[lug] FSF plans Apple Genuis Bar "denial of service"

[Nate Duehr]

p.s. The arguments in that guy's posting were lame.  "Vote with your  
feet"?  Yeah... walk away from the Apple store and don't buy stuff  
from them.

What?  You already did that?  You're not an Apple customer?

Great.  See ya.  Next in line please.

----

Yes sir, you with the money out ready to purchase something -- what  
would you like?  One of these evil DRM-laden products?  Certainly.   
Here you go.  You don't know what DRM is?  Oh it just says if you buy  
content from our iTunes store, you can't copy it to everyone else...  
it's only yours.

You don't mind that?  Cool.

By the way you can make backups of the files as much as you like, and  
you can even burn lower-quality versions to standard audio CDs for  
safekeeping... it's a little bit of a quality hit to do that, but at  
least you'll never have completely lost your purchase.   We also sell  
backup drives, if you'd like one.

So, good... you're not a whiney 20-something who's wetting his bed  
over having a few rules on your legally-purchased, completely backed  
up, and even portable content as long as you're using our devices,  
that you're already standing there with money in hand ready to  
purchase, because you like them?  Cool.

Okay... there you go.  Enjoy the product.  Here's your receipt.  Have  
a nice day.

----

Apple's has bent over backwards to make most folks feel their system  
is reasonable.  That there's a minority of "freedom or die" folks out  
there wanting to never buy any of their products, but come into their  
stores and annoy the crap out of their sales staff, support staff, and  
customers, probably will bother them, but for all the wrong reasons.   
Mostly they'll ask them to leave or buy something, and if they don't  
they'll try not to call the cops.

They've got a business to run, and they deserve the freedom to operate  
their business in peace.  They're following the rules and even fought  
to get non-DRM'ed stuff on iTunes.  They're not the source of the  
problem.

Again I assert that this group and FSF endorsing them means that  
they've all lost any capability for rational thought.  Don't want  
DRM'ed stuff?  Don't buy it.  But don't bitch if you're in the  
minority when all you can find for content is crappy stuff no one else  
watches or listens to.  Head on over to that venture from podshow.com  
and download some license free crap to put in your podcast.

The real content producers have things people want.  Apple just abides  
by their rules, and even pushes them to open up a bit when they can.

Saying stuff like this little stunt makes things "better" is stupid.   
It gets a little publicity and sucks a few more wackos into the fold,  
is all.

Everyone deserves a little free content.  Great.  I get it.  And they  
do have it.  Most of it sucks.  Want quality free content?  Go produce  
it, and ask Apple to distribute it.  Don't hang around in their stores  
like vagrants looking for a hand-out.

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com