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Apple Cease-And-Desists Stupidity Leak
Apple cites the Lanham Act (see below) and I have no idea what that covers. But Bill Innanen pointed out on a mailing list that the operating system might be said to violate its own access control rights under the DMCA:
...since the possession of the tools to violate a copyright has been criminalized, we have yet another case of circular legal "logic." The only tool necessary to violate this particular copyright is the very operating system that the copyrighted software (the updater/full-installer) installs (or an earlier version of same).(Just pop open the installer package with the built-in "context sensitive menu" module, find the CheckForOSX module and drag it to the trash can. Voila!)
Is the possession of MacOS X v10.1 or its installer illegal because it can be used to violate its own copyright?
(Well, actually by the letter of the law in 1201(2) I think you'd have to argue that Mac OS X 10.0 was "primarily" designed to circumvent the access controls in the 10.1 update... but it's still pretty funny.)
Bill goes on to point out: "The problem that this converted updater fixed is that there are reported problems with 10.1.1, and with a 10.0.x and the updater you can't backtrack. With the 10.1 full installer you can."
Apple's lawyers write:
We represent Apple Computer, Inc. ("Apple") with respect to its intellectual property matters. Recently, it has come to our attention that you are providing unauthorized instructions concerning the modification of the Mac OS X 10.1 update software (the "Software") on your website. Specifically, it appears that you are providing instructions for converting Mac OS X 10.1 update Software to a full install version of Mac OS X from your web site in violation of the Copyright Act and in violation of your software license agreement with Apple.
You should be aware that Apple has never authorized you modify the Software. Moreover, by providing instructions on how to modify and circumvent restrictions within the Software, you are infringing Apple's copyrights in violation of the Copyright Act and engaging in acts of unfair competition in violation of the Lanham Act. Additionally, Apple's license agreement, which you accepted upon purchasing a copy of the Software, specifically prohibits you from copying, decompiling, reverse engineering, disassembling, modifying or creating derivative works of the Software.
Consequently, on behalf of our client, we demand that you cease and desist from publishing or distributing the above-referenced materials. We believe that this is a very serious matter, thus we ask that we receive confirmation in writing from you that you have removed the infringing material from your web site.
Thank you for your prompt cooperation on this matter.
Providing instructions or a mechanism for circumventing a copy control mechanism that controls access to a work is a violation of the DMCA.
Here's a link to it: Lanham Act.
Here's a little description I found online:
The Lanham Act defines the statutory and common law boundaries to trademarks and service marks. Trademarks (and service marks) are words or designs used in the advertising of goods and services. Rights to use a trademark are defined by the class(es) for which the trademark is used. Therefore, it is possible for different parties to use the same trademark in different classes. The Lanham Act defines the scope of a trademark, the process by which a federal registration can be obtained from the Patent and Trademark Office for a trademark, and penalties for trademark infringement. The Legal Information Institute provides Title 15 of the US Code, which encompasses the Lanham Act.
It sounds like this act has to deal with advertising... so is Apple saying that MacFixIt should take down their post because it advertises away to get a full version of commercial product that costs $129 for $19?
I don't think this should be that big of a deal - they'll probably just stop making the update CD, and most people who bought one already owned a copy of OS X anyway.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Back in the ol' Win 95 days, the Win95 upgrade could be used as long as you had a "WINDOWS" directory and a file named "win386.ini"
so you took edit.com, and created a blank file called win386.ini - presto..the upgrade became the full kitten kaboddle
Upgrade disks will by necessity require the entire OS - all that is required is to figure out how to circument it, and it's end of story...this is barely even news if it wasn't for the fact they sic'd lawyers to prevent a webpage from passing out info every hacker will figure out in about 2 hours
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Thank you for finally bringing Microsoft into this conversation. At least Microsoft allows you to use an upgrade CD on a new system as long as you have an older version available. The only reason that this was an issue was because Apple required you to use the Full 10 cd and then upgrade to 10.1.
You are confusing trademark law with copyright/patent law. Trademarks must be defended or lost. Copyrights and patents need NEVER be defended. Recall the GIF compression patent fiasco - the patent holder did not enforce their patent for 15 years. Everyone who dealt with GIFs was vioating their patent. For 15 years. And then they started enforcing it.
I hereby sentence both you and your moderators to read "The Intellectual Property FAQ." Search for it on google...
By posting the entire text of said article?
Convert your Update CD to a full Install CD
In the meantime, we found a work-around that may be even better than the one we were looking for. Instead of finding a file on the hard drive that we could modify to fool the Installer, we found a file on the Installer that we could delete and thereby bypass the checking process altogether!
