Summary: The selfish, greedy side of Apple and what it means to people's freedom

● DOJ inquires about Apple's hold on digital music [via]

The U.S. Department of Justice has begun asking questions about Apple's role in the recent scaling back of special music discounts and promotions at Amazon, according to two high level music industry sources.

● FSF: Apple's iTunes Store terms of service at odds with GPL

The Free Software Foundation is up in arms over Apple's iTunes Store Terms of Service, suggesting that these terms fundamentally conflict with the terms of the GNU Public License. The foundation has warned Apple that a version of GNU Go distributed by the App Store makes Apple liable to comply with GPL terms that allow free sharing of code, but warned that its "Usage Rules" violate those terms. The fallout could potentially affect any app that uses GPLed code.

● Apple's GPL Snafu and Opportunity

Apple is finding itself on wrong end of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). An iPhone port of GNU Go has made its way into the App Store, which is all good — except that the terms of the App Store conflict with the GNU General Public License.

● Death by Foxconn

Foxconn is the largest contract manufacturer in China and the world, making products notably for Apple and for other American companies, too. The company has been in the news lately because of very public worker suicides by jumping from the factory roof.

Were these people worked to death? Were they worked insane? In one case was the suicide the result of a suspected leak of Apple intellectual property? What kind of sweat shop is Foxconn, anyway?

I don’t know and nether do you. What we do know is the annual suicide rate per 100,000 people in China is about 13.5, with slightly more women than men taking their own lives (the only major country where that is the case, by the way). That means the Foxconn factory, with 300,000 workers, ought to be experiencing almost 40 suicides per year, while the reported numbers are a lot less than that.