The unlocked version will apparently cost more than the locked version.

This means two things:

1) The phone is being subsidised, like most phone. It’s just not as transparent.
2) Anyone in the EU will be able to buy an unlocked iPhone.

The EU is a single market. This means anyone can go to France, buy an unlocked iPhone, and take it back to their own EU country and Apple can’t stop them (well, legally. They might try as they do with the iTunes Store).

I expect a lot of people to buy unlocked iPhones in France and ship them to other EU countries.

>Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
>sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

>A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure
>it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

>Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over
>the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money
>can buy.

>We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
>marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
>Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in
>our private CD Baby jet on this day, Thursday, March 29th.

>I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
>Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all
>exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

>Thank you, thank you, thank you!

>Sigh…

Brilliant.

http://twitter.com/melevittfl

Just like the iPod and CDs, most people already have a number of movies on DVD that they won’t want to buy again through the Apple Store. What they’d like is a way to rip the DVDs into iTunes, just like they can with their CDs.

Most of the songs on an iPod come from people’s CDs, not from music they bought through the iTunes Store. Similarly, I expect that most of the value of the Apple TV for most people will be to watch the DVDs they’ve already purchased.

And, in fact, many threads on the newly create Apple Discussion [Forum for the Apple TV](http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1133) are people asking for help in doing exactly that.

Now, two things to note:

1. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes ripping DVDs **illegal**.
2. Apple’s Terms of Service for the discussion forum state:

>3. Keep within the Law
>No material may be submitted that is intended to promote or commit an illegal act.

Now follow along with me:

* Apple wants people to perceive the Apple TV as a worthwhile purchase.
* The Apple TV becomes much more valuable if people can rip their DVDs
* Ripping DVDs is illegal
* Asking about illegal acts are a violation of Apple’s Terms of Use for the discussion forum.

The solution? On every post is a handy link to report a post as a violation. Use it to report any DVD ripping posts you find.

Why? Because maybe it will make the average Joe more aware of the flaws in the DMCA. Or, perhaps it will push Apple into spending more money lobbying for copyright reform.

OK, I’m mostly joking. But really, go join [EFF](http://www.eff.org) or [The Open Rights Group](http://www.openrightsgroup.org).

He writes “I posted Alice’s story to Boing Boing, the popular Weblog I co-edit, where it was seen by hundreds of thousands of potential Sony customers. By close of business, her cell phone was ringing — it was Sony.”

Lucky for Alice, her boyfriend co-edits one of the most widely read blogs. But, the rest of us aren’t so lucky. His solution for the rest of us is for companies to have an Ombudsman who have the power and remit to fix problems that fall through the crack of an organisation.

It reminded me of something that happened to me when I was moving out of an apartment at University. I was leaving in about a week so I called up the various utilities and gave them my moving out date. Unfortunately, [NyNex](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NYNEX), the telephone company, turned my phone off about half an hour later.

This would not have been so bad, except I still hadn’t found a place to live the following school year so I needed the phone (this was before cell phones became ubiquitous). So I called them back and told them they’d made a mistake and cut off the phone too early.

They told me I’d have my phone service on again in about an hour. Thinking everything was sorted, I went out to lunch. Just to check, I called myself from a pay-phone and guess what? No service. Calling them back and again explaining the problem elicited another promise to have the phone service back on within an hour.

As you might guess, still no phone service after the second hour of waiting. Finally, on the third attempt to get the problem fixed, I got through to someone who was less helpful, but more honest. The customer service rep made it clear that they could not turn on the phone service again for at least two weeks. This was, according to him, because “telephone systems are very complicated”.

That was the wrong thing to say to me. You see, at the time, my uncle was a programmer for Bell Labs and worked on and with a lot of the telephone equipment that sat in the nations telephone exchanges. I knew dam well that the telephone system was basically a computer system and that turning on my phone service was simply a matter of entering the right command in the system. Of course, the fact they’d manage to turn it off in less than half-an-hour didn’t seem to phase this guys logic.

In an attempt to trigger some sort of “oh crap he’s going to get us in trouble” path, I demanded to know the address of the regulatory body that deals with consumer complaints and the address of the company president. It was then that the representative offered me the number for the “President’s Help Line”.

I liked the sound of that! Calling the number, I got through to someone where I calmly explained the problems I’d had that day, the number of people who’d said I’d have service back within a few hours, and the eventual admission that nothing was going to be done for weeks. I also explained about my uncle and that I knew it could be done, if they’d just bypass the red type. I was polite and calm, but I also made it clear I wanted my phone service back. She asked me to hold on for a moment.

After about five minutes, she came back and said she was sorry for the delay, my phone will be back on shortly, and she hopes that I accept their apology. Sure enough, within about twenty minutes my phone was back on.

I don’t know how many companies have an equivalent of a President’s Help Line. But, I’ve found it’s worth asking.

Finally, Cory, what the hell is your girlfriend doing buying a [Sony](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal)?

Afterwards, a couple of people where going to a meeting of UK podcasters. In attendance was Adam Curry, MTV VJ, Podcasting Pioneer, and owner of the first graphical website I saw way back when (mtv.com, the original). So, I made an idiot of myself by gushing a bit (but not too much), and talked to a few people about copyright issues that might affect them.

Flickr stream here.

Technorati Tags: copyfight

So, the fun I’m thinking of is carrying around an old style boom-box, you know, like one of these. Then, whenever you come across a film shoot in a public street, discretely point your boom-box in the direction of the action, crank up the volume, and play a recording of the watermark. They won’t hear it, but the mics used to record the action will.

Imagine the bemused laughter and shouts of “those darn pesky kids!” when studio executives discover that many of their blockbuster new DVDs are being returned because they won’t play.

(and before anyone writes, yes, I know most movie dialog gets re-recorded in a quiet studio and I’m really not advocating sabotage. But I’d like to make them a bit nervous about it.

It turns out that you can actually get chemical burns from certain hot peppers.

I came home from the chili fiesta with three scotch bonnet peppers. One of them went into a salsa. Next time, I’ll have to remember to use some sort of gloves.

But hey, no pain, no gain, right?

There are stands where people sell chilies , salsa, chile plants, and various hot sauces with “death” in their title. Needless to say, I was in heaven. That being said, I prefer chilies to be hot, but also have lots of flavor. So, while I liked to machismo of tasting sauces with names like “widow maker” in the title, I’d prefer more flavorful ones. Of course, that didn’t stop me from buying a bottle of this stuff.

Actually, the nice thing about the fiesta is that there’s lots of small producers with homemade or homegrown products. Here are two of the best:

• Peppers By Post
• The Cool Chile Company

Highly recommended.

I also came back with three Scotch Bonnet peppers. At least one of them is going into a salsa. We’ll see about the other two.

That being said, I’d avoid Alitalia Airlines if I were you… I won’t go into the gory detail, but suffice it to say they decided to send us on an 8 1/2 hour bus trip to Milan when they canceled our flight, rather than route us through Florence or Rome. Grrr.