8 ms·

In the spirit of this particular story, I'd like to ask HN the following question: Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell?

• noncoml 6y ago
  Some customers buy into the Apple ecosystem because of its walled garden. Not despite of it.
  • baby 6y ago
    Really? Who?
    • braythwayt 6y ago
      Not my sole reason, but since you asked, here I am. I give my children iPhones. I like having certain family controls over what they use, and further controls over what appears in the app store to begin with. I like having a single vendor for all my software purchases, that I can trust to issue refunds and discontinue subscriptions promptly. I spend all day thinking about computers, I don't want to also be my own IT professional and security team, especially for a slab of glass I hold in my hand. I accept that I have to do some IT and security thinking about my iOS devices, but the more the walled garden provides, the less is on me. I understand that with this "safety" comes a loss of "liberty," but I find that an acceptable tradeoff for consumer hardware in my personal life. I don't automatically assume that the right tradeoffs for me are also the right tradeoffs for everyone else. If someone wants to sideload apps and/or develop their own custom apps without some kind of special developer status, I have no problem suggesting they buy something else. I accept that I am not the typical HN reader.
      • baby 6y ago
        Should a parent really get their children iPhones?
        • braythwayt 6y ago
          If you are a parent, you decide for yourself. I question the validity of presuming this question has a correct answer for all parents under all circumstances.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • reaperducer 6y ago
          Should a parent really get their children iPhones? Not your kids. Not your business.
        • spanhandler 6y ago
          Maybe, maybe not, but by like 5th grade most of them seem to have one regardless. Many younger kids have one. By 7th it's practically all of them (a smartphone, that is, though yeah, often an iPhone) Our school assigns every kid an iPad. In Kindergarten. Good idea? I kinda don't think so, though it's been useful this year, of course. But it happens. Increasingly parents have trouble letting kids wander the neighborhood on their own without a tracker/communication-device on them, and a smartphone's really good at serving that role. There are other options but kids want to have their smartphone on them, and as soon as you want them to be able to do one other smartphone-thing any other option starts to look kinda pointless. (just relating observations of parenting in the wild, not my own parenting approach)
      • tuscen 6y ago
        Why this can’t be a part of parental control function where you can restrict certain function on devices you control?
      • bradlys 6y ago
        I will add to this: I wish my parents had stuck with iPhones. The amount of IT support that I had to do after they switched went up quite a bit. It's been a few years so they've adjusted (and I've just ignored their complaints and told them to fix it themselves) but who knows what garbage they've installed on their phones! They're not tech savvy. It would be quite nice if they had stuck with iPhones. I remember they got Samsung tablets and when I had looked at them to see if I would like to buy one... I saw they were completely full of - essentially - spyware and malware.
    • badsectoracula 6y ago
      People who do not know better and people who make money out of people who do not know better.
      • noncoml 6y ago
        People who don’t want to exposed their non-technical family to the Wild West of Android.
        • romanoderoma 6y ago
          That's just the tip of the iceberg https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/mar/11/my-kids-spent-600-on-their-ipads-without-my-knowledge https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/mar/11/my-kids-spent-...
          • badsectoracula 6y ago
            Uh, that is about iPad, so Apple's walled garden didn't help. And kids shouldn't be able to buy things with their parents' cards, which is something completely unrelated to a platform being open or not.
            • romanoderoma 6y ago
              The problem is that once you go down the streets dressed as a Batman to do justice, you'll find a villian dressed as a penguin Apple store is not more secure because it's a walled garden, people will always find other ways to scam other people Apple could just make sideload possible declining responsibility It doesn't sound very hard to me, for a company like Apple which employ some of the best talents in the World
              • badsectoracula 6y ago
                Right but i do not think it is really about Apple having responsibility - it is about Apple being in control. For example, see how Apple is in total control on when iOS devices are obsolete by requiring some minimum version. You can't keep your device usable and useful by installing a program that supports it from another source, you can only install it from Apple and Apple's requirements limit the iOS versions you can target.
    • spanhandler 6y ago
      Raises hand. I don't wanna have to worry about stupid computer shit when I'm just trying to use my iPad or iPhone as a tool to accomplish something else. Drawing, playing music, reading, writing, edutainment for the kids, very occasionally a game. Maybe the odd SSH session. If I decide I want some software to help me with any of those things I just want it to be in the App Store, and I just want it to use the App Store payment system. I don't want competing app stores because that might mean that sometimes what I want isn't on the Apple one, following Apple's rules about spying on my and otherwise behaving as badly as desktop software and webapps do these days. It means I have to search more than one store. Now we're veering into the stupid computer shit I don't want to have to worry about, again.
