I can't believe you interpreted sarcasm as literal.

I agree with you 100 percent, well almost. Forcing Verizon to do anything that isn't in their corporations best interest is morally wrong. Because we all know that large corporation are only looking out for what is best for the consumer! If you get a "free" phone from Verizon for your aging mother so that she can stay in contact with you more easily, well then you SHOULD have to pay the early termination fee of $350.00 for that $29.99 piece of electronics when she passes away on the 21st month of your contract. And while we are at it, let us remove those other pesky regulations that the goverment has placed upon these large corporations. Let us remove the one where they are required to pay a minimum wage to their employees. We all know that this is just costing us jobs. Hell, my cousin Bruce could be making as much as 50 cents an hour AND have a job if it wasn't for that pesky goverment interference. Shame on you Mr. President (Because we all know that he REALLY makes all the laws, the Congress and Senate are just for show.) Let's remove the regulation that says Verizon must provide access to their lines from other competitors as well. I don't want no stinking Sprint customer to be able to call me. (You and your aging mother are using the SAME provider, aren't you?)

My point is that a truly and totally free market is a farce. There has to be a balancing act performed to keep the market truly competitive and profitable. Unfortunately, one groups idea of fair and balanced differs from another groups idea of fair and balanced. That is why we need regulation. Maybe this particular case isn't one that requires regulation. Maybe this particular case works as it currently is implemented. Obviously not everyone believes that, especially the person who DIDN'T get a DROID and then for whatever reason had to cancel their contract two months early.

Oh and one more thing. Maybe forcing PEOPLE to do something is morally wrong, but corporations are NOT people. People generally have to live with their actions, a corporation can merely disolve itself and start up as a completely different corporation. It is a lot more difficult for a person to simply disolve their identity and reappear under a completely new one free of all legal and moral obligations of their past actions. If the US goverment is going to provide corporations with that type of benefit then they do have a MORAL responsibility to make sure they don't abuse it.

Except Tenenbaum was not making his OWN property available, it belonged to someone else. A closer analogy would be more like...

"Prosecuting people for picking their neighbor's locks and having enabled THEM to be burgled."

I stand corrected. First Sale is not a 'right' although up until recently it was a general expectation of the consumer. I guess my point was that the knowledge contained within the IP could in essence be 'locked' away from the public forever if a legal means of passing that knowledge onto someone else is not made possible. And that 'locking' away of knowledge doesn't have to come from some 'evil or greedy' corporation. It may happen simply because it was no longer profitable to maintain the locks or they were just forgotten. Very few ideas are truly original, most are formed from previous exposure to others. Imagine if we allowed those previous ideas to be locked up and forgotten, never to be recovered again.

>>> I'm not seeing any difference between "digital rights management" and the MicroProse C=64 disks I used to buy which used digital errors to block copying. It seems they both achieve the same goal: Stop copying and also block the user from uploading the Microprose game to a friend.

Well I am sorry, but I clearly see a difference.

"Copy Protection" did not prevent you from performing any of the following actions...

1. It did not prevent you from using your software on a portable unit. (SX-64)

2. It did not prevent you from using your software on a newer, upgraded model. (C=128) (Although this could be debated if the protection scheme turned out to be incompatible with the newer hardware. In those cases, the publisher, inevitably released patches or new versions that were compatible if the market conditions were acceptable.)

3. It did not prevent you from using your software on a replacement unit. (New C=64 machine purchased to replace broken C=64 machine)

4. It did not prevent you from taking your software over to a friends house and playing it with your friend. (If it was multi-player. At least you didn't have to cart your C=64 around with you to show off your new purchase.)

5. It did not prevent your from donating or re-selling that software to someone else after you no longer had a use for it. (Right of First Sale.)

6. It did not prevent you from using the software if you just happened to forget the password, forget the login account, or otherwise fail to validate the myriad other ways that are now used to ensure that the person attempting to use the software in indeed the original purchaser.

All of these issues are and have been generally applied to consumer purchases in the past. No one places DRM type restrictions on my purchase of an automobile, house, or TV set. Yet "Digital Rights Management" seeks to prevent the consumer from doing any one of the above.

In summary, "Copy Protection" prevented you from making unauthorized "copies" of the software. "DRM" is designed to prevent you from making unauthorized "uses" of that same software. However, letting a corporation who's ultimate motive is monetary profit (Nothing wrong with that) decide what is a legal and authorized "use" (Everything wrong with that) goes against the entire grain and intent of Copyright laws. Copyright laws were enacted to create a fair and balanced benefit between the author AND the public welfare! If we allow corporations to restrict how knowledge can be used (and that IS what intellectual property is, knowledge.) then we restrict everyone's, including our own, future development and welfare.

However,
      If you purchase a piece of hardware that cleary has a defective design, (i.e. the fuel tanks on the Ford Pinto, an Xbox 360 that doesn't properly disperse heat causing it to die prematurely with the red ring of death) you could and should expect the manufacturer to correct the situation. Just because the inability to play back music on my Zune isn't life threatening doesn't make it OK for merchants to pawn defective equipment off onto an unsuspecting public. Furthermore, this is a defect that has ALWAYS been there, just not discovered until now. It is not a part that wore out over time. The Zune was defective from day one. This assumes that the bug was present in earlier versions of the firmware. If it was not, then does that mean that Ford can come 'force' me to upgrade my pickup with a part that will soon render it unusable? This is essentially what Microsoft does in order for you to make use of their online DRM protected music distribution. Microsoft was just lucky in that it only caused a temporary single day incapacitation of their product. What kind of outrage would there have been if this had turned out to be a permanent 'Zunicide'?

Perhaps you yourself should have 'continued' to check YOUR facts. From t-Mobile's "View Data Plan Terms" section 2. Protective Measures:

"To provide a good experience for the majority of our customers and minimize capacity issues and degradation in network performance, we may take measures including temporarily reducing data throughput for a subset of customers who use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth; if your total usage exceeds 10GB (amount is subject to change; please periodically check T-Mobile.com for updates) during a billing cycle, we may reduce your data speed for the remainder of that billing cycle. We may also suspend, terminate, or restrict your data session, Plan, or service if you use your Data Plan in a manner that interferes with other customers' service, our ability to allocate network capacity among customers, or that otherwise may degrade service quality for other customers."

As with many other providers, "unlimited == limited". Advertising a specific bandwidth speed as unlimited and then cutting that speed to aproximately the same rate as an old 9600 baud modem, is effectively the same as 'limiting' your usage.