iPhone Owners Demand To See Apple Source Code 298
CWmike writes "iPhone owners charging Apple and AT&T with breaking antitrust laws asked a federal judge this week to force Apple to hand over the iPhone source code, court documents show. The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2007, accuses Apple and AT&T of violating antitrust laws, including the Sherman Act, by agreeing to a multi-year deal that locks US iPhone owners into using the mobile carrier. On Wednesday, the plaintiffs asked US District Court Judge James Ware to compel Apple to produce the source code for the iPhone 1.1.1 software, an update that Apple issued in September 2007. The update crippled iPhones that had been unlocked, or 'jailbroken,' so that they could be used with mobile providers other than AT&T. The iPhone 1.1.1 'bricked' those first-generation iPhones that had been hacked, rendering them useless and wiping all personal data from the device. The plaintiffs say that the source code is necessary to determine whether all iPhones were given the same 1.1.1 update, and whether it was designed to brick all or just some hacked iPhones."
And I demand a pony and some ice cream! (Score:3, Insightful)
Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now, the iPhone is only unique in that its popular so people actually care that only one service provider can support it. I'll bet a cookie that the terms of the service agreement let Apple & AT&T do more or less what ever they want with what is legally still their hardware.
So even if it comes out of all of this that the "bricking" was targeted, I doubt it will change anything in the end.
I agree (Score:2, Informative)
How true. Anyway...
Apple did in fact approach the other carriers (IIRC), but they refused to put into their infrastructure the ability for the iPhone to download messages without the user having to dial up for them. The iPhone owners I've talked to really like that feature and it allows them to jump around messages without having to listen to them all from the beginning of the queue - one o
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I don't know if you're referring to some official bit of information, but the rumor at the time of the first iPhone release was that Apple approached Verizon before AT&T, but Verizon wouldn't agree to Apple's terms. The terms included:
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I doubt this happened given that "at the time of the first iPhone release" and, just like now, the iPhone is a GSM based phone. Verizon is CDMA. These negotiations would have had to occur when Apple was designing the iPhone.
This doesn't invalidate the rest of the terms you describe. But, the iPhone would have needed to be designed for CDMA - you just can't swap out cellular systems like we can with a hard drive. The entire circuit board would need to be redesigned so that it would pass FCC certification
"Trojan Horse" (Score:2)
Call it fluffheaded fantasizing on my part, but I could envision the much-maligned iPhone 1.1.1 update as being part of a wonderful Trojan Horse attack.
And no, I don't mean against the industry of hacked or modded iPhones, I mean against the industry practice of locking phones to specific carriers in the first place.
Yeah, it's goofy, I know, but think about it: for a very long time, the mobile networks have been calling the shots and tilting the playing field their way. Phones would be designed to meet thos
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Oh, yes, that's why I have been able to take phones on my family plan and put another carrier's SIM card in them and have them work. Yes, really locked down. The phones were locked when I bought them, but the carrier gave me the code to unlock them at no charge to me.
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Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now, the iPhone is only unique in that its popular so people actually care that only one service provider can support it.
Just because phones have been wired to contracts for years, doesn't mean it was ever legal, or that it failed to be illegal product tying.
It may very well be that it wasn't an issue until now, or there wasn't enough outrage or damage to actually bring the matter to the courts.
The iPhone is certainly a very unique product compared
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Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now, the iPhone is only unique in that its popular so people actually care that only one service provider can support it.
This seems doubtful - phones have been on contracts, including only one service provider, and things change because the Iphone comes along with 1-2% market share? I don't thinks so.
The only thing that's changed is that the Iphone stories get publicity. For all we know, this kind of thing has happened with the major players like Nokia, Sam
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I'll bet a cookie that the terms of the service agreement let Apple & AT&T do more or less what ever they want with what is legally still their hardware.
No it's not. It was sold. So it is NOT their hardware. How hard is this to understand. If you do not wish to sell the hardware make sure that you specify that it is NOT sold, so the consumer is not under the impression that he bought it!!!!!
I want my cookie now....
and we may just get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now,
That doesn't make it right. In fact, in many countries, what Apple is doing with the iPhone is illegal and Apple must sell them without a contract, or unlocked with a contract.
