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Psystar Crushed In Court
We've been following the case of Mac cloner Psystar for some time now. Apple was just handed a summary judgement over Psystar, and as usual Groklaw has the scoop. Here is the order (PDF), though PJ supplies it in text form at the link above. "Psystar just got what's coming to them in the California case. ... It's a total massacre. Psystar's first-sale defense went down in flames. Apple's motion for summary judgment on copyright infringement and DMCA violation is granted. Apple prevailed also on its motion to seal. Psystar's motion for summary judgment on trademark infringement and trade dress is denied. So is its illusory motion for copyright misuse. ... So that means damages ahead for Psystar on the copyright issues just decided on summary judgment, at a minimum. The court asked for briefs on that subject. In short, Psystar is toast." Reader UnknowingFool adds, "There are still issues to be decided but they are only Apple's allegations: breach of contract, induced breach of contract, trademark infringement, trademark dilution; trade dress infringement, state unfair competition, and common law unfair competition. Even if Psystar wins all of them, it is unlikely to help them very much."
I know. They'll say, but, but, but ... what if they hadn't used the master and just used each copy, then would it work? Sons, why do you think Psystar used the master copy? Because it's a business, and in a business, efficiency is money. That's why businesses set themselves up, to make money. The whole world is not with you on a holy war to destroy EULAs and the GPL. Even this rinkydink business wanted to make money. Theoreticals belong on message boards, not in business and definitely not in courtrooms, and even on message boards, everyone told you for years that this wouldn't work out if someone tried it. It's been tried. It didn't work out. ... coming from Pamela, who revealed that Microsoft played no small role funding the SCO debacle though bogus license purchase.
If you follow patent troll cases for example, you would know that shell business are often set up by litigants for the sole purpose of facilitating a lawsuit. Once you've acquired your defunct IP, you set up a web site to demonstrate intent to sell a product. Sure it's not strictly necessary to test the patent but it can help when it come times to assess damages, and it garners judge and jury sympathies (especially if you can get it tried in the Texas east district).
So, who was behind Psystar? Dell perhaps? There's no chance in hell a startup box builder would go to these lengths to test a legal theory. Their vested interest in the supposed business was a pittance compared to the cost to fight this, so where'd they get the money?
Obviously, Psystar was staged for the exclusive purpose of being sued .
Are they going to shoot up in value in the history of computers market?
Sell PCs! This was always about trying to mooch off Mac's success and not about individual freedoms.
OS X is a decent operating system, but few people can be satisfied by a single hardware vendor. Might as well write off Apple as a player now, as it's unlikely they'll ever release the death grip and let the world play with OS X.
Microsoft is very happy with the status quo. Apple voluntarily limits itself to the tiny niche that is their own hardware. As is, they're absolutely no threat to Microsoft.
It is truely bizarre to watch the reaction of the Mac/Apple Crazies(Here's to the crazy ones...) to Psystar.
I can't think of another cult type Defend The Mothership! reaction ever before.
If Psystar wins, people get to use Macs.
If Psystar loses, people get to use Macs.
But there is some sort of disturbing "my identity and self worth is validated by Apple/Mac/Steve Jobs" mindset that is absolutely sickening to see.
Their real profit these days is the iPod/iPhone/iTunes segment. Which they would make approximately zero on if they were only available to Mac users.
Psystar isn't a front for anyone. That doesn't mean they haven't been used by real players.
The truly powerful don't need to do anything so unsubtle as conspiracy nuts like to believe. They can take existing bit players, and give them the right nudge for the same effect.
You can just imagine some angry and bitter emo Mac cultist sitting in front of their overpriced Mac wearing their own Steve Jobs-ish black turtleneck scanning the comments for heretics to unleash their mod points on...
A particular Apple machine might suit my purposes at one time, but that doesn't imply that they'll always be able to meet my needs. I wouldn't lash myself to the mast of Apple any more than I would Dell or Acer or any other hardware vendor. So long as OS X is tied to a single vendor, it's absolutely irrelevant to any reasonable person.
Apple has never given it a real chance.
The only thing lamer than this verdict is reading PJ crowing over it at Groklaw. It was great when SCO, a genuine bad guy, was getting kicked around. However in this instance her smug self-righteous I-told-you-so BS is even more obnoxious than the triumph of the EULA.
Like the German guys from PearC.de and their distributors: .be, .fr, .es,
they just announced a whole new line including Core i5 machines
and dual Xeon configurations, all running 10.6.2.
I really don't think Apple will be able to sink all the :-)
clone builders of this world,even less stop the hackingtoshers of this world
but maybe they owe it to their shareholders to win a local US battle and show some muscle.
I'm convinced Apple secretly find this a good evolution
osx86-rider
If Psystar was a stalking horse then the only reason that makes sense is that someone wants Apple to lock their OS to their hardware. Apple doesn't seem too concerned by hobbyists building Frankenmacs. Their ever vigilant lawyers haven't been jackbooting down doors and dragging offenders to court. There have been instances in the past where an OS-maker has turned a blind eye to, if not actually facilitating, its OS being pirated simply to deny a competitor marketshare. Maybe somebody was worried that Apple was moving in this direction. However, if Apple is provoked into action by a startup selling Frankenmacs might they not decide to implement a TPM system to lock the OS to Macs-only? No more hobby Frankenmacs and Apple is seen as not only closed software but closed hardware too. The Technorati would be incensed and Apple would wear the black eye forever.
All the interesting bits are either proprietary, or written by someone else.
All this goes to show is that, contrary to the statements of some Slashdotters, Psystar did not re-install OS X as-is. They replaced key segments, including the bootloader and kernel extensions, in order to get it to install on commodity hardware. That makes Psystar the distributors of a derivative work, thereby violating copyright laws. This is not about the EULA:
"Psystar infringed Apple's exclusive right to create derivative works of Mac OS X," the ruling reads. "Specifically, it made three modifications: (1) replacing the Mac OS X bootloader with a different bootloader to enable an unauthorized copy of Mac OS X to run on Psystar's computers; (2) disabling and removing Apple kernel extension files; and (3) adding non-Apple kernel extensions."
I fail to understand how Psystar is even within light years of being right on this issue.
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Ya the business model Apple uses will never work. Ya..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
apple needs non aio systems and mini is weak pro is very over priced.
People do not want to be stuck with one screen and the mini is weak and priced high next to other systems Laptop cpu 2gb ram, on board video, 160GB hd at $600?
where is the $1000-$1500 system the imac are poor priced there $1200 for on board video? $1,499.00 and only dual core + 4670 graphics with 256MB? you can get core i7 systems with screen and better video card at that price. $2000+$200 for a core i7 imac? and only 4850 graphics with 512MB?
The $2,499.00 mac pro comes with a MUCH WEAKER VIDEO CARD, LESS HD SPACE and NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB for $1000 - $300 more then a imac with a screen build in?
