only a temporarily restraint and will only hasten the transition to 100% remote teams.
Soon people will no longer be complaining about Infosys and Tata Consulting but instead about Toptal, GitLab and Zapier - and there will be no regulatory way to stop them.
Politicians can only protect your jobs for so long.
Politicians don't care about American's jobs. If they did they would have reigned in the H1B abuse years ago.
Disney had their IT department literally training their H1B replacements before being laid off. That was blatantly illegal. Nothing happened to them. How may other companies got away with this without notice because they weren't as stupid as Disney?
We can rake Zuck across the coals but Disney is untouchable. That's what politicians care about.
Exactly this. I work for Anthem, and they are implementing a plan to move the majority of their IT development work to a captive subsidiary in India. This is increasingly the model.
His methods were illegal but can we please recognize this guy for being an ABSOLUTE HERO for unlocking all those phones and giving the people what they wanted.
A contract was violated when these phones were unlocked. In return for a locked phone the buyer received a subsidy from AT&T on the cost of the hardware. I don't want people to violate contracts with me, why should I recognize someone as a hero just because I don't like the contract?
To be absolutely clear, I don't like locked phones, either, so I always buy non-carrier-locked devices and it means I pay the full, unsubsidized hardware price.
Contracts are violated all the time - it's called efficient breach. Most of the time, there are no penalties either. If AT&T overcharges you, and you don't notice - they just take your money without consequence.
If you can get away with efficient breach of contract, do it. As a former lawyer who write contracts all day, I will give you a virtual high five.
Sure it may be legal but is it whats morally good? If someone / your employer entered into a contract with you to pay you for your legal services for a year and then efficiently breached the terms would you give them a high five and be fine with it? In your example, would you give AT&T a high five for efficiently breaching their contract and taking money from a subscriber?
Also I'm not sure if you're using the right terminology. From Wex, Efficient breach: A breach of contract in which the breaching party finds it cheaper to pay damages than to perform under the contract. [1]
You're not paying them when you unlock your phone out of contract so it wouldn't be efficient breach. It's just breach of contract. Also as you know it's not really breach of contract or not until a judge says so, so you can't just call contract violations that happen all the time an efficient breach.
I have a bit of legal education from years ago and I understand that there are many things that are legally "right" but there are other things to consider too.
> A contract was violated when these phones were unlocked.
That doesn't make it wrong. Fun fact, contracts are violated all the time, and not just between individuals and huge telecom companies, but also between large companies. If you have an issue with it you sue for breach of contract.
Sure. But the same generality applies to contracts, especially contracts of adhesion - their results aren't necessarily beneficial to society, or morally good.
Phone unlocking itself is definitely beneficial to society and morally good. An incumbent network provider being able to leverage a small market inefficiency into indefinite bondage is not a good thing, regardless of how its justified. Never mind the e-waste and surveillance issues.
What’s morally bad about unlocking a phone? Literally suggesting that it is morally bad to modify a device you own. If att doesn’t want people to mess with these phones than they shouldn’t sell it.
What contract? Most of these contracts have terms for canceling early. Like a fee to cover the remaining cost of the phone. After that point, it's their phone and I don't see a problem with someone using their property on another network.
> When your contract is up they will unlock the phone for you.
Not necessarily automatically.
Maybe you are referring to the FCC ruling on Verizon's request?
(I have not been following this too closely but here is what I've read)
My understanding is Verizon will (in the future) fight this ruling as well.
> "After the expiration of the 60-day period, Verizon must automatically unlock the handsets at issue here regardless of whether: (1) the customer asks for the handset to be unlocked, or (2) the handset is fully paid off. Thus, at the end of the initial 60 days, the unlocking rule will operate just as it does now, and Verizon’s customers will be able to use their unlocked handsets on other technologically compatible networks. The only exception to the rule will be that Verizon will not have to automatically unlock handsets that it determines within the 60-day period to have been purchased through fraud."
I don't remember the exact wording, but the last time I had a subsidized phone (with T-Mobile) it was made clear to me that the phone could be unlocked after a period of time. The period was shorter than the contract period. T-Mobile even unlocked the phone for me before that time was expired when I explained that I was traveling to Europe and wanted to swap the SIM when abroad.
>T-Mobile even unlocked the phone for me before that time was expired when I explained that I was traveling to Europe and wanted to swap the SIM when abroad.
Thanks for posting that, as I had no idea it was possible. I personally don't buy locked anymore, but last year that definitely would have saved me some trouble.
>it was made clear to me that the phone could be unlocked after a period of time. The period was shorter than the contract period.