I'll bet a cookie that the terms of the service agreement let Apple & AT&T do more or less what ever they want with what is legally still their hardware.
Legally? Are you kidding? You paid for the phone, it's yours. Yes, even with a contract, because if you break the co
and a pony (Score:4, Funny)
Dear Apple:
Please also include a pony with the next release of the iphone software.
kthxbi,
iPhone owners
Re:and a pony (Score:5, Funny)
Theres an app for that. iQuestrian Sports
careful what you wish for (Score:5, Funny)
That pony included with your iPhone will only eat iFood, use iWater, and can only be housed in iStable. Unfortunately, all of which must be purchased from Apple as well.
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Unfortunately, all of which must be purchased from Apple as well.
And will be overpriced... sorry, I mean will have "high end features" and "really good support." ;)
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Unfortunately, the pony is doomed to die. Even if the pony doesn't die of thirst waiting for iWater to be approved, it will starve because Apple quite possibly maybe think about implementing an app with similar features in the future, so they rejected iFood.
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Good luck with that (Score:2)
Shooting the moon or their foot (Score:2)
They have to know that they're never going to get the source code. A) It'd be an incredibly earth-shattering precedent, and B) it's beside the point to what they're charging. It doesn't matter of Apple and AT&T colluded to brick one hacked phone, odd-numbered hacked-phones, or even hacked phones on Verizon's network. If the issue is the practice of tying the purchase of an iPhone to the purchase of an AT&T service plan, the source code is not relevant. It's a contractual question, not a technical
Re:Shooting the moon or their foot (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure it'd be totally irrelevant. If you'd go so far as to brick my phone as an "f-you" to protect your partners network exclusivity, I'd guess that maybe that's an argument for unfair collusion of the antitrust sort? I am not a lawyer, of course.
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"They have to know that they're never going to get the source code."
While I don't know what they "have to know," I do know that source code does get disclosed in litigation--oftentimes under protective orders to avoid commercial disclosure. The breath test machine cases are an excellent example of this. Copyright cases are another kind of case where this kind of material gets disclosed.
Saying (in italics) that "the source code is not relevant" does not advance the argument. The test for evidence discover
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I once was subcontracted by a friend to examine source code provided to him under court seal about what I believe had been a software patent case but might have been misappropriation of trade secrets or something similar. The source code was not released publicly, it was just released to my friend who was serving as a consultant to the plaintiff who we will call party A. In my opinion, party A had patented linear interpolation and the whole thing should have been thrown out but that wasn't what the case w
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They have to know that they're never going to get the source code. A) It'd be an incredibly earth-shattering precedent...
SCOs lawyers received a server from IBM with every single version that IBM ever produced of the software both companies were arguing about.
Antitrust? How? And copyright cancellation? WTF? (Score:2)
So, yeah, the iPhone's great and everything, but I don't think Apple has even 20% of the smartphone market. How exactly does an antitrust suit work against a player that doesn't have anything resembling monopoly power in the market in which it operates?
Not only that -- why exactly would relief by gained by Apple turning over the source to the iPhone OS? Canceling copyright is pretty serious business, there'd better be a pretty compelling reason to do it, both in terms of justifying the cancellation and str
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Well, you see, Apple is Teh Evil.
Google,T-Mobile, and the G1 are the most awesomest awesome ever conceived of.
Well, until they actually gain some appreciable market share and then we must deride them for the very same things we praised them for once we find the next geeky savior of the world.
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I believe the bricking is the difference. Does Google deliberately brick G1's at T-Mobile's behest to keep them from going to the competition?
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Probably because, while monopolies are specifically a subject of antitrust law, they aren't the only thing it covers. Antitrust laws deal with a wide range of anticompetitive and unfair practices in trade.
The demand for the source code isn't as a remedy, its a disc
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You do understand that if they try to use your theory they will fail miserably, right? The reason is that what you have described is not "restraint of trade". It is an exclusive distribution deal. AT&T and Apple have the same kind of exclusive arrangement as a band and a record label.
The exclusive distribution deal between Apple and AT&T does not restrain the trade of other carriers or the customers. It does not prevent customers from buying and/or using phones with other carries. What it does do is
Hahahahaha! (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck with that (Score:2)
Wasted effort in the wrong place. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not force the carriers to offer official unlocks for all currently locked phones?
