It's more than that. Google and Apple can harm, in principle, by either being evil or incompetent (I'm not claiming they are either). But they have lots of competent developers who try hard to keep you safe. This company here has most likely 10 times less security expertise than either Google or Apple. Which means your risk is much much higher.

Language is changing. "Hate" used to be a noun, and usually a verb. Like "his hate was aimed at the wrong person" or "he hated the wrong person"; in each case "hate" being the opposite of "love".

"To hate" has developed a new meaning. Someone who "hates on Obama" isn't the same as someone who "hates Obama". Instead, it means making wild accusations against Obama, which usually have no rational explanation but are just issued to hurt or annoy the person himself or his supporters.

A similar case, compare the totally different meanings of "He hit the girl" and "He hit on the girl". Or just check here: http://www.thefreedictionary.c...

Now start cleaning that gun and the picture changes. Now take the gun to a shooting range, and remove all the bullets when you take it home and put it on the table. What are the chances that you left a bullet? Now show your friends that there are no bullets. What are the chances that you fire a shot from a gun that you absolutely positively definitely knew had no bullets in it, and kill one of your friends?

You don't leave a gun on the table for thousand years without touching it, so the safety of leaving it there is irrelevant. And leaving your gun with no human touching it isn't safe: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/20...

Since you're comparing USA and Denmark (or UK, which is quite the same), it should be obvious that there are two stable states: One, where everyone has guns, so criminals need to have guns to avoid being shot during a crime, and upright citizens need to have guns to avoid beig shot during a crime, too. Two, where nobody has guns, and criminals know that carrying a gun during a crime means that the whole police force will do anything possible to catch them, and they will go to jail for a long time. And upright citizens know that killing an unarmed criminal say during a burglary will get them into legal trouble.

Two stable states. Both stable states are hard to leave. I prefer the stable state with no (few) guns and very few people shot.

It all depends on your definition of "can". Apple could theoretically do _anything_ with your iOS device. Some things would be detectable, some wouldn't, some would be illegal, most would be pointless to do for Apple and would be damaging to business if found out, which is a very good reason not to do it.

Apple _can_ install apps remotely without asking you, and it actually happens if you buy an app on one phone, and you have set up the other phone to automatically install purchased apps. Well, technically you asked for it, but nothing needs to appear on your iOS device at that moment to ask you. Quite obviously, Apple _can_ install software on your iPhone, because that's what they have to do when you purchase software. Being asked by you to do it is just a small detail. In reality, Apple doesn't install software without asking you.

Apple _can_ remove software without asking you, and would probably do that to remove malware, if it decides that removing the malware without your explicit permission is better for the customer than not removing it. I don't think they have ever removed anything for that reason, and they haven't removed anything with copyright problems.

The reason was that the music labels were worried about Apple's strength in the market, so they forced Apple to sell an inferior product (music with DRM), and they only allowed Apple to sell DRM free music after Apple agreed to raising prices.

And anyway, I have the impression that Apple's music DRM is the only one that still works. If you bought music with Apple's DRM ten years ago, you can still play it. Try playing PlayForSure music. No chance. It doesn't work anymore. I think there are some other schemes that stopped working. (If anyone knows of any other music DRM that still works, I'd be interested to hear about it).

And Apple's DRM could always be removed legally by burning the music onto a CD using Apple's own iTunes software, and today Apple's DRM can be removed legally (unfortunately not for free) by subscribing to iTunes Match once.

The plaintiff's claims were nowhere near as sensible as the things you asked about. (Actually, Apple's legal reply to most of the claims was "what you are claiming doesn't make any sense". Usually a legal reply to a reasonable accusation either says "we didn't do it" or "we were allowed to do it". )

I suggest you read what the case was actually about. Apple is claimed to have prevented Realnetworks from adding Apple's DRM to Realnetworks' DRM music and copying it onto Apple's iPods. The reality is that Realnetworks created an awful hack and damaged the data on an iPod in the process to an extent that Apple's software thought the iPod was broken and reformatted it.

To your question "How can DRM ever be defined as good for customers": Without DRM, it would be impossible to rent videos online for cheap instead of having to buy them for three times as much. And in 2006 when this happened, without DRM there would have been no online music stores. Surely offering you to buy music with DRM is better than not offering you to buy music without DRM.

Just in case that you still have a reasonable amount of music with FairPlay DRM: You can buy Apple's "iTunes Match" for a year, which will among other things allow you to replace any music bought from Apple, and any music from anywhere that the software recognises, with DRM free 256 Kbit/sec copies. Costs about $25 or so. If you have lots of music with DRM or in lower quality, it's worth it.

I think you are making the mistake of thinking that Apple was sued for something that remotely makes sense. They weren't.

Apple sold music with DRM in 2006. That music was hard or impossible to copy, as music with DRM should be. But that's not what Apple was sued for. And making it impossible for music with DRM to be copied is actually what DRM is there for.

Realnetworks had developed their own DRM "solution". Which had the unfortunate disadvantage that it didn't play on iPods, and it didn't play on Microsoft "Playforsure" compatible players either. So it was quite dead in the water. So Realnetworks decided to create a hack where they removed their own DRM, then put fake "FairPlay" (that's Apple's DRM) around it, and copied that to the iPod.

It turned out that they damaged directory structures on the iPod, and the iPod's "FairPlay" implementation noticed that there was something fishy about these files. Altogether so bad that Apple's software suggested that you reformat the iPod. And that is what these lawyers complain about: That Apple didn't allow their hacked DRM to play on an iPod.

The obvious and 100% iPod compatible solution would have been to remove the DRM and _not_ to try to add Fairplay DRM to the music. Music without DRM, like mp3, AAC, WAV, ALAC has always played on all iPods.

No, she was the largest vessel, briefly afloat :-)

Most likely the sale is only entered at a later stage. Could be if the charge your credit card, could be if the ship.

And most likely, they have terms and conditions that basically say "we offer what you see on the website, except if there are obvious mistakes". And the only way you could complain is if you spot a pattern, like if this happens repeatedly, or if they refuse to sell to you but don't change the advertised price.

Now all that said, from all I've heard the authors of the GPL were quite competent in what they were doing, so it is quite likely that the GPL says what they meant.

I think the most important thing is about remedies, and there is quite strong precedence. It seems that if you use open-sourced software and don't do what you are supposed to do according to the license, you are a copyright infringer, and not someone in breach of contract. So the damages are those of a copyright infringer (up to $150,000 per work, or the proven damage), and not those of a person in breach of contract.

I really wouldn't think so. Sure, it has to be made clear that the license for the software doesn't include the license for the patents. But it would make absolute sense if a patent holder made it easy for companies to actually use their patent by providing open source software to use the patent, instead of everyone having to create their own proprietary software.