Double standard. Apple gets kid glove treatment in the media. I've been a mac user since OS 10.0...I bought my last mac, I hate their behavior. Win 7 changes everything.
Obligatory car analogy: Sorry, by installing the LS7 engine in a Mini body you've created a derivative work and have violated GM's copyright. You'll have to die in a fire now, kthxplz.
Translation: "I want an iPhone, but I can't afford one"
I've been through the links and it just looks like a company wanted to sell a cheap Mac clone. I don't get what one or a firm would get in setting up a clone company just to get sued by Apple.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Uhm, because they can?
Their whole business model is Windows and Office (i.e. OS and document formats). That makes them such an enormous profit that they can afford to spend oodles of cash on side project on the off chance that they have a chance of beating the market leader.
Apple is still peanuts to MS, zealotry aside.
I imagine if you tried to sell the modified GM vehicle, GM would come after you with their lawyers. If you modded it on your own they wouldn't care. Apple doesn't care about Hackintoshes. They care about people selling competing products by appropriating their IP.
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And you get multi-tasking, native Google Voice, Google Navigation, and so on.
There are quite a few 'tuned car "manufacturers"' operating.
I for the life of me can't remember any of them other than AMG (but they're part of the same group) so they're probably licensed.
Anyhow, my point still stands. If I wanted to buy a brand new tricked out Mini there would be a company out there that would be glad to sell it to me.
(Minis are horrible things now BMW have them)
Apple is stealing a lot of Microsoft's mindshare and they're percieved as "cool and hip" whereas as Microsoft are thought of as an evil MegaCorp.
The geek is a hothouse product with little contact with the outside world.
The geek will rant on forever about "the convicted monopolist."
But, with Apple content with a very profitable and easily serviced upscale niche market, anti-trust is a bust.
The truth is that you can't pin the label on either one of them and make it stick.
Microsoft gets Boot Camp and the Mac as a strong secondary platform for Windows apps.
Apple gets iTunes for Windows and placement on the desktop with 93% of the market.
Psystar makes an early exit.
Our hero and heroine live happily ever after.
What Apple has done is turned themselves in to a consumer electronics company. In particular, they are a company that sells cool. Their designs are seen as cool by a great many people in the US at least and that gives them a market. After all there were plenty of good MP3 players before the iPod, and there are plenty of good ones now. So why was the iPod the one that took off? Because it was cool. It was a fashion accessory as much as an MP3 player. People wanted to own it for the style.
Well the same deal with their laptops these days. I know exceedingly few people that buy them because they are OS-X computers, they buy them because they like the style. In fact, many now buy them because they can run Windows which means that they can run all the apps they need. They may still use OS-X as their main OS (though I've seen MBPs converted in to Windows-only systems) but it was access to Windows and the software that brings that made it practical to get one.
As such I think Apple ought to stop this crap of trying to lock their OS to their hardware and do two separate divisions and products. Start selling Macs as stylish computers with OS-X or Windows, or both. Let people buy them with what they want. Sell them because they are stylish. Yes, they'd still cost more but people will pay for style. Make Mac the brand of computer you go to for style, regardless of what you want to do.
Then, license OS-X to whoever wants it (for an increased cost of course). Make it just another OS that people can buy if they want.
Of course continue to sell electronics, maybe look at other markets at well (TVs perhaps?).
It seems like Apple's insistence on doing computers they way they do is not based on a good business practice but just stubborn insistence.
Jesus. I think you need to go different bars.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
As an extremely happy Mac user, you like everybody else fails to understand why people by Mac these days. After 15 years os using Windows on my home machine, 5 years of Linux, my Macs have proven to be the most reliable and hassle free machines I have ever had. Coupled with the fact that I don't play games on my computer anymore and I have no compelling reason to ever go back.
And as icing on the cake I have cool technologies like TimeMachine and Spotlight. TImeMachine has saved my ass a couple of times and Spotlight is just way too convenient to give up.
You guys always focus on the hardware specs and completely fail to consider the things people want to use computers for.
This particular type of derivative work is also known as an "adaptation", which is allowed by 17 USC 117 since it's necessary to make OS X work with a non-Apple machine. Psystar just wasn't careful enough about the order in which they did things: to stay within the letter of the law, they should have sold the copy of OS X to their end user first, then made the adaptation on the user's behalf, instead of making the adaptation first and then selling a copy of it.
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Here...let me explain... First...get all teary...then start whining...then demand that everyone should give you what you want the way you want it because you want it to be that way. Then start stomping...screaming...crying...maybe rolling around on the floor. Basically...all you really need to do is throw a temper tantrum that would make a 2yr old proud and you will understand the entitlement mentality behind all of this. "I should get what I want, for the price I want, with the rules I want, because I want it that way." This is all driven by people who think that if they don't like the terms of an agreement that they can unilaterally alter them to meet their needs. These are the same people that dream up stupid shit ideas like "We reserve the right to alter this agreement at any time without notice" and then scream bloody murder when other like minded idiots lock them into a contract that says the same thing.
I don't like what the RIAA is doing. I haven't bought any RIAA music in almost 10 years now. I also haven't downloaded any music. I don't try to rationalize some weird shit reason that says it is ok for me to simply take what I want because they won't offer it to me on the terms I want. The same goes for software. I VERY rarely buy software, and I pretty much restrict most of my software to F/OSS stuff. There are a few software package that I have bought, but rather than downloading, I wait for a deal where I can pay the price I want, or I find another product. It is that simple. This insane entitlement mentality is getting disgusting, and is ultimately what drives much of behavior the whiners usually throw tantrums about. Tell me that the RIAA behavior is anything other than greedy entitlement bullshit...just the same as the idiots downloading music.
These battles are escalating battles between large groups of spoiled brats that think that they deserve whatever they demand on the terms they demand and they will go to great lengths to force their demands.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
APSL covers
1) bootx
2) darwin kernel
apple can't have it both ways, you cant pretend to be open then sue the crap out of anybody who uses that code.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi, it will soon see the end of Psystar.
Imagine if you paid GM for the car, modified it, then sold it to someone else.
Now imagine doing it as a business.
Neither is illegal.
GM probably wouldn't even care. To them, a sale is a sale.
Why then is Microsoft trying to clone everything apple is doing?
Because that is their business model.
Excel to Lotus, Explorer to Netscape, C# to Java, Xbox to Playstation...the list goes on and on. It's what MS does.
It's nothing personal against Apple. That's just what they do.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I imagine if you tried to sell the modified GM vehicle, GM would come after you with their lawyers.
Carroll Shelby, Mopar, and Magnuson Moss think you're full of crap.
Remember the Slashdot rules: even if any other physical or software manufacturer would be publicly flayed for committing an act, it's Right and Good and Justified if Apple does it.
