6 ms·

This is based on a nonsensical idea of what ‘ownership’ allows you to do. When you buy a phone, you definitely own all the atoms in it. You can take it apart a

This is based on a nonsensical idea of what ‘ownership’ allows you to do. When you buy a phone, you definitely own all the atoms in it. You can take it apart and use the bits to make jewelry. You can take all the phones you have and assemble them into a piece of wall art. Apple has no say in what you do with the object. But your belief that physical ownership of the object should mean you can make it do anything you want is… bounded by your actual capability to do so. You can probably extract some of the parts of your phone and reuse them - maybe with care and patience you could figure out how to use the screen, or the battery, or the camera as part of another device. Again, not something Apple can stop you doing. But expecting to be able to use a device to do something you want to merely because you know the potential to do so is inside is an unrealistic expectation. A cotton t-shirt might contain enough thread to be able to be woven into a pair of shorts, but you can’t complain to the manufacturer that the way they made the t-shirt makes it hard for you to turn it into shorts. They sold it to you in a useful, valuable configuration. They’re not obligated to make it easy for you to reconfigure it to your will.

Hackbraten 5y ago
That t-shirt analogy feels a little stretchy to me. The configuration option used to exist. All iPhone developers were able to use it. Now Apple is revoking that permission. That’s hardly “reconfiguring to our will.”
judge2020 5y ago
Messing with the software, to this day, is also allowed as you own the device. The only thing stopping OP is their own technical skills/the publicly available tools that allow modification of the code in the right way (as in: jailbreaking is still legal, but Apple has the right to put barriers in the way of it for security reasons).
- jameshart 5y ago
  Right - if you ripped the ROM chip off and replaced it with your own ROM containing your own OS and drivers for all the hardware you could make the hardware do anything it’s physically capable of accomplishing. And Apple would have no legal recourse. The fact that that is an extremely complicated thing to do is not apple’s problem.
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    I agree with you - As long as the barrier is genuinely complexity. My issue is that Apple (and many other manufacturers, this isn't really Apple specific) add complexity solely to act as digital locks on what is otherwise a fairly obvious and achievable task. Take your ROM example - Why should I even need to rip it off and replace it? I know damn well how to flash ROM. I have the software tools available. I have the image file with all the drivers I need/want. The only thing stopping me is digital locks in the device. Are the locks themselves evil? No, clearly not - I lock my house when I leave, and I'll probably leave my phone locked most times too. Are the locks evil if I don't own a key? Pretty clearly yes. Can I rip the whole device apart, interface directly with the ROM, and flash it? Probably - assuming I buy some much more expensive hardware. But that sorta defeats the point of having the device, yes? Just like it's not reasonable to sell me a car without a key. --- - Congratulations - you own this brand new car you just bought! - Great! Thank you so much, can I have the keys to drive it now? - No, no... of course not. When you want to drive it, you phone us up, and we come unlock and start it for you - Wait... what? That's bullshit - I just bought this car! - Well, you're welcome to break a window and hotwire it to drive it. But do be aware we'll report this as theft to the police, and depending on what you tinker with we might also throw the DMCA at you
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Your car analogy sounds a lot like Tesla with phone-as-key, and last I checked Tesla sold 500k of those last year and are on track to sell 800k this year. People have been locked out of their Teslas when their phone is dead and they didn't bring a physical key with them. Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they protect against the threat model of physical access, whether that be an attack thanks to leaving the phone unlocked or giving your passcode to your friend to use for a while. This is all in disregardless of whether or not the customer actually has this as part of their personal threat model.
      - 6yyyyyy 5y ago
        >are on track to sell 800k this year Zero of which will be bought by me. >Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they protect against the threat model of physical access Apple can add as many arbitrary digital locks as they want. The problem is that they keep the key instead of giving it to the user.
happymellon 5y ago
This would make sense if I had the tools to unweave and reweave a t-shirt but the manufacturer has added additional wire in a cross pattern to specifically prevent this. Apple actively design their products to not allow you to reconfigure them even if you have the tooling. The shirt manufacturers do not prevent me from taking a old shirt and making oil rags from the fabric.
- jameshart 5y ago
  Well in this case, Apple make a ‘tool’ that lets you send multicast packets (it’s actually built in to the device, but it’s behind a lock) - and they will even give you the key to unlock that tool and instructions for how to use it if you apply through a form on their website! That doesn’t seem quite so evil, does it?
