Its surely a useful tool, but not the only one. We can still say no to Hollywood when they try to attain ownership of our private owned hardware, our software, our networks.
Well, "the intellectual property" which prevents me from selling a copy of movie or book I bought, seems to supersede private property.
I miss the old days when my money could actually buy things and I could trade with the goods and services that I bought.
Now they want to take ownership of my user agent, my browser, they want to impose their intellectual rights on it, instead of mine.
I just bought a Samsung Mega clone, 1.2 GHz quad core, 1G ram, 16GB storage, 2 sim cards, 2 batteries. Camera's even better than the Samsung offerings too. $200 US. And they come unlocked and prerooted, ready for your hackings and exploits.*
You just have to be smart where you do business. Our US dollars really are an effective weapon to wield against other entities. Especially in cases of locked devices, there are answers we can respond to. You just have to be aware that those choices exist, rather than say the Galaxy Note 3 with region SIM locking.
And I also have 0 problems with piracy, at all. I haven't a problem with paying for content and services. I've paid for a fair share of DVDs, VHS, CDs, tapes, and other forms of media... many times over. And then, they want me to pay for it again just because it's in another format? Nope. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and I take matters in my own hands.
*http://www.aliexpress.com/item/new-arrival-in-may-6-Haipai-N...
I wouldn't be surprised if the phone included a modded version of some Android components so that your web traffic go through Chinese servers, you know, just to "enhance" your user's experience with better ads.
Although I did run a packet sniffer on my router to see if there was Chinese server contact, and there was. That was because the GPS config had NTP servers polling from China. I kind of expect that for a device sold to the Chinese, so it didn't exactly set off buzzers in my head.
Once I changed that, no more talkey to China. I guess there could be a few packets of UDP per week that I'd not catch, or cell-only data transmit. But tell me: how's that any worse than say Motorola?
Any Chinese software you install will do something similar. You install one software (for instance, a popular messenger like QQ or some online banking software) and get half a dozen processes and services running all the time with admin privileges (which they've asked during installation).
It's a mix of carelessness and greed, and there's no limit to it since consumers here don't have much power to change anything. That's why I'd be careful with a Chinese smart phone.
It comes with 3 cases: a standard back, a snap-on hardcase for the back, and a back with a cloth-hard flap lid. I use that third one so it protects the screen. If you want 3rd party equipment for this, AliExpress does have _some_ n7889 stuff, but nothing like the OtterBoxes. The phone itself feels sturdy, and not like a bootleg. Also note, there's no samsung logos anywhere (unlike some of the fake iphones that have peel-off stickers of the apple logo).
The first thing I noticed is how buttery smooth everything is. I like that mushroom live wallpaper, and I've never seen a frame drop or lag at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not much of a gamer, but Angry Birds is also perfect too. Everything just is so fast (faster than my few year old laptop). Do note, that the screen is a BIG battery eater. Then again, it's a big screen.
There is a GPS on the device, however weirdly there is no compass. So the Google skydome does weird behavior. But that's not a big deal to me. Also, the stylus is NOT a S-pen. It's just a capacitive touch end, and the stylus does NOT work on the touch 'Back' and 'Home' buttons. I'm not sure if they do or don't work like that on the Note's, either. However, the screen can take up to 5 inputs (that does surprise me). You can see that with mobileuncle tools and go into engineer mode.
The device DOES have an FM radio, unlike Samsungs. And you can record FM channels (coooool), but you need headphones hooked in. I also notice better antenna and cell strength than my previous iPhone 3GS. And about the Cell: there's 2 sim cards. The first slot supports 3G AT&T frequencies, and the second slot is a 2G. The idea is you can do calls on both, and fast data on the first slot. There's a sim manager in the settings that you can do cool stuff like bind a user to a certain SIM.
It also supports Miracast, or "Wireless Display". Went into a Best Buy and demoed that out. Evidently, the Samsung phones cannot handle miracast when you change orientation. This phone can. Ive never seen this before, and it was DAMN sweet :P Ended up playing Psy's Gentleman (it was a HD video I grabbed and threw on there to see the quality of the screen).
It's running Android 4.2.1 and uses MTK chipset. I don't think it'd be terribly hard to update the rom, as there are 2 3rd party rom mods for this phone. Phone model is Haipai Noble n7889
Also, be extremely careful in buying "clones" that don't care about trademark. Word on the websites I deal with are they are the ones that don't care about quality. The 'mostly clones', that don't mind attaching their own name to the product are usually pretty solid devices.