I've been making some humble efforts on behalf of my fellow Canadians with Fido and the CRTC.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=817293 [macrumors.com]
I was able to get as far as getting a phone call from the office of the president of my carrier Fido. If enough people did the same with their carriers and their country's regulatory body, we might actually get somewhere.
Re:Wasted effort in the wrong place. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. This is not really Apple's fault. Jobs famously called a meeting of wireless execs who were trying to "sell" him, "orifices." The way that he got things pushed through with the iPhone was by offering an exclusive. If it became illegal to have exclusives, this would be a boon to Apple, because then they could get out from under AT & T and sell to anyone on any carrier. It would be a boon to every handset manufacturer.
The issue here is not Apple or the iPhone or even AT & T; it's the US's ridiculous lack of regulations on this market (same thing in Japan, where I live, though). The carriers need to get the hell out of the handset market and just do their damned orifice jobs. They want to be retailers, but they are very obviously utility companies. This and net neutrality are basically the same thing: Utility companies aspiring to be retailers or content companies. They need to be smacked down as the knuckle-draggers they are.
Call it what it is! (Score:2, Insightful)
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I don't own an iphone, but I know I signed no such licensing agreement when I bought my xbox360. I'm betting if MS actually bricked xbox360s they'd be in a lot more [legal] trouble.
I demand to see Kristen Stewart naked! (Score:2, Funny)
As the owner of a copy of Twilight I have the right to see her naked. My friends and I plan to file a class action lawsuit against the makers of the movie and Miss Stewart. As film owners our rights are being ignored and we won't stand for it!
Source code leaked (Score:2)
The source code was leaked, unfortunately it's not too exciting:
How is my Sprint HTC Touch Pro... (Score:2)
... any different?
Even if HTC offers the same model to another carrier, they aren't offering the SPRINT one. And in line with that is the limit to Spring. I cannot use it on another network if I choose. I am forced to exclusively use my hardware on a Sprint network.
Anti-trust crap happens all day all over the place. It is almost funny to see how few of these blatant offenses to competition actually get pursued.
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In response/support to what I was saying, a true competitive market is as this:
Some companies make phones
Some companies offer service
That's it. The europeans do it well. I loved it when I lived there. My phone had a swiss number, a german number, and an italian number. All depending on which SIM card I put in it. I paid for minutes and texts as I used them.
Why oh why is the american business model becoming "do as much anti-trust as you can, abuse the consumer, and pay penalties if you're caught".
WHY?
You need the source code to determine this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? You need the source code to determine the phone was locked into a carrier?
How about reading the service agreement.
Code Review? (Score:2)
So, who is going to review the code in this closed process? The judge? :) Hehehe... I can see him now powering up is new Mac Book pro, reviewing the source code and exclaiming "There it is... the smoking gun!"
In all seriousness, how would they manage this process? Would the plaintiff and defendant hire expert programmers to comb through the code looking for evidence? Would it then be presented to the judge and he would decide? Would he even know how to decide?
I can see it now - "Your honor, you can clearly
1.1.1 brick not purposeful (Score:5, Informative)
I know it's cool to hate Apple these days, but seriously, get the facts first...
The people who had 1.1.1 phones "bricked" were people who had unlocked their phones with the original (buggy) version of AnySIM that subtly corrupted the seczone where phone locks and IMEI were stored. It was corrupted in such a way that it wasn't obvious until the baseband was upgraded to the next version (which occurred in 1.1.1) where things totally stopped working.
Apple never deliberately tried to break anyone with an unlock, it just so happens that the unlockers had damaged their seczones and prevented the update from being applied cleanly.
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Apple never deliberately tried to break anyone with an unlock, it just so happens that the unlockers had damaged their seczones and prevented the update from being applied cleanly.
The *entire point* of this story is that they want to see the source code so they can discover if that's the case or not.
Re:First brick (Score:5, Funny)
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No kidding. The day Apple has to hand over their source code? That’d be a cold day in Hell...
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Unless you were saying that Texas is worse than hell which may or may not be true.
