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EFF Kicks Off Campaign to Free Your Phone

[Posted January 15, 2009 by cook]

From:  EFF Press <press-AT-eff.org>
To:  presslist-AT-eff.org
Subject:  EFF Kicks Off Campaign to Free Your Phone
Date:  Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:34:07 -0800
Message-ID:  <[email protected]>

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: Thursday, January 15, 2009

Contact:

Jennifer Stisa Granick
   Civil Liberties Director
   Electronic Frontier Foundation
   [email protected]
   +1 415 436-9333 x134

Fred von Lohmann
   Senior Intellectual Property Attorney
   Electronic Frontier Foundation
   [email protected]
   +1 415 436-9333 x123 (office), +1 415 215-6087 (cell)

EFF Kicks Off Campaign to Free Your Phone

Software Locks on Cell Phones Stifle Competition and
Cripple Consumers

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is
asking for the public's help in its new campaign to free
cell phones from the software locks that stifle competition
and cripple consumers.  The campaign's website is
FreeYourPhone.org.

Hundreds of thousands of cell phone owners have modified
their phones to connect to a new service provider or run
the software of their choosing, and many more would like
to.  But the threat of litigation under the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has driven them
underground.

The DMCA prohibits "circumventing" technical protection
measures used to protect copyrighted works.  But many cell
phone manufacturers and service providers build these
software locks to protect their business models instead of
copyrighted material.

"Apple locks its iPhone to AT&T and prevents users from
installing any software that has not been pre-approved by
Apple," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred
von Lohmann.  "Consumers need a DMCA exemption to lift the
cloud of legal risk that otherwise serves only to reduce
competition and consumer choice."

Every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office convenes a
rulemaking to consider granting exemptions to the DMCA's
ban on circumvention to mitigate the consumer harm.  EFF
has already filed exemption requests with the Copyright
Office addressing the issues, but the rulemaking proceeding
also accepts public comments about the proposals.

"Companies are using the DMCA to threaten customers out of
exercising their consumer rights," said EFF Civil Liberties
Director Jennifer Granick.  "The Copyright Office needs to
hear real stories about how these software locks frustrate
consumers and developers."

On FreeYourPhone.org, people can sign EFF's petition to the
Copyright Office and share their stories about cell phone
frustrations.  EFF will also help people officially submit
those stories to the Copyright Office before the February 2
deadline.  The Copyright Office will hold public hearings
on the DMCA exemption requests in Washington, DC, and
California in the spring, and the final rulemaking order
will be issued in October.

For more on the Free Your Phone campaign:
http://www.FreeYourPhone.org

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/01/15

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most linked-to
websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/


     -end-

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https://falcon.eff.org/mailman/listinfo/presslist

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 15, 2009 22:03 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] (16 responses)

Isn't Apple within its rights not to sell specific books? How is that censorship? As lot as no public officials are involved, I don't see any freedom of speech issue. Apple is not even a "common carrier". Sure, Apple is using its hardware product to promote its views, and it may be wrong or even illegal. But to call it censorship is to undermine the struggle of those who risk their lives fighting oppressive regimes around the world.

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 15, 2009 22:51 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (guest, #23051) [Link] (6 responses)

I guess you don't think that it is within your individual rights to be free to do as you wish with hardware you purchase. As long as I don't adversely interfere with the liberty of others in my use, and I am complying with the rights of the original author of a work which I wish to view on my cell phone or any other electronic device, how is it in the public interest that I am vulnerable to an adverse judgement from a court of law for doing so?

Basically, if Apple and AT&T don't make available a particular work that I want, they shouldn't be able to stop me from viewing it just because they don't sell it. Even if they do sell it, I want to be able to choose to legally acquire that work in any way that I can (hey, maybe it's on sale for a lower price elsewhere, or it is public domain, or under a Creative Commons license, etc.), and use the work on a device that I own (or even rent). By locking in customers to software which only allows certain works to be used, this is indeed censorship. Can you imagine the outcry if every radio or television could only watch the television or radio manufactures' approved channels or shows? Or only works with "Comcast" cable or "Dish" satellite providers? What would you call that, other than censorship?

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 15, 2009 23:33 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (5 responses)

umm, if you buy a Dish network receiver, the only think it can receive is the Dish network.

that's not censorship, that's technical reality, combined with a bit of monopolistic activity (or whatever the plural is for a group of companies conspiring togeather)

that being said, I do really wish that the government would step in and force them to sell devices that weren't such complete lock-ins (say PCI Dish receiver cards with documented APIs)

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 15, 2009 23:43 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (guest, #23051) [Link]

Ah, I see my typing got ahead of my thinking there. I meant to write:

'Or *your television* only works with "Comcast" cable or *only with* "Dish" satellite providers, and no others?' ( *...* surrounds what I meant to type)

Basically, I meant to extend the analogy of having exclusive agreements between television manufacturers and media carriers to compare against cell phone manufacturers and cell carriers and their arrangements. But, you got my main points. :)

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 16, 2009 0:08 UTC (Fri) by Mithrandir (guest, #3031) [Link] (1 responses)

(or whatever the plural is for a group of companies conspiring togeather)
monopoly = one
duopoly = two
oligopoly = many

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 18, 2009 10:24 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

I thik the word cartel is more appropriate in this context: it expresses the intention (to conspire), not the result.

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 16, 2009 5:16 UTC (Fri) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

1) Just to be clear, this whole thing about "censorhsip" comes from a CNN article that FreeYourPhone.org links to, not FreeYourPhone.org itself.

2) No-one, even CNN, is arguing that a Dish network receiver should magically pick up other signals.

3) CNN is complaining that Apple is refusing distribute certain books on the basis of their content (allegedly, based on a simple keyword filter for swear words), i.e., censoring the content they distribute. That's like Dish refusing to carry Jerry Springer or something, nothing to do with network receivers.

