Yeri Tiete

Something to think about

Imagine, a couple of years from now.

Apple’s patent to block recordings is reality and in operation. At some event such as Pukkelpop. During a crisis.

No one, as the infrared is beaming light into every smartphone, telling it to shut down the camera, is able to record or take pictures of what’s going on. Countless of proof is lost (or never made). Nothing on Twitpic, nothing on Youtube. No proof of how severe the storm/crisis actually was. No usable data for journalists and researchers to reuse afterwards. Unable to see whether the roof/screen/pillar/sound system/… fell before or after the whole tent actually collapsed…

Yes, think about that… “Free” world.

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Yeri Tiete

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2 responses to “Something to think about”

  1. Steven Op de beeck avatar
    Steven Op de beeck

    With the attention to detail that Apple applies to their products, I do believe they try to make every customer happy. Because it is clear they are not doing it for the developers. If that is the case, it would be totally unacceptable for Apple to implement the scheme, as detailed in the patent. As lot of people are using their phones to shoot pictures and videos of occasions like concerts etc, this would hurt the product, and the customer, a lot. And in a very noticeable and annoying way.

    You could say the record industry is forcing their hand. Or Apple will use the implementation as a bargaining chip in future negotiations with the record companies (maybe to collect more profit), who knows. But it is safe to state that Apple is not the bitch in this relationship: They got rid of DRM on music, kept the right to single-song-buys, made previews a lot longer, are giving us the ability to re-download a song when iCloud launches, legalize our music collections, etc. I think you can’t deny they are doing a lot of this to please the users of their products and not the record companies (AT ALL).

    Not that freedom is high on Apple’s feature list, but I don’t believe this patent will materialize, and take away the freedom we now have to create things ourselves.

    Reply
  2. Yeri Tiete avatar
    Yeri Tiete

    Time will show, but if the “blocking pattern” is released, anyone would be able to prevent recordings. No matter where (think Egypt, think London, think festivals and concerts, think …).

    It’s not hard to create infra red emitting lights in a certain sequence, any kid could do that. While I certainly do not like voyeurism and other inappropriate recording, I do not agree that others would be able to control my device.

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