Two on Tethers (Donna Wentworth)

Cory Doctorow, on Siva Vaidhyanathan's new article on using technological "tethers" to force customers into using your products, your whole line of products, and nothing but your products: "It's easy to understand why hardware companies love tethering -- it's a license to screw their locked-in customers out of titanic sums of money -- but that's exactly why smart customers need to reject tethered products."

Dan Gillmor, on his decision to stop purchasing iTunes: "Threats to use copyright law against Real are exactly what you'd expect, unfortunately. Apple wants control over online music, and this is just part of the game.

What we customers want is cross-platform compatibility: standards. What the companies want is lock-in. They may win, but they're only locking me out -- because I won't play by those rules. Which means I've bought my last iTunes Music Store song until Apple starts paying more attention to what its customers want."