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    If I own the device, why does it have a lock to which I do not have a fucking key? "I sold him the car, officer! I just refuse to give him the keys to actually start it."
    - jameshart 5y ago
      Because the main usecase of the device is running software written by third parties and if that tool was left unlocked occasionally that third party software would hack into your home router.
      - horsawlarway 5y ago
        I don't mind the lock. I mind that it's a lock to which I don't have the fucking key. I understand the risks of allowing local network access, I'd like to unlock the lock. Why does apple still have control to say no?
        underdeserver 5y ago
anticristi 5y ago
I would take the analogy even further. While you may physically have the capability to do as you please with the house you own, you do not have the legal permission to do so. The exterior is heavily regulated by city landscaping regulations. The interior structure is heavily regulated by building codes. Mess with wiring and you can say goodbye to your electricity grid connection. Mess with pipes and no insurance will cover you. Similarly, I own a car. Can I take off the seat belts? Physically, yes. But legally, a vehicle without a seat belts is no longer a car and I lose the right to enjoy driving it on public roads. Ownership was never about physical possession. It's about gaining some rights. Back to phones, the challenge is to demarcate what rights does an owner get when they buy a phone. To side with Epic Games, the discussion is even more complicated by Apple's (purposeful) confusion of owning a phone with having access to an ecosystem of apps for that phone. I can do whatever I am capable of with my iPhone, but I may lose access to the ecosystem of apps.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  This doesn't hold at all. You not being allowed to drive a car without seat belts has nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with the road. You own the car. You share the road. You can drive that car anywhere you want with permission from the owners, you just can't share the road we all paid for together unless you put on a god-damned seat belt so that John the EMT doesn't have to see the 4th smeared human body on the shared road this week when you crash it.
  - kemayo 5y ago
    It's not awful for this specific entitlement, as we could say "you own the phone, you share the network". (You might own some networks. But you also might own some roads. We'd stretch the analogy to your home WiFi being akin to your driveway, I guess.)
    - 6yyyyyy 5y ago
      Apple doesn't own the network.
wyager 5y ago
> But your belief that physical ownership of the object should mean you can make it do anything you want is… bounded by your actual capability to do so. No object should ever actively, uncompromisingly preclude me from using it to do something of which it is capable. Objects can suggest I take a certain course of action, but ultimately they must follow my instructions without trying to impede me. Any other way and I don’t truly own the object.
- jameshart 5y ago
  The object of your iPhone will absolutely not impede you in any way from using its antenna to transmit a multicast IP packet on a WiFi network. It is up to you to figure out how to get the electrons in the antenna to wiggle in the appropriate manner to make that happen, but there are absolutely no constraints preventing you, as the owner of said iPhone, from doing so.
  - wyager 5y ago
    > The object of your iPhone will absolutely not impede you in any way from using its antenna to transmit a multicast IP packet on a WiFi network. Yes it will. The premise of your claim is wrong. It impedes me from doing lots of things, like running apps that aren’t approved by Apple.
    - jameshart 5y ago
      You want Apple to give you some software that lets you do that without restriction. They don’t want to. So if you want to do so without restriction you’ll have to make your own software - as in, literally replace the entire software stack, rom/os/drivers with software that does what you want. Good luck with that, but don’t blame the device - the object you bought and own - for your failure to be able to.
kevin_b_er 5y ago
This is incorrect! If you rearrange certain atoms in ways not approved, you are in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201. If this improves your financial standing, you have committed a crime under 17 U.S. Code § 1204 and are subject to not more than $500000 or 5 years in prison. Under the DMCA, if you rearrange the atoms or attempt to describe how to rearrange the atoms in a way not approved by the phone manufacturer, you are a criminal. Copyright, and in particular the DMCA, has superseded your ownership of the atoms. You must do with them as the true owner of the atoms (Apple for example) permits.
- jameshart 5y ago
  If you rearrange the atoms into your neighbor’s head you violate a bunch of laws as well. Owning an object certainly doesn’t immunize you from your obligations to use it in ways that comply with the law.
joshstrange 5y ago
There is always a point at which you don't control the stack, that's been the case for decades now. Just look at the CPU and how you can't change the code that interprets microcode (I think I'm using that term right) or, even more insidious, the Intel ME. Yes, Apple has moved their control up the stack but some people pretend the world was an open source utopia before Apple created the iPhone. As someone who has to provide tech support to my family/friends I can tell you I couldn't be happier that they can't screw up their phones like they do their computers.
- 6yyyyyy 5y ago
  This is also a bad thing.

