Protestors: iPad is nothing more than a golden calf of DRM

Steve Jobs may have descended from the mountaintop today with Moses Tablet in hand, but a group of protestors were waiting in the foothills with a simple message: the iPad isn't a divine revelation, but a golden calf.

Members of the Free Software Foundation staged a small protest outside today's Apple event in San Francisco, making the case against Apple's use of DRM. The group's four-foot signs were headed with the message "Entering Apple Restriction Zone" and laid out the tablet's detriments:

No free software
No installing apps from the Web
No sharing music or books
We can remotely disable your apps & media

I spoke with John Sullivan, Operations Manager for the FSF and one of the sign wielders, just before the Apple event began. The protest had gone well, in his view, despite a small turnout ("six or seven people" were around when we spoke).

Thou shalt not launch a non-free tablet

The protestors passed out literature and said that support was good; most people had a negative story to share about DRM, Sullivan said, and an Apple employee (anonymously) supported the group's message.

And what was that message? Sullivan and crew were rounding up signatures to petition Steve Jobs to drop all DRM on Apple computers and mobile devices. To the FSF, the iPhone model (closed App store, no allowed installation of software from other sources, DRM on applications, tight integration with Apple media store) was bad enough, but the new tablet looked ready to take it a step further.

If the iPad turned out to be more "laptop-like" than "phone-like," the FSF would have an even stronger objection to Apple's tight connection between device and Apple-controlled stores (for music and apps). Such a device would extend the iPhone model beyond phones and into laptop territory—and computers in particular should remain open devices in ways that are perhaps less important on phones.

There was also the charge of hypocrisy; if Steve Jobs truly hates DRM so much and wanted it gone from iTunes Store music, why does he continue to lather it onto all video content from Apple, and why did he voluntarily add it to iPhone apps?

As the event got underway, I asked Sullivan what his protest crew was going to do next. "We might take a trip down to the Apple Store," he said, to keep spreading the word... all in the hopes of turning this golden calf into a free-range gnu.