Why I hate corporate policies.

[theweaselking]

I have a new phone. It is a cellphone. It was a gift. It is quite spiffy, in most ways.

In some ways, it is not spiffy - and these are not TECHNICAL ways, nor are they necessary ways.

Basically, my phone can play all kinds of different audio files, as ringtones.
My phone can speak to my computer through four or five different ways.

The connection is obvious, right? Make your own ringtones! Hey, the manual for the phone model says you can do this! The website of the provider says you can customise your ringtones any way you want! And they link to the manual for the phone model when you ask how! That means it's easy, right?

Wrong.

You see, the provider (who shall remain nameless but whose name is similar to Irginvay Obilemay) LIES. When they say "customise it any way you want", they mean "you can get a 20 second ringtone, downloadable from our website, and your selection is very limited unless you like Justin Timberlake and Kevin Federline". They've DISABLED the functionality on the phone - actually crippled a listed sales feature on their site and the manufacturer's site.

And when I called support, their stated reason for doing so is "copyright concerns" - as in "you could get music or video from anywhere and out it on your phone".

#1: Uh, yeah. That's the whole reason that FEATURE exists, so I can produce or procure my own music and put it on my phone.

#2: Oh, and this is your business how, again? Copyright concerns? Right, because Dell is liable when people steal music, and Samsung is liable when people trade video tapes, and all that. Newsflash: copyright violation is *my* worry, *my* fault, and *my* liability, and since I have all the rights I will ever need and then some to the material I'm trying to use, I'm not worried. Since I'm not worried and it's NOT YOUR BUSINESS, why the fuck did you disable that feature?

#3: You don't prohibit me from copying it to my phone and playing it as "radio". That works just fine. So, let's take Metallica for a moment: Is playing the CD on my computer illegal? No? Is copying the CD to my computer illegal? No? Is copying it to my phone illegal? No? Is setting my phone to vibrate and manually queueing up the track every time I feel it illegal? No? Then why the fuck have you CRIPPLED MY PHONE to make it so that I can't do just that automatically?

(And if you start saying "yes, it's illegal" at any point, then I will do two things: First, I will point and laugh at your pathetic ignorance, and wonder out loud at your continued ability to breathe with that low level of brain function. Second, I will then point out that, illegal or not (not, for the record), I *can do* all of those, and so your prohibition doesn't actually stop me from infringing copyright)

#4: Hey, are you saying that you, as my provider, hold the position that YOU are responsible for any copyright infringements I make with my phone? That appears to be exactly what you're saying, and you've added functionality to ensure that I *can't* accidentally violate copyright! Wonderful! I've just queued up a Metallica album to automatically push itself to every Bluetooth source it sees, as soon as it sees them - and you're on the record as having said that YOU'RE responsible for all those violations that you're protecting me from! How wonderful that it's not my fault, your phone stopped me from doing anything *else* wrong so how was I to know that THAT was wrong?

The *real* reason they've used misleading advertising to sell a phone with the features they're advertising disabled is that for those 20 seconds of Justin Timberlake, it will cost you $4.

But I'm angry enough to make a stink about the misleading advertising, until I can get them to publically admit that.

Comments

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

They've DISABLED the functionality on the phone - actually crippled a listed sales feature on their site and the manufacturer's site.

Yeah, that's a provider I'll never be subscribing to. Who is it?

I have Cingular, and my phone has a Bluetooth connection and can play MP3s. Which is why my ringtones are either the Final Fantasy Victory Theme (OK, maybe I've seen Advent Children one time too many) or the Katamari Damacy theme.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Virgin Mobile (who are now identified in the above rant).

Right now, I'm looking at their licensed MP3s to figure out if it's just a tag on the MP3, which I can then duplicate, or if the phone actually phones home to the mothership and checks the catalog - in which case, Enter Sandman might get itself renamed "Virgin Mobile.mp3"

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Virgin Mobile (who are now identified in the above rant).

Right. Note to self: Don't use them ever.

Enter Sandman

Who do you think you are, Billy Wagner? Mariano Rivera?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

My original plan was to record my own voice saying "John, your phone is ringing. I don't know who it is. Please, help me John" as the default tone and set "John, it's $PERSON" for custom ringtones, but, really, as soon as you tell me I can't do that, I'm damn well going straight for the fathers of the modern copyright infringement lawsuit, to make a point.

