Over The Counter Culture

I recently sold my old Nokia 5800 on eBay (netting £60) and thanks to an Orange (UK) Pay As You Go customer in my family, was able to get my hands on a brand new ZTE Blade (reviewed here), which Orange sells as the San Francisco for just £85, contract-free, and covered by warranty (which had expired on the old Nokia). In itself, that’s a huge upgrade for hardly any money, but I had no intention of being stuck with Orange, so this post is designed to walk you through getting the deal, liberating the phone from Orange’s clutches, and then really improving the featureset, freedom and reliability of the phone by flashing it (with a new ‘ROM’) to the latest Android version.

1. Getting the offer

You simply get an existing Orange PAYG customer to call up (150 or 0800 079 2000) and say they want the PAYG San Francisco deal. Orange will send the phone and a SIM with £10 (I’ll be using my existing contract on 3UK with the phone; the Orange £10 will be used for Orange Wednesdays 2for1 film or pizza promotions).

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2. Unlocking the phone so you can use it on any network

The next step is to unlock it. You can do this for free and easily on the ZTE Blade, thankfully. Just head to http://arrtoo.x10.mx/unlockBlade.php , enter your IMEI (which you can get by turning the phone on, ignoring as much of the messages as possible, getting to the dialer, and dialing *#06#) and input the unlocking code when asked for it (after turning your phone off, inserting a SIM from a non-Orange provider, and turning it on again); you’ll get prompted for the code given out at the link above.

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3. Flashing the ROM to update the phone

Once unlocked, it’s time to get rid of the Orange pre-loaded crap and update the phone to the very cutting edge. Orange sells these phones with Android 2.1 or 2.2. You can get it to 2.3.4 (plus a few additional fixes) through any number of the tutorials here: http://android.modaco.com/category/453/zte-blade-blade-modaco-com/ ; usual caveats apply: you’re not doing a standard operation, there’s a risk you’ll brick it, void your warranty, etc. Follow any instructions to the letter, read around the topic before you launch into it without understanding what each step does, and search for people asking the same questions you have, either on Google on in the Modaco forums linked to above. And back things up from your old phone, obviously; save your numbers somewhere safe, and save them to your SIM card so you easily move them over to your new phone.

Here’s what I recommend doing:

- determine whether the phone you were supplied with is ‘Gen 1′ or ‘Gen 2′ by installing a tiny app called Mr Pigfish: http://www.appbrain.com/app/ask-mr-pigfish/com.apedroid.pigfish

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- if Gen 1, then download this (or another ROM; newer alternatives come up all the time, you just have to read around the Modaco forums linked to above): http://hotfile.com/dl/124709138/1d6efab/gsf-blade-b15-tpt.zip.html; place it on the SD Card (if you downloaded the file to a computer, not to the phone, then move it over by USB or Bluetooth). This is an all-in-one image for first converting your phone to Gen 2, and then flashing it up to Android 2.3.4. Here are the install instructions courtesy of the maker:

“To install: Unzip the file to the root of your SD card, it will create an ‘image’ folder. Check the integrity of the files you created using AFV (available from android market) to find the nandroid.md5 file in the image directory, then long press on it & verify nandroid backup. Turn off your phone, leave it for at least 30 seconds, then hold menu & volume (up) when you power it on. You should see some green text (may be just a blank screen) then it should reboot & you should see a big android while it is performing it’s first boot (this will take a while). Once it has successfully started up don’t forget to delete the image folder on your SD card, to prevent any accidents.”

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- if Gen 2, then this is the file to download: http://www.filesonic.com/file/1500072091/gsf-blade-b15.zip (or another ROM; newer alternatives come up all the time, you just have to read around the Modaco forums linked to above); this file will be installed through a clever program called ClockworkMod: this can be launched before your phone boots up into the normal phone mode, for doing things like backing up, flashing new ROMs, etc.

The best instructions I’ve seen for installing ClockworkMod and then flashing the file you just downloaded onto the phone, are the instructions here: http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blade-roms-rom-customisation/329864/22-may-guide-how-to-install-a-custom-rom-on-the-zte-blade-gen1/ - you should read it all, but the instructions you’ll need are in subsections 1 and 2. Section 2 refers to an out of date ROM file; where it says “r12-update-modacocustomrom-blade-kitchen-unsigned.zip” you should instead read “gsf-blade-b9.zip”; and where it says “cb1718841318a63775b020e6c544edfa” you should instead look for an MD5Sum reading of “174ba19a85ec96258727d12177befa66″.

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And there you have it. A cutting edge, high performance phone, covered by warranty, nicely unrestricted, and it’ll cost you about £85, minus whatever you sell your old phone for.

Commentary on the recent case of Schutz (UK) Ltd v Werit UK Ltd [2011] EWCA Civ 303, which held that replacing a tired (unpatented) component out of a patented item constituted patent infringement (making a patented item without a licence from the patent-holder). The anti-competitive aspect of the ruling was considered and dismissed as unimportant to the Court. The implications for repurposing the items we own – especially as the age of 3D printing is soon upon us – is considered by way of conclusion.

Wowzers. Patent law has just given common sense, competition, and sound principles of living a serious left hook. Lord Justice Jacob, who retired earlier this month, has left England & Wales with a stinker. To be fair to Jacob LJ, his fellow judges on the Court of Appeal bench nodded his decision through. And they were applying, as judges should, the law (through precedent cases, specifically, United Wire and Canon v Green Cartridges [1]).

Patent law prevents you from making something that is patented, unless you have the patent-owner’s permission.

This case was about what ‘making’ means. Specifically: if, without seeking permission from the patentholder, you replace bits of something you have already bought, are you making a new object? If yes, you are potentially infringing their patents, having made an unlicensed manifestation of their invention.