      • romanoderoma 6y ago
        That doesn't address the issue: those who would can't. You don't lose anything if you don't want to. You should have to keep doing what you already do.
        • spanhandler 6y ago
          > That doesn't address the issue: those who would can't. Then buy any other general computing product on the market. I'd be more sympathetic to this concern if Android didn't exist. Meanwhile it does, and the users who picked Apple did it because they don't care about this, they don't care very much about this, or because they actively want the App Store restrictions and the ecosystem that they create. > You don't lose anything if you don't want to. I very well might, though. Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system. The way software developers and publishers behave on iOS could change in ways that I don't like if they're able to viably distribute software outside the App Store. That might be OK, except forcing developers and publishers to follow the App Store rules is part of the appeal of the devices. If that'd been a major sticking point for me, I could have bought Android.
          • romanoderoma 6y ago
            > Then buy any other general computing product on the market That's not how free market works. And it's a very silly objection. Android is a licensed platform.from Google, but Google does not make the majority of devices. Apple manufacturs the devices, but they sell them to me locked in the ecosystem they profit from. Imagine being unable of refueling because your car does not work with standard oil pumps and you had to go to Apple licensed gas station whom Apple charges 30% to. They would be prohibited from selling the car. > I very well might, though. But you wouldn't if you don't change your behaviour. > Changes to rules change how actors behave in a system That's exactly what many want from Apple. Change the rules. Nobody is asking Apple to relax their safety rules inside their walled garden. If they can't allow sideloading, they're not as good as I thought. > I could have bought Android. I don't buy it. If Apple sold Android powered iPhones you would still buy an iPhone, you're are buying the brand, not the product.
    • smnrchrds 6y ago
      On every discussion about this topic on HN, there has been at least one but typically many more commenters saying they love the walled garden and they would pay a premium for it. They trust Apple so they are OK with paying them 30% more instead of paying the app developers directly. They would never dare recommend Windows or Linux or Android to their parents but they would happily recommend them to get iPhones and iPads because they would not end up with a virus-ridden device. Personally, this is so different from the way I think that I find it utterly surprising, much more so from the tech savvy audience of HN. But apparently preferring walled gardens and being willing to pay extra to obtain one and even more every time you buy something on it is not an uncommon opinion to have.
      • reaperducer 6y ago
        Personally, this is so different from the way I think that I find it utterly surprising Seven billion people on the planet. It shouldn't be surprising to learn that not everyone thinks the way that you do. I wonder if it's an age thing. When you're young and have more time than money, tinkering with the technical hassles of your phone is worth it to save a buck or two. When you're older and have more money than time, you happily pay $399 for an iPhone if it means getting hours or days of your life to spend on other things.
        • spanhandler 6y ago
          Age was it, in part, for me. I used to do lots of hardware and OS tinkering. Now the last goddamn thing I want to do is troubleshoot graphical glitches in x-windows, or try to get my audio to handle changing outputs correctly, or cross my fingers while "dist-upgrade" runs, or fix scaling and font rendering in GTK apps, or whatever, when I'm just trying to do something else. At some point I became acutely aware of every time I was doing something with a computer that was simply fucking with the computer, and not actually getting anything that I wanted or needed to get done, except to the extent that making my computer be not-broken is required for those things. Around that time I was exposed to macOS and iOS and finally had an actual choice to (mostly) not have to do that when I don't want to, and if I decide I would like to tinker then I can use... any other option on the market. I'd probably be screwing around with trying to run NetBSD on Android phones and turn them into mobile computers I can plug monitors and keyboards into and embedding RPis and Arduinos in all kinds of crap around the house, if I were 16 again. At the age I am now, though, you'd literally have to pay me to even think about doing any of that. Even when I screw around with getting allegedly set-it-and-forget-it RPi media projects (think: kodi, lakka) working I usually end up regretting it. I do know how to work with those sorts of things. I also very much don't want to any more, but do still want computer-things doing stuff for me with few or no hassles. Luckily these days you can pay to get that, in some categories at least. Largely from Apple, if you want them to last a while—I do wish they had actual competition in that sense. More options that don't spy (much) and Just Work (mostly), please.
