Re: A game of cat and mouse: The iPhone, Steve Jobs and an army of blind hackers

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Synthesis:Law and Technology Law and Technology"  
<synthesis.law.and.technology () gmail com>
Date: September 20, 2007 9:34:28 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: Re: [IP] A game of cat and mouse: The iPhone, Steve Jobs and  
an army of blind hackers

Dave,

One thing to remember when reading this analysis and speculation  
about Jobs intent is the fact that the DMCA is US legislation.    
Someone staying in Europe can not be effectively prosecuted under  
it.  Same for Asia.  The real clout of the DMCA is in the US and it  
appears too late to try and go after the hackers, since the crack is  
already well published.  As a deterrent it falls under the horse-barn- 
too-late-lock category.  That suggests that changing the code is the  
only way to go.


On 9/20/07, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: September 20, 2007 12:19:25 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] A game of cat and mouse: The iPhone, Steve
Jobs and an army of blind hackers

September 19, 2007 5:04 AM PDT
A game of cat and mouse: The iPhone, Steve Jobs and an army of blind
hackers

Posted by Chris Soghoian
<ttp://www.news.com/8301-10784_3- 9781162-7.html?
part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20>
With Steve Jobs' recent announcement of his intention to fight off
the independent iPhone developers, the question that must be asked is
how will Apple try to defeat the hackers: Frequent and disruptive
software updates, or lawsuits? Will Apple risk losing its most
frequently (ab)used legal tool, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
to try to punish the developers of the iPhone unlocking tools?

The wait is over. After being teased over the past few weeks with
rumors that Apple would turn a blind eye to iPhone hacking or *gasp*
even encourage it, the news is in and it ain't good for the hackers.

At the official U.K. launch of the iPhone Tuesday, CEO Steve Jobs
made it clear that Apple will fight attempts to use the popular
device on unauthorized networks. "It's a cat-and-mouse game," said
Jobs. "We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it's
our job to stop them breaking in."

For the loose-knit community of iPhone developers, the last few
months have been an around-the-clock hacking session. As a result,
programmers have released a plethora of applications. Some, including
an instant-messaging tool, a general purpose application installer
and even a Nintendo game emulator, can be seen simply as developers
releasing applications that Apple just didn't get around to writing
itself. Other hacks, such as the much hyped iPhone Dev Team's anySIM
unlocking tool, or the numerous free-ringtone tutorials that have
been floating around the Net, can be more accurately described as a
developer-lead attack upon Apple's revenue streams.

Apple has sunk a significant amount of developer time and marketing
dollars into creating a product so drool-worthy that fans spent days
queuing outside stores around the nation. Because of the significant
hype surrounding the device, and the millions of customers who would
flock to whichever wireless carrier with whom Apple signed an
exclusive distribution deal, Jobs and his negotiation team were able
to extract highly favorable, if not downright obscene amounts of
money from the wireless carriers. While AT&T agreed to give Apple up
to $11 per month for new customers who came to the carrier due to an
iPhone purchase, some media reports are suggesting that Jobs was able
to extract 40 percent of the monthly subscription fees that U.K.
network O2 is charging its customers.

O2 is charging customers between $70 and $110 for its different
monthly iPhone plans. With an 18-month contract, Apple is looking at
between $500 to $800 in revenue share per customer. While the
approximately $250 that AT&T will give Apple for a new customer over
the lifetime of a 2-year contract is rather paltry in comparison, it
still provides enough of a financial incentive for Apple to do all
that it possibly can to lock the devices down, and keep hackers from
unlocking the platform. Furthermore, if keeping open-source tinkerers
away from the guts of the iPhone can also protect Apple's new, but
potentially hugely profitable venture into the mobile phone ringtone
market (99 cents per ringtone for each song already purchased), even
better for Mr. Jobs and his stockholders.

Now that Jobs has declared war on the iPhone hackers, the only
question that remains is the approach that Apple will take: software
updates that'll break the iPhone hacks, or lawsuits against the
trouble-making developers. To answer this question, we to look to the
law and, most importantly, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The most powerful weapon in Apple's legal arsenal is the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This law, much hated by open-source
developers and much loved by copyright holders and mega corporations,
was passed by a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate before being signed
into law by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

The DMCA is fairly complicated, but there are two main parts that
seriously threaten researchers, hackers and hobbyists. First, the law
makes it a crime to circumvent the technological locks that control
access to copyrighted works. Second, the law makes it a crime for
anyone to "traffic" or share such circumvention tools. That is, it's
a crime to break the encryption protecting a copyrighted work, and
it's an additional crime to share the software that breaks the
encryption with anyone else.

While the law was originally intended to protect music and movie
owners who were scared of infringement in the Digital Age, it has
been used to try to block the sale of third-party printer cartridges,
universal garage door openers, and even Web sites that publish leaked
copies of scanned fliers for post-Thanksgiving "black Friday" sales.
A few years ago, a number of prepaid mobile phone companies started
using the DMCA to go after people who were buying their subsidized
phones, stripping off the software and re-selling them to others.

When it passed the DMCA, Congress empowered the Librarian of Congress
to issue exemptions to the anti-circumvention provision of the law.
This power is intended to protect the public from access-control
technologies that substantially interfere with their right to make
non-infringing uses of copyrighted works. Current exemptions include
the right for users to hack restrictive e-book digital rights
management technology to allow for inter-operation with screen-
readers and other helpful technologies used by blind and disabled
people.

[snip]



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