The invention in question is a metal cage with a plastic bottle inside. There’s a photo in the judgement. The cage is estimated to last five times as long as the bottle, so once the plastic perishes or is contaminated, you’re going to replace the bottle rather than throw the whole thing out to buy a new one. Reconditioning is as straightforward as putting new plastic bottles in, and scrapping or recycling the old ones. In this industry’s lingo, replacing the plastic bottle from the cage manufacturer (who is the rightsholder to the patent) is “re-bottling”, whilst doing it from a third party is “cross-bottling”.

The straightforward competition between cross-bottlers and re-bottlers drives the cost of repurposing these containers down for businesses in England & Wales. What do businesses do when they don’t want to engage in tiring and potentially expensive free-market competition with others, striving to be the most value for money provider on the market? They turn to intellectual property (or they engage in directly anti-competitive practices, or lobby governments into building regulatory moats around their commercial castle). Holding a patent (a state-granted monopoly) on bottles in metal cages of this design, they sued.

The verdict? Infringement.

And yet Jacob LJ recognised the result of this verdict:

“78. (…) (it) was obviously a concern of the Judge in the present case – that if there was infringement Schütz would, as a commercial matter, have a monopoly in unpatented replacement bottles for their cages.

79.  This essentially economic concern is not really an apt matter for patent law. (…)

80. Does it really matter if Schütz has a monopoly in replacing bottles for its cages?  One cannot really say whether there is any public interest in the nature of freedom of competition seriously involved. (…)”

Sadly, the Court of Appeal decided to ignore what this leads to, what the parties called the ‘re-stringing problem’. If a tennis racket is patented, does re-stringing it infringe the patent? Or even more absurdly, do I infringe a patent on a photocopier if I re-fill it with Asda-brand paper?

The Court also ignored German law’s approach to the problem, specifically, “whether ultimate consumers of the patentee’s product could, by replacing parts, prolong the life of the product.  The German approach is clearly not the same as here”.

Come on. This is the dawn of the 3D printing age: easy reconditioning of everyday items we have spent our hard-earned money on, or bought second-hand, will soon be within our grasp. We also have an ailing manufacturing sector that the efficient and competitive Germans can laugh at. It is simply not acceptable now that neither our courts nor Parliament roll up their sleeves and clip back the barbs of intellectual monopoly to within common sense, economic, environmentally friendly or competitive bounds!

For consideration of the IP implications of 3D printing, see this post over at Technollama.

[1] United Wire v Screen Repair Services [2001] RPC 24; Canon v Green Cartridge  [1997] AC 728

You get some weird stuff offered for free on Freecycle. But when I saw two tiny sachets of sugar advertised, well – I had to inquire. Here’s what went down:

Times are hard, down Lewisham way. Good to see the giving spirit is still strong.

So what’s my connection? Well, a couple of years ago BPP was purchased by the Apollo Global group, the main operator of for-profit higher education in the US, including the massive University of Phoenix. BPP is the UK law school I just completed my Graduate Degree in Law at.

The acquisition as 4/5th funded by Apollo, whilst the Carlyle Group (well known to Michael Moore and his unwashed ilk for its huge presence in the US war machine and its ties to both the Bush and Bin Laden families and the UK Conservative party) stumped up $200m for the ongoing joint venture.

Since then, BPP has been aggressively expanding, and I have been part of that effort: as a Brand Manager, I’ve assisted on open days, fairs and even a marketing video. The UK Bar Standards Body, the non-governmental body which regulates education to become a UK barrister (read: attorney) had their guts for garters over a disgraceful ‘administrative error’ that led to massive oversubscription on the course, swelling class sizes and seeing people turned away at short notice before the start date of the course they’d previously been accepted to.

BPP is adding centres around the country, and increasingly shifting to online, long-distance courses. Leverage. It’s also running a very strong upselling campaign to get people in my position to ‘upgrade’ our GDL into LLB (i.e. Bachelor of Law) degrees – getting the accreditation to do so was one of the very first moves it made after Apollo took the reins.

And in very recent news, BPP also announced that it is abandoning its bases as a professional educational college, and taking the title ‘University’ – the first private university in thirty years, and fully in keeping with Apollo’s US track record.

Yet it’s worth pointing out that the tutoring and teaching I got last year was mostly really very good. I was lucky to be in a class of very bright people and mostly quite good tutors. So my concerns aren’t derived from personal experience; they came from an HR person I got talking to that was attending a BPP event I was working at. She was from a very decent City law firm.

BPP, she said, has become less selective in who it allows onto the course. People with 2:2 (i.e. third-rate) degrees from universities are now given places when before a 2:1 or better was required. Her complaint is that this has made her job harder; no longer a badge worth trusting, she has to look deeper into CVs to see if they have to be binned at first sweep through the thousands of applications they receive. Worse, the HR personnel now have to field calls from emotional mothers asking why their child is being turned down for City jobs despite the family having shelled out/indebted itself in order to pay for the most expensive GDL course on the UK market. In truth, a third-rate university degree is going to be a straight-up rejection and the HR personnel view BPP’s new practice as at best immoral, at worst, downright deceptive.

So that’s my connection. I realise that sharing it in this tripartite piece is labelling myself a profiteering hypocrite whilst simultaneously shooting myself in the foot by potentially devaluing the value of a keystone of my CV; and may perhaps come to be seen as a snobbish and irrational act from an Oxford graduate irritated at seeing the value of his further education cheapened as his degree is made more accessible to ‘the high street’. Even if this comes to be seen as a good thing, it’s an enduring truth that good things are not necessarily good ideas.