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I really think there is a big difference between digital devices and houses, and saying that the old "house is your castle" laws should apply to a phone is sill

I really think there is a big difference between digital devices and houses, and saying that the old "house is your castle" laws should apply to a phone is silly, especially when talking about app stores. Saying that "the phone is still your property" is true physically, but that's not what the OP is saying. He's saying that whoever sold you the phone shouldn't be able to control or limit what happens to it. Why not though? I wonder what he thinks about homeowner associations in the US. Or gun laws. Or zoning restrictions. Or all of the other laws that society has added since then. My Samsung TV won't let me install apps from anywhere but the Samsung app store. Is that really breaking the Magna Carta? This is silly.

nybble41 6y ago
> He's saying that whoever sold you the phone shouldn't be able to control or limit what happens to it. I can't speak for the OP but I would generally agree with this statement. Selling something implies turning over control to the new owner. If the device still answers to you after the transaction you haven't really finished your part of the sale. This is somewhat like the concept of inalienable rights, where e.g. you can't voluntarily transfer ownership of your body to someone else while you're still alive because regardless of what you claimed to agree to you still have effective control over it. Except in this case their control is alienable but they simply choose not to relinquish it. One can make a reasonable argument that claiming to sell a device while actually retaining control over it is a form of fraud—that this isn't a sale but only a lease. Imaging selling someone a house with unbreakable locked doors, and keeping the keys to those doors for yourself, so that the new "owner" must beg permission from you to enter. This make a mockery of what it means to own something.

nybble41 6y ago

> He's saying that whoever sold you the phone shouldn't be able to control or limit what happens to it. I can't speak for the OP but I would generally agree with this statement. Selling something implies turning over control to the new owner. If the device still answers to you after the transaction you haven't really finished your part of the sale. This is somewhat like the concept of inalienable rights, where e.g. you can't voluntarily transfer ownership of your body to someone else while you're still alive because regardless of what you claimed to agree to you still have effective control over it. Except in this case their control is alienable but they simply choose not to relinquish it. One can make a reasonable argument that claiming to sell a device while actually retaining control over it is a form of fraud—that this isn't a sale but only a lease. Imaging selling someone a house with unbreakable locked doors, and keeping the keys to those doors for yourself, so that the new "owner" must beg permission from you to enter. This make a mockery of what it means to own something.