Firmware Update Speculation And A Rant

[Mydel]

That's the point. It's not "your" music. You have a license for a specific use and a relicensing is required for the ringtone use.

Seriously give me a break. I couldn't care less about the "music ringtones". I do my own so please dont tell me about the rights and licensing cos it just make me laugh. And with my device I will do as Im pleased. I couldnt care less about Apple buisiness plan. Sorry that they have to deal with RIAA or others like AT&T. They choose it cos it makes PROFIT for them. I have their computer and other stuff cos I like it and I payed for it.

 

[Mark Scheuern]

Seriously give me a break. I couldn't care less about the "music ringtones". I do my own so please dont tell me about the rights and licensing cos it just make me laugh. And with my device I will do as Im pleased. I couldnt care less about Apple buisiness plan. Sorry that they have to deal with RIAA or others like AT&T. They choose it cos it makes PROFIT for them. I have their computer and other stuff cos I like it and I payed for it.

I'm telling you what the law is. Whether you like the law or not is another matter but your opinion and understanding or lack thereof doesn't change the reality of the situation.

 

[sanford]

Mark, no, the one I read and I can't source it at the moment dealt specifically with people who had legitimately acquired a statutory end-user license for a musical audio recording, and stated that such a license holder may use a portion of such a recording in creating a ringtone and transmitting it to a mobile phone for personal use but not for resale or distribution. The other thing was about how licensing fees have to be distributed, I think had something to do with whether a record company had to pay an artist for a recording and for selling a ringtone version of that recording. Or similar.

I'm primarily a writer, and of course we have a completely different set of fair-use issues. The problem with fair use these days is that there's just the single fair-use concept and it has to be interpreted as it applies to many different mediums, typically meaning a court challenge and attendant hassle. Some things are obvious, of course. Something I wrote can be quoted in brief in another copyrighted work. If I reviewed a gallery showing of your photography in a copyrighted publication, that publication could reproduce one of your photographs as a visual illustration for my criticism without acquiring from you a license to do so. But so many elements of fair use are hardly obvious, at least not anymore.

I'm a photographer and not a musician so I'm not very familiar with that side of intellectual property laws, even if there are some similarities (rights-managed photographs have to be re-licensed for uses not in the original contract, for example, and dealing with people who are unaware of copyright laws in general is a continuing problem), but I think that's unclear if you're referring to the RIAA decision. This article, for instance, says that the ruling dealt with the RIAA's distribution of fees from ringtone licenses and not with fair use. In any case, it's seems that Apple needs to take care to make reasonable efforts to collect licensing fees and therefore had to patch iTunes

 

[Mydel]

The law?? What you talking about?? I DO MY OWN. And will keep doing this as long as i like. And it also depends what country are we talking about. The US law is not only one and always right . And I really think this argument is pointless. people will keep hacking their devices cos they OWN them. And please remember that when you were buying the phone there was no mention about WIFi iTMS.

 

[sanford]

I'm telling you what the law is. Whether you like the law or not is another matter but your opinion and understanding or lack thereof doesn't change the reality of the situation.

I think he literally meant he records his own sound effects or writes his own music for ringtones. In which case it would be a matter for the EULA and whether or not the EULA for the iPhone software allows you to put ringtones on the phone by method other than the official one provided by Apple.

The funniest thing about this is the cachet Apple has these days. Nobody gives a damn if the Samsung 4X54B7KLY-32B is locked to a specific carrier or will allow you to transfer to it self-created ringtones. Apple puts out a phone and every aspect of it, philosophically and technically, is dissected, debated, argued over and screamed about.

Maybe we all should get a life.

 

[Mark Scheuern]

Mark, no, the one I read and I can't source it at the moment dealt specifically with people who had legitimately acquired a statutory end-user license for a musical audio recording, and stated that such a license holder may use a portion of such a recording in creating a ringtone and transmitting it to a mobile phone for personal use but not for resale or distribution. The other thing was about how licensing fees have to be distributed, I think had something to do with whether a record company had to pay an artist for a recording and for selling a ringtone version of that recording. Or similar.

