designguybrown

Meh. Seems emotional and sentimental. If you are placing your content on the web, you are practically posting it on the street for general view with absurd hopes of pennies trickling in on some desperate fancy rather than through proper business channels with an effective strategy of legally protecting and promoting yourself - childish. Most people who do such art that they may avoid other types of structured paid work - what do they expect when they treat their skill set as a hobby - likely not wanting to work for others on a structured gig - if that's even around much? What's even the issue here - not getting a piece of the trifling leavings of scrapers and edu-content pedlars? pedantic. Art needs to stop being a vague creation-vocation of the rando people and grow up. Successful society is based on complex businesses and legal structures requiring serious people acting seriously. Creativity is a real skill and needs focused training and  a hierarchy of knowledgeable people to propagate it through society. Sorry, but I have little symp for the dilettantes and dabblers hoping to otherwise avoid the soulless cubicle, construction site, and assembly line.

I suppose a lot of companies have hidden 'forced obsolescence', upgraded-yet-back-incompatible data connectors, and 'for your own good' security and protocol updates under the intention of maintaining solid and recurring bought-upgrade cycles along with subscriptions that should have simply been version purchases. It is frustrating to see endless technological orphans, especially when so many try to create large eco-systems of products throughout their home they hope will last at least a decade, inter-functionally. Along with right-to-repair and right-to-reasonable back-support, perhaps the EU needs to clamp down on shallow and unnecessarily pointless operating and hardware upgrades - a 10-YR anti-obsolescence regulation with all connectors, protocols, and systems support covered. Quality over quantity updates. 

Of course, this goes way beyond prices for consumers and tariffs for international sparring. Supply lines on-shored and all the piles of subsidiary parts, designers, and assemblers that would sprout up - there could even be districts of consumer digital products' companies within various cities. I would work there for below minimum wage, 60 hours a week, as a high school or college co-op/ summer job. The local schools, JCs, and colleges would be collaborating with the various design, manufacturing, and industrial processes as part of their curriculum. What people don't realize is that bringing back the manufacturing sector is not about returning to your gramp's 1970s blue-collar smelly factories, but re-engaging with a mostly-automated but high-end process that requires great skill to design, construct, and maintain, albeit at 90% less staff, -- good, solid first-world work with endless multiples of community economic spin-off. If TSMC can make a go at it in the US, all top manufacturing can integrate as befits their profits - but it won't be a 4-year process.

Of course, this goes way beyond prices for consumers. Supply lines on-shored and all the piles of subsidiary parts, designers, and assemblers that would sprout up - there could even be districts of consumer digital products' companies within various cities. I would work there for below minimum wage, 60 hours a week, as a high school or college co-op/ summer job. The local schools, JCs, and colleges would be collaborating with the various design, manufacturing, and industrial processes as part of their curriculum. What people don't realize is that bringing back the manufacturing sector is not about returning to your gramp's 1970s blue-collar smelly factories, but re-engaging with a mostly-automated but high-end process that requires great skill to design, construct, and maintain, albeit at 90% less staff, -- good, solid first-world work with endless multiples of community economic spin-off. If TSMC can make a go at it in the US, all top manufacturing can integrate as befits their profits - but it won't be a 4-year process.

It's strange that this is controversial.
Of course, the government should have access to anything and everyone with 'just cause' and 'due process' - they're elected or appointed or some other reasonably transparent/ hyper-private process -- yes, they're incompetent and slow and lazy, etc -- but so are the majority of apple customers and the world, in general. The very idea that we are allowing a private company to even have an opinion on security as if they have any public obligation or oversight is ludicrous. Private companies care about nothing except money and the visions of its corporate overlords. The penalties that companies and directors face when they abuse trust and undertake massive frauds is nothing - a few years in a cuddly summer camp. Private companies shouldn't have visions or morals or public opinions or be involved in any public matters -- make stuff and sell it - that's it.