I am with T-Mobile as well, and IIRC there are two main options for unlocking:
Unlocking the phone doesn't break the contract though. AT&T is still going to charge you even if you stuff a different SIM in the phone. If you cancel your service then they'll tack on the ETF that covers the cost of the device. They wouldn't be losing money unless the guy was unlocking unactivated phones, which is an interesting legal area because technically he may never have entered into a contract with AT&T in the first place.
First, a subsidy can exist in many ways. It's not explicitly "when someone gives you money". It's often the case that phones are discounted through deals such as buy one get one (BOGO), for example. When you purchase those two phones they are tied to a contract that states you'll carry new lines of service through the carrier that subsidized the phones for a period of time. That's one example of a common US carrier subsidy.
Second is when costs of a phone are spread out over a contract period it is credit, not a subsidy. The carrier gives the phone to the buyer on credit since they haven't paid for it up front. This is often done now so people can buy phones they may not have the capital for up front. In this way the carrier lessens churn by locking buyers into a continuous upgrade cycle. If they want out of their contract they have to pay the balance of the phone and any early termination fees (ETFs). To imply these are "hidden installments" is disingenuous as the terms are laid out in the contract.
Counterpoint: carriers don't always make it easy to unlock your phone even if they allow you to do so as per the contract. It can involve lots of back and forth with clueless monkeys in their customer service department.
There's also the issue of legitimately buying/acquiring a phone, finding it to be locked and having no idea which carrier it is locked to nor how to go about getting it unlocked. It isn't an easy process even if everything is legitimate and the phone was acquired legally and not stolen nor its IMEI/ESN being banned anywhere.
The truth is, phone unlocking is designed to be a shit-show on purpose and practices like these are just a natural consequence of that. Make unlocking straightforward and user-friendly (or just don't lock phones to begin with) and the market for these illegal things will dry up significantly.
> There's also the issue of legitimately buying/acquiring a phone, finding it to be locked and having no idea which carrier it is locked to nor how to go about getting it unlocked. It isn't an easy process even if everything is legitimate and the phone was acquired legally and not stolen nor its IMEI/ESN being banned anywhere.
It sounds like you're talking about buying a used phone. Sure - there's danger there. Danger which can be completely mitigated by buying at the owner's provider's store, and having an employee look up that info before giving over money.
If you want to avoid all that business, it's really, really easy to just buy from the manufacturer. If you do that, they always come unlocked, not stolen and not banned.
Broadly: locked phones suck. I would never buy one (unless it was used and on a network I'm already with). But I also know several people who cannot save money. At all. Subsidized phone plans are specifically tailored for those people. The subsidized experience will always be worse than strict ownership simply because incentives between the provider and the user are not aligned. But for those people who can't save money, I think this is the best option they have.
Yes, there is danger, however it's artificially manufactured danger. There's no reason why the process should be so awful. If phone locking does need to exist (it doesn't but that's besides the point), why is there still no webpages on manufacturers' or carriers' websites allowing me to quickly check whether a phone is locked based on its IMEI and whether it can be unlocked (so whether the previous account is in good standing and the device isn't stolen)?
I remember knowingly buying a locked iPad. Even figuring out the carrier it was locked to was difficult (why isn't that displayed on the system information screen or on the error when you use a different SIM?) and Apple were of no help either. I bought it because I knew this bullshit and decided to go through it anyway but it isn't a pleasant experience and shouldn't be considered normal.
There's also the issue of recycling and e-waste. You're telling me to buy new, which is fair but what about the countless locked devices that are perfectly functional and yet stuck in limbo because nobody can figure out how to unlock them (even if they are otherwise not stolen and the previous account was in good standing)? Should we just accept that these devices are essentially bricked and can go for scrap because it's not worth the trouble to unlock them?
This is a tertiary issue, but for carriers using locked bootloaders unlock them when you unlock your phone to go to another carrier? If not, then the device that's bought and paid for is still not wholly owned by the customer.
I've never owned a phone with a bootloader I couldn't unlock myself (unofficially or otherwise), so I don't know if this is the case or not.
I would argue that that your latter assertion is not the case, at least not here in the US. When I got my first cellphone in the mid-00s, you bought your phone on an installment plan from the carrier as part of the service contract, the purchase installments were rolled up with your and service fees, and that's the way the world worked, regardless of which carrier you chose. Bringing your own device was not a thing.
It wasn't until later that I learned that cellphones could exist independent of their carrier networks and be unlocked therefrom; that one (in theory) could purchase a phone somewhere else, and then bring it to the the carrier of one's choice to be configured to interface with that network. And I only learned of that fact because I am nerd who likes to learn as much as he can about anything he becomes involved in.
Most people aren't nerds or have nerd-like tendencies. Most people simply want a magic rectangle so they can have Snapchat and Twitter in their pocket. The carriers do little to advertise the fact purchasing phones independently is even an option. So I'd say, no, most people don't know what they're getting into when they sign up.
