iPhone, Gadget of the Year - But Has Apple Sold Out?

Apple has jumped into bed with AT&T and threatened its own loyal fan-base with punitive firmware updates if they exercise their right to unlock the iPhone. My, how it has strayed so far from that artistic, edgy computer company that was once so difficult to hate.

Do you remember last summer when mobs were after recent Apple ally AT&T’s head with concerns over net neutrality? The storm was raised over the censorship of anti-Bush statements made by Pearl Jam front-man Eddie Vedder during a live concert web-cast. If AT&T was your ISP, you didn’t get to hear Vedder’s rant during a rendition of Daughter.

The proposed Net Neutrality Act is based on one simple question: Should ISPs have the right to censor content over the Internet?

If not, shouldn’t consumers enjoy the same freedoms from wireless carriers?

Nobody is surprised when companies like Comcast or AT&T raise the Net Neutrality alarm. But who would ever have expected it from Apple?

Apple has become The Man

Don’t get me wrong, I respect Apple’s place in the history of Silicon Valley. I think the company’s products bring an influential level of design and ergonomics to the industry.

The iPhone, Time Magazine’s gadget of the year, is a slick mobile computer - make that, a slick and heavily regulated mobile computer that forbids the installation of third party applications.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 is a bit of legislation well used by the likes of the RIAA. But even the draconian enforcement arm of the recording industry must back down to recent exemptions to the DMCA pushed out in 2006.

Exemption number five of the DMCA makes it legal to unlock your cell phone for lawful use with the wireless provider of your choice. There is nothing AT&T or Apple can do about that. The right to do what you want with your private property is a cornerstone of a free society - regardless of what direction technology takes us.

In the face of these exemptions to the DMCA, I know of no mobile phone manufacturer or wireless carrier that has tried to circumvent the law with the destruction of your private property. Not Nokia, not the Sony-Ericsson collective, not even any of those dastardly communications companies whose CEOs surely keep the First Amendment pinned to their dartboards.

That is until this Apple press release:

CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 24 -- Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.

It’s a threat from Apple that says if you unlock your iPhone they’ll break it on you with a future firmware update. Apple will turn your new toy into an expensive glass-covered brick that won’t be protected under warranty.

Apple finds itself far from those Silicon Valley rebels in the old days, when IBM was the Big Brother Apple wanted to smash in its 1984 TV ad.

Now, Apple has become Big Brother and finds itself the butt of several class action lawsuits from disenfranchised Mac-fans who only want to exercise their constitutional rights.

What's next? Will Apple CEO, Steve Jobs try to regain customer confidence? I look forward to the results of this year's MacWorld Conference.