A ruling was just issued by the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) of Hamburg, Germany banning VoIP on the Apple iPhone. Specifically, the sipgate VoIP app (image right) has been banned - all part of T-Mobile's ongoing fight to block VoIP on the iPhone.Apparently, the court felt that sipgate would "lure" iPhone users into "jailbreaking" their iPhones. WTF? Banning software because it might entice customers to do something bad? Glad I live in the good ole' freedom-loving USA where we punish people for committing crimes not for "intentions" of committing crimes, jailbreaking iPhones, violating terms of service contracts, etc.
There is a single instance for appeals past this court (Bundesgerichtshof) so there is some hope this decision will be repealed.
sipgate's Thilo Salmon told me, "Unfortunately, T-Mobile has found a court to ban VoIP from the iPhone. I am glad to report though, that we have found a court to hold up the current ban of their iPhone ads in Germany. I guess, that at least eases the pain."
According to Thilo, here is exactly what happened:
1) T-Mobile has managed to bring a court to crack down on our VoIP application for the iPhone. T-Mobile has claimed our labeling the software as "beta" is misleading, as this allegedly does not point out the pre-release nature of our software. Furthermore, we would lure customers into jailbreaking their 2G iPhones (and their terms and conditions) as using sipgate is too attractive. While charming, we dispute this.
This injunctions comes after almost two month of jurisdiction shopping by T-Mobile. The Higher Regional Court (OLG) of Hamburg has now issued a preliminary injunction barring us from advertising and distributing the software. It is still a bit too early to tell what we can do next owing to the complex legal nature of this move. I like to point out, that sipgate has not been heard by the court prior to issuing the injunction.
2) In a related matter we had a German court preliminarily ban T-Mobile's iPhone ads on the grounds that they are misleading. T-Mobile has advertised its plans as "free Internet access with unlimited usage" but has put a number of severe restrictions on its use. Not at least did they ban the use of VoIP.
After a hearing the Regional Court (LG) of Hamburg has now decided to uphold the injunction.
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Good thing this isn't a political blog. "We punish people for committing crimes not for "intentions" of committing crimes."
One need only look at Gitmo to see how wrong that is. Many of those "POWs" have never been charged with any crime.
Do please circulate this information through the US blogs etc.
It is obviously a matter of big corporation using its financial weight against young creative Sw developers. I am sure if you strive looking for it you will find international support.
I would also encourage you to go straight to Apple and try sell the app via appstore, they never obstructed any VOIP app , in fact they have one TruPhone selling there. And now they launched the new iPod Touch supposedly with mic access via new headphones, it's got speakers too so it seems all setup for Wi-Fi VOIP.
If at the end of this whole matter you cannot succeed going with the full app, you can strip it off of the VOIP over carrier network functionality and make it so that it only works through wi-fi. If you ensure that, I'm sure you'll have a winner and no court in the world will impede you from releasing the Sw.
Furthermore, why doing all that locally? You're on the internet, release the Sw worldwide - through international servers - and no one will ever be able to stop you from selling the app.
You can also go live in Luxembourg or Holland or in Spain/Portugal where the Sun always shines and tell those guys to stick it up
Do not be shackled in your mind and you'll always be free
>One need only look at Gitmo to see how wrong that is. Many of those "POWs" have never been charged with any crime.
These people were picked up on the battlefield fighting against U.S. and coalition forces. In the history of war, POWs have never been given court trials. It's only through liberal judges that they've not been given access to military tribunals.
POWs aka Prisoners of War are to be prisoners of war until the war is over. That's how all previous wars were handled. End of story!
Yeah right, only "soldiers" picked on the BF are sent to Guantanamo... No suspected civilians, only recognized terrorists and soldiers... Hahahahaha.
"Believing is the key" ^^'
If civilians are picked up accidentally in the battlefield & taken as a POW, unfortunately, that is just one of the horrors of war.
POWs never have been given access to the courts in previous wars. Imagine the hundreds of thousands of German, Italian, and Japanese POWs wanting access to U.S. courts.
The Geneva Conventions explicitly state POWs taken are to be held until hostilities are over.
Granted, the War on Terror could go on forever, and that is the one counter-argument. I would argue if the POWs AND the terrorist leadership renounces terror and abandons their war effort, THEN we should release them. Not a day sooner. Guess it's life imprisonment for the terrorists in Gitmo.
oh well... should have thought of that when you took up arms against the U.S.
Well, I wasn't speaking about "regular" civilians ending-up with a gun on the battlefield between the two forces, I was thinking about operations conducted by intelligence services and police forces in their own country (the U.S. for instance) and which end-up by sending the potential suspect (informant, cell member, you name it) to Guantanamo in order to conduct a friendly "interview" near the beach. Here, there is no formal accusation neither.
Anyway, that's not the point of this post, let's recentrate the conversation a little bit by asking this:
Do you think that, if this particular app had been released on the App Store (and picked off right after, no doubt), T-Mobile would have made the same moves ?