Slashdot Mirror
PlayFair Pulled Due to DMCA Request
doubleacr writes "MacSlash is reporting that PlayFair has been removed from SourceForge.net. Didn't see that one coming." We posted about PlayFair on Monday. SourceForge.net received a DMCA complaint from Apple on Thursday, claiming PlayFair is in violation of the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA, section 1201(a)(2). As per SourceForge.net policy, the project has been disabled. Should the project managers file a counterclaim, the project could be restored. SourceForge.net is owned by OSDN, the parent company of Slashdot.
By trying to sue something off the Internet, you only ensure its wider propagation and interest among people who otherwise wouldn't have cared. I'll be sharing a tarball on eMule immediately. Come and sue everybody, Apple.
Just to play devils advocate, it's not as if people who bought their music from Apple weren't aware of the "limitations" of it's use. If they were, then it's no one's fault but their own.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
No, it's not "your music." You have certain limitations on what you can do with it, like it or not, because you bought it from Apple with those limitations. Don't like it? Don't buy it from them.
I don't like what Apple did (with this lawsuit), but changing the facts to suit your argument doesn't do you any good.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Unfortunately, I am not a lawyer, nor do I have the disposable income to pay for one.
However, this looks to me like a(nother) possible test case of the DMCA.
What makes this case attractive is that, to my understanding, PlayFair works WITHIN the accepted norms of society for copyright law (if you don't have a key from iTunes showing you bought the song, it won't convert the audio).
It is a law that is OUTSIDE the accepted norms of society that is causing the problem here.
I googled EFF.org for "playfair" and didn't have any returns of relevance.
Is the EFF involved in this case, or are they even aware of it?
- Neil Wehneman
P.S. I've mentioned this in previous posts, but I'll mention it again here because it's relevant.
Dr. Larry Lessig, who argued "our side" in Eldred v. Ashcroft, has put up his new book Free Culture under a Creative Commons license. Noncommercial redistribution with attribution is freely allowed.
Download the PDF or buy it and support Creative Commons in the process.
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
"play their music"
No, it's not "your music."
It's our music. All of us. The record companies just have it on loan for the duration of their copyright, which, unfortunately for us, keeps getting extended.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I honestly don't know, but I would imagine that Apple is concerned about this not because they want to make sure everything stays locked up for the sake of being locked up, but probably because they don't want the RIAA to yank their licenses and cause all of the iTMS to come crashing down.
Sure, you can make all the standard black helicopter and tinfoil hat jokes, but I really don't see how Apple would care about this, save the ramifications for keeping an amicable relationship with the RIAA pigopolists.
While the DMCA is a horrible piece of legislation, a business would not be doing their shareholders a favor if they didn't use it to protect their business. This is a standard move, everyone saw it coming; and to say that it is a dumb mistake is a bit myopic.
To do nothing would be a bigger mistake for Apple, for entirely different reasons.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Thus begins the stampede of technological innovation to environments where freedom is celebrated, rather than crushed.
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
I'd like to think that Apple is doing this reluctantly, but they've used the threat of litigation against individuals and small organizations too many times in the past to give them the benefit of the doubt. They're like a smaller version of Microsoft--just as evil, but with style and with better PR.
This is a really interesting comment. You're drawing a comparison between the people who wrote the GPL and the people who wrote the iTMS contract, which is not something I've seen before.
But it makes sense. Whether you're drawing a contract to protect intellectual property or protect *distribution* of intellectual property, in either case you are deliberately writing a contract that protects some actions and prohibits other actions.
The GPL was developed based on the notion that software is essentially a form of speech, and so should be free. In order to protect this freedom, the GPL dictates that modifications to GPLed software must also be made under the GPL.
The iTMS contract was developed based on the notion that in order for digital music to prosper, there must be limits on how widely a given purchased download can be distributed, so that the music's copyright holders can make a return on their investment. Without the profit motive for the copyright holders, the music won't be put on the iTMS, and Apple won't be making money.
In both cases, restrictions are placed in the license to further the end goal. Attempts to circumvent the license by definition negate the end goal. If the GPL were repeatedly circumvented, the *implementation* of Free Software would be crippled as well. The same is true of the iTMS.
You can't expect that if you change the rules of the game so you can enjoy benefits beyond those you agreed to at the time of purchase, Apple is somehow going to continue to provide the very tools that you hacked. This is quite similar to what would happen if Microsoft took all of the GNU tools, changed them slightly, and released their own Free Windows OS. Everyone on Slashdot would be crying bloody murder, because the value of GPLed software would be denigrated by Microsoft's circumventing of the GPL contract.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
They are not illegal if you live outside the US.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.