    • darkwizard42 6y ago
      Me for one. I don't want to deal with several different terms of service, different ways of payment, lack of clarity on if an app is trustworthy or not. Apple is simple. I trust Apple to protect me and honestly based on the stories I read about Google's Play Store I feel more confident in Apple to do the right thing for consumers in the long run. Their incentive is aligned to my needs (good safe hardware that protects me from making potentially poor choices -- even as someone who is in the "tech" world)
      • farisjarrah 6y ago
        Is Apple's app store actually protecting you from anything, or do you just get the illusion that its protecting you? Although the situation has gotten much better the past couple years, its still not uncommon to find apps on the app store that charge like 10$ a month for some wallpapers or something of a similar nature. Furthermore, every few months there are new news articles coming out about how ""XYZ"" app is collecting ""ABC"" data from iPhone users(like apps scraping clipboard data, or apps trying to access the microphone or camera when the user thinks there should be no recording going on). The claim that the iOS is actually protecting users seems dubious at best. Apple tends to exert control over the app store, but it always seems to be in response to users finding out that some app is doing something evil rather then Apple protecting users up front to begin with.
        • MrScruff 6y ago
          It's providing me with a unified experience, which is a benefit. You might not value it but others do.
        • darkwizard42 6y ago
          iOS is protecting me WAY more than Google Play store. I also read plenty about Apple being TOO strict on developers more than I read them being loose. (which sorry to the developers out there and definitely an area that apple can and should improve on) Your point that some bad actors get through doesn't invalidate that Apple seems to be doing the best job of keeping the app store secure and consumer friendly.
        • 6y ago
    • layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
      Me. I buy Apple products not because it's a walled garden per se, but because it's Apple's walled garden. Apple has been the only vendor to provide me with a consistently top-quality user experience, so I trust them to make decisions that benefit me. I don't have the same trust relationship with other software and hardware vendors, so their walled gardens I would protest against.
    • reaperducer 6y ago
      Me. My life is too full of other things to want to worry about the latest bit of malware floating around on Android, or whether my phone will stop getting updates a year or two after I own it. To me, a phone should work for me, not the other way around. I'd rather spend my time living my life than fussing with the technicalities of my phone. I'm willing to pay extra for it. I also went with iPhone because I trust Apple to vet its apps better than any other vendor. When someone else does as good a job, I'll head over there. But for now, iPhone is where it's at.
    • asadlionpk 6y ago
      Me. It limits the attack surface and all the problems that come with openness, very visible in the Android world. The problem is that giving a choice to users is risky and not acceptable at scale because people are not smart, they do dumb things all the time; like pasting untrusted scripts into devtools console and getting hacked. Or replying to mail scams. So I am happy I can hand an iPad to my parent and not be there to secure all activities they do online.
      • braythwayt 6y ago
        We used to joke about the fact that no matter what you do to educate users, if told that to see a video of funny dancing pigs[1] all they have to do is give the installer root privileges... Users will give the installer root privileges. History bore this out over and over and over again. — [1]: See also: Crapware-laden browser toolbars, Java runtimes, Adobe Reader, Windows crapware, Smart TVs, ...
    • hombre_fatal 6y ago
      Me. I like the sandboxing. I like Apple Pay (especially for subscriptions). I like the new random-gen email addresses system. I like that apps have to use these things and can't just opt-out, because I may have to use the app for work or something. It's not the only thing I care about, but it's not all just strict downside.
    • bhupy 6y ago
      Me, without a doubt. I'm too old and busy to worry about configuring my phone or making sure that it's safe / clean. I also buy it for my parents for the same reason.
    • justwalt 6y ago
      To be fair, this is a somewhat common sentiment that I’ve seen on HN. Similar is the “non tech oriented parent” point, where you don’t have to worry about your parents phone getting a virus.
    • lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Me also. I don't want to spend another second of my life dealing with malware.
    • barefoot 6y ago
      Me. For some background, I’m a longtime hardware and (more frequently) software developer. I also do quite a bit of ML consulting. I was gifted a MacBook Air many years ago. I was an avid Ubuntu (and, to a much lesser extent, Windows) user and developer at the time so I didn’t know what to make of it. I certainly didn’t expect to be blown away and switch to all Apple devices. Eight years later and I’m solidly in the Apple ecosystem. I have an open mind about switching but I love the reliability and consistency of the user experience. I can count on the core apps that I frequently reach for to just work. And if they don’t work there’s almost always an obvious, low-time, solution to fix them. I still do a great deal of development in Windows, but it’s exclusively in a Parallels VM on a MacBook and I’ve long since abandoned my desktop for development. The Apple ecosystem has built up enough trust with me that I also use it when flying (Foreflight on an iPad). You couldn’t pay me to switch to an android tablet as an alternative for that use case. My largest complaint is python development is not great on OS X out of the box. But that’s easy enough to work around.
