Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Steve Jobs, Books and Blogs
More Evidence that Jobs is a Deity: No License Plates
After today's earlier post, when I saw this post appear in NetNewsWire with its scintillating title, I suspected that Russell Beattie was just fishing for another link from TUAW. However, after reading Russell's anecdote about Steve Jobs having no tags on his car, I grew suspicious that it might be true. Then I read the multiple comments, which all state that neither Jobs nor his wife are required to have license tags on their cars, because they "worked something out" with the local authorities. Supposedly, this is because someone kept stealing his license plates. Naughty Billy Gates, perhaps?So let me get this straight: Not only was Jobs a phreaker in his youth, not only did he drop out of school (and then later in life offer a Stanford commencement speech about how he dropped out of school), but he also gets to speed around town willy nilly with nary a license tag on his set of wheels? He must be a minor deity.
If he's a mere human like the rest of us, then I have a proposition: If Jobs can bend the law like this with just a few words with the local authorities, shouldn't I be allowed to go ahead and strip all of my iTunes Music Store purchased tracks of their DRM without any fear of legal repercussions? I think so, too.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tim O. said 9:26PM on 7-13-2005
Well, no. Your not an all knowing god like his Steveness.
Anyway . . . stripping DRM off your songs is legal, as long as you bought them fair and square, right? You should not need the blessing of a superior being to use your legal files as you deem fit on a legal digital audio player (other than an iPod). You could spare yourself the trouble of stripping DRM, and assimilate yourself into the (borg) iPod users to spare yourself the trouble and legal obscurity. Remember, "Identity is irrelevant. Individuality is irrelevant. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile." (I own an iPod too, and love it... I just like to fiddle with people's minds)
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C.K. Sample, III said 9:32PM on 7-13-2005
Tim, stripping DRM isn't legal, due to the atrocity that is the DMCA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA
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fra said 10:10PM on 7-13-2005
So if someone stole the 'number' plates (as we call them in Belfast) from my parent's or my brother's car, they could all drive without plates!?!
Then nearly run over a guy who works for Microsoft!?!?
Bet Jobs smokes pot aswell...
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Tim O. said 11:09PM on 7-13-2005
Oh man, your right! People talk all the time about frivolous law suits, and things of that nature, but the real evil in our society seems to be our government and it's leaders. I had heard of the DMCA, but was never aware of what it really was. Atrocity? No, that's an understatement (to say the least).
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Dan Lowe said 3:14AM on 7-14-2005
That removing DRM is illegal is only the tip of the iceberg, as far as why the DMCA is evil. It protects anything "protected" by a technological device from that device being removed. This is a very, very broad statement. For example, unzipping a .ZIP archive could be considered circumventing a copyright protection mechanism, if the content owner's stance is that the zip archive is a copy protection. A group of researchers wanting to audit Diebold voting machine code that they had been given was partly stymied by this sort of thing. Their lawyers told them, you can only deal with code files that someone gave you, and which they had already unzipped. If you unzip it, you've potentially violated the DMCA.
Ridiculous.
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oceanplexian said 11:29AM on 7-14-2005
no, not ridiculous. I don't support DRM as much as the next man, but far to many people misread the DMCA as some evil 1984 rights taking document. The truth is, if you actually take the time to read the document, that you must be using a tool that has piracy as a sole use. If you're taking media, and unlocking it youself, WITHOUT the intention of piracy, then you're fine...same as if you are creating a tool.
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Brian said 6:02PM on 7-14-2005
Back on the post, no license plate? That is awesome.
Does anyone know what kind of car(s) Steve Jobs rolls in?
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Bob Not said 2:21PM on 7-15-2005
The deal is apparently Steve Jobs counts (rightly so) as a "celebrity" and California law has some kind of vague law allowing this (anti-stalking, etc, I presume).
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