Hackbraten 5y ago

That t-shirt analogy feels a little stretchy to me. The configuration option used to exist. All iPhone developers were able to use it. Now Apple is revoking that permission. That’s hardly “reconfiguring to our will.”

judge2020 5y ago

Messing with the software, to this day, is also allowed as you own the device. The only thing stopping OP is their own technical skills/the publicly available tools that allow modification of the code in the right way (as in: jailbreaking is still legal, but Apple has the right to put barriers in the way of it for security reasons).

jameshart 5y ago
Right - if you ripped the ROM chip off and replaced it with your own ROM containing your own OS and drivers for all the hardware you could make the hardware do anything it’s physically capable of accomplishing. And Apple would have no legal recourse. The fact that that is an extremely complicated thing to do is not apple’s problem.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  I agree with you - As long as the barrier is genuinely complexity. My issue is that Apple (and many other manufacturers, this isn't really Apple specific) add complexity solely to act as digital locks on what is otherwise a fairly obvious and achievable task. Take your ROM example - Why should I even need to rip it off and replace it? I know damn well how to flash ROM. I have the software tools available. I have the image file with all the drivers I need/want. The only thing stopping me is digital locks in the device. Are the locks themselves evil? No, clearly not - I lock my house when I leave, and I'll probably leave my phone locked most times too. Are the locks evil if I don't own a key? Pretty clearly yes. Can I rip the whole device apart, interface directly with the ROM, and flash it? Probably - assuming I buy some much more expensive hardware. But that sorta defeats the point of having the device, yes? Just like it's not reasonable to sell me a car without a key. --- - Congratulations - you own this brand new car you just bought! - Great! Thank you so much, can I have the keys to drive it now? - No, no... of course not. When you want to drive it, you phone us up, and we come unlock and start it for you - Wait... what? That's bullshit - I just bought this car! - Well, you're welcome to break a window and hotwire it to drive it. But do be aware we'll report this as theft to the police, and depending on what you tinker with we might also throw the DMCA at you
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Your car analogy sounds a lot like Tesla with phone-as-key, and last I checked Tesla sold 500k of those last year and are on track to sell 800k this year. People have been locked out of their Teslas when their phone is dead and they didn't bring a physical key with them. Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they protect against the threat model of physical access, whether that be an attack thanks to leaving the phone unlocked or giving your passcode to your friend to use for a while. This is all in disregardless of whether or not the customer actually has this as part of their personal threat model.
    - 6yyyyyy 5y ago
      >are on track to sell 800k this year Zero of which will be bought by me. >Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they protect against the threat model of physical access Apple can add as many arbitrary digital locks as they want. The problem is that they keep the key instead of giving it to the user.

happymellon 5y ago

This would make sense if I had the tools to unweave and reweave a t-shirt but the manufacturer has added additional wire in a cross pattern to specifically prevent this. Apple actively design their products to not allow you to reconfigure them even if you have the tooling. The shirt manufacturers do not prevent me from taking a old shirt and making oil rags from the fabric.

jameshart 5y ago
Well in this case, Apple make a ‘tool’ that lets you send multicast packets (it’s actually built in to the device, but it’s behind a lock) - and they will even give you the key to unlock that tool and instructions for how to use it if you apply through a form on their website! That doesn’t seem quite so evil, does it?
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  If I own the device, why does it have a lock to which I do not have a fucking key? "I sold him the car, officer! I just refuse to give him the keys to actually start it."
  - jameshart 5y ago
    Because the main usecase of the device is running software written by third parties and if that tool was left unlocked occasionally that third party software would hack into your home router.
    - horsawlarway 5y ago
      I don't mind the lock. I mind that it's a lock to which I don't have the fucking key. I understand the risks of allowing local network access, I'd like to unlock the lock. Why does apple still have control to say no?
      - underdeserver 5y ago

