Quote from: ArticMine on September 17, 2016, 10:51:44 PM

Quote from: dinofelis on September 16, 2016, 09:11:47 PM

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I think this is somewhat unfair to Apple. After all, the *ONLY* reason why Apple is pickish about these things is because they feel the heat from the Biggest of all Brothers on this planet: the totalitarian united states of america federal government. Otherwise they wouldn't bother.

The United States Government is not forcing Apple to do anything here.

Well, real power is when you don't even have to tell your lackeys any more what your wishes are, but they fight amongst themselves to guess them and please you, and go and impose your wishes even before you have to say so, no ?

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When it comes to violence on the part of the United States Government the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998 by the United States Congress stands out as the one act of violence by the United States Government in the last 25 years. It is further reinforced by the actions of US Trade Representative in promoting DRM around the world. Yes this is far worse then all the actions of United States military, the CIA, NSA etc combined during the same period.

Without the violence stick behind it, we would all laugh our ass off DMCA. Don't confuse the means and the goals. They are not separated. The means are the goals, and the goals are the means, in this vicious circle of power.

But I agree with you that "intellectual property rights" are incompatible with fundamental freedoms, and allow at the same time some elite to gather immense wealth and power.

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To understand this one only needs to consider that the number deaths due to smoking worldwide in the 20th century were actually higher than the deaths caused by World War I and World War II combined. A critical component in these smoking deaths was that the tobacco industry went out of its way to hide and obfuscate the data on the relationship between smoking and premature death. Data that they claimed was their proprietary information. Protecting the "intellectual property" of multinational corporations can be a crime worse than war if one measures this crime by the number of deaths it can cause. This is just one industry. Multiply this by the crimes committed by large multinational corporations in areas as diverse as manufacturing to pharmaceuticals and one gets the real picture here. The vast majority of corporate crimes are crimes of deceit and fraud, and withholding information because it is proprietary is a critical component of such crimes.

This is a bad example, I'm afraid. Nobody forces you to smoke. With freedom also comes the freedom to scam. It gets worse when, using DRM, these companies attack in justice *independent analysis*, but nobody can force you (in a free world) to tell the truth about your own data. Even if I have huge labs that have examined in every detail the effect of radioactivity on human health, I consider it part of my fundamental freedoms to set up a publicity campaign to have people buy my plutonium sun tan cream "to boost the vitality of their immune system" or any other scam. And if I'm successful, and I can kill 90% of human population that way, I would consider this as nothing else but the normal enjoyment of my personal fundamental freedoms.

However, if I send out thugs that force people to put that cream on, I'd be a criminal violator of people's freedoms.

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Furthermore most violence attributed to governments worldwide is actually done at the behest of multinational corporate interests. Every time a government drops a bomb one must ask the question which multinational corporate interests asked the government to drop said bomb. There is where the real fault for the violence, death and misery the bomb causes actually lies.

This is because, again, goal and means are one and the same. The government is partly multinational corporate world, and vice versa. The official government is only the tip of the iceberg of what government is about. But these multinational corporations couldn't exist without the violence of the state, and the politicians couldn't do their manipulative acts without those corporations (otherwise the politicians wouldn't do them any favours). This is ONE AND THE SAME aristocracy, and the "democratic show" we see every so many years to get one or another straw man "winning a popular election" is nothing else but a façade for this aristocracy to keep the power.

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Again there are some very serious misconceptions here. In the case of Intel computers and Microsoft this used to be the case say 20 years ago, but it is no longer the case, in particular since the advent of UEFI bios. These computers can be locked down even worse than most mobile devices including iDevices. Microsoft has mandated that they be sold with the UEFI bios locked. Those with Windows 8.x and Intel/AMD compatible processors Microsoft required that the UEFI bios be unlock-able by the end user. In the Windows 10 case the noose was tightened further with the mandate that they be sold with the UEFI bios locked, but the requirement that the UEFI bios be unlock-able by the end user removed. With Windows ARM devices (Windows surface) the Microsoft Mandate is that UEFI bios be not unlock-able by the end user, creating a situation that is actually worse than with Apple. When it comes installing software on Windows, Microsoft is moving towards a closed platform with their Windows store and Windows Universal, and has added language to their EULA allowing Microsoft to remove any software it so desires from end user computers running Microsoft Windows 10. On the other hand it has modified the Windows kernel in Windows 10 64bit to run the GNU tool chain on top of Windows. So we literally have both extremes on one computer.

I've heard about those locked boot loaders. One should avoid buying such devices, but I think it must be possible to hack them open. I don't think there is any legal procedure that can be used against you for REMOVING software or firmware from a device ; and if so, it would be the OEM that would have a strange hardware selling licence. I've never had an intel machine on which I couldn't remove windows entirely (that's usually the first thing I do with a new computer). It is true that UEFI is a pain, but I thought even (though I never bothered) that there are laws in some countries that force microsoft to pay back the windows license if you ask to remove it.

There could be manufacturers that lock down windows in the UEFI. Then one mustn't buy stuff from them. They can make life technically difficult, but I don't see how you could be legally annoyed by doing away with software.

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The issue with Android is the manufacturers and telcos and not Google. The vast majority of Android devices are sold with locked boot loaders and no root access. This is required for the DRM in these devices to do its dastardly deeds. In some cases they are also locked to the Google play store like iDevices. The impact of this is that a lot of software cannot be run on these devices without rooting. The secret to freedom in Android is to 1) Unlock the Boot loader 2) Root the device and 3) as in any mobile device remove the carrier lock. Rooting an Android device will of course break the DRM. and can lead to "a police raid on one's home" as in the Apple case. Once these three steps are accomplished then one is free and how one chooses to exercise one's freedom such as by installing a different ROM becomes one's own business.

I wouldn't, indeed, mess with a stock rom. That's probably "illegal". One should only buy devices that are listed on, say, cyanogenmod's list. Again, I don't see how one could get raided because one installed cyanogenmod on one's device.

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As for Apple customers not been interested in Crypto this again is not true. What happens with Apple customers is that they are for the most part deceived by Apple on these issues. Here is an example of what can happen when a Apple customer figures out they were had.

Well, I consider it "fair play" to want to deceive one's customers, as long as you don't use violence to impose it on them.