I'm typing this on a Mac, probably the last Apple product I'll ever buy because of the crap they pull.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I imagine if you tried to sell the modified GM vehicle, GM would come after you with their lawyers.
If they did, GM would lose. There's no question that you have the right to buy a car, modify it, and resell it, just like you can with any other piece of physical property.
That's why this ruling against Psystar is so baffling: with a car, the legal issues are straightforward. With software, although you are allowed to make modifications like the ones Psystar made, and even to have a third party make them for you, if you're going to run a business like Psystar's, you have to be very careful about exactly how your process works -- even though the end result is exactly the same.
It shouldn't matter whether you copy a pre-patched copy of OS X onto the new machine, or whether you copy an identical copy first and then patch it. It shouldn't matter whether you sell the original copy of OS X to the customer and then patch it for him, or whether you sell him a copy that's already been patched and also give him the original. But apparently it does matter, and that's stupid.
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Let's see:
Anti-SCO - check
Anti-MS - check
New entry Pro-Apple - check
It's even worse in the courts. Apple fanboys everywhere sitting on all those judicial benches.
I shake my angry fist at you Apple fanboys judges!
If you buy a copy of Windows, you can transfer it to a machine from any other vendor.
Further, you don't need to tie yourself to Windows at all anymore. If you develop for .NET, you can transfer to any system that supports that at any time.
Webkit (ie, KDE's html renderer) is pretty slick. But there's no more reason to use it with OS X than any other system.
Nobody is going to say "No" to Apple in California.
You just tried to insult a stranger on the internet by telling him to hang out with his friends at a coffee shop.
You really just did that.
To use Slashdot's favorite car analogy, you can buy a cheap sedan for $20k. Does that mean BMW should stop being stupid and start selling cheap sedans? After all, they're selling cars made out of metal and plastic like everybody else.
GB2 putting a six-foot spoiler on your Civic (or the computer equivalent thereof). And try to learn to spell and/or capitalize on the way.
They make decent money from iPods, but not enough to offset the fact that they entire company rests on the health of one man. One man with cancer who's known to rely on fruity crystals and snake oil over medical treatment.
I think you just need to stop hanging out with douchebags.
So anyone that has ever written in the margins of a textbook and then resold it is not within light years of the law! ;)
Spotlight? Well I'm using the Win7 RC and the search functionality works damn well. To me, it works as well as spotlight does on a mac, which means that's no longer a useful metric. Stable hardware. Don't buy junk when building a system and you wont have stability problems. As an example, I bought an Intel DQ965GF mainboard, installed an E6300 C2D with 4GB of Intel Qualified memory along with a quality PSU and have had no hardware related stability problems. Yes I've had software puke on me and it's rarely been anything from MS, instead being things like Firefox, Filezilla, FreeDownloadManager and uTorrent, all of which are non Microsoft products.
That's a bunch of crap, and if that's what the decision says then First Sale law is over, at least until it gets escalated, and it will. First Sale is critical to whole long lists of industries. Using copyright law to restrict transfer of an object [blogspot.com] is an abuse... First Sale law permits you to modify things you've purchased.
If Psystar modified the OS X software and then sold the modified software (along with the computer), then they've both created a derivative work and distributed it. This should be clear cut in the courts. There is a circuit split over whether attaching a postcard to a tile and then reselling it constitutes the preparation and distribution of a derivative work, but the split is over the question of whether simply gluing the card to the tile is enough to qualify as a derivative work. In this case, modifying the software is almost unquestionably enough to constitute the preparation of a derivative work.
First sale will allow you to resell a copyrighted work that you have purchased; if, however, it's been modified enough to constitute a derivative work, you'll run afoul of copyright law. If, in the Seventh Circuit's tile case, the defendant had made a new piece of artwork, e.g. a collage or something with a bunch of postcard, that would likely pass the threshold for a derivative work.
If all Psystar had done was resell copies of unmodified copies of OS X along with their Hackintoshes, the issue of derivative works wouldn't come into play at all. It would be more a matter of whether Apple's EULA matters, etc. By modifying the copies, however, they opened up a big can of worms.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The simple truth is that Psystar DID have to use an image method to perform the installs, and so this should be considered a minimum necessary step towards exercising First Sale rights to do as you like with something you've purchased; but I do agree that they should have been required to use an image based on the same version of OSX that would appear in the box. First Sale law permits you to modify things you've purchased. If I am not permitted to modify Apple software, then arguably I can't even use it. And if I'm not permitted to use images to deploy OSX, then I'm certainly not even going to consider using it in the enterprise. If Psystar isn't allowed to use a custom image, then I must assume I'm not allowed to either.
Good points and I totally agree with your points on the validity of the First Sale law and it's necessity. However, you're missing a crucial point. Pystar not only modified OSX, (as is allowed for personal use), but it sold this modified derivative product, which is not protected by the First Sale law. You can use a modified product, but you can't sell. That's why Pystar lost, and lost big. I personally think that these and other copyright restrictions are too strict, but it is pretty clear in this case (summary judgement and all that) that Pystar broke it.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
The court rejected 117. Partially because Psystar's lawyers suck. (emphasis mine)
It has been shown time and time again MSFT only makes products good enough to beat the competition through brute force
I wish advocates of alternative anything would just be honest. Microsoft has made products that are better than their competition and sometimes they are breathtakingly so. Bill Gates may have been a ruthless businessman, but when he was at the helm, Microsoft made some good stuff.
MS BASIC was way better than other BASICs made by other computer companies. String arrays? Geez, on Atari Basic you had to fake them.
DOS was better than CP/M. It was quicker to learn, and, had a pretty spiffy version of BASICA with it, for its day.
FoxPro (bought by MS), was way better than the dBase (bought by Borland). And, Access was a better desktop database than anything else out there.
Windows of the DOS extender series was better than any other DOS task extender series. For that matter, Windows 95 is hands down superior to Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 and Windows NT blew OS/2 completely out of the water. OS/2, single message queue on the desktop, puhlease.
Excel was better than Quattro, and I'm sorry, Word was better than Word Perfect for Windows, by far. My favorite Word Process was Samna AmiPro, which, probably would have ruled them all had Lotus not bought them and screwed it up.
Yeah, everyone can cry fowl over Netscape being destroyed by Microsoft, but Microsoft IE 4 had a fully programmable DOM and an AJAX XMLHttpRequest.. what did Netscape have... you could script a form, had document.write for everything else...a half-assed buggy email, and a billion bugs.
Visual Studio was way better than Borland's C++ IDE was by around 2.0 of Visual Studio.
