Feb 09
14
Smart Phones Join the Copyright War
Even as Steven Jobs is
working to remove the DRM from iTunes sold content,
Apple itself is joining the ranks of the copyright industry
by defending the iPhone from hackers “jailbreaking” their phones..
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act bans people from
defeating technical protections for copyrighted materials (such as DRM on
iTunes songs and encryption on DVDs). The act requires the government to review
items that should be exempted every three years.
A recent filing
by the EFF to the US Copyright Office to apply for such an exemption was responded
to by Apple, smartly.
It seems Apple doesn’t wants its users to be able to dual
boot into differing operating systems; and I quote;
“Ever
since the first model, Apple engineers have designed the iPhone to contain
technological protection measures (TPMs) that
protect two critical pieces of software resident in the
device that are core to its functioning – the bootloader and the operating
system (OS). The bootloader is a small computer program stored
in nonvolatile memory (i.e., memory that is not erased when the power
goes off) that is automatically read and executed when power to the iPhone
is turned on. Its principal function is to perform a few initial tests of the
hardware, then to load the OS into the device’s main
(volatile) memory for operation. The OS is the core operating
software of the iPhone. It is responsible for handling the details of the
operation of the
device’s hardware and for management and
coordination of activities and operations that are necessary
for the making and receiving of phone calls and for application programs (such
as email and calendar) to execute on the device.
Apple owns the copyrights in both the bootloader and the OS.”
And later in the same document
“These
TPMs do more, however, than simply help ensure the quality of the customer’s
experience with iPhone applications. They
also protect Apple’s copyright interests in its own content,
as well as the copyright interests of third parties in their content, that
plays on the iPhone. There are many instances in which
unauthorized persons “strip” the TPMs protecting such content, thereby
placing it “in the clear” (i.e., in unprotected form). With the TPM removed,
pirated copies of the content in unprotected form can then be widely
distributed among persons who do not pay for it, typically
through unlawful peer-to-peer networks and other online distribution
sites. Such has happened, for example, to a copyrighted game owned by Apple called
“Texas Hold ‘Em,” as well as to a host of popular games from third party
vendors. However, the stripped games can be played
only on jailbroken iPhones, because the TPMs on the
iPhone would otherwise prevent them from
playing. Apple believes that the proposed
exemption would further facilitate and
encourage this form of piracy. Piracy, in turn, can
diminish the investment that developers are
willing to make in the creation of copyrighted works for
the iPhone, contrary to the fundamental purpose of the copyright law to
encourage the creation of new works of authorship.”
In other words, their real objection is that
you might use your “jail-broken” phone for P2P.
Yep – Apple has definitely joined the ranks
of the Industry.
Will the next step be RIAA takedown notices
for modified boot-loaders on iPhones.
I can see how that works for ISP’s, but how
will the Government police that one for the music industry ?
I just don’t see the Australian public
accepting some strange person in the street coming up to them and saying – “Hi there,
I’m from ACMA, could I check your iPhone please to see if you have breached
copyright legislation ?”