4) EFF is saying that if you have the technical know-how to take a Dish receiver, and modify the one that you have purchased so that it can receive other sorts of radio signals, then this should not be a criminal copyright offense. (It might be legally problematic some other way, e.g. if you are renting the equipment or have formed a contract where you agree not to do certain things, but that has nothing to do with *copyright* law.) The EFF is also saying that describing how you modified your satellite dish to your friends should not be a criminal copyright offense either, which is blindingly obviously true, but the DMCA is an awful awful law so someone has to actually argue this.

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 16, 2009 14:48 UTC (Fri) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]

Thank you for your post. That explanation is both excellent and from what I've read, correct.

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 15, 2009 23:13 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (4 responses)

It becomes censorship when Apple enlists the government to enforce its choice to keep ebooks it objects to off of the iphone. More precisely, the government is made to act as censor, to Apple's specifications. That Apple provides the specifications doesn't take the government out of the picture.

Anyway censorship is only a detail of the campaign, not mentioned on the press release and mentioned only once on the project page. The bigger picture is that the DMCA is being used not to protect against unauthorized publication of copyrighted works, but in restraint of trade.

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 16, 2009 18:12 UTC (Fri) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] (3 responses)

Even without the existence of DMCA, it is still censorship for Apple to act as gatekeeper, only allowing approved applications into the Apple Store. A similar analogy is with gaming consoles only running signed applications, putting the console makers in a similar gateway role.

Contrast this with the Android-based T-mobile G1, which, while by default only allowing vetted applications from the Android Market, allows users to turn off verification so that arbitrary applications can be loaded. Likewise, Windows allows non-signed drivers (but warns you about it).

DMCA makes it worse by making attempts to bypass the censorship criminal. It does not, by itself, mark the boundary between what is censorship and what is not.

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 16, 2009 19:51 UTC (Fri) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (2 responses)

No. Censorship is a government activity. It's the DMCA that gets government involved, so it's the DMCA that makes it qualify as censorship. Without the DMCA, anybody would be allowed to (try to) reverse-engineer the iPhone interfaces, with no threat of prosecution.

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 17, 2009 2:12 UTC (Sat) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

I have to disagree about censorship requiring government involvement by definition.

Imagine a small town with one library that is the only accessible source of books for many people. If, say, a bunch of parents get up in arms and demand that they pull Huckleberry Finn from the shelves, and the library does that, then that's... a really bad thing, I would say, with specific adverse consequences. And how bad it is has very little to do with whether that library was run by the town or was run by a non-governmental charitable organization.

It's not a *First Amendment* violation unless the government gets involved, but we do ourselves a serious disservice (in many areas, not just with regard to censorship) if we stop distinguishing between the moral status of an act and its legal status under the present civil framework.

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 18, 2009 20:33 UTC (Sun) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Well then that is just local, smaller forms of government. Usually in situations like your describing the small town library isn't privately maintained or financed.. so they are dependent on the political whims of whoever the people in local council are afraid of.

------------------------------

There is a fundamental principal to Free speech and whatnot that tends to scale very well from smaller areas to very large regions. Ethics/Moral type things, in their purest form, tend to be like that... apply just as well to 'micro' situations as 'macro', hence they can be considered 'universal' or 'natural' laws due to the universal nature of their application.

Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 16, 2009 10:09 UTC (Fri) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] (3 responses)

If people were not so blinded by the bling bling light of apple (note all lower no respect case) then they would not be in the position they are now and would not be ABLE to say yea or nay to what is and is not installed .

It is simply that you have been taken in by the apple bling bling thing , When you all wake up and can the trash the things will start to get sane once again (with a bit of luck and old jobs'y out of it for a while there is a chance to clobber them ) the end of a crap product range very nice thought

Have fun wont you in you apple bling world while it lasts


Censorship in America!

Posted Jan 16, 2009 16:22 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

You can't blame people for being human. The ipod, besides the bling factor, is actually (beleive it or not) very nice and useful object.

Now Apple's behavior makes it less useful then it should be, but when you compare it to the other sorts of phones you can buy the Iphone is actually more open then almost all of them, except for Android/OpenMoko stuff.

Hard to believe

Posted Jan 16, 2009 18:46 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

Now Apple's behavior makes it less useful then it should be, but when you compare it to the other sorts of phones you can buy the Iphone is actually more open then almost all of them, except for Android/OpenMoko stuff.

When I've last developer programs for Symbian/WindowsCE phones (three to four years ago) it was possible to do with free sdk and programs were installable from your web site. Have the times changed so much?

Hard to believe

Posted Jan 17, 2009 4:51 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Ya your probably right. I know that I can install pretty much any j2me program on my cell phone, even though it's a midlevel feature phone.

But for the most part most phones remain nasty little horrid proprietary things, most much worse then iphone. Especially the phones you purchase subsidized from phone providers... they tend to have extra restrictions built into them.

That's not to say I am praising apple or anything. If I am going to go out and spend a lot of money on a phone it is going to have to do better then that.

EFF Kicks Off Campaign to Free Your Phone

Posted Jan 15, 2009 22:47 UTC (Thu) by zooko (guest, #2589) [Link]

I just go an OpenMoko for Christmas!

EFF Kicks Off Campaign to Free Your Phone

Posted Jan 16, 2009 18:02 UTC (Fri) by dannyobrien (subscriber, #25583) [Link]

We (EFF) are also specifically looking for comments from individuals would useful for the Copyright Office in making their decision. If LWN readers have specific stores to tell about wishing to run your own software on a phone platform (applications that you can't run on the iPhone, G1 or other locked-down systems), without having to break the law to do so, we'd appreciate your contributions: http://freeyourphone.org/


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