Hvem ejer din iPhone og din computer?

Det gør du selv, mener du måske (hvis du har nogen af disse ting). Men balladen omkring Amazons Kindle-læser viser, at det måske ikke lige præcis er dig der ejer disse ting i den forstand, at det er dig, der bestemmer, hvordan du kan bruge dem eller hvilke ting, du må have på dem. Farhad Manjoo beskriver situationen i en artikel i Slate:

The worst thing about this story isn’t Amazon’s conduct; it’s the company’s technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That’s an awesome power, and Amazon’s justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1’s and 0’s, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.

Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren’t really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else. Steve Jobs has confirmed that every iPhone routinely checks back with Apple to make sure the apps you’ve purchased are still kosher; Apple reserves the right to kill any app at any time for any reason. But why stop there? If Apple or Amazon can decide to delete stuff you’ve bought, then surely a court—or, to channel Orwell, perhaps even a totalitarian regime—could force them to do the same. Like a lot of others, I’ve predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.[…]

In The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It, Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain argues that such “tethered” appliances give the government unprecedented power to reach into our homes and change how our devices function. In 2004, TiVo sued Echostar (which runs Dish Network) for giving its customers DVR set-top boxes that TiVo alleged infringed on its software patents. A federal district judge agreed. As a remedy, the judge didn’t simply force Dish to stop selling new devices containing the infringing software—the judge also ordered Dish to electronically disable the 192,000 devices that it had already installed in people’s homes. (An appeals court later stayed the order; the legal battle is ongoing.) In 2001, a company called Playmedia sued AOL for including a version of the company’s MP3 player in its software. A federal court agreed and ordered AOL to remove Playmedia’s software from its customers’ computers through a “live update.”

Mine fremhævelser. Modtræk? Nægte at bruge apparater og medier, der anvender nogen form for kopibeskyttelse, også når man sælger e-bøger og online-film. Insistere på, at alt skal kunne håndteres ved hjælp af fri software. Boycot iPhones og brug Android og andre GNU/Linux-baserede telefoner i stedet.  Afvis tanken om, at producenten skal bestemme, hvad man kan gøre ved eller have liggende på sine egne ting.

Link: Why 2024 will be like Nineteen Eighty Four