Who Owns My Stuff?

Why are we okay with a company automatically pushing an upgrade to our phones or deleting a malicious app?  If Microsoft pushed a security upgrade to your PC without your consent or deleted an executable that it found to be malicious how would you feel?

When Apple announced that it had a kill switch built into iOS to remotely disable any app that turned out to be evil a lot of people were uneasy.  Including myself.  It is one of those moments when you realize that being able to stop malicious activity is good but also you wonder who gets to decide what should be killed...

Google apparently took a page out of Apple's book because over the weekend they remotely killed several apps that were found to be malicious.  They also pushed a security update to affected phones.

I feel pretty confident that if the PC was developed in today's ecosystem it would work the same way.  Operating Systems are built on a platform that did not consider the danger of malicious code.  People trying to circumvent the rules were really just people looking for a better way to do things.  It was harmless fun.  It was a blue box that let you make free phone calls or it was a code redesign to make the same software run more efficiently on the same hardware.

Viruses changed all that.  The increase in the value of personal data led people to realize that there was gold in them there hills.

So now we are developing a new ecosystem.  Smartphones are not computers.  The world in which they live is not the old internet.  It is a whole new paradigm.  Service providers and manufacturers push updates to "protect" the network and its users.

How long before an OS upgrade brings this same mindset to our PCs?  There has been a lot of talk about 10.7 bringing OSX and iOS together.  Will it be Lion that suddenly gives Apple the ability to disable a program on my computer?

I am sure it will start very benevolently.  Some OS-provider will disable some really evil virus that eats children and everyone will feel the same way I feel about Google deleting the apps this weekend.  We will all be grateful that the virus was stopped but we will wonder in the back of our minds about apps like HandBrake.

How long will it be before an app gets disabled because it infringes on the rights of the OS-provider to make money...