Let me answer that for you, Eric
Free Software pundit Eric Raymond, preaching on the report that Apple “has filed for a patent on a system for disabling the video camera on an iPhone or iPad when its user attempts to film a concert or other interdicted live event”:
On their past record, can there be any doubt of Apple’s willingness to quietly slipstream this technology into a future release of iOS, leaving its victims unaware that their ability to record a police action or a political demonstration is now conditional on whether the authorities have deployed the right sort of IR flasher to invisibly censor the event?
Um, yes. Yes, Eric, there can be doubt.
Raymond’s argument about Apple’s past record is buried in the comments:
DRM. Their whole corporate history indicates a willingness to design iPhones and iPads so they are instruments of RIAA/MPAA control rather than the purchaser’s.
Sigh. Okay, let’s actually look at their whole corporate history. Apple’s CEO has stated in the past that the reason Apple doesn’t do subscription services like Spotify is that he believes people want to own their music. Is the fact that they started out offering DRM-encumbered music at odds with that? In part, yes—but at the time, the choice was offering music with DRM or not offering music at all. The iTunes Music Store was successful where others had failed because iTunes’ DRM was far and away the least onerous: music was keyed to an iTunes account, up to five computers could be linked to that account and an unlimited number of devices could be linked to it through the computers. Neither iTunes nor any Apple device had to “re-authorize” playback; the media you’d bought couldn’t be “de-authorized” by Apple, and they couldn’t mysteriously go back onto your device to delete it (hello, Amazon).
And from very early on, Apple was apparently campaigning behind the scenes to get rid of DRM. They weren’t the first DRM-free music store, but they were certainly instrumental in getting major record companies to back off DRM, first by getting EMI to agree to the iTunes Plus format—higher bitrate and no DRM—which in turn set the stage for Amazon’s DRM-free music store.
There’s something important to note here: I saw arguments at the time that Apple had no compelling business interest in supporting DRM, but by the time the Amazon MP3 store opened, Apple had such a commanding lead in both the MP3 player and digital download markets that arguably Apple had a very compelling business interest in supporting DRM: vendor lock-in. By getting rid of DRM, they would make it possible for you to take your music to any software/hardware combination that could play AAC files.
And they did it anyway. This strongly suggests that Jobs was not blowing smoke out his ass when he said that he felt people wanted to own their own music.
Apple still sells DRM-encumbered media, to be sure—movies and TV shows. But again, this is due to the content providers: it’s either sell (or rent) them with DRM or not sell them at all. The Eric Raymonds of the world argue that this is proof positive that Apple is evil. I’d argue that this is proof positive that Apple is pragmatic. If people like Raymond ran Apple, there would never have been an iTunes Store. If there had never been an iTunes Store, there wouldn’t be an Amazon MP3 Store, either. Raymond is a radical of a certain stripe, and in some ways that’s a good thing—but nearly all radicals of nearly all stripes tend to regard compromise as pure evil. With all respect to the radicals of the world, this is why you guys tend to never actually get shit done.
So what about Apple’s patent here? What’s actually being addressed in the patent is using a phone’s camera to
…determine whether each image detected by the camera includes an infrared signal with encoded data. If the image processing circuitry determines that an image includes an infrared signal with encoded data, the circuitry may route at least a portion of the image (e.g., the infrared signal) to circuitry operative to decode the encoded data.
This could be used in museums, for instance, to trigger a display of information about what the camera’s pointed at, or to get tourist information from a display stand in a town square or a theme park. And, yes, the patent does suggest the signal could be used to “disable the recording functions of devices.” The examples actually listed in the patent are all about museums, which gives us some insight into what the inventors were actually thinking—they’re imagining “photography prohibited” signs at MOMA.
Naturally, that doesn’t mean that the nefarious uses Raymond imagines for this technology aren’t possible. (If this were deployed, they would almost certainly happen, in fact—that’s simply the way of technology.) However, using the methods in this patent to restrict device functionality are less practical than using them to enhance device functionality. In the latter case, it’s an added bonus you get for having an iThing; it’s the former case, it’s a penalty for having an iThing, at least to the exclusion of other portable cameras. As a company which is primarily interested in selling you iThings, which of those do you think Apple would have a stronger interest in promoting?
Lastly, Raymond is, of course, setting up Google as “less evil” than Apple. Again from the comments:
Google—so far—doesn’t have a history that indicates a willingness to seize control of Android handsets in order to protect someone’s DRM. So, even though Apple and Google both have products that are DRMed, Google is objectively less evil about it.
What exactly has Apple done to “seize control” of my iPhone? Raymond’s argument seems to be, as expressed still later in comments, that “Apple’s closed source means I never had control of my handset in the first place”: in other words, it’s the same specious reasoning used by Richard Stallman to argue that running Microsoft Windows is slavery. Right then. It doesn’t matter that Google has actually remotely deleted Android apps, and somehow Google’s business model—in which users like Raymond are manifestly not Google’s customer, and are arguably part of what Google is actually selling to their real customers—is seen as more conducive to liberty. I think that’s extremely short-sighted—but Google has mastered the language of open, and for people like ESR, so far that’s enough.
