Alec Saunders SquawkBox

You really have to wonder what they're thinking down at #1 Infinite Loop these days.  Let's review:

• King Steve and his merry men ship what is undoubtedly the hit phone of the year in iPhone.  Breathless anticipation, glitzy rollout, and the star power of Steve Jobs himself all conspire to make the launch a huge success. 
• Customers love it so much that they pay full pop for it, and then unlock it to work on the cell phone network of their choice.  Aside from Nokia, not many cell phone manufacturers are able to get full price for their phones in North America - especially $500 cell phones.  It's a remarkable achievement.
• Without so much as an SDK to help, a thriving community of third party developers emerge, who start to build all kinds of software for this new "internet on the go" device.  Apple officially says "We don't support third parties, but we're not going to go out of our way to break their applications either". Developers forge ahead anyway.  The Loopers later modify that statement to "updates will likely break the apps".
• Four days before the 1.11 update goes out, Apple makes a statement that all hacked iPhones will be rendered inoperable by the update. 
• Starting September 27th, reports of bricked iPhones start to roll in.

The Infinite Loopers are trying to replicate the success they had with iPod.  By tying it to iTunes they built themselves a tasty backend revenue stream from services.  They must have been asleep at the wheel on iPhone, however.  While getting in bed with the cellular industry and its hated contracts and locked phones was certainly a means to build another backend revenue stream, casually bricking loyal customers' phones shows an unexpected degree of arrogance.  The backlash is likely to be extreme. 

There has been quite a bit of chatter on the internet recently about Virgin Mobile's use of a picture of Dallas teen Allison Chang in its advertising campaign in Australia.  Briefly, Allison's youth counsellor Chewy Wong took a photo of her, which he then posted on Flickr using a Creative Commons Attribution license.  This license allows others to copy and use the photograph in any way so long as they attribute the photo to Chewy. Virgin did so, and that's when the trouble started.

Mark Goldberg characterizes it as a cautionary tale about privacy on social networks, which it certainly is.  The issue, however, is much more complex than simply privacy. It's also a licensing and legal issue.

• Virgin made a huge error when it used the photo without obtaining a model release.  Flickr isn't a commercial stock photo site, but rather a site for amateurs to share their photos.  It's unlikely that anyone on Flickr routinely obtains model releases.  Virgin should have known better.
• The subject, Ms. Chang, is a minor.  No doubt this complicates Virgin's liability. 
• The photographer naively put a Creative Commons Attribution license on all his photographs.  This particular license all but releases the photograph to the public domain, allowing the photographer to retain very little control over its use.  A much better license is the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial, which allows others to privately share and enjoy the photographers works, but reserves commercialization rights. Had the photographer chosen this license, Virgin would have been required to contact him before using the photograph.

The CC Attribution Non-Commercial license is a fabulous tool for amateurs, incidentally.  All of the content I produce — on Flickr, and on this blog — is licensed this way.  Others may freely use my work, but I retain control of its commercial use.  Occasionally I even earn some money from licensing a photograph or syndicating a post. 

Two threads that are worth following:

• Dump your pen friend: the original flickr thread where Allison discovered that her photograph was being used without her knowledge.
• Virgin Mobile campaign using Flickr photos: a subsequent discussion group about the legality of the campaign. 

Not to be outdone by rivals like Jaxtr and Jangl, Jajah has delivered buttons for your website.  Targeted at social networks, blogs, and email users, the button enables you to embed Jajah calling into virtually any webpage.  You also get a choice of which phone number to be reached at, and control over times of day that you are reachable. 

MIA?  Voicemail for the times when you aren't available.

 Just after midnight last night I received email from Tungle CEO Marc Gingras to say that they had won a DEMOgod award in San Diego.  Congratulations to the team! Well done adding to the roster of great Canadian startups winning at DEMO!

The DEMO conference, by the way, has a new and very easy way to watch videos of the demos online.  Visit www.demo.com to check them out yourself.

Cubic's MaxRoam SIM goes live today.  This is the SIM that lets you roam your phone internationally at local rates.  David Pogue's article in the NY Times is a good and balanced write-up.  As Andy Abramson noted, Pogue must have actually used the product.

I'll be grabbing one of these and sticking it into a spare handset.  I'm sure it will save money.  Last night, for example, I made a couple of calls to India.  Who knows how much they cost me?  And since taking my rarely used North American roaming off my Rogers plan, I'll need something next month at VON.

Oh, and one lucky person who buys a MaxRoam SIM today (September 27) will win an unlocked iPhone.