  • bluedevil2k 6y ago
    The "walled garden" isn't really the issue most at stake here, it's the in-app purchases. To me, it's hard to argue against the benefits of having a one-stop-shop safe-and-secure place to download apps on your phone which contains all your personal information. However, to me, it's hard to argue that Apple should keep getting money from you once you've established a loyal customer base and they are giving you money. And as a not-so-crazy take on this issue, why isn't Apple insisting on taking a cut of, say, the check I'm depositing into Chase and just uploaded a photograph of it. It's revenue, it's in the app ... why isn't Apple taking a piece of that?
    • philwelch 6y ago
      The only people paying the cost of that are companies like Epic, and if their games aren’t available for iOS that will affect the popularity of the iPhone. Maybe Apple backs down on the in-app purchases, or maybe they don’t and that decision drives away developers followed by users. Until then, we’re just seeing them negotiate with each other via PR.
    • fastball 6y ago
      Indeed, that is exactly the argument made by the article.
    • Traster 6y ago
      If Apps are delivering new content and functionality in response to users directly giving them money then in what way is the walled garden walled? Just download the "door" app - now you're downloading arbitrary apps from a 3rd party. What happens when you download steam and suddenly people are downloading totally arbitrary code. Oh and that arbitrary code is hijacking whatsapp and sending itself to all your contacts?
• oppositelock 6y ago
  What does banning closed hardware accomplish? It won't result in equivalent open hardware, except at the margin where it doesn't matter.
• ericmay 6y ago
  > Should closed hardware even be legal to sell? I don't see why not. If it's a problem, then either a competitor will emerge, or people won't purchase the product. If it's truly a bad business practice, it'll lose out in the end. Besides that I actually love the closed system of the iPhone + App Store, we can't just go around banning things anytime we think we might not like them. Every time I see this story it just annoys me. I want the iPhone and App Store to be a closed system. Opening it up is the bad idea here. Philosophically, amazon.com and Facebook are closed systems too. As is Wal-Mart and UPS. I'm not sure why we're only focused on hardware systems here, what's the meaningful distinction?
  • the8472 6y ago
    > If it's truly a bad business practice, it'll lose out in the end. Many bad business practices only lose out because they're made illegal. Protection rackets are great for the ones running them. Although one could quibble that the police is the cheapest universally available protection racket that pushes out all the competition.
  • sammorrowdrums 6y ago
    It seems worth considering startups and entrenched near-monopoly situations differently. Competition is hard to bring back in the latter, and certainly consumers might well benefit from the right interventions. It doesn't mean a purist law to prohibit proprietary closed devices is necessary. And I'd argue with your example of Facebook that they should at minimum be compelled to enable universal linking so that other app vendors can intercept outbound links directly, and users can choose their web browser etc.
  • rowanG077 6y ago
    Hardware is a physical product you buy. You don't buy Amazon or Facebook. They are a service not a product. The meaningful distinction is that you should OWN the hardware you buy and thus it shouldn't be limited by the manufacturer except for things that are vital for product function.
    • ericmay 6y ago
• wmf 6y ago
  There's nothing stopping you from putting a Blu-ray player in your rack next to the Prima box and the cost is trivial. There's a common-sense argument that a person is only going to have one phone, one phone carrier, one ISP, etc. and thus those companies shouldn't hold their customers hostage. Turning that into a legal principle is left as an exercise for the reader.
  • reaperducer 6y ago
    There's nothing stopping you from putting a Blu-ray player in your rack next to the Prima box and the cost is trivial. There's nothing stopping an iPhone owner from also buying an Android phone, and the cost is trivial. There's a common-sense argument that a person is only going to have one phone, one phone carrier There are hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, maybe even millions, who have more than one phone.
    • romanoderoma 6y ago
      This is a common argument, but it's wrong IMO iPhone is not an Android competitor, iPhone is a Samsung/Huawei/LG etc competitor Android competes with iOS If I could install iOS on a Samsung device or Android on an iPhone that would be different But I can't
      • reaperducer 6y ago
        If I could install iOS on a Samsung device or Android on an iPhone that would be different I'm with you there. I'm so mad that I can't install iOS on any device I want. My Android phone? Nope. My HP laptop? Nope. My car entertainment system? Nope. My TRS-80? Nope. My waffle maker? Nope. I even tried to install iOS on my cat, and she rebooted all over the rug. Clearly this is a massive conspiracy by the Apple industrial complex to control what I do with the things I bought and paid for with my own money.
        • romanoderoma 6y ago
          > My HP laptop? Yes. You could. Hackintosh do exist, you know? Buut it's illegal because Apple doesn't want to. So blame Apple for your cat.
