The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.The "landlord's pleasure". It's true, in essence you become a digital share-cropper as a developer for the iPhone. It may well be that you might be the richest, most successful share-cropper ever, but you serve at the landlord's pleasure. Your fields can be taken away from you without any recompense (see the EFFs posting of the iPhone developer agreement) other than a $50.00 "go away" fee.
Is this the shape of the Internet to come? Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read" neatly lays out a future of digital rights management (DRM) that appears to be the future, culmination of the plans of Apple and Amazon (with the Kindle). It may not matter much to consumers, but these things do matter to creators (musicians, artists, and yes, software developers). Given their way, we'll all just be renters, continually paying access fees over and over. And they wonder why people so often reject new technology and "pirate" works to get non-DRM versions so that they can continue to have the freedoms they have enjoyed.
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