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Apple Files Suit Against Psystar
Reader The other A.N. Other, among others, alerts us to the news that Apple has filed suit against Psystar, the unauthorized clonemaker. (We've been discussing Psystar from the start.) The suit alleges violation of Apple's shrink wrap license and trademarks, and also copyright infringement. News of the lawsuit, filed on July 3, first surfaced on a legal blog. There's speculation that the case has been sealed.
Apple is and always has been a hardware company. They fear competition on the hardware front, because that's their primary business product: overpriced "luxury" computers. (cue the fanboy bashings)
Without the clause in the EULA that you will only run the OS on a genuine MAC, there is nothing here. So I guess we get to see just how far a shrink wrap EULA will go in the court. I'm not entirely certain that this is a good case for it, but it's not one of the worst.
Unfortunately, the 9th Circuit just ruled for Blizzard in their interpretation of a EULA violation negating the validity of license of legally purchased software & CA is in the 9th Circuit.
Wouldn't it be nice if they fought this? If they said, hey, we bought your software, we can install it on whatever we want. And then, in my imaginary world, a judge sees their point of view and rules that once you purchase a piece of software, it's yours to do with as you please.
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
[Apple has] the exclusive right to distribute [their] OS. As they should ... Now some small fry entrepreneur is ... selling PCs with OS X loaded on them. Despite the overwhelming legal precedent against them (I don't know of any official retailer that has gotten away with installing pirated versions of Windows on commodity PCs...
You seem to be confusing Psystar's behavior with piracy. They pay for their copies of OS X. Apple doesn't have a discount distribution center for their OS (for obvious reasons), so Psystar pays full retail price for each copy of OS X that they sell, and they use their right-of-first-sale rights to then resell that copy to their customers.
Yesterday Slashdot had a story about how it was judged that loading software in RAM is equivalent to distributing software. Psystar is loading it onto the HDD, so this ruling might be different. Of course, you could argue that Psystar is then distributing the HDD, but as mentioned before, right-of-first-sale gives them this right without the need for a license.
It's been a while, but I really hope for a sane copyright-related ruling this time. I'm not holding my breath.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Er. Apple is a) a very small player in a market locked up by Microsoft (for OSs), and b) just one of many players in the home computer hardware market. By tying their hardware so firmly to the OS, they aren't so much killing competition as denying themselves extra sales of the OS.
I'm all for holding Apple to account for their licensing policies, but hyperbole doesn't help.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
If it's all marketing then why does Apple have the highest consumer satisfaction rates in the entire industry?
If their products were crap, or even equivalent, consumers would not speak so highly of them, for so long after their purchases.
I know the Slashdot hordes like to bitch and moan about EULAs -- not without cause, mind you -- but the EULA violation in this case might as well be a footnote.
If all Psystar had done was violate the EULA clause that said "hey, you won't do anything to make this run on non-Apple hardware", then this case would be about how enforceable that clause is.
Unfortunately, Psystar did much more egregious things than violate a silly EULA term. They, by their own public admission, modified a copyright-protected work, then redistributed these modifications without a license to do so. And they did it for commercial purposes, no less. Even under the traditional terms of copyright (as opposed to the mutilated corporate-serving terms we have now), that's just not cricket.
On top of that copyright infringement, they also noodle-headedly used at least one Apple trademark (the "Leopard" name and mark) to promote the sale of hardware and software.
I will be absolutely stunned if Apple doesn't prevail on the Copyright and Trademark parts of their case, though I do hope that the judge will find that a license to run software on a particular kind of hardware is not binding.
(Not a lawyer, this isn't advice -- I do know a thing or two about the law)
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
If it's all marketing then why does Apple have the highest consumer satisfaction rates in the entire industry?
If their products were crap, or even equivalent, consumers would not speak so highly of them, for so long after their purchases.
So you would think. But, a couple things play against that.
1. Customers *expect* that an Apple will be a different experience than, say, a Windows machine. As a result, they're expectations are already geared towards, "This is going to be a good experience." As a result, they are more likely to have a good experience.
2. Face it - Apple products are expensive. Another psychological response that people have is that once they invest into something, they are more likely to stick with that something (and argue for that something) no matter how bad it is. So, it may be that someone spends $2000 on a new Mac, they have high expectations, they take it home and don't really like using it. However, they can't admit that because that means they made a bad decision. Hence...Macs are always awesome.
I know it sounds stupid. I thought so too until I read through the studies and performed some of my own in my work.
Never underestimate the power of someone to convince themselves of something if they don't want to be wrong or stupid.