Web and Mobile Apps Dev

The following email message is from Free Software Foundation (FSF) to stop the DRM restrictions on the new Apple iPad device. The message title is “iPad is iBad for Freedom (Peter Brown)”. I strongly recommend to visit the URL mentioned in the email message and sign the petition.

*With new tablet device, Apple’s Steve Jobs pushes unprecedented extension of DRM to a new class of general purpose computers*

Please sign our petition to Steve Jobs at:
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ipad

SAN FRANCISCO, California, USA — Wednesday, January 27, 2010 — As Steve Jobs and Apple prepared to announce their new tablet device, activists opposed to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) from the group Defective by Design were on hand to draw the media’s attention to the increasing restrictions that Apple is placing on general purpose computers. The group set up “Apple Restriction Zones” along the approaches to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, informing journalists of the rights they would have to give up to Apple before proceeding inside.

(images from the action http://i.imgur.com/nUtZK.jpg, http://i.imgur.com/0wpvY.jpg, http://i.imgur.com/iL2vT.jpg)

DRM is used by Apple to restrict users’ freedom in a variety of ways, including blocking installation of software that comes from anywhere except the official Application Store, and regulating every use of movies downloaded from iTunes. Apple furthermore claims that circumventing these restrictions is a criminal offense, even for purposes that are permitted by copyright law.

Organizing the protest, Free Software Foundation (FSF) operations manager John Sullivan said, “Our Defective by Design campaign has a successful history of targeting Apple over its DRM policies. We organized actions and protests targeting iTunes music DRM outside Apple stores, and under the pressure Steve Jobs dropped DRM on music. We’re here today to send the same message about the other restrictions Apple is imposing on software, ebooks, and movies. If Jobs and Apple are actually committed to creativity, freedom, and individuality, they should prove it by eliminating the restrictions that make creativity and freedom illegal.”

The group is asking citizens to sign a petition calling on Steve Jobs to remove DRM from Apple devices. The petition can be found at:
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ipad

“Attention needs to be paid to the computing infrastructure our society is becoming dependent upon. This past year, we have seen how human rights and democracy protesters can have the technology they use turned against them by the corporations who supply the products and services they rely on. Your computer should be yours to control. By imposing such restrictions on users, Steve Jobs is building a legacy that endangers our freedom for his profits,” said FSF executive director Peter Brown.

Other critics of DRM have asserted that Apple is not responsible, and it is the publishers insisting on the restrictions. However, on the iPhone and its new tablet, Apple does not provide publishers any way to opt out of the restrictions — even free software and free culture authors who want to give legal permission for users to share their works.

“This is a huge step backward in the history of computing,” said FSF’s Holmes Wilson, “If the first personal computers required permission from the manufacturer for each new program or new feature, the history of computing would be as dismally totalitarian as the milieu in Apple’s famous Super Bowl ad.”