• mLuby 6y ago
  Would that apply to anything electrical, or with integrated circuits, or with a port or antenna, or connected to the Internet? Is there an exception for ROM? What about device-specific IDs or keys? And I wonder what test the courts would accept (which the manufacturers would then build to): that the device can run arbitrary code? That each feature of the device is easily accessible via FOSS library or API? That access to each feature in the device could theoretically be reverse-engineered by a sufficiently motivated expert? Interesting thought experiment.
• asutekku 6y ago
  I'm really happy with my closed hardware as the tightly controlled environment promises the customer that the software run in it will be high quality and on some level will be vetted before allowed to the platform. This also attracts other developers to create high-quality software, as those good enough will be highlighted by the platform owner, which in turn means increased sales. And I really can't say the same about open platforms, which usually UX-wise are awful and for that I'm willing to give away the "freedom" some other platform might provide.
  • gameswithgo 6y ago
    i haven’t found that utopia you describe on either the apple of google play store.
  • AshamedCaptain 6y ago
    > I'm really happy with my closed hardware as the tightly controlled environment promises the customer that the software run in it will be high quality and on some level will be vetted before allowed to the platform. This also attracts other developers to create high-quality software, I am not sure whether this is sarcasm or not. Since it seems like it is not, let me say that most closed platforms are absolutely garbage. Let us not think only of the iPhones and the Androids of the world, and instead focus on everything else. Think industrial control. Even the cinema stuff mentioned by the GP I'm sure contains software of the worst quality.
    • jarvar 6y ago
      All you have to do is compare the Apple AppStore with the Android AppStore. How many apps on Android have been found to contain malware? also when it comes to quality and design, Android AppStore is terrible compared to apple.
      • AshamedCaptain 6y ago
        Considering Android is also mostly closed hardware, and that the Android store is exactly as "tightly controlled" as Apple's, thanks for proving my point. If now this was sarcasm, sorry.
• zb1plus 6y ago
  Nope. If a person "owns" a piece of hardware, it should be legal to jailbreak it without any consequences (except perhaps lack of support for 3rd party software) and companies that sell products that build off of jailbroken products should be 100% legal. Edge case products like Prima Cinema can simply lease the hardware with restrictions on how can be used under the terms of the lease. If Apple feels so strongly about locking down their platform, they can adjust their business model and lease their hardware to customers. However, companies should not be able to legally "sell" products that transfer ownership if they are going to include "strings" restricting the usage of the product.
  • Despegar 6y ago
    >Nope. If a person "owns" a piece of hardware, it should be legal to jailbreak it without any consequences (except perhaps lack of support for 3rd party software) and companies that sell products that build off of jailbroken products should be 100% legal. All of those things are true today. The question was: >Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? And the answer to that is: obviously it should be, if you care about competition and innovation. The only people that disagree with this are the tech people who have had problems with Apple's business on ideological grounds for decades (people like Richard Stallman and saurik). But outside that one particularly small constituency, there's no good public policy reason to actually make it illegal, and plenty of reasons not to.
    • GeekyBear 6y ago
      Correct. It's been perfectly legal since 2010. >The U.S. Librarian of Congress ruled on Monday that consumers who circumvent digital protections on smartphones to install unapproved applications—a practice often colloquially known as “jailbreaking”—for noninfringing reasons should be exempted from prosecution under the anti-circumvention section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). https://www.macworld.com/article/1152935/jailbreak_exemption.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1152935/jailbreak_exemption...
      • syshum 6y ago
• blintz 6y ago
  I think that the right legal and political concept to accomplish essentially the same goal is the “right to repair”. This is a concept that lots of people (outside of technology) have an immediate connection to, and the downsides of not having it are more clear (waste, less competition, bricking when companies go out of business). From a regulatory standpoint, it seems easier than attempting to hand ‘closed’ hardware - less line drawing on what counts as firmware and more focus on what consumers need to properly use and maintain a device over a long period of time.
• autosharp 6y ago
  > So the question is, should consumers be able to knowingly buy restricted hardware such as Prima Cinema? If this would be restricted then you should keep it legal to buy but illegal to sell. Making the purchase illegal would only further criminalize the consumer.
• _jal 6y ago
  So, the core issue, it seems to me, is one of outcomes. Do we want a locked down future? Or do we want an open one? Do we even want to have a choice? That last question is actually important - maybe "the market" (meaning whoever is positioned at time) should decide. Maybe "we" already have "decided" and the rest is just that decision playing out. But I don't think this discussion is that useful without specifics. Imagine 10 years forward - Amazon, Facebook and Google all require locked down (you do not have root) hardware to access anything they store for you/to buy anything. Maybe you can still give your Raspberry Pi an IP and send packets, but interaction with any mainstream entity requires signing your traffic with a key on a chip. ("To solve identity theft" "for the children" "do you want the terrorists to win?") Is that a world you want to live in?
