Products Too Smart for Their Own Damn Good

Every innovation seems to come with a hidden cost nowadays. Compact discs come with copy protection that prevents them from playing on computers, inkjet cartridges come with chips that prevent them from squirting ink if the cartridge has been refilled, and there are cell phones that won't work if the battery is the wrong brand. I just bought a new G3 cell phone from Sprint, and they have the chutzpah to try to lease polyphonic ring tones to their customers for $1.99 a pop. That's right, lease! After 90 days copy protection kicks in, and the ring tone locks up! Either Sprint thinks its customers are suckers or they're crazy; I don't know which. Polyphonic ring tones are essentially 4-K to 10-K MIDI files that you can download for free all over the Internet. There are millions available; why would I lease one ring tone that expires in 90 days for two bucks when I can upload them for free all day long to my Sanyo 8100 phone? Ring-tone kits sell like hotcakes on eBay, and there are Web sites such as http://www.3GUpload.com devoted to uploading cell phone ring tones, games , applications, and animated screen-savers. By nickel-and-diming its customers, Sprint is setting itself up to be pirated and hacked!

Figure 9.12: http://www.3GUpload.com