Jerry Brito

How Apple and Congress Limit iPhone Users' Freedom

Tim Lee in response to my post on the EFF’s attack on Apple:

[Consumers are] being deprived of the freedom to purchase legal jailbreaking tools. In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes it a felony to distribute products “primarily designed” for circumventing copy-protection schemes like the one on the iPhone. Breaking the law “willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage” can get you a half-million dollar fine and five years in prison. …

When Apple decided to lock down the iPhone, it was effectively invoking the force of criminal law against jailbreaking. That seems like a restriction on users’ freedom to me even if, like me and Jerry, you view freedom in terms of negative rights.

I agree with Tim that the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision is a misguided encroachment on personal liberty. But it’s Congress, not Apple, that is to blame. As far as I know, Apple didn’t lobby for the law, and iIt’s not their fault that locking down a phone can create criminal liabilities. But even if Apple willfully avails itself of the law, the solution is not to force Apple to be open through regulation, but instead to repeal the anti-circumvention law. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Apple isn’t depriving anyone of liberty; the government is.

Posted on Jun 4, 2012 • #link #apple #ios #openness #tim lee #dmca #copyright

Does the EFF favor government regulation of computer manufacturers?

You won’t find the words ‘government’ or ‘regulation’ in this post at EFF’s blog by Micah Lee and Peter Eckersley. They’re just appealing to Apple’s better angels to drop its closed ways. I’ve explained before why that’s a rational thing to do. But will the EFF assure supporters like me that it will never endorse government enforcement of a “bill of rights” like the one Lee and Eckersley propose today?

What I like about EFF is that it is a pro-liberty group, but I hope I’m not wrong in assuming that they view liberty as I do: as a negative concept. They never come out and say it, but it sure sounds like the authors believe that if Apple doesn’t come around to seeing the virtues of openness and provide an escape hatch, then maybe they should be forced to. I get that impression from passages like this:

When technology and phone companies defend the restrictions that they are imposing on their customers, the most frequent defense they offer is that it’s actually in their customers’ interest to be deprived of liberty: “If we let people do what they want with their pocket computers, they will do stupid things with them. You will be safer and happier in our walled compound than you would be outside.”

Imposing on their customers? Seems to me like the vast majority of Apple’s customers are choosing these restrictions. It’s not Apple that thinks its customers are stupid, and is therefore “imposing” a locked phone on them, it’s Lee and Eckersley who seem to have a low regard for customers’ preferences and want to impose an open device on them.

We can of course debate whether customers are being short-sighted in the choice they’re making, whether the benefits of closed platforms outweigh the costs, and whether we have the best of both worlds right now, but you can’t say that customers are being “deprived of their liberty.” What liberty are they being deprived of? Does the EFF believe there is a positive right to mobile computers that run arbitrary code?

I repeat my plea: Can EFF assure us that it will not support government regulation of computer manufacturers?

Posted on May 31, 2012 • 1 note • #eff #apple #openness