Since we've argued about the extensive meanings of "dictatorship", let's
put the things together. Let's talk, for example, about China.
Apple's AppStore is subjected to state censorship in China, and as a
result, again for instance, a few applications about Dalai Lama and
Buddhism are not available in that country. Now, this is for sure a
bigger problem involving the freedom of Internet in that country, and
people can't ever access free information about those topics surfing the
web.
But let's compare what happens if I'm chinese and buy an iPhone, or any
other phone which accepts any application on it. WIth other phones, I
can manage in getting the missing bits in some ways - underground or
perhaps travelling in foreign countries. When I return in the homeland,
I for sure risk to be inspected and the police might find that I carry
illegal software on my apps. But the fact of carrying illegal document
is a common and old problem in any dictatorship, nothing new, and
there's courageous people willing to risk for it. This underground
circulation of prohibited information is something part of a process
that in the end is able to bring the dictatorship down.
With the iPhone? First, I can't install the bits that I could get in the
underground market (sure, there's jailbreak, but this is not usable by
most non-technical-savvy people). For sure I can travel abroad and
install those apps, but when I return home? Isn't there that blacklist
application killer that allows Apple to remove unapproved applications
on every gear? Isn't that killer working by talking to some Apple
server? Isn't the local government filtering and monitoring all internet
communications in the country, so I could be as well tracked and
arrested by police (not of course because I generically installed an
application not allowed by Apple, but because of that Dalai Lama stuff).
Isn't this just _outrageous_?
I'd also would like to point out that Microsoft has been severely fined
by the EU because of that Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player
being the default installation on Windows. Note, note the only allowed
application, just the _default_ one - a sign that the measure was
directed to protect end customers, not professional ones that take five
minutes in downloading and install FIrefox. And everybody of us was just
applauding to that EU decision. Now, how comes that on the iPhone,
another thing targeted at customers, we're not even talking of
_defaults_ that can be overridden, but an _explicit_ Apple's policy that
forbids any "duplicate" of Apple features? Think of Google Voicemail,
that was banned. Isn't this much worse than Microsoft attitude, and most
of us say now that it's "normal"? Of course, to me doesn't matter that
for Microsoft we were talking of computers and now it's a matter of
smartphones, because of that convergence of computational appliances.
--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/people
[email protected]
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