• badsectoracula 6y ago
  > Yes, it's legal today but should we make it illegal? IMO, yes. We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff, which ends up with you losing control over it (you have no more access to your stuff), so it also makes sense to make it illegal for someone to decide to not allow you install or modify the stuff you have (again taking control away from you). The way most of these platforms run is like buying something but by doing so you also give an implicit permission for the seller to come in your house and modify or even forbid you from using what you bought if they do not like what you are doing with it. Imagine if you bought an oven and you could only bake specific recipes that the over manufacturer allowed. And when you complained you had others telling you "just buy another oven" (until all oven manufacturers were into the game because it made them more money - especially those who are also into selling ingredients - and you had no other options, except perhaps a few cheap models that had a tendency to explode every now and then and their only usefulness is to be used as skapegoats whenever "monopoly" is brought up). And yes, i know the above comparisons aren't 100% fitting, software isn't a physical product, it is special, but it still feels very wrong to buy a device (be it a phone, gaming console, TV or whatever) and have no control over what you can install or even -in some cases- do with it.
  • gtsteve 6y ago
    > We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff It's not illegal however if you signed a contract to that effect, which is what you did when you started using the platform. A better analogy is that you're renting some furniture and the furniture is found to be unsafe. The company can come and take it away, either replacing it with something else or refunding you. In the software world nobody but the creators or IP holders of the software actually owns the software. They just provide you the license to use it. It's illegal in many countries to modify the software so if you had a closed-source word processing application it would be illegal to mod it or to use it as part of a data transformation pipeline. You can only use it for the purposes stated when you bought it. If there was a way to limit your oven to bake recipes the manufacturer allowed or to use specific approved ingredients, and would come with some sort of value-add to make consumers ignore that as a problem, I'm sure someone would actually do this. (please note that I am stating facts as I see them and not necessarily agreeing with the state of affairs)
• FactolSarin 6y ago
  While I'm sympathetic to this idea, one thing that I get hung up on is game consoles. I enjoy multiplayer shooters, and I like knowing that none of my opponents are using bots. So the fact that the console is locked down is part of the value proposition for me. It's a pro, rather than a con.
  • liability 6y ago
    Or you can just play with friends who don't cheat. Cheaters are only a problem if your friends are jackasses or you play with strangers.
    • spanhandler 6y ago
      So... we're gonna throw out the freedom to play with non-cheating strangers when your friends are all busy, in order that every computing device, instead of just lots and lots of them, can have arbitrary software installed on it? This feels like losing options, not gaining them.
      • liability 6y ago
        > we're gonna throw out the freedom to play with non-cheating strangers Freedom? No. Opportunity? Maybe. I think communities would arise to fill the demand though. Pseudo-anonymous reputation systems tied to matchmaking could fill the roll. I have a group of pseudo-anonymous friends/acquaintances I frequently play games with online. None of us cheat and if any of us did, we'd stop playing with them. We don't need big brother. We don't need technical solutions to social problems.
        • spanhandler 6y ago
          Maybe they could form a company for this purpose, and then sell a product that fills that need?
    • esrauch 6y ago
      That only works if you have friends to play both your teammates and the enemy team which is a very tall order. Most people play with strangers overall, and most people who play with friends just have them as teammates against stranger opponents.
• arkanciscan 6y ago
  First of all; Yes in my opinion. But just as a devil's advocate; what about rentals? You can't just put new wheels on your ZipCar. If we made locked platforms illegal, they would simply become rentals. But at least it would be explicit then.
• runako 6y ago
  > closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? Two thoughts: 1 - As software goes into everything, keep in mind that the universe of devices to which this applies will grow to include the set of "non-organic physical objects." 2 - And this will means that surprising outcomes could come of requiring everything to be open. Who do you trust to verify the software in your used car/refrigerator/lightswitch/water heater/etc? For devices where physical safety is at play, how do you verify that the (possibly aftermarket) software is up to code or other certification? Imagine every car sale or home inspection required a software assurance verification of every embedded system. Closed systems implicitly provide some level of assurance here.
  • gsich 6y ago
    >Closed systems implicitly provide some level of assurance here. No they don't as I can't verify any of that. A perfect counterexample is the VW dieselsoftware.