It's pretty simple. Microsoft is good, at times, especially when Gates was running the show. And there were many times Microsoft, despite all of these "advantages", competed, and flopped... does anyone remember PhotoDraw? That little gem was actually pretty innovative, but, Adobe crushed it like an insect. Now we have Silverlight going up against Flash, and lo, Silverlight is still not reliable in Firefox and didn't have drop shadows. WTF. They lose, and deservedly so.
And, Microsoft lets the XP franchise languish, releases Vista way too early, and so loses market share to Linux. Microsoft prices things off, and so, WinNT Server loses to Linux. Microsoft, after a brilliant run from IE4-6 (yeah, one time, 6 was the best... almost 10 years ago?), but now, can't catch a clue with IE8 and so FireFox and now Google Chrome and Safari are now gradually crushing them.
And now Visual Studio seems ever more confused, while Eclipse and other IDE's start to look better, and I switched.
Conspiracies, monopolies, all of that, can be an advantage, but really, only for so long. In this society, it is product that matters,
This is my sig.
NO. No it is NOT ok. I want my coca-cola, because it's the brand that I like, and I've invented personal private reasons for why I prefer one to the other, but truth be told, if I were given a completely double-blind taste test, I likely couldn't tell the difference.
But all those "facts" get in the way of the truthiness. I drink COKE, and Pepsi is NOT ok.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I run mostly Linux, with the odd windows VM. What hole would OS X fill for me?
Nobody can say this about Apple, who are still working to the 1960s proprietary hardware business model, and still behaving as if the PC revolution never happened.
Well, except for that part, that, for all intents and purposes, Apple STARTED the PC revolution. Yeah, there were other people before Apple, but Apple was the first to put the PC together into the thing that it is, and get everything working. IBM and the clones are just copies of the very concept of the personal computer that Apple defined.
You can't take that away from them.
This is my sig.
It shouldn't matter whether you copy a pre-patched copy of OS X onto the new machine, or whether you copy an identical copy first and then patch it. It shouldn't matter whether you sell the original copy of OS X to the customer and then patch it for him, or whether you sell him a copy that's already been patched and also give him the original. But apparently it does matter, and that's stupid.
While the end result may be the same, disallowing the latter prevents Psystar from selling fully functional, turn-it-on-and-it-works machines. If the law forces the purchaser to perform the final step of modifying the software, that is a relatively large disadvantage in the marketplace.
I have to wonder, if Psystar sold its machines with a special "first boot" CD that made the necessary modifications to the OS X installation, and had purchasers run that CD only after buying the machine... that sounds like it'd get around the letter of the law, but I suspect Apple's lawyers would creatively find some way to stop that, too.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I'd happily short Apple stock the day before Job's death, if I had that particular bit of info.
is a loss for customer (public) rights.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
While the end result may be the same, disallowing the latter prevents Psystar from selling fully functional, turn-it-on-and-it-works machines. If the law forces the purchaser to perform the final step of modifying the software, that is a relatively large disadvantage in the marketplace.
But it doesn't - 17 USC 117 allows you to have someone else make the modifications for you. So all they'd have to do is clarify the order of the process: first you buy the computer, then you buy the copy of OS X, then you authorize them to adapt your new copy of OS X to run on your new computer. That would be slightly less inconvenient (thus more expensive), but achieve exactly the same thing, which is why it's stupid for the law to require these steps to be done in a certain order.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
(or Linux)
There's a longish article about Psystar's Robert & Rudy Pedraza in this week's Miami New Times, published before the verdict. They were expecting to win.
There is a legal exception to the restriction on creation of copies and derivative works, in 17 USC 117a:
This issue was apparently not properly raised by Psystar. Nonetheless, this section strictly authorizes the creation of copies and derivative works if it is: "an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine".
If anything the court's reasoning seems awfully sloppy (nonexistent?) on this point with regard to both copies and derivative works, although I suppose it is not the court's job to make Psystar's case for it.
That last sentence is interesting. What would be "frivolous" about using 117 as a defense? It doesn't seem to be explained in the order. From what I can see, it looks like the failure can be blamed entirely on Psystar's absent-minded lawyers.
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(I'm not familiar with the details of the Psystar case and so I don't know if this company did anything wrong or not. Neither do I really care. This post is not a defense of Psystar.)
I cut my teeth on an Apple II+ way back when 64k was a lot of memory.
So why don't I like Apple today?
Because they seek to monopolize the markets created by their products.
Many years ago I bought a Quadra 700 on the cheap because its hard drive was dead. I had a good SCSI drive that I planned to use with it. Then I found out that unless my drive came from Apple, the MacOS partitioning and filesystem tools would pretend it didn't exist. Looking for help, I received many lies from Mac fanboys about how SCSI was just an electrical standard and that the Mac SCSI devices used a different command set. That was a flat out lie that is easily falsified. That they would insult me with such an obvious canard was astonishing. If someone likes a particular product then that is fine. But when they LIE in order to promote it or to obscure its flaws, then that is just plain disgusting.
Apple specifically created their filesystem tools to kill the 3rd party market for hard drives and other peripherals such as CDROM drives.
This wasn't a singular example either, but part and parcel of that company's nature. I won't purchase products from a company that tries to prevent me from purchasing complimentary products from anyone else.
Apple is continuing with this tradition today by tying their operating system to Apple branded PCs. There are people at work who use Macs and it would be nice to be able to support the platform. But doing so requires that I go out and purchase a new computer, at a significant price hike, just so I can run their operating system. If the hardware was different, such as it was back in the PowerPC or 68k days, then that would be understandable. But the hardware is not different. These are standard PCs with special hardware included that their OS searches for before it will allow itself to be installed. Same story as the hard drives with tags in the firmware.
So I just don't buy anything from Apple. I don't buy their computers. I don't buy their MP3 players. I don't buy their phones. I avoid them. I tell anyone who asks me to do the same, and I explain why.
If they ever change their tune and stop playing keep away, then maybe I'll reconsider. Till then they can blow me.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Full of a bunch of greedy fuckers. What make them think their hardware (same as any other company) is worth that much more? Fuck them...
There are limitations on the Section 106 exclusive rights in subsequent sections, notably Section 117:
This exception was not properly raised, and the court didn't bother to consider it, contributing to the widespread ignorance of this issue, unfortunately.
How far would some get by selling per unlocked iphones?
as the law lets you unlock a phone to use it on any network.
Will apple have a very hard time shutting that down?
Nope, not interested in :
1) i[diot]phone
2) droid
3) any other smart phone.
I have had the following cell phones since 1985
1) Motorola in car unit
1a) Motorola 8000UH aka BrickPhone at the same time as above
2) Nokia CDM980 or 980 something to replace the above two when CDMA started to take over
3) Audiovox 9000
4) Audiovox 9155gpx
5) LG Decoy, only since it was $20 last year for a special or something.
The ONLY REASON I ever got rid of the 8000UH was the CDMA version never was produced in quantity and at the time Bell Atlantic would only sell dual mode AMPS/CDMA to replace it.
