Tuesday, July 10, 2007

don't be so quick to snap up an iPhone...

Another example of consumer protection being a good thing (h/t to Open Left):

Our action urged Steve Jobs to unlock the iPhone from its monopolistic reliance on AT&T. Lots of people liked the action and it traveled around the blogosphere rapidly, particularly among activists who are concerned about AT&T's lead role in trying to eliminate net neutrality and its active cooperation with the Bush Administration in allowing the National Security Agency and others to listen in on our phone calls and review our emails without court oversight.
Personally I want one of them iPhones, although I intend to wait a bit -- for reasons practical (the price to go down) and philisophical (always wait a few generations for a better product). It is also assumed here that Apple will eventually open up the iPhone's interent accessability to beyond one evil empire corporation. But until they do that, I won't be getting an iPhone even if they were giving 'em away.

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Update: A more proactive approach:
It is in fact perfectly legal, according to a recent decision from the U.S. Register of Copyrights, for American consumers to unlock their phones for use on whatever network they would like. Apple is trying to take away that right by locking the iPhone to AT&T's network.

Sign this petition and add your name to the list of Americans calling on Steve Jobs, the President of Apple, to make the iPhone unlockable so that consumers can use it on networks other than AT&T. Then, forward the petition link on to some friends -- let's all remind Steve Jobs that the reason he's in business is because of us.
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Update II: Let loose the hounds!
Freeing the Apple device from AT&T is only a matter of time.

Early this morning, the worldwide crew of iPhone hackers who congregate on the IRC channel #iphone reported major progress in getting at the internals of Apple's once-locked-down new toy. They now have access to the filesystem -- or, in hacker argot, "we have owned the filesystem."

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