Why Apple’s intellectual property prohibitions are necessary

“I got an iPad as a birthday present a little while back (thanks again, Mom!), and am loving it. So when I heard that Cory Doctorow, the science fiction author and editor of the blog Boing Boing, was not enamored of the device, I was eager to learn why. I checked out his post expecting to read a review but instead found a diatribe. And one that cries out for a response,” Andrew McAfee writes for Forbes.

McAfee writes, “He rails against the fact that it’s hard to physically take apart the iPad, but he seems even more angry at the ‘technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.'”

This infrastructure includes:
• Prohibitions on swapping, sharing, reselling and forwarding many kinds of content once they’re downloaded to the device.
• Gatekeeping by Apple with the App Store. Only Apple-approved apps can be easily installed.

McAfee writes, “Neither do I, which is why I’m really glad for the one-two punch of the First Amendment and the Web. Doctorow, I and everyone else with Internet access in America are free to create almost anything we want with astonishingly few restrictions (the Supreme Court recently decided that even appalling depictions of animal cruelty are protected speech), and to distribute our digital content via the Web. And the iPad provides Politburo-free access to all this Web content.”

“Doctorow dislikes that in addition to providing Web access, Apple has also created the walled garden of the App Store and allowed companies like Marvel and Amazon to place restrictions on replicating some content delivered to the iPad,” McAfee writes. “And even though I like free stuff, too, I’m really happy Apple put this infrastructure in place. Let me explain why.”‘

Read more in the full article – recommended – here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dow C.” for the heads up.]