If the Brickphone were available today, I would have it.
If any wants to know what a decent phone looks like: Motorola rs765 (This being used by SoLinc for their iDEN network, sprexhell, has stated they will only offer the rs765IS which is only 0.6W v. the 1W of the rs765, buts never really made a public appearance for sprexhell.)
See it, HAS ANTENNA ON IT! Why its a RADIO! Its not magic that makes it work.
The current Decoy has a :
1) Camera - I've taken 10-12 pix in total since I've had it. So thats 1 month.
2) web - don't use it - laptop with data card, its a phone!
3) Inbound SMS - get tons! I use it as a replacement for an alpha pager, which has better coverage in most places than even the remaining paging carriers. Except in the one region I travel there is still a regional network on 152.480 that HAS FAR BETTER COVERAGE than cell phones, and any of the larger national paging carriers.
4) Outbound SMS - about 6 in Jan. 2009 during a business trip. Otherwise NONE.
5) Ringtones purchased - ZERO
6) Wallpapers purchased - ZERO
7) games/applications purchased - ZERO
8) GPS - REALLY! -NOT! - I have a stand alone GPS, no fee.
9) Numbers programmed - 12,
a) times numbers programmed are dialed, rarely! I normally dial all numbers from memory, MINE!
10) bluetooth, its included in the decoy. Use - NEVER!
Some of us have a cell phone for what it is, A PHONE! Nothing less, nothing more.
I wouldn't purchase any thing from crapple for the draconian control on all their products.
1311393600 - Back to Black
(b) Lease, Sale, or Other Transfer of Additional Copy or Adaptation.— Any exact copies prepared in accordance with the provisions of this section may be leased, sold, or otherwise transferred, along with the copy from which such copies were prepared, only as part of the lease, sale, or other transfer of all rights in the program. Adaptations so prepared may be transferred only with the authorization of the copyright owner.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The crushing was inevitable. Any theories on why the principals of Psystar tried this bs in the first place?
Are they stupid, or are they going to come out of this financial winners (because the money is unreachable by now)?
Any ideas from anybody?
That makes Psystar the distributors of a derivative work, thereby violating copyright laws.
...
I fail to understand how Psystar is even within light years of being right on this issue.
Kind of like selling a used book with notes in it, eh?
Article in local FL paper
The court's logic seems to be that first sale doctrine does not cover copying to an "imaging server", therefore everything Psystar did afterwards was also illegal.
Which might imply Mac cloning could be legal if it was done 'by hand'. However, the court also found that bypassing Apple's lock-out mechanism violated the DMCA, which seems rather dubious to me.
(Also I have to complain. 90% of the discussion here is computards arguing Apple sucks/Apple rules/I like my iPod, and ignoring the issues at hand. Slashdot is really full of knuckledraggers nowdays.)
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I am not sure that Psystar needs authorization from the end user to do what they did.
Section 117 provides for exceptions to all the exclusive rights in section 106 under conditions of ownership and essentiality.
Psystar *is* the initial owner of the copy. At that point, they can prepare a copy and adaptation as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with "a machine", and then they resell that machine in conjunction with the original copy.
I can't wait for Appl&euro karma to catch up with them.
I think you are on to it WRT the "order in which they did things."
The judgement says:
17 USC 117 says
So, Psystar installed OSX from a DVD onto a Mac mini. That might be permitted under 117 except that Psystar made the copy not to use OSX on the Mac mini but for the sole purpose of creating an installed image for making additional copies. Then Psystar made a copy of the installed copy onto another computer. That is not permitted under 117. For one, I don't think you can make a copy of a copy made under 117. Two, they made the copy for the purpose of making more copies, not for the utilization of OSX in conjunction with a machine. I would guess that imaging machine ran Windows or some Linux distro and the copy of OSX was just an image to be used with whatever drive cloning software they were using.
So if Psystar had installed from DVD directly onto the customers computer and then adapted it to work better with their hardware then they might not be liable for direct infringement. Still left is contributory infringement from failing to provide an original DVD of the same software with the computer they sold and also circumvention of the technological measures that effectively control access to the work.
It shouldn't matter whether you sell the original copy of OS X to the customer and then patch it for him, or whether you sell him a copy that's already been patched and also give him the original. But apparently it does matter, and that's stupid.
It all depends on who you are. The law doesn't apply equally to everyone.
This is news to me! I do not believe that there are any keys embedded in any shipping Intel Macs. In fact, I am pretty sure that OSX will install cleanly on any PC similarly equipped to a Mac and has EFI firmware. Even PCs without EFI, all you need is special bootloader to start executing the kernel, then OSX runs unmodified. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to install it from the retail DVD. I have seen it done on Dell Netbooks.
Googling for these mysterious keys turned up nothing.
Is Apple lying to the court?
Shelby is a paid consultant to Ford
Mopar is a division of Chrysler
Right idea, but terrible examples.
How the hell can the judge decide that the law should not be considered in the case just because the defense's lawyers were not aware of it? What is the Latin term for this, Ex Fucknut Assholio?
(IANAL... could you tell?)
Wow, such gushing . . . This, people, is where the word "fanboy" comes from. Whoever wrote this is is like a 12 year old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert.
Should we really be this excited about a legal judgment that limits consumer rights just because that judgment happens to favor a company that makes cool stuff we use? I think most reasonable people will agree there was nothing morally wrong with what Pystar was doing -- if it was legally wrong, that's a flaw in the law. This whole idea that Apple can sell something and then tell the people buying it how they may and may not use it is a bit silly. If Pystar was to modify and then resell it for the same price, what's wrong with that? As long as the person buys it understands that its modified from its original form and DESIRES Those modifications, nobody is harmed and consumers benefit from increased choice. Apple benefits. Pystar benefits. Consumers benefit. Everybody benefits.
Of course, Apple doesn't like it because the benefit they reap by selling the software is less than the benefit they could reap by forcing you to buy their overpriced hardware as well. It's greed, plain and simple. Legal, perhaps -- but not something to cheer about.
Who runs BarterTown?
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I suppose we should interpret all multiple fines Microsoft has received all around the world as Prizes to Technical Excellence.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... they think 3 months is a long term vision. Look at all the years before Steve Jobs.
Microsoft injected cash on Apple before the iPod.
When were you born? Yesterday?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In any other case the slashdot crowd would be raging and the megacorp who crushed the small upstart's website would be hacked, but wouldn't be visible because of the simultanious DDoS attack. Only because the megacorp is Apple and the rules with them are somehow different.
Seriously. Find me another case where Slashdot cheers a EULA being upheld. Find me another case where a DMCA attack is applauded. Listen up ya numbbuts, EULAs are always evil. The DMCA is always evil. Even when Steve Jobs is crushing a small competitor. What Pystar was doing may be illegal (I'd argue that point though) but I double dog dare any fanboy to stand up here and defend the MORAL position Apple took.