Ah, okay. That's interesting. I can certainly see where that might come under fair use but, like you say, it's a slippery subject. And while it's very OT I have to say that I'm pretty unimpressed by the RIAA's money-grab. Passing the royalties on to the artist is one thing but keeping it for themselves is quite another.

I'm primarily a writer, and of course we have a completely different set of fair-use issues. The problem with fair use these days is that there's just the single fair-use concept and it has to be interpreted as it applies to many different mediums, typically meaning a court challenge and attendant hassle. Some things are obvious, of course. Something I wrote can be quoted in brief in another copyrighted work. If I reviewed a gallery showing of your photography in a copyrighted publication, that publication could reproduce one of your photographs as a visual illustration for my criticism without acquiring from you a license to do so. But so many elements of fair use are hardly obvious, at least not anymore.

Right, exactly. Fair use has recently come up in photography with in the use of thumbnails by search engines like Google's image search. Again, hardly obvious. I know something similar has come up with Google's plans to scan printed works and make them available for online search (and with Amazon's search, too). These laws were created long before such things were thought of. In general, though, I certainly can understand the need to protect the rights of the creators of intellectual property even if I sometimes experience some frustrations as a consumer.

 

[Mark Scheuern]

I think he literally meant he records his own sound effects or writes his own music for ringtones. In which case it would be a matter for the EULA and whether or not the EULA for the iPhone software allows you to put ringtones on the phone by method other than the official one provided by Apple.

Yes, I wasn't sure if he might have meant that and in that case I would tend to agree with him and my apologies if I misunderstood. And maybe he'd agree with me if he decided to sell those ringtones.

Maybe we all should get a life.

I know my wife would agree with that!

 

[Mark Scheuern]

The law?? What you talking about?? I DO MY OWN. And will keep doing this as long as i like.

Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't catch that and now that I understand I agree with you.

 

[hard-case]

The funniest thing about this is the cachet Apple has these days. Nobody gives a damn if the Samsung 4X54B7KLY-32B is locked to a specific carrier or will allow you to transfer to it self-created ringtones. Apple puts out a phone and every aspect of it, philosophically and technically, is dissected, debated, argued over and screamed about.

Maybe we all should get a life.

I'm guessing haven't/don't follow a lot of the cell phone forums....cause that is not an entirely correct statement on many levels....except for the last part!

You'll be able to find a LOT of people gnashing their teeth over how difficult it is with some Verizon handsets to port free ringtones over. Haven't been with Verizon in MANY years so I don't know how well they're handsets have been hacked, but at least some have probably been 'broken', but I remember it being a BIG bone of contention when they enacted it.

When Verizon started crippling the Bluetooth stack in their Bluetooth enabled cell phones (just as apple has with the iPhone, by disabling the tethering/file transfer capabilties), they got smacked with a class action lawsuit and had to settle by either giving a credit to the cell phone bill, refunding the phone's cost and offering a new phone, or refunding the cost and allowing the person out of their contract with no termination fee.

You can find at least a half-dozen companies out there that will, for a small fee, unlock your cell-phone. This has been around for almost as long as GSM has been a major cell network in the US! Heck, Cingular themselves unlocked my Razr and my mom's V600 in about 10 minutes with nothing more than a phone call, which was nice as I was using them abroad. Kinda the big draw of the GSM phones, what with them being referred to as "world phones".

When the V3 first hit the US shores (officially) people were very upset that it did not have video capability enabled. LONG before Cingular quietly updated their firmware for it hacked firmware was out on the net that enabled it. They even had a firmware with all the moto provided ringtones/wallpapers/screensavers/fluff apps removed to maximize the onboard memory capability of the phone!

