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> My contention is that a license can't be invalidated by a 3rd party not giving you the technical means of exercising a right that you are granted. Similarly to how the GPLv2 couldn't stop TiVo from not allowing you to run their proprietary software if you modified the version of Linux they gave you, even if RMS intended it to.

What a way to twist things around. Apple (or the app developer, who chooses Apple to distribute their software) doesn't have the right to distribute the code without abiding by the terms of the license. Copyright applies by default unless those terms are met.

TiVo's code wasn't subject to the GPL, so obviously they can have it do whatever they want, it's not remotely analogous to distributing copyrighted works outside the terms of the license that is the only thing allowing you to distribute them at all.

Cryptographic controls might be an end-run around this (as they are being abused for many other anti-consumer purposes today). The license tries to account for this, but it looks like it only applies if the code is included with the device. Unfortunately. The law really needs to catch up with this, it's clearly a hack and not respecting the intent of this or other areas of law such as first-sale doctrine.




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