We hold these truths to be self evident:

That as long as Apple’s iPhone is locked, there will be those who wish it open. And that as long as this is the case, iPhones will be jailbroken and outfitted with third-party applications not vetted by Apple. And this will remain so regardless of whether or not Apple manages to convince the U.S. Copyright Office that jailbreaking an iPhone is copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. So all this jawing over Apple’s legal stance on iPhone jailbreaking is ultimately for naught.

So the Electronic Frontier Foundation can argue that jailbreaking is protected under fair-use doctrines. And it can urge the Copyright Office to add a jailbreaking exemption to the DMCA on the grounds that “the culture of tinkering (or hacking, if you prefer) is an important part of our innovation economy.” And Apple (AAPL) can insist that such an exemption is “an attack on Apple’s particular business choices with respect to the design of the iPhone mobile computing platform and the strategy for delivering applications software for the iPhone through the iPhone App Store.”

And they can go round and round and round. But their sparring and bloviating will ultimately be meaningless. Because if Apple’s history with iPhone jailbreaks (see stories below) has taught us anything, it’s that they’re essentially unstoppable.

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Uri Geller, the purported spoon-bending paranormalist, apparently did neither when in May of 2007 he sent a DMCA take-down notice to YouTube demanding that it remove a clip debunking his “supernatural” abilities. And boy, did he ever pay for it.

You see, Geller didn’t own the video. And that made his DMCA take-down notice unlawful, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out when it filed suit against him for misrepresentation of copyright claims. “We’ve seen a rash of people abusing the DMCA lately, attempting to take down legitimate criticism and commentary online,” EFF staff attorney Jason Schultz said at the time. “To allow thin-skinned public figures like Uri Geller to abuse this system forces critics to remain silent and creates unfair hurdles for free speech to thrive online.”

Well, the hurdle to which Schultz was referring was knocked down today when Geller settled the EFF suit. Under the terms of the settlement, Geller will license the disputed footage, all eight seconds of it, under a noncommercial Creative Commons license. A monetary settlement was also reached, but the terms are not public–unless you too are a paranormalist and can divine them.

And as for the “those-who-would-sacrifice-liberty-for-security- deserve-neither” crowd? Well, perhaps they can find some solace in this comment from Senator Christopher S. Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: “There’s nothing to fear in this bill, unless you have Al Qaeda on your speed dial.”

All depends on who you ask, I guess, because the Electronic Frontier Foundation says there’s actually quite a bit to fear no matter who you have on speed dial.

“It is an immeasurable tragedy that just after its return from the Fourth of July holiday, the Senate has chosen to pass a bill that betrays the spirit of 1776 by radically expanding the president’s spying powers and granting immunity to the companies that colluded in his illegal surveillance program,” said Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “This so-called compromise bill represents a shameful capitulation to the overreaching demands of an imperial president. As Senator Leahy put it in yesterday’s debate, the retroactive immunity provision of the bill upends the scales of justice and makes Congress and the courts handmaidens to the White House’s coverup of its illegal surveillance program.”

The federal judge presiding over Viacom’s (VIA) $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google (GOOG) and YouTube denied a motion for the pair to produce their source code Wednesday. “YouTube and Google should not be made to place this vital asset in hazard merely to allay speculation,” U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton wrote.

Apparently he didn’t feel quite as strongly about the privacy of YouTube users because he felt entirely comfortable turning that over to the media company. And so he ordered Google to provide Viacom with YouTube’s Logging database, which contains:

…for each instance a video is watched, the unique “login ID” of the user who watched it, the time when the user started to watch the video, the internet protocol address other devices connected to the internet use to identify the user’s computer (“IP address”), and the identifier for the video. That database (which is stored on live computer hard drives) is the only existing record of how often each video has been viewed during various time periods.”

To Stanton such data isn’t a “vital asset,” although the authors of the Video Privacy Protection Act and anyone else with an interest in personal privacy would likely disagree. Said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “The Court’s erroneous ruling is a setback to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube. We urge Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users.”

And Google will almost certainly do that. But it may have its work cut out for it, because in this case it’s fighting not just Viacom and the presiding court, but itself. You see, in granting Viacom’s request for YouTube’s Logging database, Stanton cited Google’s own argument that IP addresses aren’t always personal data. “Defendants argue that the data should not be disclosed because of the users’ privacy concerns, saying that ‘Plaintiffs would likely be able to determine the viewing and video uploading habits of YouTube’s users based on the user’s login ID and the user’s IP address,’ ” Stanton wrote. “But defendants cite no authority barring them from disclosing such information in civil discovery proceedings, and their privacy concerns are speculative. Defendants do not refute that the ‘login ID is an anonymous pseudonym that users create for themselves when they sign up with YouTube,’ which without more ‘cannot identify specific individuals,’ and Google has elsewhere stated:

We … are strong supporters of the idea that data protection laws should apply to any data that could identify you. The reality is though that in most cases, an IP address without additional information cannot.”

–Google Software Engineer Alma Whitten, Are IP addresses personal?, GOOGLE PUBLIC POLICY BLOG (Feb. 22, 2008)

Ironic, no?

The concept is simple: The music industry forms a collecting society, which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to ‘get legit’ in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway–share the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer–without fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music. In exchange, file-sharing music fans will be free to download whatever they like, using whatever software works best for them. The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders. The more competition in applications, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom to fans to publish what they care about, the deeper the catalog.”

–Excerpt from “A Better Way Forward: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, April, 2004

Turns out that the Electronic Frontier Foundation was simply ahead of its time when it suggested that the recording industry adopt a voluntary collective-licensing model for music. Because the record labels are finally warming to the idea.

During tomorrow’s South by Southwest “Mobility, Ubiquity and Monetizing Music” panel, Jim Griffin, managing director of OneHouse–a digital entertainment consultancy that works with three of the four major labels–will argue the case for a file-sharing surcharge.

Like the “File-sharing Monetization” proposal recently pitched by the Songwriters Association of Canada and the EFF plan that the industry dismissed back in 2004, Griffin’s proposal would have Internet Service Providers add a flat-rate fee to their monthly charges to underwrite the cost of unlimited music downloads. The resulting funds would be divvied up among songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels.

“It’s monetizing the anarchy,” says Peter Jenner, head of the International Music Manager’s Forum, who will join Griffin on the panel. “The labels are beginning to like the idea of an access-to-music charge, because they’re increasingly aware that their current model is broken.”

Anyway, together with NBC and Disney, AT&T has invested a combined $10 million in Vobile, a company whose VideoDNA is rumored to be the gold standard of video content recognition systems and is considering deploying it at the network level.

The mechanics of the initiative haven’t all been sorted out, but sources tell BusinessWeek that one scenario involves traffic on AT&T’s network being routed through racks of Vobile servers that would scan it for NBC Universal and Disney content. And perhaps child pornography as well, you know, just to make the idea of network-level monitoring a bit more palatable to the masses.

Such a strategy, if AT&T were to pursue it, would make the company the first major Internet carrier to implement a network solution to copyright enforcement. And it would beg a number of questions: Will AT&T police the Internet traffic of its customers alone? Or will it police traffic over all its backbones and peering points (IE: traffic from other ISPs)? The answers could be troubling.

Suffice to say privacy advocates who’ve been railing against AT&T over the NSA debacle and issues of Net neutrality aren’t exactly thrilled with the company’s latest move. “They better be very careful,” warned Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is serious, serious stuff, to basically invade the privacy of all of your subscribers.”