Within maybe a month of the A1200's release, people were already writing custom apps for it. Games, productivity apps, someone even got a custom video player to work for the phone, allowing people to view a wider range of video codec types. Heck, enough complaints about the volume (sound familiar) got someone to write an app that boosted the phone's volume, which was a pain due to how locked down the phone OS was (again, sound familiar?). Then, despite everyone being absolutely positive that the phone was not EDGE capable in the firmware, someone managed to find the right bits to flip and activate EDGE on it.

What Apple is going through is absolutely nothing new to the cell phone industry, and I'd have very strong doubts that they are unaware of this, and have not formulated a plan around it.

 

[Mydel]

Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't catch that and now that I understand I agree with you.

Thank you But still I cant understand what is that all about. I know the law /more or less/ but for me once you purchased CD you can do with that music as you wish as long as you not selling it. This all ringtone issue is pure greed, nothing else...

 

[sanford]

I'm guessing haven't/don't follow a lot of the cell phone forums....cause that is not an entirely correct statement on many levels....except for the last part!

Ooh, yeah, no, I've had nothing to do with cell phones except for a convenience/emergency phone until the iPhone. So it's just the same battle with a different name attached to it, I guess. That's some interesting information. It's funny about the camera-phone that wouldn't record video, because I've thought for a while that Apple held back on the video on their camera so in the future they can offer a "new" feature, at very little cost to Apple, to existing customers to keep them happy.

 

[sanford]

Thank you But still I cant understand what is that all about. I know the law /more or less/ but for me once you purchased CD you can do with that music as you wish as long as you not selling it. This all ringtone issue is pure greed, nothing else...

Mydel, in the States, you can do a lot of things with a purchased CD, including even making mix CDs from the content, etc., and you can sell it so long as you sell the original not a copy. But you can't mass distribute exact copies for free, either. And say you own some sort of shop, you can't play it in your shop for customer listening without a purchasing a license to do so. (There's a blanket ASCAP license for this sort of thing that covers lots of music, as opposed to having to buy a different license for every CD.)

 

[Mydel]

Mydel, in the States, you can do a lot of things with a purchased CD, including even making mix CDs from the content, etc., and you can sell it so long as you sell the original not a copy. But you can't mass distribute exact copies for free, either. And say you own some sort of shop, you can't play it in your shop for customer listening without a purchasing a license to do so. (There's a blanket ASCAP license for this sort of thing that covers lots of music, as opposed to having to buy a different license for every CD.)

Yeah I know but still don't you think that making people to buy 30 second of the clip they already have is an overkill??!! For me its really greed only. I know I know licensing etc but you bought sic! Cd and use piece of the song as your personal ringtone. I think I'm not on the same page with RIAA cos I would do that no matter what if I wanted. This all licenses issues these days is soooo shady..

 

[sanford]

Yeah I know but still don't you think that making people to buy 30 second of the clip they already have is an overkill??!! For me its really greed only. I know I know licensing etc but you bought sic! Cd and use piece of the song as your personal ringtone. I think I'm not on the same page with RIAA cos I would do that no matter what if I wanted. This all licenses issues these days is soooo shady..

No matter what the RIAA says there is a court decision in the States, saying you can do just that, use a clip of a song you bought to make a ringtone for personal use, no sale or distribution. I think your problem is with Apple. That they don't allow a mechanism for putting self-created ringtones on the iPhone. And I'm not sure where that comes from. It could be Apple wanting to make some money on ringtones. But I think a big factor is that the RIAA, regardless of what the law allows, contends you can't use music for a ringtone without buying a ringtone-specific license. So the record companies get to thinking, We sell our music on iTunes and now people will be putting this music on their iPhones' iPod feature and they're going to want to use this music they've purchased as ringtones, and we say, even though the court decision doesn't support them, you can't do that without paying us extra, so we need to tell Apple that if they expect us to allow our music to be purchased and copied to an iPhone they better make it so if they want a ringtone on their iPhone they have to buy that, too. Probably a bit of both: revenue for Apple and record companies.

