Dec 6, 2006 1:00 PM

Rants: Phones, Feds and Fox

Here’s what a few of you had to say about our recent stories. To post a remark online in our feedback forums, enter your comments in the text box at the end of any story (registration required). Additionally, you can jump in on the hottest discussions about our most popular stories through the Wired News […]

Here's what a few of you had to say about our recent stories. To post a remark online in our feedback forums, enter your comments in the text box at the end of any story (registration required). Additionally, you can jump in on the hottest discussions about our most popular stories through the Wired News blog links at the bottom of the page.

Re: Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon

By David Hambling
From: W Labiosa

This weapon emits radiation in the W band of the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The W band ranges from 75 GHz to 111 GHz. It may not be in the same region as the microwave bands used in microwave ovens, but it's classified as microwave radiation nonetheless.

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Re: Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon

By David Hambling
From: Delores Lanzo

I am always amused at the soft-soap info the government pedals about a new weapon when it is found out. Why should we believe anything they tell us about the safety of a weapon they have created? Any weapon to control the masses is another step to prevent the common man from living freely. Just the mere fact that they have created another weapon is proof positive toward the next step in controlling the masses. It matters not what country or condition, war or peace, it is still forced control of the people of Earth. To lose control of the common man is in reality a defeat for the controllers.

Controllers beware: Just look at what history tells you about suppressing the masses. You eventually go down in defeat.

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Re: Hollywood Eats Sci-Fi's Brains

By Jason Silverman
From: Kingsley Bugarin

In reply to the letter in Rants + Raves asking why Firefly failed, this is my understanding, but my source could have been wrong.

The series was approved and production was started, but before the show got to air the Fox executives who approved it were sacked. The replacements decided they had to justify the sackings so they sabotaged the series. They put it in the Friday night death slot, didn't advertise it, showed it out of order (apparently the first episode that opens in the middle of the bloodiest battle of an interplanetary war didn't have enough action) and pre-empted it as often as they could.

The result: Few people knew it existed and few of those people could understand what was going on because it was out of order. As a result it got poor ratings, which justified the disposal of the execs who approved it and the canning of the series.

One other thing that scared the shit out of the simpletons at Fox was that, contrary to all their expectations, Firefly appealed to women more strongly than men. I have the box set and I've shown it, in the correct order, to five friends. Every one of them said it is the best television they have ever seen, so it would have been a smash hit if Fox had given it the respect it deserved.

On the movie, I saw it and enjoyed it but wasn't completely happy. In the series there was friction between the crew members but overall they knew that individual survival depended upon working as a team and despite everything they were a close-knit group. In the movie there seemed to be too much of an every-man-for-himself attitude and my friends said the same thing.

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Re: Cell Phones Freed! Poor Suffer?

By Jennifer Granick
From: Mark Metzger

You didn't mention an even easier argument. While it is true that the owner of a newly unlocked phone is able to choose a different network, the software s/he is using is the handset manufacturer's, not the carrier's. The carrier's "contribution" to the phone's software was the locking program and any "their network only" proprietary programs that are, by definition, no longer in use after a network switch.

It seems to me that the DMCA doesn't provide someone with the ability to build a non-circumventable software lock for anything other than one's own intellectual property. The carriers' locks are merely locking in subscribers, not protecting content.

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Re: Cell Phones Freed! Poor Suffer?

By Jennifer Granick
From: Cory Hojka

I have two thoughts I'd like to share with you concerning the DMCA exemption for unlocking cell phones. First, do you feel that the exemption will still apply where providers attempt to contract around the exemption? Given cases like ProCD, or the view that fair use can be contracted away, I'd suggest that consumers will possibly end up in the same position as they are in now. In essence, charities that receive cell phones out of contract would still be free to unlock phones, but for contractual reasons consumers generally would not.

Second, in the case of prepaid phones I'd wonder how far the DMCA exception applies toward unlocking all the features on a phone. For example, if we take the $60 prepaid phone that is sold at $20, I'd presume that perhaps part of the reason that the prepaid providers are willing to incorporate such a loss is due to the additional advanced features they can provide. Without locking, they might be able to only offer the most bare-bones phone imaginable, while with locking they can offer a more feature-rich phone because they'll recover their losses.

Thus, what happens if a prepaid phone seller offers a phone, but it only allows numeric-entry voice dialing or such when it is unlocked? Does the DMCA exception require that they offer all the features of the phone, or can they protect additional features of the phone from usage when the phone is unlocked? It seems to me that once you get away from basic phone service and into applications, which you can argue are protected by copyright law, the merit of the exemption from DMCA starts to waver.

In particular, I'd question whether one could still use games and an MP3 player, which generally are not dependent on network communications except for downloading, on an unlocked phone. If not, than this also would have interesting ramifications for devices like BlackBerries or other PDAs because they are part network device and part application device, which probably makes it harder to draw a bright-line rule that doesn't compromise the usability of those devices. While this might lead someone to argue for a broad exemption for unlocking under DMCA, I think that the difficulty of extending the merits beyond just low-level unlocking, when allowing for the other competing interests involved, is likely to lead to a narrow view of the exemption. Do you agree?