Apple Hunts Playfair in India

An anonymous reader writes "A news posting at Sarovar.org says that they have to take down the 'PlayFair' program upon receiving a notice from Apple's attorneys. They are awaiting their attorneys' response. This is bad news for all those who appreciated this cool program. Let's hope that 'PlayFair' might appear in some other country now."

Comments

Preferably a country with fat pipes...

[tcopeland]

...since it was getting downloaded around 5000 times a day before it got pulled. I'm sure the other project admins at Sarovar aren't sad to see it go; now they have a much more responsive server :-)

And again, if you put up a public (foo)Forge, make sure you have a Terms of Service document to cover this sort of thing.

Re:Let's hope indeed

[whelck]

How many computers do you have? You can authorize the files to be played on up to three computers, and if you have more than that, just set up a iTunes server. I have one box that has iTunes which I buy the music from. Then I just leave iTunes running all the time and I can then access the music from any computer in my house.

(you can also just burn the song to CD and rip it back as mp3...)

BitTorrent mirror for PlayFair

[hbmartin]

http://btiteam.bttracker.co.uk/download.php?id=370 &name=playfair-0.2.tar.gz.torrent

Re:A few thoughts

[JoshuaDFranklin]

Here is my mirror of the source code. There are no binaries, no DMCA violations:

http://students.washington.edu/joshuadf/decss/

Use responsibly.

The laws are Indian

[shamir_k]

Both the Copyright Act 1957 and the Information Technology Act, 2000 are Indian laws. I doubt that the Copyright Act would have any DMCA like provisions that could apply on this case. Not so sure about the Information Technology Act. It was hailed as a great piece of forward looking legislation when it was introduced. Any Indian lawyers care to comment?

Re:A few thoughts

[1u3hr]

4. With refard to Sarovar, Apple did nothing more than make with is essentially an intellectual appeal. Apple didn't "force" anyone to do anything.

Oh yes they did.

[T]he PlayFair program is against the express provisions of our Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Copyright Act, 1957 and you are equally liable as accessories, being the means through which the offending program is available for download at the Sarovar site.... Please confirm your compliance of the above requisitions within 24 hours from receipt of this notice, failing which our clients would be forced to consider the legal options available to them

Is not an "intellectual appeal", it's a threat to make them spend the rest of their lives in court and/or be bankrupted. It's one step removed from a horse's head in the bed.

Re:Time for the /. IANAL to begin

[cygnusx]

> Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Copyright Act, 1957
> ... Is that Indian law

Both are Indian laws. FWIW, Indian law is largely based upon English common law. It's quite common for Indian courts to cite English and US Court judgement in their judgements. (India's tradition of of law interpretation is one reason why India has been considered a "safer" IP outsourcing destination than, say, China).

One thing that Indian courts don't have (very apparent in criminal trials) is a jury. (It had one to begin with, it was abandoned after it was found prone to abuse) The judge alone hears arguments and interprets the law.

Re:A few thoughts

[pyros]

Here is my mirror of the source code. There are no binaries, no DMCA violations:

You're fooling yourself if you think that you must distribute binaries of a copy-protection circumvention application. The 2600 guys were successfully prevented from hyperlinking to sites with the source code. That's right. There is precedent for /. to be sued for leaving your comment in this discussion, based on the DMCA.

Re:A few thoughts

[Fallen Kell]

I don't know about that. Once you cross the line as to saying that code is not speach then where is the actuall line? That was the whole point of the DeCSS Gallery, to prove that there is no line between source code and speach.

In any case, THIS IS EXEMPT! Read the DMCA under 6 exemptions:

2. Reverse engineering (section 1201(f)). This exception permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under copyright law.

PlayFair is needed to allow us to use the protected work in hardware that does not support the FairPlay encryption scheme. While I might not bet my life on that, it at least is a good place to start in challenging this (as well as in the case for DVD's).