anticristi 5y ago

I would take the analogy even further. While you may physically have the capability to do as you please with the house you own, you do not have the legal permission to do so. The exterior is heavily regulated by city landscaping regulations. The interior structure is heavily regulated by building codes. Mess with wiring and you can say goodbye to your electricity grid connection. Mess with pipes and no insurance will cover you. Similarly, I own a car. Can I take off the seat belts? Physically, yes. But legally, a vehicle without a seat belts is no longer a car and I lose the right to enjoy driving it on public roads. Ownership was never about physical possession. It's about gaining some rights. Back to phones, the challenge is to demarcate what rights does an owner get when they buy a phone. To side with Epic Games, the discussion is even more complicated by Apple's (purposeful) confusion of owning a phone with having access to an ecosystem of apps for that phone. I can do whatever I am capable of with my iPhone, but I may lose access to the ecosystem of apps.

horsawlarway 5y ago
This doesn't hold at all. You not being allowed to drive a car without seat belts has nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with the road. You own the car. You share the road. You can drive that car anywhere you want with permission from the owners, you just can't share the road we all paid for together unless you put on a god-damned seat belt so that John the EMT doesn't have to see the 4th smeared human body on the shared road this week when you crash it.
- kemayo 5y ago
  It's not awful for this specific entitlement, as we could say "you own the phone, you share the network". (You might own some networks. But you also might own some roads. We'd stretch the analogy to your home WiFi being akin to your driveway, I guess.)
  - 6yyyyyy 5y ago
    Apple doesn't own the network.

wyager 5y ago

> But your belief that physical ownership of the object should mean you can make it do anything you want is… bounded by your actual capability to do so. No object should ever actively, uncompromisingly preclude me from using it to do something of which it is capable. Objects can suggest I take a certain course of action, but ultimately they must follow my instructions without trying to impede me. Any other way and I don’t truly own the object.

jameshart 5y ago
The object of your iPhone will absolutely not impede you in any way from using its antenna to transmit a multicast IP packet on a WiFi network. It is up to you to figure out how to get the electrons in the antenna to wiggle in the appropriate manner to make that happen, but there are absolutely no constraints preventing you, as the owner of said iPhone, from doing so.
- wyager 5y ago
  > The object of your iPhone will absolutely not impede you in any way from using its antenna to transmit a multicast IP packet on a WiFi network. Yes it will. The premise of your claim is wrong. It impedes me from doing lots of things, like running apps that aren’t approved by Apple.
  - jameshart 5y ago
    You want Apple to give you some software that lets you do that without restriction. They don’t want to. So if you want to do so without restriction you’ll have to make your own software - as in, literally replace the entire software stack, rom/os/drivers with software that does what you want. Good luck with that, but don’t blame the device - the object you bought and own - for your failure to be able to.

kevin_b_er 5y ago

This is incorrect! If you rearrange certain atoms in ways not approved, you are in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201. If this improves your financial standing, you have committed a crime under 17 U.S. Code § 1204 and are subject to not more than $500000 or 5 years in prison. Under the DMCA, if you rearrange the atoms or attempt to describe how to rearrange the atoms in a way not approved by the phone manufacturer, you are a criminal. Copyright, and in particular the DMCA, has superseded your ownership of the atoms. You must do with them as the true owner of the atoms (Apple for example) permits.

jameshart 5y ago
If you rearrange the atoms into your neighbor’s head you violate a bunch of laws as well. Owning an object certainly doesn’t immunize you from your obligations to use it in ways that comply with the law.

joshstrange 5y ago

There is always a point at which you don't control the stack, that's been the case for decades now. Just look at the CPU and how you can't change the code that interprets microcode (I think I'm using that term right) or, even more insidious, the Intel ME. Yes, Apple has moved their control up the stack but some people pretend the world was an open source utopia before Apple created the iPhone. As someone who has to provide tech support to my family/friends I can tell you I couldn't be happier that they can't screw up their phones like they do their computers.

6yyyyyy 5y ago
This is also a bad thing.