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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.
...that it took Apple this long to get the legal ball rolling on this!
But it's Apple, so it's OK.
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)
Apple is exactly what Microsoft would be if Bill Gate's father wasn't already a wealthy man. Do you think that Jobs or Gates are very much different?
One interesting note, however, Apple uses the courts as an offensive mechanism more often than Microsoft. Microsoft tends to bombard problems with cash projectiles until resistance is bought off. Apple sues you for even talking about them.
All multi-national corporations suck.
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.
1. Create a line of Mac clones.
2. Sell them to an unwitting public.
3. Have Apple file suit.
4. Pay bonuses to all the execs.
5. Declare bankruptcy.
6. Shut down all operations.
Guess what... Everyone who bought a Psystar is left totally unsupported (which includes the all-important security hole fixes) and the execs made a bundle... Now, could Apple go after the execs personally for copyright infringement or (the soon-to-be-defunct) Psystar? Ironically, there was no consumer fraud here--businesses go under all the time and anyone who bought a Psystar would have had to know that Apple wouldn't support them...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Here is a slightly more informative (less speculative) posting: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9328
That's like saying Rolls Royce is no more expensive than the equivalently specced $OTHER_BRAND.
When you include the maple wood trim, leather seats, huge engine, ... it all works out about the same.
Kind of silly, isn't it.
Now, what the point IS is that nowadays you can buy a crappy little CPU, some memory and an old graphics card and have PLENTY of horsepower for what you need to do.
And Apple don't make one of them.
So Apple are expensive. Because they don't do the cheaper end.
No reason why they can't, they just don't.
I really hope this goes to trial and a judge rules on it. Partly because I think the judge would rule that Apple can't do what they're trying to do with their EULA, but even if the judge sides with them, it's still a clarification of the law.
I don't like existing in the murky world of armchair people positing what is and isn't legal. Plus, if it goes Psystar's way, I doubt it would be too long before larger manufacturers got on board. Once something becomes legal, corporations want all over it (well, I guess that applies to profitable things).
It takes a lot of preparation for them to reach this point and file proceedings, consider:
* exec hears about it, if it were Microsoft chairs would be thrown ... ...
* passed to the legal team to see if Apple have a case
* legal sign off
* paralegals do the groundwork, scrutinizing the EULA etc.
*
*
* case is filed in court?
In the past I've tried bringing legal action for trademark infringement, and the whole process just to get things started can take months and months especially if you're in a large organization with N-layers of forms & approvals required for anything like this.
[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/
There's a little more to it now. It sounds more like they're suing because they took the Leopard update, opened it up, modified files in it, and re-released it for themselves. I think they're considering that a copyright infringement.
The 9th Circuit Court is the most over-turned court.
False. In fact, the 1st, 2nd, and 10th circuits had 100% of their decisions heard by the supreme court reversed in 04-05. The 9th had 84%.
In terms of pure numbers, yes, this may be true. But the 9th circuit also hears comparatively more cases than the others, as well. In terms of percentages, this is an oft-repeated but rarely-documented fallacious statement. The only time in recent history when they were the most overturned was in the 96-97 session.
It's also somewhat of a silly statistic, given that the supreme court rarely hears cases that it doesn't expect to overturn - if the general consensus is agreement, why would they hear the appeal unless it's important enough to "reinforce" the original court's decision?
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
They have the exclusive right to distribute that OS. ... Normally, I'm against harsh "intellectual property" laws, but this is Apple's investment in a huge competitive advantage, and they've earned it.
Psystar buys legal copies OS X to ship with its units.
Apple tolerates a few hackers jumping through hoops to get it running on commodity PCs, as long as that means they lose maybe 0.1% of their potential customers.
Actually, they are losing far more than that. I won't buy a Mac because they won't make one with the specs and form factor I want. I'm interested in an 'imac tower', and a 12" macbook with a decent video card, gps, and a cellular data option. (I'd gladly give up the internal cdrom for an express card slot. I'd also be interested in a tablet-mac... and the axiotron is pretty sweet, but it would be even better if using the stylus was optional, the price wasn't so high, and the little hiccups like auto-rotating the screen based on orientation were worked out.
