Apple Sics Lawyers on SomethingAwful

bheer writes "Apple has sent a threatening letter to SomethingAwful about a post in its forums that describes how to fix the overheating in some MacBook Pros by applying thermal paste properly, according to a post on Gizmodo. The post includes a brief excerpt from Apple's Service Source Manual which Apple wants removed. Gizmodo continues: 'the real problem [is] that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius under full load.'"

Comments

Karma whore

[Anonymous Coward]

The thread in question:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s= &threadid=1864582

Lowtax's response:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?th readid=1867138

Posted anonymously to avoid accusations of karma whoring :)

End of thread

[jmorris42]

Let me save everyone the trouble...

Apple is acting like Apple always does... like an asshole. They are caught out in a fairly major QA problem and trying to lawyer their way around it. Same as every other large company. Mac fanbois will of course totally defend their noble defense of their 'intellectual property' even though this case is a textbook example of fair use. The fanbois will also 'like totally defend the quality of Apple hardware against that Dell crap.' And while they have cause for that in general it will stink of slavish devotion because of just how busted Apple is on this case.

That 'bout cover everything?

sounds like a job for...

[steak]

leonard j. crabs

http://www.somethingawful.com/legal/

The problem is...

[Galston]

The problem is that Something Awful aren't hosting the picture, it is hosted by someone else elsewhere. Something Awful only have a link to the picture in a thread not the actual picture itself.

Fair Use

[TubeSteak]

How is posting sections of a service manual fair use? Service providers and others who are given access to those manuals sign an agreement that they will not do the very thing that was done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_und er_United_States_law

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
4. and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

1. The use would qualify as " nonprofit educational purposes";
2. ummm, it's a service manual;
3. SA used a tiny portion "in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole"; and
4. This use should have zero effect on any "potential market for or value of the copyrighted work"

I'm not really sure how to address your second point. It's either irrelevant, or Apple should be claiming SA divulged Trade Secrets.

Re:Why is this news?

[rolfwind]

Perhaps this may have something:
http://www.applerepairmanuals.com/

(I'm not a Mac person, so I don't know.)

But I agree with the GP, offering snippets of anything isn't copyright infringement, newspapers, critics and reviewers have long offered small sections of movies, articles for discussion purposes. Educators also rely on this (quoting) to provide a piece of relevant information to their students.

There are boundaries to this, but a "snippet" isn't it.

Re:Actually...

[monkeydo]

From Dave Schroder's website:

I am located at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. I work in the University's Division of Information Technology (DoIT) since 1995 in the Systems Engineering group as the senior Apple systems engineer, supporting Apple products in primarily research and enterprise environments at the University. In 2001, I was honored to be selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator.

From Apple's website:

Role of ADEs

Members of the ADE community fulfill three primary roles in their interaction with Apple:

Advocate: ADEs are passionate advocates of the potential of Apple technologies and provide expert assistance and best practices to educators and policymakers.

Astroturf much?

Re:fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

This material isn't published, all Apple service manuals are considered confidential trade secrets.

As Linuxmop pointed out below, the entire manual is here (and now it's on my hard drive). If it was a trade secret, it isn't any more.

http://www.repairyourmac.com/macbook-pro.pdf

Actually, no

[cgenman]

If you push something down onto thermal grease and it comes out the sides, you put WAY too much on.

Thermal grease is ONLY to smooth out imperfections in the surface. While it has reasonable temperature conductivity properties, it's still a lot worse than a straight metal-to-metal connection, partially due to the lack of electrical conductivity (and therefore, lower overall metal density). When spread appropriately, you should still see the surface of the thing you are coating, along with spots of the grease where the original topography fell below the base surface line (however slightly). Coat both surfaces like this, and you're golden.

Really, what you want is a tiny, tiny drop spread around by a squeegee-like straight edge, like a plastic credit card. Put a little too much on, and your temperatures will rise. Put as much on as it appears in the picture, and your temperatures will be through the roof.

Re:Why is this news?

[cloak42]

I hate to repeat something that has already been said, but I wouldn't be the first person in this thread to do so: In this case, it is NOT copyright infringement, regardless of the fact that the manual was published without permission. The reason for this is as follows:

From the opinion of Justice Story in Folsom v. Marsh, as reported in Wikipedia's Fair Use entry:

[A] reviewer may fairly cite largely from the original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism.

In other words, what this judgment states is that a work is considered fair use if its intent is to provide commentary or criticism. In the case of the Apple service manual, it is clearly a critique of Apple's mishandling of the processor in the first place. The author of the post is clearly making the logical case that Apple is doing a poor job by posting the damning evidence of the service manual, and making the logical case that had they not screwed it up in the first place, you wouldn't have had to repair the thermal paste. I don't know what could be more of a case of valid critique than this.

As such, it seems pretty obvious to me that Apple is trying to prevent the criticism of whatever shoddy computer building practices it might have, rather than trying to protect its copyright.

IANALBIKHTSWRIFOMFF. (I am not a lawyer but I know how to see what's right in front of my fucking face)

Not just one page

[Yjerkle]

The post includes a brief excerpt from Apple's Service Source Manual which Apple wants removed.

I have mod points, but I couldn't find anyone pointing this out to mod up. The post includes a link to the entire service manual. Apple's complaint is NOT about the single page showing the thermal grease, it's about the posting of a PDF of their copyrighted service manual in its entirety. Now, they're still threatening the wrong person, since the file is hosted somewhere else, but there is real infringement going on.