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Not necessarily [wikipedia.org]. According to Dante, the ninth circle of Hell is a frozen wasteland reserved for the most severe traitors and betrayers.
Now, if only the Beltway [wikipedia.org] were the first circle, then the Capitol/White House would be the ninth... damn traitors to the Constitution.
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cold indeed as frosty as the sheen on brushed aluminum.
It doesn't seem that unlikely to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is known that this update caused problems on these phones. If it was intentional it would (supposedly) be a violation of the law. Assuming the judge thinks that the plaintiff's case has merit, and Apple cannot provide any other sort of evidence to the contrary, then it seems perfectly reasonable for the him to require that code be submitted as evidence. That doesn't mean that it will be open to the world, just to those people involved in the case who need to see it.
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When Palm tried to use Apple's software in a way Apple didn't like (syncing the Pre with iTunes), it got broken pretty fast - more than once. It's a different situation - Pre is a competitor to the iPhone and Apple aren't obliged to support a competitor. But Apple was going out and changing iTunes to make it not sync with the Pre, it's not like changes Apple made in normal development just *happened* to break the Pre. Whereas nobody would have batted an eyelid if Apple had accidentally broken the Pre, a
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Seeing how aggressively they've pursued that case, you can see how they might get accused of doing a similar thing for the iPhone. I can just about imagine that Apple would have the arrogance to take a hard line on iPhone jailbreaking but I'd be mightily surprised if they had the legal and PR foolhardiness to actually deliberately brick devices.
They just give you the standard boilerplate EULA saying "this might brick a modded iPhone, so don't sue us" and then ignore you, assuming they can do whatever they want once you hit "yes".
At least, I assume that's what they did. If they left out the EULA, then they are complete fucking morons regardless of their intent.
IANAL.
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If you don't click YES then you cannot use the phone that you paid $300 for. You have a contract that you will have to pay $100 / month for the next 2 years. If you do not click YES then you might as well have taken that money out of the ATM and set it on fire.
YES | NO
Duress, plain and simple, just like every other EULA.
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Yeah, my first thought was:
Sigh, then I actually read the post... so,
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However, needing to manually do firmware updates can be a hassle. But I think its worth it.
Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, consider the following formulation: You buy a product. It's your property. The person who sold it to you doesn't like the way you're using it, so they break the product you bought. They don't compensate you for your lost product or offer a refund.
Are you of the opinion that this is generally acceptable behavior on the part of the vendor?
Now yes, it's more complicated than that. You have software licensing terms, and you have warranty terms. People arguably broke their own phones while voiding their warranty. And IIRC, Apple wasn't very strict about refusing to replace bricked phones.
Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
You buy a product. It's your property. The person who sold it to you doesn't like the way you're using it, so they break the product you bought.
Consider further: before buying the product, the vendor offers to pay for half of the product (making it much more accessible) if you sign a contract to use it the way they tell you to use it, for two whole years.
I'm not an Apple fanboy by any stretch, but people shouldn't sign the contract if they don't agree to the terms. 'Nuff said.
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Why should they, besides the fact that you want them to do so?
Your statement boils down to "They should do this because that is what I want them to do because it benefits me and not them."
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Why should they, besides the fact that you want them to do so?
a) They can change carriers at will - maybe get a pre paid plan on their phone
b) They can just stop using the phone if they don't want to keep paying for two years
c) When they move to another country they can just pull out the SIM and dump in another local one
d) They can buy another phone after just a few months if they want and throw the last one into the dustbin.
Seriously dude, there are soooo many benefits to having a non contractual fully unlocked phone. I'm surprised I have to point them ou
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Those are all benefits to you, not they, who would be AT&T and Apple.
The question is:
Perhaps you should read the comments before commenting.
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Why should they, besides the fact that you want them to do so?
Your statement boils down to "They should do this because that is what I want them to do because it benefits me and not them."
Oh, I see. So it's a contract of adhesion [wikipedia.org] since there is no unlocked version. If you listen to your legal team (who will approach the issue from the "what's the easiest case to argue" angle and not the "what can we maybe technically get away with" angle) you'll sell an unlocked version.
IANAL.
