Comment by _heimdall
20 days ago
The question really isn't whether we should be able to modify computers we own, its whether we own them at all.
20 days ago
The question really isn't whether we should be able to modify computers we own, its whether we own them at all.
The question of how private property, intellectual property and posession/ownership should work is indeed something humanity hasn't properly figured out yet.
But if anything, regular people should have more of the cake.
We have! The only problem is a very limited amount of legal decisions accidentally paved the way for a massive dystopia. In particular, the first sale doctrine [1] solves everything immediately.
The courts assumed good faith with a licensing exception, and maybe it was. But that opened the door to essentially completely dismantle the first-sale doctrine. Get rid of that loophole and all this stupidity ends, immediately. Well that and the DMCA. Once you buy something, it's yours to do whatever you want to do with it short of replicating it for commercial benefit.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
We also need regulation to prevent unbreakable hardware locks. Integrating the locks deep into VLSI makes removing them unrealistic.
As a more specific way to do this, I'd like to see any software that hardware companies make for their own hardware designated (at the choice of the company) as either part of the hardware or a separate product. In the former case, it must be made available under GPLv3 with full anti-tivoization provisions. In the latter case, it must use only public and documented interfaces and must be completely realistic for another company to make a competing product on a level playing field. Ideally the separate products would also need to be highly cross platform if technically feasible where the burden of showing that it isn't is on the developer.
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You might be right. We're seeing a paradox of more and more exclusive ownership of property for commercial interests (land, water, airwaves, orbits) and fewer and fewer exclusive ownership for individuals (rented homes, licensed software, subscriptions etc). I too think we're still in a transition stage and humanity has yet to figure this thing out.
It's actually what Marx was warning about - private property ending in the hands of the few as an endgame of capitalism.
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It's not we haven't figured it out. It is that gov and corp prefer to be shepherds and we are OK to be sheep. We figured it out a long time ago.
The solution certainly won't be through legislative or judicative powers as they have failed predictably and repeatedly. Sometimes reality must be molded a bit of fait accompli.
What are you proposing if not legislative or judicial means?
Those are the only checks of power on the executive built into our system. Are you expecting we would have to throw out our political system all together, get rid of the top by force, and start over?
No - private property is clear.
The question that hasn't fully been worked is how to allow people to think/feel they own something, while having no actual legal rights to it. But, as we see, this is being worked on.
Record companies figured that one out a long time ago.
Throwing your hat in the political ring?
And the answer is we don't. If we can't run our own software, then we do not own the computer. To run software of our choosing we need the cryptographic keys to the machine and we sure as hell don't own those keys.
regardless of what the corporations say we do own the devices we purchase.
Not always. There have been car manufacturers that sold vehicles with features only enabled by a subscription. You may buy a car with heated seats, but the heated seats only work if the manufacturer enables them.
And there should be no law against enabling the heated seats in the car you own without interacting with the manufacturer.
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This is the same argument people make between Apple and Android.
Can I use an Android phone without using Google? Yes, of course you can. There are plenty of secure OS's like Graphen, Lineage, Calyx and many others. Do people really care enough to use them? Hardly any, which proves my point.
Same thing here. Most people will just pay the fee to get the seats. Some might just opt out and not get them. Others will shop around and find some legacy cars that are older that have them but don't require a subscription.
At the end of the day? There's ALWAYS a choice. How hard do you want to look to avoid the subscription? Is it really worth your time and effort? Some would say yes, the vast majority really DGAF. People have been lulled into not caring about stuff like personal privacy and having a say in what's being peddled to you.
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Am I the only one that found that to be a reasonable edge case?
The seat heating was apparently shortening the life of the leather seats. Its cheaper to include heated seats in all cars, than it is to maintain 2 different sets of production. The subscription basically offsets the cost of needing to replace the seats more frequently when the heating is enabled.
Likewise, if you manually enabled the seat heaters, then complained that the seats were falling apart quickly, having given you a legal out to get that feature enabled in warranty, would not have to replace your seats for free.
Not to mention, they apparently already ditched the subscription over backlash.
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In a legal sense, yes. In a practical and technical sense, no.
Ok, let's say you own an iPhone. Please try install alternative OS on your iPhone, if you succeed, you own your phone.
The contention point will be whether you purchased the device or not.
This is a ridiculous take.
The thing is most people do not want to mess with computers. They are terrified they are going to break them. Frankly they are not wrong. I spent yesterday just trying to get a div tag to flow correctly with all the objects around it, a whole day down the drain. I have a pretty good idea what I am doing. However, for others these things we call computers are inscrutable devices that just 'decide' to do something wrong. We have built this https://xkcd.com/2347/ and expect everyone to be cool with it. Most people most certainly are not, and are willing to give away whatever just to make it easier to use, and not randomly screw up. Apple and Google can take whatever they gave away now because well most people really do not care. The rest of us can pound sand for all they care. We effectively have a duopoly and they are acting exactly in the manor of that.