Anyway, greed. In economic theory that's it, the sole reason for the existence of a profit-making publicly traded corporation is to make money for the shareholders. Period.

 

[Sobe]

Yeah I know but still don't you think that making people to buy 30 second of the clip they already have is an overkill??!! For me its really greed only. I know I know licensing etc but you bought sic! Cd and use piece of the song as your personal ringtone. I think I'm not on the same page with RIAA cos I would do that no matter what if I wanted. This all licenses issues these days is soooo shady..

Spoken like someone who never earned a living off of their creative works.

 

[darngooddesign]

That's the point. It's not "your" music. You have a license for a specific use and a relicensing is required for the ringtone use.

Nice to see you've been brainwashed by the labels who are desperately trying to convince everyone that a song is a different physical entity based on how its used. I buy the song, its mine to use as I see fit for any use as long as I'm not distributing it illegally.

Are you going to defend Apple's ringtones if they pull a Verizon or Sprint and make your ringtones expire after a set amount of time?

 

[darngooddesign]

Spoken like someone who never earned a living off of their creative works.

I've earn money from creative work, and if someone bought one of my pieces I wouldn't dream of charging them an additional fee just to use the image, or photo of the piece, as the wallpaper on their computer.

 

[KittyToy]

Some of you people need to relax, you guys act like apple is your life and there is no reason to live until you get this update. It will come when it come, till then relax and use your iPhone in all it's glory.

 

[sanford]

I've earn money from creative work, and if someone bought one of my pieces I wouldn't dream of charging them an additional fee just to use the image, or photo of the piece, as the wallpaper on their computer.

Well that's good because fair use would allow that anyway. I agree in part with Sobe, because, of course, copyright law was enacted to do that very thing, to allow people creating art to make a living from that art, even though most art has at least some element of the intangible which is rather easily appropriated. But on the other hand we who are protected by copyright have to bend to reasonable fair use: we can't sell the exact same thing ten times to the same person for slightly different personal uses; that's not fair to the consumer. Personal ringtones and computer wallpapers are reasonable fair use.

 

[sanford]

Some of you people need to relax, you guys act like apple is your life and there is no reason to live until you get this update. It will come when it come, till then relax and use your iPhone in all it's glory.

Okay, pick up the prescription bottle. Notice where it reads, take 1 mg 2 times per day, not 20 mgs 1 time per day.

And I'm assuming by your post signature you are female. How can we possibly take your opinion seriously? You have no bona fides to discuss this matter, as women do not typically go stark-raving lunatic mad over trivial details of electronic gadgets.

(I kid, of course. You're right. It's just easy to get the "gimme gimme" part of the brain all wound up, which energy is then transfered to the "screaming angry" part of the brain when the monkey doesn't get his expected banana-flavored treat.)

 

[alep85]

It's the middle of the night in California, so there's no guarantee we won't get the firmware update today, but...

After reading the details of the iPhone launch in the UK and the 9th November on-sale date, there was absolutely no reason to hold off the firmware update for the UK announcement. And it's obvious the new firmware is ready to go, as it's what all the pretty obviously production iPhones at the UK event were running, complete with the as yet unavailable in the UK on any device iTunes WiFi Store.

The only thing I can think of that's holding up the firmware update is Apple trying to break anySIM and/or other unlocks. I too very much did not like the exclusive, contract nature of the iPhone with no subsidy, but after spending some time checking out the iPhone, I decided the trade-off was worth it. But unless we do get the update today, all this unlocking nonsense is holding up legitimate iPhone users from getting new features that even the stripped-down iPod touch already has, in the States just so you can use the iPhone on Tmobile with somewhat cheaper voice plans but double the cost for the unlimited data plans, while you lose a lot of features that make the iPhone unique. We were Tmobile customers for years, and they're fine, but they're nothing so special you can't switch carriers to get an iPhone.

