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Wake up Steve Jobs and APPLE—it’s time for the locked cell phone to die!
© Cheryl Hodgson 2007 | Posted on October 15, 2007
Steve Jobs is talking out of both sides of his mouth, and it’s not fun to watch. I’ve just finished reading a great article on www.thestreet.com by Brett Arends entitled APPLE DECLARES iPHONE MARTIAL LAW, http://www.thestreet.com/s/apple-declares-iphone-martial-aw/newsanalysis/techstockupdate/10384062.html?puc=_dm.
Now it’s my turn to comment from the music industry perspective. After years as a music attorney, artist manager, publisher and agent, I’m tired of seeing the one-sided impact technology has had upon the rights of copyright owners. Technology companies like Apple have spent millions lobbying to successfully limit the rights of music copyright owners so that “open access” to the consumer can be had by all.
Now Steve is screaming—“No open network access for I Phone users?” What happened Steve? Now that those same music infringing devices which demanded open access are combined with a phone—open access is not okay?
Apple is taking the bitter bill–a dose of the same medicine the music industry has been swallowing for the last few years as a result the success of technology advancements enabling wholesale copying and “open access” to music. Apple and other companies like it have quickly forgotten that extension of the “fair use” holding in the Sony Betamax case paved the way for Apple to legally sell devices such as the I Phone free of claims of contributory infringement by copyright owners. Companies like Apple are free to innovate, design, and sell devices which everyone knows are being purchased for the purpose of using copyrighted materials.
Steve and Apple are upset that devoted consumers and purchasers of it I Phones (many I’m guessing already owned an I Pod) might want open access to other networks than AT&T, the one “chosen” by Apple, through the same process any master owner would have used a few years ago. While Apple’s I Pod owes its very existence to such “free access” arguments, suddenly, it’s not okay to allow unfettered open access to the I Phone via other than the “licensed” network of choice AT& T.
Hmm, this situation sounds like Apple is suddenly feeling the pain the record companies were feeling a few years back, when technology companies supported the right of the “consumer” to remake the music industry by demanding more open access to music and a negation of the master owners to say yes or no to use of their masters by technology companies unwilling to seek permission.
Aren’t the consumers who want open network access for the I Phone the same consumers Apple was “supporting” a few years back? And isn’t Apple’s response to its consumers much the same as the music industry’s futile cries when record companies claimed they had the right to say yes or no to access to their copyrighted assets?
One could say: “Steve, you can dish it out—but you just can’t take it!” I’m a huge fan of Apple, and a shareholder in the company. However, Steve, you are way off base on this one! You helped create this generation—live with it. Wake up and join the rest of the world, particularly Europe where the locked cell phone is dead, or should I say never really born.
Just as the music industry was forced to deal with impact technology had on its business model, the locked cell phone in the U.S should end. Steve, the same consumers who wanted open access to music can now afford an expensive I Phone. They now want to choose which and what networks those precious little I Phones can access. Why would you expect anything else?
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