And the fact that I like Metallica is a very attractive bonus.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Ah. See, "we've crippled your functionality" always translates in my brain to "we'd like you to cancel your service now, please." I'm not really interested in making a point in these penny-ante circumstances. I'll go for the large scale--hence my eventual career of choice.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Well, the phone was a gift, as was the non-refundable money on the pay-as-you-go phone.

But I'm certainly lacking any incentive, at all, to stick with them once that money is used up.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

Here in Kansas, false advertising negates nonrefundable policies.

Please do...

[jackoutofthebox.livejournal.com]

copy and paste this entire bit of information to the phone

on www.phonescoop.com

we'd like nothing better than to know all the details so that others can learn and make informed decisions.

Re: Please do...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Love to, but not interested in signing up for a forum account.

Why don't *you* post the salient bits, under a title like "Virgin disables features on the Nokia 6275i (and doesn't mention it on the advertising)", and include a link to my post?

Re: Please do...

[jackoutofthebox.livejournal.com]

No problem, will do whats the Maker and Model# of the phone?

Re: Please do...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Nokia 6275i.

Which is why I said "Virgin disables features on the Nokia 6275i" as a suggested thread title.

Re: Please do...

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Many Nokias have a program called Composer, or something along those lines, where you can manually enter a tune, a ditty, a series of bleeps and bloops. I got some Zappa ringtones on my old one (wife has it now).

Are you saying they disabled that program?

Off-topic

[hakerh.livejournal.com]

... But hey, fancy meeting you here. :)

[psyco-path.livejournal.com]

Good luck and more power to you.

Although it stands to reason if somthing has been disabled then there is potentially a way to reenable it.

[thathatedguy.livejournal.com]

Verizon does the same thing. They've disabled bluetooth to where it only works with wireless earpieces and not as ta remote control for the DVD player on my PowerBook (for which there is software). Their stated reason? Copyright violation. The real reason? Same as Virgin, limit your ringtones to those you purchase.
They all fuck the corpses of meth addicted manatees.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I'm also a Verizon customer, and oddly enough, the bluetooth on my E815 still works with my G5 iMac, at least to the point where I can synch up the addressbooks.

Whether any other aspects of the bluetooth on that phone work are a complete mystery to me.

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

anivair had a similar struggle trying to get the theme to Good Eats on his cellphone, as he made the ringtone himself. Don't ask me how he finally got the ringtone on his Verizon phone, I don't know, and i don't want to know, because it was probably illegal. -_-

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If he owns the phone, then what he did to it was legal, period.

If Verizon owns the phone and he's renting it, then what he did may not have been legal.

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

I was mostly joking, I'm too stupid to ever understand how he made the durn thing work, but I like to pretend that I don't want to know so I won't have to face my own stupidity. (He is not renting the phone.)

You should email him for advice on circumventing Ergin-vay Obile-may, there might be a way to do it.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I know exactly how to do it, I just don't have the hardware for it.

Buying that hardware will cost me about $10, and the time it takes to ship. This frustrates me, because of the delay and because the *only* purpose of the hardware is to unlock the phone. I don't need that hardware for anything else, at all.

So what I'm doing is running through Virgin's tech tree, with a simple goal: They damaged my property, therefore they unlock my phone and I continue with Virgin, or I unlock my phone and I do not continue with Virgin.

[mrbankies.livejournal.com]

Given that my phone lacks the ability to do this, I can't comment as to whether or not Nextel are scum sucking colostomy bags in this respect. I can tell you that they'll grub money from you at any opportunity. I bought a game for my phone, and not only did they charge me $7.99 for the game, but another $7.00 for the two minutes it took to DOWNLOAD the game from THEIR website. Had I know ahead of time, I'd have skipped the game.