We found the file by comparing a Mac OS X 10.1 "full" Install CD with an Update CD. Both CDs had the aforementioned VolumeCheck file. However, only the Update CD had the CheckforOSX file. Could this be the only critical difference between the two CDs? What if we made a bootable copy of the OS X Update CD, but with the CheckforOSX file missing? Would it act as a full install CD? We tried it. It worked! In brief, here is what
to do:
1. Using instructions posted on this page, create a disk image of the Update CD.
2.Delete the CheckforOSX file from the Essentials.pkg file in System/Installation/Packages folder of the image file. [You need to use the Open Package Contents contextual menu item to access this file.]
3.Burn the image to a CD using Disk Copy.
You can now boot from this CD. When you do, it will list any volume - even one that has no version of Mac OS X at all - as eligible for an install of Mac OS X 10.1. We did not test to see if this actually correctly installed the OS, but we have no reason to believe it would not. This method thus apparently converts an Update CD into a full install CD! A neat trick (although we suspect Apple may not find this so wonderful).
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
WEll they wouldn't try to "crush" that site. MacFixIt is one of the largest and most-respected Mac sites on the Internet. It's also probably saved Apple tens of thousands of dollars in support costs due ot the help posted on that site everyday.
MacFixIt first was an web-update site for Ted Landau's Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters book. Since then, it has grown to be quite popular and well-known--#3 out of 56 sites on a recent survey.
This isn't Apple sending a harsh letter to some corporation in Asia ripping off its iMac or a letter seeking to shut down someone's domain that infringes on copyrights--it's Apple's lawyers politely, but firmly, explaining their problem with the update (the legalese is what makes it seem a bit...shall we say...stern?) to a website that is well known both inside and outside of Apple.
Actaully, its not quite that easy. Most of the files in the OS are active at any given time, so you can't just delete them. To remove the entire os, you'd have to boot of another drive, or boot of another system ont he same drive drive.
Mod point free since 2001
US Constitution, Article III, Section 8
"The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries..."
Copyright has long been recognized by legal authorities as a limitation on free speech. It is considered an acceptable compromise.
I would like to see the following idea added to IP law, though. You either make your IP available to the people or you lose your exclusive rights. In other words, if you want to prevent someone else from publishing it, you must be publishing it. Do you think there's no longer profit in publishing this game? Fine. It's in the public domain, now. You set an initial price for your IP product; the price can never increase, only decrease. As long as you offer the IP product for that price or less, thus making it available to people, you retain copyright on it. The day you fail to make the product available, it enters the public domain.
Note: these instructions are from the Xspot website.
Prof. Dave Touretzky at Carnegie Mellon (you may remember him for the gallery of CSS descramblers he keeps on his page) has an interesting practical reply to being threatened with bogus Lanham Act claims (scroll about halfway down for the relevant comments). I'm not sure if the reasoning applies here, but it's worth a read.
First, DMCA also covers mechanisms that control access to a copyrighted work.
Secondly, reading a book is not 'unauthorized copying'.. the INTENT of the book is to be read.
A book, as has been stated so many times before, is not software. It's not licensed to you, it's SOLD to you, and the only thing preventing you from copying it and re-selling it is copyight law.
Software, on the other hand, is contractual, on top of it all.
Check it out - very easy to follow.
Apple did design proof of OSX ownership (store receipt, 1 of 3 coupons, or walk in with the retail package) in its original scheme, or pay $20. Some retailers had very specific rules.
When it got to the stores, the retail staff handed out 1, 2, 3, many... with nothing but a pulse for a requirement.
Hence these were selling on eBay by the first day for up to $70...
There were 150 in the entire state of CT until the Apple store opened up, 4 days before the upgrade offer was set to expire.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
This article is already making its way around the Gnutella network:
Mac OS X - Convert the Free 10.1 Update CD to a Full Install.txt
I'm talking about more than tax breaks. Read up on it a little more. An example is federally funded research, which is given to companies for free, that then turn around and sell it to us with patents for a profit. Medical research is a big deal in this area. The government pays for almost all of it, and then we end up paying for it again with inflated prices. Check out Public Citizen for some recent information.
Ceci n'est pas un post
Apple was kinder than they had to be to give us a CD that is capable of fully installing OS X. (In fact, if you have 10.0.x installed on the hard drive, it can erase the hard drive and install 10.1, so it had to be a full copy anyway.) That doesn't mean that we're entitled (legally or morally) to convert it into a CD that can install on machines that don't have 10.0.x.
Theoretically, no one who had not purchased 10.0.x is entitled to own the 10.1 update CD at all; people who didn't buy 10.0.x have to buy the $130 10.1 full install. Therefore, one can argue that Apple should have made the 10.1 "update" CD an unrestricted full install CD. However, given the fact that 10.1 CDs were readily obtainable (even at Apple's own retail stores) without proof of purchase of 10.0.x simply because it was logistically hard to check proofs of purchase, it is fair of Apple to put restrictions on the update CDs and to prevent the most popular Mac web sites from distributing the instructions to circumvent Apple's legitimate copy protection.