EFF Sues Apple Over BluWiki Legal Threats

Hugh Pickens writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed suit against Apple to defend the First Amendment rights of BluWiki, a noncommercial, public Internet 'wiki' site operated by OdioWorks. Last year, BluWiki users began a discussion about making some Apple iPods and iPhones interoperate with software other than Apple's iTunes. Apple lawyers demanded removal of the content (pdf) sending a letter to OdioWorks, alleging that the discussions constituted copyright infringement and a violation of the DMCA's prohibition on circumventing copy protection measures. Fearing legal action by Apple, OdioWorks took down the discussions from the BluWiki site but has now filed a lawsuit to vindicate its right to restore those discussions (pdf) and seeking a declaratory judgment that the discussions do not violate any of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and do not infringe any copyrights owned by Apple. 'I take the free speech rights of BluWiki users seriously,' said Sam Odio, owner of OdioWorks. 'Companies like Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by making baseless legal threats against services like BluWiki that host the discussions.'" Random BedHead Ed adds ZDNet quotes EFF's Fred von Lohmann, who says that this is an issue of censorship. 'Wikis and other community sites are home to many vibrant discussions among hobbyists and tinkerers. It's legal to engage in reverse engineering in order to create a competing product, it's legal to talk about reverse engineering, and it's legal for a public wiki to host those discussions.'"

Comments

!streissandeffect

[L4t3r4lu5]

This is a story regarding the countersuit to an Apple DMCA takedown notice. The EFF want publicity for this case.

No Streissand Effect here, folks.

Re:What's the Story

[Chyeld]

I believe this was the project where they were attempting to brute force the key that encrypted the song database on the newer iPhone/Touch firmwares. They did this by requesting everyone upload their own copy of the database off their device.

The purpose in doing this was to enable third party programs to actually sync with the device, since currently the only way to do so is through iTunes (even the third party programs that do so now rely on being able to hook into it's dlls).

Apple hit them with a C&D letter indicating that the project was a viloation of the DMCA, specificly an attempt to bypass DRM.

The question will be, do the courts agree with Apple?

Re:"Because it's there"

[claytongulick]

I just added RockBox to my Sansa based on your comment. I'm truly amazed at the difference in playback quality. I didn't realize what crap the default firmware was until I listened to the same music through RockBox. RockBox is amazing, I highly recommend it to anyone out there that has a supported player - and if you are buying an MP3 player, make sure you get one that RockBox supports. Oh, and you can play Doom on your Sansa :D