[jirel.livejournal.com]

How about - I as dumb computer user purchase a flashdrive from Best Buy. Being an idiot I purchase one made by the Geek Squad (it was on sale). Flash drives as I understand it are supposed to be drives you hook up to your computer that allow you to copy data from your computer to the drive and then carry the data to another computer. Except that when I attempt to do so I find software on the drive that prompts me to download programs from their website but won't let me do a simple copy into the drive - its protected. It has a feature "download programs" but no feature "copy files". When I call support to ask for help I'm told that to talk me to how to do a basic feature will cost me a fee. I told them they can have the flash drive back.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

Go You

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty happy with my phone and service. I hated that Sprint couldn't use all the normal phones everyone else could use cause they don't have that little chip thingy... There are a few little tiny things about my phone that are annoying. But the only thing I can think of at the moment as far as crippling.. My phone is an mp3 player/phone. It has bluetooth. The only thing you can use bluetooth for, however, is to send a contact to a friend via bluetooth, or use it to connect to stuff like wireless bluetooth headphones. My friends all have razrs that can send ringtones and stuff to each other using bluetooth, my phone doesn't allow for this. prolly helps that sprint has their own music you can download and ringtones... I don't wanna spend a bunch of money on connecting to the internet from my phone fee, and then buying the ringtone, and then the text msg fee, all for a ringtone i could have had my friend send me. actually, i can't even do that, i haven't been able to find the ringtones i want, so i'm stuck with the 5 rings it came with. also, it won't let you set your songs for your mp3 player as a ringtone, that kinda sucks. hmm. i guess i am being limited? it's not like it would be all that hard to let it do those things. but i don't think it was falsely advertised to make people think you SHOULD be able to do these things, so i'm not pissed.

[jolt-junkie.livejournal.com]

you could always unlock the phone..

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Indeed, that seems to be the way I'm looking.

What I want to be sure, though, is that the phone will still continue to work with Virgin, since I'm happy about pretty much everything except this one piece of crippled functionality.

The ability to modify the items on the main menu - so that the "multimedia" icon with the picture of the camera doesn't say "tunes" and so that VXL (Virgin's "please pay money to browse our crap and then more money to download it" function) doesn't appear at all - would be nice, too, but not required.

[jolt-junkie.livejournal.com]

well i live in canadia but ive worked in the mobil industry.. and unless virgin mobil is doing something funky they dont check the software on your phone.

basically what you have is a cdma phone.. there is no sim card (the little chipy thing) with cdma, your phone contacts the mobil service providers servers to let them know which cell tower it can be reached at and that your phone is on.. leave your phone next to speakers or a old crt monitor and youll hear interference as it regularly updates its status wiht the providers servers..

Gsm uses Sim cards to keep your account info.. so you can switch phones as easily as switching the sim card into a different phone.. with your phone when you registered your phone they registered your iemi number which basically puts that number in their databases as a registered phone.. the software on the phone has nothing to do with the interaction between your phone and the servers.. (by that i mean they dont check the software versions and they cant bar your phone if you unlock it) also if you unlock your phone there might be a legal precident for action against your mobil company if they do bar you.. any mobil company makes you buy the phone.. and there fore it is your property and then you enter into a contract for the service.. im pretty certain that your contract doesnt stipulate any where that your phone must be running their software..

but worst case is it doesnt work.. and you take it back to one of their service centers and say "the software has a glitch in it and you dont know how it happened" unlocking nokias is a software unlock so there is no way they can prove that you did unlock it and there fore no way that they can prove you voided your warentee.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

> any mobil company makes you buy the phone.. and there fore it is
> your property and then you enter into a contract for the service..
> im pretty certain that your contract doesnt stipulate any where that
> your phone must be running their software..

Actually, Virgin runs Pay As You Go, with no contract whatsoever. You buy the phone outright, then it runs their software and talks to their system to get you online.

I want to be sure that I don't fuck up their stuff when I remove the DRM that's preventing me from legally using my property.

Either way, all the ways I know of to unlock a CDMA phone require software that I don't have (downloadable) and a direct cable that I don't have because I said "Hey, dirt-cheap bluetooth adapter? Why not use that? That's kinda neat".

Which was dumb of me, because now I've got bluetooth and no USB cable, and the DRM removal requires a USB cable.

Alternatively...

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

Should you find yourself in Toronto anytime, you cannot throw a rock downtown without hitting a person who will unlock your phone for twenty bucks.

Re: Alternatively...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If it were a GSM phone, I'd already have unlocked it myself. The problem is that it's CDMA and I can't just stick in a code to unlock it, I require a bit of software and a USB cable.

