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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

Would Apple have a legitimate legal argument for stopping these devices? DMCA violation?

They have a real purpose as research tools...

Once you find yourself against a team of lawyers funded by an organisation with basically unlimited money them not having a "legitimate legal argument" becomes less relevant.

As we have seen in the past, however: this is mostly only an issue if you reside or operate in the US.

The US government is not afraid of meddling in/pressuring other countries to get what they want. Case in point: Julian Assange, Kim Dotcom.

It works like this in most places.

A good friend of mine went head to head with the Dutch tax service. It was obvious from the start the tax service could never win. So he won...after about 5 years of legal proceedings and having to finance the whole thing up front before getting his money.

Remember you have to fight them in your spare time, for them it's just work time.

Why? It seems like Apple can sue someone in pretty much any country they like.

I’m confused as to why I’m getting downvoted on this. I’m not being critical of the US, just recognizing the differences in how the legal system operates vs other countries.

In Canada, for example: potential lawsuits must be signed off by a judge who believes the case has merit. This means that you cannot decide to bury someone in legal paperwork simply because you have the money to do so: you must also have a reasonable complaint.

Yes: I skipped over the fact that the US has arrangements with other countries and therefore there are other countries where you can still do this, but the US’s legal system makes it easy.

Also: working around Apple's censorship.

You're thinking of iOS, the Mac is much more open!

You can't normally run code on the T2 but I don't think that has much use outside of research. You can't run code on an SSD controller either.

Who do you think writes code for the T2, if not programmers? You're imagining that people who are employed for Apple are special, but they of course are just ordinary programmers.

Your point about SSD controllers is embarrassingly incorrect; there exist many hackers of SSD controllers, including OpenSSD [0], an entire open-source community of folks working on the problem.

Please stop apologizing for Apple's walled gardens. They intentionally limit access to hardware, even after it's legally sold and belongs to the new owner.

Edit: Downvoters, provide evidence or knock it off. Nobody's interested in Apple apologia this morning.

[0] http://openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project

The downvotes are presumably because your point is moot, and also because it brands anyone who disagrees with you as an apologist.

Yes, Apple limits access to program the t2.

Well, yes, I don't know if you've read the rest of the thread, but it's quite apologetic. For example, the parent claims that nobody outside of academic research should actually want/need/desire to write code for the T2, but this is clearly bullshit meant to apologize for Apple's sealing off of the T2 from user access.

Maybe we should stop paying a fashion company to sell us chips that we aren't allowed to touch.

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