    • runako 6y ago
      (Edit: I did not downvote, this is a legitimate counterpoint.) > perfect counterexample is the VW dieselsoftware This is a great counterexample that inadvertently proves the point because in that case a) the software in question was exactly as delivered by the manufacturer so that b) consumers were able to receive compensation from rich VW for the faulty software. If the software stack was open, a malfunction could be caused by aftermarket software (think: downloaded from Sourceforge) and therefore consumers would have no real remedy. I suppose I could have been clearer on what's being assured. There is (obviously) value in being assured that you are buying what the manufacturer intended!
      • gsich 6y ago
        With an open system, that flaw would have been detected way earlier. Now the original post was about closed hardware, so I'm not sure if this was the case here. I have never tried flashing some motor control of a car, but it's possibly not even restricted, so "open system" would more likely refer to "open source". While there might be an incentive to restrict modifications (at least on a car, which is potentially dangerous), I don't see counterpoints to open-sourceing the software that runs on (the car in this example).
• actuator 6y ago
  I think this comparison is in bad faith. I would put it like this, it should definitely be illegal to be anti-competitive on general computing devices once you hit a significant revenue(the revenue bit only to allow small players to compete first and not be stifled). Devices like Kindle are one purpose devices. It is supposed to be a replacement for a book. The integration with Kindle Store for ebooks can be complained about, but Amazon gives you the freedom to use ebooks from anywhere, infact if you can live with the bad experience you can use the browser itself to download them on the device. iPhone is a different ballgame, it is an ecosystem creating device. I have no problem with them restricting the APIs for third party developers if it improves security on the device, that's a good thing. But then the rent seeking on apps like Spotify is just bad for upcoming companies and would be for users in the end. This is not just limited to software, they can use the same leverage to even kill companies in hardware space. Sure, Apple doesn't have a monopoly in terms of device share, but they absolutely are in a position to kill a company.
• simion314 6y ago
  As long I own it the vendor should unlock it, it the past the phones were locked to work only with SIM cards from the provider you bought the phone, when the contract expired the phone still remained locked and you had to find someone to unlock it for you, Then (hope my memory is not mistaken) something changed(probably laws) so carriers had to provide you with a code to unlock your phone when the contract was over. I think should be the same with game consoles if and only if they are subsidized , when I paid the full price then is my hardware. Preventing piracy should not affect my property rights and hardware should not brick itself if somehow detects I want to use it as I want. If Sony does not like this they could rent me the hardware for cheap or free because the bastards are locking already online features behind subscriptions.
• liability 6y ago
  > "You can't argue that Prima Cinema should not be locked down (claiming anti-competitive behavior)" Yes I can. > because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't That's fine by me.
• philwelch 6y ago
  Back in the heyday of the Bell system, telephones were owned by the phone company and you leased them as part of your phone service. That’s why they were made of indestructible steel and you could hang up by slamming the handset down on the receiver at full force if you were really ticked off at a telemarketer or something. That also meant phone phreaks tampering with their own phones were in dubious legal territory because they didn’t own the phones. I think people should have the freedom to consent to buy whatever products they like so long as the functionality of the product is not kept secret. They also should (and do) have the freedom to try and jailbreak it but not to the point of obligating the manufacturer to produce an open system. But even if there is some sort of law that you can’t sell closed-stack systems, you could just migrate everything to equipment leases. IMO this would make matters much, much worse for the consumer in terms of having control over their own equipment (though maybe some equipment would be made to last again).
• jm4 6y ago
  How about don't buy it? Here's another question. Is it reasonable to buy a product, knowing that it works a particular way, and then expect the law to change in order to change the way that product works?
  • jcelerier 6y ago
    > Is it reasonable to buy a product, knowing that it works a particular way, and then expect the law to change in order to change the way that product works? if we agree as a society that the way the product work does not fit with our society ideals, then yes, definitely ? Especially when the person buying it will likely not have a lot of information / put a lot of thought in the issue. Laws are meant to protect people from that.
• harha 6y ago
  I’m not sure if all cases need to be handled this way, with the Prima Server the main transaction seems to be the right to access the movies. With a device that needs to be used in every day life (proof: smart phone penetration in many countries, more recently, access to certain locations only with a Covid app) it makes sense to have stronger protections for consumers and other businesses.
• 627467 6y ago
  IMO, In most circumstances companies shouldn't need to document their products to the point that anyone can recreate them or modify them. But I don't think companies should actively create mechanisms (legal or otherwise) that prevent tinkerers.
