While the media hoopla was a near perfect storm of hype, and Apple’s near blackout on technology reviewers kept it’s critics at bay, the I Phone is subject to the inevitable backlash. While tech savvy geeks may want to point out flaws in the internet speed, weak battery life or Apple’s lockout of 3rd party developers, their are other critics as well.

Activist enabling & piggybacking phone network operators Working Assets have launched a boycott, claiming the worst aspect of the I Phone is not it’s third world sweatshop manufactured non bio degradable components but it’s reliance on ATT as the only choice of carriers. They point out that by giving biz to AT & T it’s technically showing Apple endorses the recent Bush admin prying including “turning consumers’ information over to the National Security Agency without warrants, AT&T’s efforts to wipe out net neutrality, or the near 100% Republican & right wing affiliated giving of AT & T’s chairman”

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The boycott and internet chatter even spurned the usually unflappable Steve Jobs to comment on the issues anti-I Phone activists had brought up…

While hackers have apparently already figured out how to unlock the phone from AT&T’s grip…

More after the jump…

According to critics, the Apple/AT&T alliance is troubling when one considers AT&T’s opposition to net neutrality despite the importance the internet plays in open dialogue in this country, and the role the web has had in the free distribution of information. Michael Kieschnik of Working Assets claims this is obvious in the case of the Iraq war debacle, “Only with an open internet did some of the truth eventually emerge. And it is precisely that open internet that AT&T seeks to suppress…Apple made a choice in selecting AT&T. Steve Jobs could have used the immense leverage Apple had in launching the iPhone to demand concessions that changed the wireless market. He did not. I had hoped for more.”

The boycotters say consumers should have additional choices available, and recent government decisions support this:

“According to a recent decision from the U.S. Register of Copyrights, for American consumers to unlock their phones for use on whatever network they would like,” and that “Apple is trying to take away that right by locking the iPhone to AT&T’s network,” Working Assets urged its list of activist/customers and online audience to sign a petition telling Steve Jobs to allow for open access to the iPhone on other phone networks.

The campaign against the iPhone took off on the web as these links at Technorati demonstrate. Online activists eventually prompted Jobs to address some of their concerns just prior to the phone’s launch.

But of course as the boycott struggles to have it’s viewpoint heard over the din of geek glee, as half a million of the suckers were sold last week. Some hackers have already figured out tricks like unlocking the iPhone from AT&T’s network. One suggests using a Pre-Paid I Phone and switching simcards.

Another hacker claims to have created his own iPhone activation server program to bypass AT & T. who knows what other wackiness will take place this week in Adobe’s SF compound at 601 Townsend where more hackonauts will be gathering and creating iPhone apps at http://barcamp.org/iPhoneDevCamp