And lest you say that said terms are right there in the contract, while true, be honest, when was the last time you carefully read and understood all 40-pages of the EULA when you have a more pressing problem to solve? I suspect even you commonly simply click the "I Agree" to get that damn boilerplate out of the way so you can Buy The Thing already.
The people can get what they want by buying an unlocked phone. It's not like it's hard. I haven't bought a provider-locked phone in over a decade, because I move and travel a lot. This guy is a criminal, plain and simple.
Most people that pirate stuff never would have bought it to begin with. If pirated stuff wasn’t available, they’d have just gone without or gone with a free alternative. I don’t expect it has much impact over all.
The profit margins we are eating into is exactly ZERO. Why? because if most of the time i need to actually pay for it, i'll just use the cheaper alternative: Google Fonts.
There will be times when I need to use this font and make something that will go live. That's the time to buy a font.
If font making is not profitable, then don't make fonts.
Someone is making a product and telling you what you can and cannot do with it, and then you decide that none of that applies to you, because...I don't know, you're entitled to use it if you happen to see it?
"There will be times when I need to use this font and make something that will go live. That's the time to buy a font." - that depends on the license that the font foundry grants you.
"If font making is not profitable [due to lost sales via piracy], then don't make fonts"...some kind of mental gymnastics there. "I will take freely from you and if you can't afford to let me do that, it's your fault for making it in the first place" is a tough ground to stand on.
Most of the people who are taking your fonts are also making a product. We understand the need to make a living and the difficulty of making a product. I hope you get paid for what you do but you don't get to decide the market size for your product when it is a digital good. The market does.
There is a market for paid specialty fonts used on a website. People should pay for that. However, there is not much of a market for paid fonts used in Sketch when developers and designers are testing out different concepts they MIGHT use in production. You complaining that you are failing to monetizing off that non-existent market is completely bonkers for me.
The ground I stand on is reality. You're living in a fantasy land where musicians still get paid big dollars for records and where journalism is a lucrative career.
> You don't get to decide the market size for your product when it is a digital good. The market does.
"It's easy for me to acquire content against the content creator's wishes, therefore I should dictate the market."
> There is not much of a market for paid fonts used in Sketch when developers and designers are testing out different concepts they MIGHT use in production.
Never said there was. There's an easy solution: don't take a font that doesn't belong to you.
This all boils down to "I want something and don't want to pay what the creator thinks it's worth." It's disrespectful, and it's straight-up entitlement. Just don't use the font. Nobody owes you a particular typeface.
> The ground I stand on is reality.
The reality is that it's easy to do the wrong thing here, so you do it, then try to pretzel your way into thinking that it's not morally wrong. Think someone's overcharging? Then don't buy the product.
The reality is that most people like myself are continue to do this regardless of your morality rant. The problem is that your morality argument is based on licensing terms and the legal system. The internet has its own morality that is somewhat untethered to legality: use what you can get, pay for what you feel you should. You can claim that this violates copyright or morality but people vote with their clicks and git clones - there is nothing you can do to change that.
And you can scream and write these type of blog posts all you want but really it just ads to the Streisand effect. You think this blog post net increased or decreased the awareness and use of github as a source of fonts?
> The internet has its own morality that is somewhat untethered to legality: use what you can get, pay for what you feel you should.
I see you chose more of a passive tone here, as though you're just a cog in the machine, totally helpless and unable to take action on your own.
The Internet is what people make of it, in part based on the sum of individual choices.
> And you can scream
Not screaming.
> it just ads to the Streisand effect
Possibly. Maybe it alerts GitHub devs to the problem and they try to come up with a solve. If font creators read it, they can work with repo owners to get things in order. For my part, it pointed out a problem that I can take steps to mitigate in the future with my own repos.
Anyways, obviously I can't stop you or anyone else from taking digital goods at will. But in part, I wish that people would be more transparent about their motives instead of talking themselves into thinking that they're not actually doing something wrong.
Just say "I take things that don't belong to me because I deserve to have them, it's easy to do so, and I won't get in trouble". At least it'd be an honest assessment.
There are enough fonts. It wouldn't be a great loss for humanity if we didn't get as many new fonts because of decreased profit margins in the font design industry.
Because it is very extremely unlikely that the font license the font purchaser paid for allows them to distribute it to the public.
I could see this happening in a repo by Google/MS/FB/etc., but it probably would be extremely expensive for them. Any other instance of this sort of sharing is unlikely enough that it can be assumed to be illegitimate.
There are enough <programs/apps/blogs/websites/paintings/songs>. It wouldn't be a great loss for humanity if we didn't get as many new fonts because of decreased profit margins in the font design industry.