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That is all very well and good, except you didn't answer the question:
Both AT&T and Apple benefit from their exclusive distribution deal. How would they benefit from what you suggest?
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Nobody forced anybody to buy anything.... Unless you claim Steve Jobs has psychic powers that forced you to buy iPhones....
Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an Electrical Engineer with two kids. I have never owned a cell phone and I have never missed having one. I've been offended by the "go fuck yourself" fees that the carriers put on the bills. 911 / system access / wireless access -- they're all just bullshit fees that only go to the bottom line. So really, anyone with a cell is a victim of marketing. (You might as well be wearing Axe.)
I've been called out on not owning a cell more than once -- "What? your wife could go into labour at any moment and you don't have a cell?"
"She knows where I am and they have a phone here."
"What if there's an emergency?"
"If it's big enough, cells won't work. Just out of curiousity, do you have pre-arranged meeting areas if there IS a big emergency? Do you have 72 hours of food and water at your house?"
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If Apple is bricking phones that have been carrier unlocked (which an owner has the LEGAL right to do) then they should be held accountable.
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Perhaps you believe that there should be no anti trust cases. Perhaps you believe that AT&T in its early years was doing nothing wrong.
Perhaps you believe that the "free market" is actually free.
Oh wait....
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Nobody paid for half of my iPhone.
I didn't jailbreak my phone and my phone was never bricked. I don't really have a horse in this race. I'm really just suggesting that if Apple really bricked phones on purpose, that doesn't seem quite right to me, even if it's legal.
Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd take it one farther than that. Consider also: Years down the road, AT&T gets out of the wireless phone business. Your iPhone still works great, and you're really attached to it. Even though the contract is expired and the service provider who's interests were being protected is defunct, you STILL cannot make use of something YOU legally own.
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Sounds a bit like the shitstorm from the XBox Live bans. Hard to believe there's terms of services on hardware devices, but it's a brave new world.
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You buy a product. It's your property. The person who sold it to you doesn't like the way you're using it, so they break the product you bought.
What of the what, now? You buy a product with software that is titled iPhoneOS 1.1. You jailbreak the phone to do what you want to it. You can continue to do what you want to it, unless you decide to download 1.1.1 which means, with the jailbreak software you added, your phone no longer works and you need to wipe and reinstall.
So when you say "they break the prod
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The main thing that is left out is that the iPhone was not "bricked" until users downloaded and installed the last patch. In this case it was 1.1.1. If the user did not download the last patch, it was fine. Small but important distinction.
Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that anyone who jailbroke their phone was an idiot for allowing updates.
On the other hand, the difference between "Ooops, your changed binary got patched in the wrong place" and "if AuthenticBinary() then NukeDevice() else Patch()" is roughly the same as what happens to a burglar when he steps on the broken glass after breaking into my house Vs me planting bear traps next to each of my windows.
The first is schadenfreude, the latter legally actionable.
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Doh!
InAuthentic()
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If you live in a place where the latter is legally actionable, you live in a land of idiots. The burglar is responsible for his injuries in either case. In both cases, had he not been breaking the law and violating the homeowners rights, he would never have been injured.
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You did not say "someone looking in my window". You said "a burglar when he steps on the broken glass after breaking into my house Vs me planting bear traps next to each of my windows" which implies both are inside your home.
Please keep your arguments straight and not try to change things after the fact.
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Why is leaving bear traps next to each window legally actionable? It isn't legally actionable if no burglar ever breaks into your house, so why should it be when a burgler does? It's not like you're actively hurting the burglar. If you have a gun in your house and the burglar takes the gun and then shoots himself with it, are you suddenly legally actionable? The burglar could have asked you to remove the bear traps, so it's not like he didn't have any options (yes, obviously the option would have ruined his
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Honestly, I think all you'd really need to do is:
1) Verify that bear traps are not barred by law, and
2) Post signs that say "WARNING: Bear traps in use! Do not enter!"
IANAL
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IAALStudent. Covered this exact sort of thing last year, except it was a shotgun rigged to fire a shell toward a doorway when the door was opened. The lack of #2 was the important bit. As long as you put up a sign that says "Hey! There's a bear trap underneath this window, don't even try it", then you're probably not going to be
correction (Score:2)
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Mantrapping is illegal (Score:3, Informative)
IANAL, the lawyers reading this can correct me as needed.