The guy who I've been buying from is http://www.aliexpress.com/store/108763 , ELE Team. I have a phone from them, as did a buddy here in the office (I work at Indiana University IT). He got the same model just shipped in a few days ago. We both absolutely love the phones. I've also been eyeing the ELE Team's $200 retina Android tablet. Pretty crazy cheap tech.
The other big trick is to check which frequencies the phone uses. If you use a TMobile or subsidary, you're getting 2G because of the whole lack of 1700MHz.. But that's because TMob chose a pretty much oft used GSM frequency.
A single viewing of a movie reduces the value to a point where it may not be purchased. That's why distributors release them in as many stunted, protected, phases as possible - they want a return on their investment before it becomes relatively worthless.
My hardware however is not theirs, it's mine. I should have the same property rights to my property as they should have to theirs. Goods that still are controlled by the manufacturer has thus been designed to infringe on my property rights after ownership has been transfered. It is wrong, and should be illegal.
DRM is a technical design to corrupt property rights. The actual owner has none of the rights in "Bundle of rights"¹. One losses any of the control associated with property rights². It removes the concept of private property in ways we should never allow. It is simply a worse crime in history than eminent domain, mostly because everyone nowadays carries it in their pocket.
Lets not forget that people were seriously wondering if "jail-breaking" their iPhones is illegal or not. Thats how far it has gone. Its a disgrace to anything that a democratic liberal society is.
What is next, you are not allowed to run a certain program on your devices? Then it will be illegal to access certain web-sites with your devices. Then perhaps it will be illegal to have read a text on a print-out. Watch out, citizen, what you are writing is illegal, you are not allowed to do that!
Remember Eben Moglens talk on the war against general purpose computing.
All of these national level DNS website blocks were sold as kiddie porn blocking.
That's what software licensing decides. I can have perfectly valid executable binaries on my computer but if I don't have a license to use them, then it's technically illegal to ./execute
I was saying that more in the context of oppressive regimes, sorry I mean safe democratic governments, that some programs are illegal to write.
It's a mistake to think that content creators are in the business of selling bits and bytes, and then complain about not being allowed to trade those bits and bytes as you would physical property.
The reality is right there in the name: it's called "intellectual" property. What you think you paid for, the disc or the bandwidth or the bits, is simply the medium used to deliver that which what you really paid for.
Yes, there is.
> There are exclusive rights, given by We the People, , and not for any other reason than to advance science and the useful arts.
No, they're given by Congress. The power to give those rights is given to Congress by the people via the Constitution, but Congress is the one giving the exclusive rights. And that limitation applies to the subset of intellectual property which is dependent on the copyright clause in the US, which isn't all of intellectual property.
But, in any case, even where that applies, it illustrates the existence of intellectual property, since an exclusive right with regard to something protected in law is what property is.
Real property is an exclusive right protected in law with respect to land. Tangible personal property is an exclusive right protected in law with respect to some tangible object not permanently affixed to the land. Intangible personal property (of which intellectual property is a subset) is an exclusive right protected in law that is not attached to land or to some tangible object.
Also: if you don't make use of it, why do you care what they do to protect it? Firefox and Chrome are open source, and as the refrain goes, you can always remove any DRM bits you don't like and use that.
Children watch movies VERY MANY TIMES. They also manage to destroy the physical media.
I'm not sure what the law is about making a backup of the disc (is backup exempted, or am I circumventing an effective copyright measure?) but morally I think it's okay to make a back up of a DVD.
Having said that, I'm on my 3rd DVD of Despicable Me.
100% agreed and can personally attest to that!!
I already payed for the bandwidth to see the movie, it was already on my private property, it is my right to save it and to re-sell it or to mix it with other movies. But no, the intellectual right of the creator supersedes private property, and even my own intellectual creativity - no remixing.
Send intellectual property and rights to the trashcan, write into the constitution that anything written and created is available for remixing and redistribution by any means.
I don't want to own a movie, I want to watch it. I don't want to own music, I want to listen to it.
What I don't agree with is the assumption from content producers that DRM is particularly useful. If the content is displayed on a screen or played out speakers, DRM isn't going to work.