• gpm 6y ago
  > Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell Yes (practically), but with a small exception. If you are the only provider of the hardware. For example if you own a single patent protecting any component of the hardware. You are the sole manufacturer of any reasonably unique component of the hardware. You are the only manufacturer putting components together in this combination. Etc. Then it should be illegal. It should be an anti-trust violation. You are using your monopoly on the hardware to create a monopoly on the software running on the hardware. Moreover attempting to do so should constitute patent misuse and invalidate any patents that you previously owned on the hardware [1]. If the hardware is completely commoditized, consumers have the option to buy practically identical hardware from a competitor, then it should not be illegal. It's hard to come up with examples of such hardware [1] Patent misuse is a doctrine where if you attempt to use a patent to create a monopoly on something else, you lose the patent. It is rarely but not never used by the courts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_misuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_misuse (I acknowledge this is a fairly extreme position, and that it is partially created by motivated reasoning. But it is the most principled position I can find to reach the conclusion that I want)
• Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  No, Can you Imagine a consumer PC manufacturer demanding such fee for Softwares using their hardware 10 years back and getting away with it? But in the age of Appstore(s), it would not be that alarming anymore if the computer manufacturer suddenly decides to lock the computer for non-store softwares instead of what's happening now(Warning, having to right-click to open etc.). But the thing is, Apple has been stomping little guys forever and these Billion dollar gaming companies got benefited from it and only when the 30% cut has become too big of a chunk of their revenue; they are now making it as a David vs Goliath story. I had a retro arachnoid type game in Appstore for years which was under 'Arcade' category, when apple branded its gaming subscription service as 'Arcade', it forced me to change it to an irrelevant category.
• gsich 6y ago
  >In the spirit of this particular story, I'd like to ask HN the following question: Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? You can have both ways. You can sell, but after 1 year (or 2) it becomes open.
• bcrosby95 6y ago
  What does the "entire stack" mean? Does it apply to e.g. cars?
• AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? No. > You can't argue that Prima Cinema should not be locked down (claiming anti-competitive behavior) because the paranoid film studios wouldn't even license their content if it wasn't. You can actually. They demand this kind of DRM because they know the customer would sooner say yes to it than not get the movie. But that's only because they're in the better bargaining position as the only source for the movie -- it's leveraging the copyright monopoly into perfidious control over the device market. But they still, at the end of the day, want your money. Which means that if the thing they're insisting on is prohibited, they'll make it work without it. Consider the general argument you're making. It's basically that if DRM was prohibited by law then Hollywood wouldn't distribute movies at all. But that's farcical -- they would have no revenue. Instead they would just distribute them without it, because they'd have no other option. Okay, but what about your edge case, the really fancy one with the hardware anti-tampering. Wouldn't they at least not have that one? Still no, because it's still the same thing. The only point in having that is to try to push back the day when the movie is on all the pirate sites. But it's only to push it back while they're still distributing it using the higher margin distribution channels. If DRM was prohibited whatsoever then they couldn't use it there, so they would distribute it even there without it because otherwise there is no high margin early release market to protect.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    Which makes me think, what prevents me from putting a lens in front to the projector and directly imaging the projection into a camera sensor? Modern cameras can record lossless 48bpp equiv. video in 4K, it would pretty much be a 1:1 copy given sufficiently sophisticated optics. Which leads me to the conclusion that the only reason why no one is ripping movies using Prima Cinema projectors and commodity grade hardware is the price. If they removed DRM it wouldn't make much of a difference, the limiting factor is already the price of the projector.
    • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      I honestly think that DRM is very much like antivirus in the sense that the only reason anybody buys into it is that the companies who develop it pay sales reps to convince corporations that it's something they need when it's really just poisonous snake oil and paying money to someone to shoot you in the foot.
• loxs 6y ago
  > Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? I think the problem here arises not from the DRM (which I tend to believe is OK for clear cut cases like the above movie player), but from the universality of the smartphone device. Because of this universality, the phone is in a way "essential", so the "contract" you (as an end user) have with Apple is not able to encompass every use case of the device. In this particular case, you might have bought the phone/tablet with the sole (or main - I know kids) purpose to play Fortnite on it. Now, because of politics, you can no longer use the phone for your initial intended purpose. Not because something you did, but because of something Apple and Epic did. So it should be either forbidden for Apple, or they should be obliged to fully refund you, because the device is no longer usable for the original purpose you used it. In an "ideal" world (with much less regulation), Apple would not be protected from such litigation (and now they are, because of the fine print) where users demand refund because of such things, but the world is not ideal. The regulation is there, so we should extend it onto Apple, who need to be "reduced" to something more like a utility company.
• slowmovintarget 6y ago
  No, we should not make it illegal. They maybe should have to say their product cannot be modified on the tin. That'd let consumers choose. It'd also let competitors advertise an advantage, if it is such. I am in favor of right-to-repair, but that's a different concern than what you're asking about.