If the burglar gets hurt due to a trap you have set, it's a crime not a tort. The burglar is not suing you, the police are arresting you on evidence of setting a trap. The crime is "Reckless Endangerment" if no one is hurt, various others if someone *is* hurt.
Traps are illegal because lots of people can be in your home without your consent: firefighters, police chasing a suspect, gas line repairmen,and the super. You must keep your house reasonably sa
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Regardless, if Apple and AT&T are guilty of anti-trust law violations, it only seems appropriate that their products are what expose them.
Did it ever occur to you that the EULA could have been DESIGNED to obscure such violations?
EULAs are bullshit. Corporations use them to deny customers LEGAL rights, intentionally complicate them with endless legalese, obfuscate their own questionable actions, and very often, use them as a place to bury shit that they simply do not want the customer to know yet are com
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Corporations use them to deny customers LEGAL rights
Name some? (not a troll, I'm curious... and stupid or ignorant and can't think of any off the top of my head)
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The very first EULA I read and COMPLETELY refused to accept was a EULA that the makers of ICQ (an instant messenger) included with one of their upgrades.
While I do not have the EULA itself to quote, the EULA essentially gave the owners of ICQ the right to upload the entire contents of my hard drive. No, thank you.
The last version of ICQ I ever used was ICQ 2003b, so I imagine it was the following version, ICQPro, I think.
Essentially the makers of ICQ wanted to me to sign away my right to privacy in order to
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If I read every EULA, I'd have no time to use the product.
Thanks god I live in a country where EULA's aren't legally binding, since they're only disclosed after completion of sale.
Re:Lawsuits are really getting asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
On numerous occasions I have seen people get frustrated when installing an App/Game.
"What the fuck? The "agree" button is all grayed out. It won't let me click it!"
The problem? The developers made it so you had to actually scroll down the slider on the EULA before the "accept" button was functional. In short, they were frustrated because they DID NOT READ THE EULA, even after the the developers attempted to get them to do exactly that.
I once wrote a paper for a class on the very subject, "accept" buttons and EULAs. I followed up by doing a short poll of the class(hand up, or not) by asking a simple question.
"Do you read the EULAs provided with products?"
Not a single hand went up out of approx. 25 students. Take that as you will. I take it as just another reason why EULAs are totally ineffective in terms of what they are supposed to achieve, and as such, should be abandoned for such purposes.
Furthermore, I asked the students WHY they did not read the EULAs. Number one answer?
"I paid for it, what does it matter?"
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"I paid for it, what does it matter?"
Sure they paid, but the EULA probably stated they didn't OWN the software. (did they REALLY pay for the software? Just curious, my students somehow just have the software)
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People do not honor the EULA, jailbreak their iPhones into iBricks and then cry out loud apple bricked their jailbroken devices.
Honor the EULA? Why should someone honor an EUL? [*] And yes, if Apple brick the phone that the customer bought, I'd say they should be liable for a replacement, at least.
But sure, the correct answer is to not use Apple.
[*] If you disagree, you can honor the EULA to pay me $100. You agree to it by clicking "Reply To This".
Re:Same concept between the modded xboxes and this (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe there is an important difference:
XBox: Hack xbox, get banned from server (offline only).
iPhone: Hack iphone, phone no longer boots at all.
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(P.S.: Posting this from my new iMac).
Smug son of a bitch...
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27"? FFS, he has reason to be... I want one of those too :P
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27"? FFS, he has reason to be... I want one of those too :P
It was a joke! I don't care if the man is happy to have a new toy was just poking fun cause I still use a 486sx16 to browse the net in 16 color mode using windows 3.1 and a mouse that has a small ball where the laser should be.
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Even my 5 year old bog standard non-smart phone can do tethering and running apps from anywhere without Motorola approval. I don't consider it anything special - hell, I didn't even know that using a phone as a modem had a special name - it Just Works. But then with the Iphone, if the most advanced feature it has really is "3G" (as per the name), what do you expect.
it does everything it claims to do in the contract and EULAs you agreed to. Right? Or am I missing something, here?
Yeah, exactly. I don't expect
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