Hacker News Reader

Comment by curiousgal | Hacker News Reader

What the fuck? Seriously what the fuck? Am I the only one who thinks this is beyond absurd? Sure it's just a patent but it speaks clearly of what they think of their customers. I never owned an Apple product except my iPod Shuffle but the thought of not owning what I paid good money for is ridiculous.

Ironically, halfway through the article:

    Buy Now: Apple iPhone 6S (16GB) at Amazon for £523.99

View on HN

It's not only that, imagine being blocked from recording a dangerous incident simply because someone has decided that copyright protection is more important than anything else.

Agree, The person who wants to record a movie will record it anyway, they can take just a different device to the cinema.

I saw once in Berlin a young guy punching in the face an old men who just complained about his misbehaviour during the movie. I wish someone recorded that.

My point is, it will hurt iPhone owners, but not the people who wants to record illegally the movie, those will find a way.

I think your overreacting. Like you say - it's just a patent. The use cases (concerts/cinemas) might not be the actual use cases. Think of it as something like the feature some drones have to prevent you entering no-fly zones. In the end it all depends how they use the tech. If concert venues started using it they would lose a lot of business and see a lot of backlash. I could see this being useful in a location where you expect your privacy to be protected and some morons is snapping photos. Off the top of my head a polling centre. When I voted last week there were signs everywhere asking people to turn off their phones - and at the same time people were taking selfies. This isn't the best case for implementing but it's the best off the top of my head. Basically it would be useful in places where nobody is legally allowed to take photographs but it's difficult to enforce.

Warning the user that it may be illegal to take photos is reasonable, but making a device that acts on the theoretical authority of someone else against its own/possessor is not. Taking your example of polls, it may be illegal for me to take a photo, but it may be my responsibility to do it anyways. For example, I may see visual evidence of large scale voting fraud within a polling station. It is similar for sensitive data and whistle-blowers.

Even in the examples you mentioned I strongly believe one shouldn't mess with their devices. You can just take away their phones. My point is that they paid for the device so they get to use it however they want to. Whether they could use it or not depends on the setting they're in, not on whoever "sold" them the device.

I don't swear much but you captured my reaction perfectly.

You are not owning what you paid good money for anyway so you shoudn't feel that bad. Most of the computer goods are now 'licensed'.

This doesn't 'speak clearly of what they think of their customers' at all.

You don't know what they intend to do with this patent.

You are overreacting to something you are only imagining.

> What the fuck? Seriously what the fuck?

Please stop overreacting, especially in this manner. Nothing says they're planning to implement it, for all we know it could be a preventive patent, so no other can use the technology without Apple's consent.

I'm not sure what the overeaction is. It is a statement of strong disbelief. My reaction was the same.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com