And for all the "I have to unlock" because I'm in HK or Milan or Edmonton or wherever and the iPhone isn't offered here yet crowd. No, you don't have to unlock. In the States we miss out on all kinds of products and services, some of them quite superior to stateside alternatives, that are not offered here. You don't have to have an iPhone until it is made available in your local region. And with an iPod touch you can get a lot of the iPhone's features now, anyway.

So knock it off already. As it is I have to update iTunes every other day because people are hacking away after freaking out having to pay 99 cents for ringtones, which is like US$1.50 less than other ringtone services and you actually get songs you want, no that AxelF Frog nonsense or what have you. There are plenty of phones that lock ringtones to the provider service and their are plenty that do not. Go buy one that does not.

I'm sure all this hacking and unlocking and making free ringtones business is great fun for those of you spending all day living in your parents' basements cleaning your bong collections, but there are those of us who are paying for a device, software and services that we'd like to be able to use and for which we'd like to expediently get new features via updates and not have to babysit with iTunes software updates to close up exploits.

I'm all for creative use of technology, even of proprietary devices, but you don't have to release your efforts to the public and cause problems for people whose time is a bit more constrained than yours. And if just have to release your hacking into the wild, Linux is widely available on many devices for you to do just that. My stars even Sony allows you to easily install Linux on a PlayStation 3.

But otherwise, please stop gumming up the works for the rest of us with your sloppy, mostly useless garbage efforts to break just for the sake of breaking.

UPDATE: I do think that now they've shown off all the features included in the 1.1.1 update, break anySIM or not, they pretty much have to release the update stateside today or current customers are going to start to get tweaky not getting the new features that are so obviously already ready to go.

Speaking of updates, when are they updating to the Powerbook G5, gosh its been long enough.........

I thought this thread needed a little ice breaker.

 

[sanford]

Speaking of updates, when are they updating to the Powerbook G5, gosh its been long enough.........

I thought this thread needed a little ice breaker.

Okay now *that's* funny. Much needed lending of perspective!

 

[AHDuke99]

I'll admit, I am very disappointed in Apple. I did expect this, but there was part of me hoping that I'd wake up this morning and read headlines saying "iPhone gains MMS, iChat, and voice dialing." Alas, we got what I expected in my realist view. Just another way to make Apple money. We will have to wait for the next iPhone before we get MMS, iChat, and all the other goodies we all lust after. It's really sad. Apple said they'd add new features to please us--and I guess these new ones please people. All i see it as is a new way to spend money.

 

[sanford]

I'll admit, I am very disappointed in Apple. I did expect this, but there was part of me hoping that I'd wake up this morning and read headlines saying "iPhone gains MMS, iChat, and voice dialing." Alas, we got what I expected in my realist view. Just another way to make Apple money. We will have to wait for the next iPhone before we get MMS, iChat, and all the other goodies we all lust after. It's really sad. Apple said they'd add new features to please us--and I guess these new ones please people. All i see it as is a new way to spend money.

Oh it's not like we've even actually gotten the WiFi Store yet... Bah.

oh, p.s., for people not reading the other update threads: the new firmware has video-out (you'll still have to wait for the new dock-connector A/V out cables to ship as the old headphone-jack style won't work, I don't think) and, for the international jet set who doesn't want to wind up with a US$10,000 bill because they tried to use their iPhone on WiFi while out of the country but kept getting an EDGE signal instead, there's a switch to turn EDGE roaming off.

 

[Daremo]

That's the point. It's not "your" music. You have a license for a specific use and a relicensing is required for the ringtone use.

OK, what about me? I'm an accomplished musician, who's band has 4 of our 6 CD's for sale on iTunes. I do OWN this music, should I not be able to use them as ringtones if I please? Or should I have to pay $2.00 from Apple to be able to use the songs?