George Hotz’s unlocking of the iPhone - in his case, to work with his T-Mobile card - seems to have unlocked all sorts of legal hounds, baying about dire consequences to hackers.

So I thought this issue deserved at least another post, and little spin through history:

Although the Romans understood authorial attribution - plagiarism comes from the Latin for kidnapped - the notion of copyright as a legally enforceable objective right didn’t really begin until the printing press, and the monarchs who at first controlled their printers.  Copyright was literally the right that monarchs dispensed to make copies.  It took until the early 1700s for England to make copyright a creator’s right.

And, of course, the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Invention made both copyright and patent often corporate things.

Even so, corporations gave and give a huge amount of information away for free - that happens every time you hear a song on the radio.

Now, Apple could try to make its iPhones unhackable.  But the idea that people who own a piece of property - such as an iPhone - could be sued for using it in a way sellers did not intend is ... plain and simply immoral and absurd.  Again, Apple and/or AT&T could have users sign a contract promising they would never use another carrier.  But what would be the point in fostering an unenforceable contract?

You know what I’m going to do about this?  The more that people talk about suing iPhone hackers, the more I think that, when Congress resumes, I’m going to start publicly urging some Federal legislation that makes it illegal to ever go after anyone who hacks something they legally bought.