alt Hacker News>Think about music rights ownership
What are we talking about exactly? Ownership as in IP, or ownership of a copy?
>You own the flat, but you can't remove the wall.
Of course I can, as long as the wall is internal and non-structural. Everything inside the inner surfaces of the external walls is mine.
>You may own the house, but you can't build a factory there due to zoning regulations.
Well, zoning laws exist because plots of land don't exist in isolation, and affect each other. If I choose to run software X on a computer I own, how does that per se affect anyone else, that I should not be allowed to do so? Not that I should be punished if I do it, but that I should be stopped technologically from being able to attempt it? As I see it, there should be a very compelling reason to infringe on property rights in such an invasive way.
>You can own electric car, but you can't put diesel fuel there.
Literally what's stopping you from opening the charging port of your electric car and pouring in a can of diesel if you really want to? Or, for a more realistic example, what's stopping you from modifying your car by installing a diesel generator in the backseat that continuously charges the battery as you drive?
>I have no idea why anyone would call these ultra-packed cameras on steroids a "general purpose computer".
If you really wanted, you could build an APK yourself to use an Android phone to host a website. Is it good idea? I don't know. That's for you to decide. But in what way is a device that's capable of doing this not a "general purpose computer"? What more does it need?
>Framed like this, this is a debate about OP demanding private companies to transform their product into something very different
No. Phones are already this. They have processing elements, memory, stored programs... They're just computers. No one should get to decide what my computer runs over me. If I want to run something I should be able to run it, and if I want to stop something from running I should be able to stop it. Whether that causes problems for myself is my own business. I don't understand what's so complicated about this, or why anyone would argue against this.
> What are we talking about exactly?
About your claim that ownership as a concept is black and white, and no middle ground should be allowed.
> I don't understand what's so complicated about this, or why anyone would argue against this.
It's hard to understand the world if you see things through a binary lens - no ownership vs full ownership, or total support vs outright rejection. A more useful framework is to see what people support, reject, and tolerate.
For example, I totally support open-source hardware and software, and would love to see more of it. But I also tolerate proprietary hardware and software stacks, for many reasons. I'm definitely not rejecting the concept of private companies making hardware that runs their proprietary software and taking control over decisions about what software should run on their hardware.
From your comments, I see that you also support what I support, but you're totally rejecting the idea of hardware that runs proprietary software or not allowing you to run your own. So these calls for the government to step in and force private companies to disallow that concept are something I definitely can't support.