[jolt-junkie.livejournal.com]

sorry i thought you were on a plan..

that being said.. their software isnt proprietary.. the funny thing about the phone industry is that everything is soo standardized and old.. the tech that they are putting out now was available 2 years ago in europe and even longer ago in asia.. the telcos in north america are slow to adapt to new things and they are so against new technology that it isnt uncommon for a new product to be in testing for so long that its forgoten

even though its pay as you go.. all of your account information is handled on the back end on their servers and your phone has nothign to do wiht your pay as you go account.. thats how they can switch phones for you at any virgin booth with out you losing minutes..

as far as unlocking.. in a local mal around here there is a guy who can do it for you or has the tools to do so.. look for the booths with those flash cellphone covers / antennas. they should be able to get you the tools or point you to someone who can do it for you.

[dreamshade.livejournal.com]

I would think that it would be said to go an inch farther and say that in a world where "Big Music" is afraid that Napster is going to drive it down the drain, that cell ringtones are the one growing avenue of licensing that allows such industries to continue to turn a profit. It's probably also notable that Virgin - a company heavily involved in many forms of media - is disallowing personally customized ringtones while a more communications-specific company like Cingular isn't so worried about it.

(And yes, they still believe it's Napster that's killing them. They're silly that way.)

[paoconnell.livejournal.com]

Want to hear something amusing? The latest version of Windows Media Player has a Napster icon on its toolbar, which offers to install Napster software on my PC (since I don't have it). That's right: Napster is somehow in bed with Microsoft now (maybe this is old news, and maybe new--no idea). That'll make it intersting if RIAA tries to mess with Napster again.

Napster doesn't do me any good as I have an iPod that doesn't do locked WMA and the like (only MP3, MP4/AAC, AIFF, ALE, and unlocked WMA), but it's interesting.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Napster has become a legit pay-for-use service, not a trading setup. This is why nobody uses it any more.

[jolt-junkie.livejournal.com]

ooh as an add on im pretty sure that their 20 second clips for ring tones they dont pay royalties to the RIAA.. i think that the majical number is 30 seconds.. if you sell or copy or what not more than 30 seconds of a song then you must pay royalties so i believe that the cell providers are keeping all of the 4 dollars..

but i could be wrong.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

The RIAA wouldn't be getting any of the money anyway, since we're talking about Canada.

[jolt-junkie.livejournal.com]

oh i was talking about rights in the states.. thats why i said i could be wrong.. i dont know..

the riaa cant do shit to us canadians.. and the canadian artist association wont do anything either.. we pay a levy on all blank media/ digital music players.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Testify with righteous anger!

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Bought a used Motorola - have to check the model - has integrated iTunes. Worked fine w/ iTunes until we put the SIM chip in the fucker, at which point the phone will now /refuse/ to mount as a volume, and /refuses/ to synch w/ iTunes.

I'll give you three guesses as to why.

I have no way to verify this behaviour (i.e. my GF will not let me break and re-up her phone), so for now, it's just "grrrr...".

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the real reason. I work in media accounting. They want to hold a monopoly on selling what you can use as your ringtone. Disabled hardware to support a business model? You bet. There's really nothing new about disabling features. You're entitled to a refund due to the misleading pitch. Want to sock it to 'em? Get the refund.

[matgb]

You don't prohibit me from copying it to my phone and playing it as "radio". That works just fine. So, let's take Metallica for a moment: Is playing the CD on my computer illegal? No? Is copying the CD to my computer illegal? No? Is copying it to my phone illegal? No? Is setting my phone to vibrate and manually queueing up the track every time I feel it illegal? No? Then why the fuck have you CRIPPLED MY PHONE to make it so that I can't do just that automatically?

Well, in the UK, yes to all of the above, because our law is seriously that fucked up. But I understand Canada has sensible copyright laws.

It's possible their policies are set by head office, who might be over here and thus intelligence challenged? What with Virgin also being a record label and all...

Beyond that, yes, stupid, and I like the idea of your prerecords. My phone rings. We actually recorded a traditional old dial receiver at one point, because phones should ring, damnit!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

our law is seriously that fucked up

So much so that *playing a music CD in a CD player* is illegal?

That, I'm impressed by.

[matgb]

Ah no that is legal I mis read and realised after submit. All the others aren't no copying at all.