My other big wish list for OSX is virtualization. I'd pay $350-400 (up two twice the retail price for OSX) for a copy that I could legally run in VMWare on non-apple hardware.(Yes I know leopard server allows for virtualization, but only on apple hardware [which I don't like], and it costs $500.)
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), they figure it's worth the risk.
What legal precendent. No one has -ever- done anything like this before. Pirated copies of windows are not remotely in the same category as legally purchased copies of os x.
If they argue that they paid for every shrink-wrapped copy of OS X, then they stand a moderately better chance of succeeding.
There's no "if" about it.
The -only- question is whether or not the eula that requires the os be run on apple brand hardware will stick or not.
And its a VERY complicated question.
On apple's side:
They have the EULA in place that clearly forbids it. That sure beats trying to deal with this on pure copyright.
They have a dubious legal precedent in the blizzard case that suggests that violating an eula makes an in computer, or even in RAM copy an unauthorized copy.
They also have the DMCA which can come into play with its protection of 'technical measures'. After all, Apple, doesn't just have the EULA, the code actually tries to check the hardware, and the psystar people have to defeat it to install OSX. This itself may be illegal.
On Psystar's side:
we have first sale doctrine - they bought OSX. They can do what they want with it, including resell it. There was an ebay related case against the makers of autocad I think over this... someone was selling used copies of autocad, and the courts ruled this was legal under first sale, despite autocad's protestation that it was against the EULA. (This is also potentially a counter precedent to the blizzard one too... as it ruled the first sale doctrine rights couldn't be stripped by the shrink wrapped EULA.)
We also have an exception in the DMCA that provides for deafeating copyright measures for interoperability. Clearly Psystar could argue that they only modified OSX to make it interoperate with the non-apple hardware. There is a printer related precedent that might come into play, where some printer manufacturer tried to prevent a competitor from releasing replacement ink via a DMCA lawsuit, and lost, because the competitor had reverse engineered the printer software to figure out how to get their cartridges to 'interoperate' with the printer. This is particularly salient because it shows the DMCA interoperation clause being successfully used in a case where the OEM specifically sought to prevent interoperation... indeed the entire point of the drm was to lock out competition. -- And they lost.
Psystar also potentially can continue to operate simply by ceasin
I think the problem will come down to what is Apple hardware. Is an Airport Extreme an Apple branded device, or is it a Broadcom 43xx card or Atheros 5424 card with an Apple sticker on it? Is the sound card a "High Definition Apple Sound Card" that's built into the "MacBook Logic Board" or is it just an HD Realtek card (CX1988, etc) on an Intel motherboard with a pick Apple sticker on it? I know for a fact that on Macbooks, they use an Intel processor and motherboard with EFI instead of good ol BIOS, a Realtek Card, a Broadcom wireless card (Essentially the same thing as a Dell Truemobile 1390 or an Atheros 5424 card), A Yukon Gigabit Ethernet card (88E8053), with standard devices hooked to it (hard drive, etc) via ICH7. This is all built inside of a Quanta laptop casing.
This is what Apple hardware is. Some may still see it as different, but I sure don't since my dell laptop has almost identical specs. And since Apple uses such an open source friendly license (http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/) I have easily ported linux and freebsd drivers to work on OS X. I have purchased a retail copy of leopard. I guess I am breaking the law, right? No, just the EULA. Why am I doing this? Simply to bring a good, friendly, stable, unix OS to my own computer. None of this requires pirating software
FYI, we've already completed a way to install OS X on a PC without altering the original Leopard retail Disc. So people can essentially go out, buy a copy of Leopard, and install it on a PC after booting off of a USB device that loads up the kernel extensions for their own PC hardware. All open source, all following APSL.
Also note that this is all homebrew stuff, none is earning any money off of it, and most of it is open source. This is why Psystar isn't really supported at all when it comes to the people who are putting their heart into this project.