Either what Apple sells in those boxes are full copies of OS X or they are upgrades. Apple insists they are full copies when it suits their arguments AND equally insists they are mere upgrades when they need to crush Pystar. Make up yer fracking minds.
Democrat delenda est
by altering copyrighted code, pystar has created a derivative work, and the right of the copyright owner to distribute derivative works is not affected by fair use. Given that modification of software if it is necessary in order to use it is fair use for a non-distributing end-user, it may be that some future hackintosh business can exist if it merely facilitates the end-user making the modifications themselves.
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
Psystar *is* the initial owner of the copy. At that point, they can prepare a copy and adaptation as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with "a machine", and then they resell that machine in conjunction with the original copy.
But they wouldn't be able to resell the adapted copy of OS X: 117 says "Adaptations so prepared may be transferred only with the authorization of the copyright owner."
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
actually its not stupid, the car analogy is just flawed. We're talking about copyright, not strict property. Its not like adding a supercharger scoop on a car and then reselling it, its like replacing the first chapter of a book with a new and different one, then reselling it as the original That is different than selling that different first chapter as 'hey this makes the book way better, read it first'
No, Psystar didn't claim that they were shipping computers with unmodified copies of OS X. They were up-front about the fact that they were adapting OS X to run on the machines they sold.
by altering copyrighted code, pystar has created a derivative work, and the right of the copyright owner to distribute derivative works is not affected by fair use.
The right to distribute this particular type of derivative work -- an adaptation made to run OS X on a particular machine -- is affected by 17 USC 117. (Fair use is irrelevant to this case.)
Given that modification of software if it is necessary in order to use it is fair use for a non-distributing end-user, it may be that some future hackintosh business can exist if it merely facilitates the end-user making the modifications themselves.
First, it's not merely fair use (which is vaguely defined in law, and in practice defined by the courts), it's an explicit right granted by the legislature.
Second, that same law allows you to have a third party make the modifications on your behalf. If you buy a computer, and you buy a copy of OS X, and then you need OS X to be adapted so it'll work with your computer, you can have a company like Psystar adapt it for you.
Indeed, I see no reason why you couldn't buy the computer and the OS from that same company, and have them patch it after you pay but before they ship it to you. Psystar lost apparently because they did this in the wrong order.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
How sad is it that I thought of the Fallout series before the original movie after reading that... I read that and was pretty sure that it was JunkTown not BarterTown... It took a bit of googling to remember that movie.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
There are a lot of them. Callaway, Lingenfelter, Hennesey, Ruf, and heck, even car rental companies like Hertz have dabbled in the "modified GM|Ford|Mopar" game. They are not all "licensed." They can sell whatever the damn well please per right of first sale.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
First sale doctrine covers buying a copy, and then subsequently selling that copy. E.g., I buy a book. I read it. I sell it to a used bookstore. Covered by first sale. If I bought a book, read it, and then made 100 photocopies, and tried to sell THOSE to the used bookstore, of course first sale doctrine would not apply.
No surprise that Psystar lost trying to use first sale to justify what they did.
Lesson to any future company that tries to sell Hackintosh computers. Buy a boxed copy of OS X for each computer you ship. Do not even open the box--just ship it with your computer, which should come with some flavor of Linux installed. You'll be fine on first sale then. (You'll still find yourself on the wrong end of an Apple lawsuit over contract issues, but at least you'll be OK on copyright).
I think this is already an exemption under the DMCA. See here: http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/index.html
A DMCA exemption request has been filed for jailbreaking iPhones and will be reviewed soon. A more explicit request for an exemption for unlocking has also been filed. See here: http://www.eff.org/cases/2009-dmca-rulemaking
Sorry Guy,
in each and every way you are a LATE adopter.
M$ has one grip left on the real word, the Office monopoly, and its grip is paper thin there,
the general (electing) populace is becoming ever more sophisticated, and after the financial melt-down, in which many Normal people lost lots of money, in 401K or UBS-N equity, have much more active and working BS detectors, more in 2012, so:
1. The OOXML scandal is well understood
2. HTML5 video subversion won't hold, Flash & Silverlight flop, and will continue, too closed, too few developers. Unless Adobe fully open PDF, all non static PDF goes the same way
3. Vista and W7 don't matter, and if M$ try to force adoption it just means that CFO s will run IT, no sane CIO can push an OS upgrade
4. That leaves the Office+Outlook+AD francise, and the EU has fixed that, the next major Samba will be an impecable Domain * Kerberos controller, but unlike AD servers will be reliable. once AD is down someone with some sense will spend some money on the Exchange.Outlook,Calandar franchise, maybe Oracle, and finally someone, maybe ein Hess Arschloch will politely ask M$ if Office XXX is ISO complient, and die prufung
Game over
Copyright used to be the right to copy something for sale. Now copyright is that and a lot more. When did copyright holders gain the right to control how you access the works or determine whether or not you can make a backup, time shift, format shift or anything currently protected under fair use? And when did copyright holders gain the right to tell a user that he cannot run software on any hardware he chooses?
Jesus Fucking H Christ. You are like the 10th moron in this thread who quotes part (a) of that section, but is completely utterly incapable of reading on to part (b). If you actually read part (b), it expressly prohibits resale of the modified versions.
Are you all aiming for the Selective Reading of the Year Award or what?
It shouldn't matter whether you copy a pre-patched copy of OS X onto the new machine, or whether you copy an identical copy first and then patch it. It shouldn't matter whether you sell the original copy of OS X to the customer and then patch it for him, or whether you sell him a copy that's already been patched and also give him the original. But apparently it does matter, and that's stupid.
Your argument is preposterous. Nevermind physical goods. What legal precedent says that I can take a piece of software, modify it, and sell that modification? Furthermore, why would anybody expect to be allowed to do so? Have you heard of anybody getting away with modding a game or other software and selling it? It just doesn't happen.
And how do wholesale modifications count as "patches" ? They're not. It's a derivative work and any precedent regarding copyright law says that this is strictly forbidden.
This space left intentionally blank.
No, Psystar didn't claim that they were shipping computers with unmodified copies of OS X. They were up-front about the fact that they were adapting OS X to run on the machines they sold.
actually, yes, they did. read their answer on groklaw. they liken what they did to swapping internet browsers, something clearly not part of the core copyrighted work. they explicitly deny that their modification was of apple's copyrighted work, or at least that if they are guilty than so is mozilla and any other company writing 3rd party software that replaces functionality bundled with the operating system.
The right to distribute this particular type of derivative work -- an adaptation made to run OS X on a particular machine -- is affected by 17 USC 117. (Fair use is irrelevant to this case.)
