Slashdot Mirror
Update on Playfair
An anonymous reader writes "A few weeks back, Slashdot reported that Apple had sent a cease and desist letter to Sarovar.org, the Indian site hosting the Playfair project. This is the first incident in India where a corporation has used legal means to shut down a Free Software project. Some of the prominent members of the Open Source/Free Software community in India have issued an update on this situation. There is also an interesting post in the FSF-India mailing lists."
Tho the hell modded the parent up???
It is wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin.
> Since more AAC is more better, but there's a quote in the linked article I think is relevant:
>
> | Apple has stated that PlayFair contravenes the Indian Copyright
> | Act. 1957 and the IT Act, 2002, but have not specified how these acts
> | are violated. While these acts make the unauthorized copying of music
> | illegal, they nowhere bar the creation of tools that could potentially
> | be used to illegally copy music. Trying to stop dissemination of a
> | tool that permits legal licensees of songs from iTunes to play them on
> | non Apple-authorized hardware is purely a business loss prevention
> | strategy from Apple and must be deplored.
I have taken the liberty to bold some words in the paragraph that you quoted to help your reading comprehension.
> So they acknowledge that the unauthorized copying of music is illegal, and
> believe a tool that makes an unauthorized copy of the music is not illegal?
Hmmm... difficult case indeed. Let's try some analogies:
Stabbing people is illegal, knives are not.
Shooting people is illegal, guns are not (at least in the US).
Rape is illegal, penises are not.
Get it now?
> Because as the author states, Apple already provides a means to permit legal
> licensees of songs from iTunes to play on non Apple authorized hardware via
> CD burning (and subsequent re-ripping). This is *authorized* copying.
> Anything else, then, is unauthorized copying isn't it?
It isn't. The method of copying has nothing to do with it.
> Doing a clean decryption of the AAC file would certainly fall into unauthorized copying, according to the terms of use, I think.
Think again.
> So FairPlay's only legal defense is that it isn't illegal to write such a tool, only illegal to use such a tool...
No, the legal defence is that it is illegal to use such a tool (or any tool) for illegal purposes (such as unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material) but it has significant non-infringing uses.
And if that defence is not good enough for you, you should be incarcerated for posessing a tool that can be used for rape.