It's not defective, RMS et al: it's a CHOICE. You purport to like choice, but no one believes you anymore. Many consumers don't care, and even LIKE, the idea of being locked in to the App Store, because it introduces a significant amount of safety.

In a ideal world where the buyer realised the impact of the restrictions, and were able to make a fully informed choice, I'd agree with you. But as it is now Apple don't mention this in their marketing as far as I'm aware. They don't mention the restrictions:

• Only Apple-approved software
• No multitasking with non-Apple-apps
• No plugins for web browsing
• Kill switch for apps

...and probably more I've not mentioned.

Most of those restrictions is artificial. Give people a choice whetever to allow non-approved apps, and tell them about the added risk of non-approved apps. Give people multitasking, but warn them against slower response. Give people the CHOICE of using the device as one wants.

As it is now the device is practically crippled if apple wants it to be crippled. On the other hand, my netbook from Asus works perfectly fine with whatever software I want, and I really don't care if asus decides to go bankrupt. It still works as it did when I bought it. With apple devices you don't know that.

The problem is that people do not realise the limitations when buying, and thus is unable to make a informed decision.

It's certainly a surefire way to blacklist spammers - I can't imagine spammers paying 50EUR to get wihtelisted any time soon, and such a grace period is a nice way of keeping spammers away, and yet allow legitimate users to remove their IP.

A better solution would be to take a deposit of 50EUR, and pay those back after four weeks if no abuse occured. Then you could be reasonably sure that no spammer would be interested in whitelisting themself...

You violating copyright shouldn't be the end of your financial life or freedom. A fine, certainly but the magnitudes that have always been in place are ridiculous.

You were not able to break copyright rules around 1900 by accident. You don't copy a book without being pretty deliberate about it, and you certainly don't give copies of a book away for free.

So in 1900 it was a fair assumption that copyright breach of any scale to speak of was commercial by nature. Today, that argument is no longer true. So stiff legal punishment was way more in place in 1900 than it is today.

have no problem with DRM until it stops me from being able to use my media legally as I see fit. If a DRM scheme somehow prevented me from giving a file to my friends, but let me listen to the song on my ipod, Sansa, or Zune as I wished, that'd be perfectly okay.

That system can't excist. If you are able to play back content with the player of your own choice, you can surely just use a open source one and dump audio to disk again after the DRM is dealt with? Or you could simply strip away the DRM straight away.

That's the inherit problem with DRM: It tries to give you access to content whilst at the same time restricting access to the very same content. It can't be done. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. There won't be a DRM system that ever lets you use media as you see fit.

So, they've made a vaccine, but in what quanta? As far as I know, vaccines are made in chicken eggs, and takes some time to produce. Will they be able to supply a proportion of the world with this vaccine in time? And more important, who'll get it. I bet the rich countries, with medical care will get it, since they can pay. But do they need it most? After all, countries in Europe and North America typically has a functioning health care system that can treat symptoms quite much better than most African countries...

So sadly, I don't think it'll really matter.