It is affected, but not permitted, by 117. 117a(1) provides for the essential step allowance for adaptation of a computer program. 117b allows the resale of those adaptations only with the authorization of the copyright owner. Pystar did not obtain apple's authorization, their behavior was infringement as a matter of law, as reflected by summary judgment.
First, it's not merely fair use (which is vaguely defined in law, and in practice defined by the courts)
actually its not that its vaguely defined so much as it is itself vague by nature. It is inherently a balance between contrary interests that must be evaluated on a case by case basis. Congress amended 117 in 1998, to its current form, setting out what are essentially fair-use exceptions. Unlike with art, however, the uses of computer programs excepted can be very narrowly defined, as they are in section a.
you can have a company like Psystar adapt it for you. Indeed, I see no reason why you couldn't buy the computer and the OS from that same company, and have them patch it after you pay but before they ship it to you. Psystar lost apparently because they did this in the wrong order
here we agree. a business model where pystar is facilitating the end-user modifying his or her own copy of OS X seems like it should pass muster.
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
I think the problem comes in when you image dump it to a bunch of commodity hard disks and sell hundreds of machines from the one copy you bought on the single cheapo Apple computer you bought.
First-sale allows you to sell that one copy, or possibly put it in one new machine, not open up a distribution center.
Psystar's boneheaded defense was that first-sale lets you, vis-a-vis, buy a $16 factory-recorded CD and a spool of a hundred 50-cent CD-Rs, and sell the "new product" at half price, turning a $7.50 profit on each disc. They were wrong. Copyright law doesn't look kindly upon that.
And that is why Psystar got pounded. If they bought a hundred cheap iMacs, modded the software, and put it in exactly a hundred high-end workstations, first-sale might have a ghost of a chance of applying.
But then, you'd have to be an individual reselling, and not be a reseller business, incorporated to turn a profit on a derivative work, which you don't have the rights to and is also a violation of copyright. This is what you think is "stupid." That I should be able to, say, delete one of the mediocre filler tracks off of that $16 dollar CD and sell it for $8. It doesn't matter if I convert them to MP3's first, etc., I'm selling them, as a business, which makes me a distributor.
It's copyright. You can't copy it for resale. You can't make a derivative work for resale if you don't have the consent of the rights holder. You can't redistribute it for substantial gain. Copyright law has been that way since long before the DMCA. The operative words are "resale" and "substantial gain." This is why it's a summary judgment, because Psystar didn't have a case. They were like the New York Yankees showing up to play water polo here.
What Apple did is in accordance with the law, and it's their duty to their shareholders to defend their rights. I won't go so far as to claim that they were "right," or "good," but if folks don't like this, then they need work to change the law, because that's what the law says.
In my experience, the law is almost always "stupid," or at the very least it's blunt. It doesn't exist as a "common sense way to live" and while the courts are a system, the law is not. The law is there to arbitrate conflicts when all other options have broken down, with little to no room for compromise so there is a clear "winner." If you want compromise, or sense, you settle outside of court as soon as possible. We should not look to the courts for guidance, we should look to the courts for a clear redress of our grievances when all else fails.
--
Toro
Maybe Psystar's lawyers were instructed to "Think Bizarre," as a Psystar-sold alternative to "Think Different?"
OS X is a decent operating system, but few people can be satisfied by a single hardware vendor. Might as well write off Apple as a player now, as it's unlikely they'll ever release the death grip and let the world play with OS X.
But... but... whatever will we do without a "magic" mouse? ;^P
Yup. They're never going to understand that expensive gimmicks just get your foot in the door, but taking your solid code and sharing it, for a modest price, is what changes the way the world works.
GNU/Linux will probably have caught up with OS X in 5 years, if personal computers are still relevant, and Apple will still have the same market share, the same snarky ads implying how "cool" they are, and the same timid overtures to the "purity" of their product that keeps them running in place. I expect them to be a music company in 10 years, just 50 years after the Beatles "Apple Records."
When software companies start worrying about whether their software is "genuine" or "cool" over whether it works well and is used ubiquitously, they've got one foot in the damned grave and a competitor is waiting to push.
(As for "one foot in the grave," if you want to mod some "flamebait," you can take that as a snide joke about Jobs and let 'er rip. I've got karma to burn.)
--
Toro
Once you've had Mac, you can't go back!
I'm living proof that this is incorrect. I was exclusively a Mac user from 1990 through 1996. In 1997 I built a Windows PC to play some games. Later that same year, I built my first Linux file server/firewall. For three and a half years, I was primarily a Mac user. By 2000 I was primarily a PC user. I haven't so much as powered up any of my Macs in over a year.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
No, because the book does not come with a license saying you can't do that. OS X comes with a license saying you can't do that.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
HUH??
DOS 1 was a CPM Clone What Version ( Not 4 I Assume)
Visual Studio was way better than Borland's C++ IDE was by around 2.0 of Visual Studio Studio 3 was riddlied with bugs. I had to use a Text editor and Batch files.
"This is news to me! I do not believe that there are any keys embedded in any shipping Intel Macs. In fact, I am pretty sure that OSX will install cleanly on any PC similarly equipped to a Mac and has EFI firmware" This is not true. Apple's version of EFI is not vanilla, and has special hooks for loading OS X. You can't load OS X from a vanilla EFI implementation.
Grow or die. Microsoft hasn't got any room to grow in the OS market...
There is an open and competitive market for PCs and PC components, keeping prices low and pushing innovation forward.
Which Apple also uses. Apple uses the same RAM PC's do. They use the same processors, the some motherboard components, the same video cards, the same hard drives, etc. etc. etc.
Apple users can basically upgrade about as much as PC users can, they just cannot easily build from scratch.
So to claim that only Windows is advantaged by innovations of the Windows hardware market is incorrect.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
whether you like apple or not - what psystar was doing was effectively taking all of apple's R&D, and selling it for peanuts having done very little actual work of their own.
OS X is not "on sale" for $29 for anyone to use on any hardware. The software license explicitly states:
Its pretty fucking clear about what you can and can't do with it. If you do not agree with the license, you are entitled to a full refund upon return of the software, from your place of purchase.
My bet is that Psystar were hoping that this license would make their CUSTOMERS accountable, as THEY would be the ones clicking through the license agreement and ignoring it. Good on the court for holding Psystar accountable, and not forcing apple to start going after hobbyist users who are running OS X on their PCs.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Except 117(b) makes it irrelevant (emphasis added):
(b)
Lease, sale, or other transfer of additional copy or adaptation. Any exact copies prepared in accordance with the provisions of this section may be leased, sold, or otherwise transferred, along with the copy from which such copies were prepared, only as part of the lease, sale, or other transfer of all rights in the program. Adaptations so prepared may be transferred only with the authorization of the copyright owner.
Psystar did not have authorization from Apple. Therefore, Section 117 does not apply. Anyone is welcome to purchase a copy of OSX and hackintosh it to their hearts content, and are protected under 117. However, they cannot sell, lease, or transfer that software to ANYONE unless Cupertino gives it the nod.
Is this right? No. But "right != law"
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I think the problem comes in when you image dump it to a bunch of commodity hard disks and sell hundreds of machines from the one copy you bought on the single cheapo Apple computer you bought.
Yes - like I said, their error was doing things in the wrong order, using a slightly different process to arrive at the same end result.
This is what you think is "stupid." That I should be able to, say, delete one of the mediocre filler tracks off of that $16 dollar CD and sell it for $8.
Essentially, yes, but note that software and music aren't the same under copyright law. You have certain rights with software you buy that you don't with a CD, and vice versa.
It's copyright. You can't copy it for resale. You can't make a derivative work for resale if you don't have the consent of the rights holder.
Right, but you can make that derivative work for your customer after you sell them the original, because that derivative work is an adaptation allowed by 17 USC 117.
I won't go so far as to claim that they were "right," or "good," but if folks don't like this, then they need work to change the law, because that's what the law says.
They don't even need to change the law. They only need to change their process. Psystar could have used a different installation process to sell exactly the same thing, legally.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Imagine you bought a GM engine management unit from their spares department, and then used it to power your own models of car, after hacking on it.
I'm quite certain GM would be quite pissed at you.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
What legal precedent says that I can take a piece of software, modify it, and sell that modification?
According to 17 USC 117, you can do the same thing in a slightly different order: sell the original, then modify it for your customer.
Since that's legal, and ends up with the same result -- the same computer is shipped out, with the same data on its hard drive -- why does it really matter whether they copy OS X before or after they take the customer's money, or whether they patch OS X before or after they copy it onto the computer?
And how do wholesale modifications count as "patches" ? They're not. It's a derivative work and any precedent regarding copyright law says that this is strictly forbidden.
"Patch" isn't a legal term. The derivative work in this case is an "adaptation", and since it's necessary to make the software work with a particular machine, it's specifically allowed by section 117.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Psystar could easily avoid the 117(b) restriction by transferring ownership of the copy to the end user, and then have the end user authorize the copy and adaptation allowed by 117(a) to make the end user owned software work on the end user owned machine.
The DMCA says that bypassing any lock-out mechanism to be illegal. Psystar argued that the lock-out mechanism was easily bypassed. The court ruled that the ease of bypass did not make bypassing any more legal.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No one except Apple can legally be in the business of selling unlocked iPhones. But someone could presumably legally be in the business of unlocking iPhones owned by someone else, if authorized by the owner of the phone, of course - See 17 USC 117(a).
So anyone that has ever written in the margins of a textbook and then resold it is not within light years of the law! ;)
Except your analogy would only be relevant if you
1. Ripped out passages of the book
2. Inserted some of your own
3. Resold the book
I wouldn't be so cocky. Yeah, I'm using Linux, but, if you think Open Office even comes remotely close to Office 2007, you are sniffing glue! Windows 7 is by far the better desktop than Linux is, it is. But I like Linux for server development.
But... Linux has nothing comparable to Direct2d. OpenGL lags Direct3d. Windows threads remain better, and, you can get better drivers for sound cards under Windows. The Linux sound situation is a disaster.
This is my sig.
Remember the Slashdot rules: even if any other physical or software manufacturer does the exact same act every day of the week and we would never give a shit, Apple gets publicly flayed for it.
Fixed that for you.
How far would some get by selling per unlocked iphones?
I haven't seen any places selling unlocked iPhones, but I've seen plenty that will unlock the one you already have for a price, and they don't hide. Two malls nearby both have at least one each, and they put up a sign, "UNLOCK YOUR IPHONE", very visible right in front of them.
Then again, this is Canada, not the Land of the Free, so...
My apologies. There is a way around the problem though: Sell the machine and the software to the user first, then have them authorize you to install it with the necessary adaptations.
I'm pretty sure that it's legal to sell books that are missing pages. But hey, could be wrong.
All this goes to show is that, contrary to the statements of some Slashdotters, Psystar did not re-install OS X as-is. They replaced key segments, including the bootloader and kernel extensions, in order to get it to install on commodity hardware. That makes Psystar the distributors of a derivative work, thereby violating copyright laws. This is not about the EULA:
"Psystar infringed Apple's exclusive right to create derivative works of Mac OS X," the ruling reads. "Specifically, it made three modifications: (1) replacing the Mac OS X bootloader with a different bootloader to enable an unauthorized copy of Mac OS X to run on Psystar's computers; (2) disabling and removing Apple kernel extension files; and (3) adding non-Apple kernel extensions."
I fail to understand how Psystar is even within light years of being right on this issue.
Maybe so, but what does it say about the suitability for copyright law that it is so closely mapped to laws originally meant to protect printed works, that don't really hold true for software? Assuming of course that PsyStar hadn't used master copies and truly pirated copies of those master copies to imprint machines with, but had instead bought every single OS X disk and modified them individually, would Apple have lost any property via copyright infringement? They really should only have the EULA to fall back on then.
I was wondering the same thing. I didn't have to do anything else than use a different bootloader to install Snow on my netbook. Everything worked out of the box except sound and Ethernet (voodooHDA and Attansic kexts took care of that). But everything else is a vanilla install.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The public policy issue here is control. Back off the details of the case, generalize it, and you see there are two possibilities about the relationship between software and the brand of hardware it runs on.
CASE 1 is that the maker of the software has the legal right to specify what brand of hardware the stuff can be used on.
CASE 2 is that he cannot specify the brand of hardware the stuff can be used on.
The public policy issue is not about EULAs in general, or even copyright, or Apple, or about any technicalities of the software itself. It is about what rights you want to have software makers to have in respect of the brand of hardware.
Let us give two very specific examples. If the GPL were to be revised to say that it was permitted to install GPL software on any machine as long as it was not Apple labeled, would you approve of this? If MS were to forbid the installation of Windows in dual boot mode on Apple labeled equipment, but permit dual booting on all other brands, would you approve of them having such a power?
Would you, for instance, approve of proceedings by MS subsequent to making such a modification to the Windows license, if it took Apple to court over bootcamp, for contributory copyright infringement?
Welcome to the world of control. This is what the key issue is. To me, intellectual freedom requires us a society to opt for CASE 2. As for PJ, she may be right or wrong about the future of Psystar, but when it comes to public policy on this issue, she is in denial.
Googling for these mysterious keys turned up nothing.
Is Apple lying to the court?
You're just looking in the wrong places. There are two 128-bit constants stored in the System Management Controller chip (alongside fan speeds and temperature info) in the keys "OSK0" and "OSK1"; the first time someone accidentally dumped these seems to have been in this forum post. The scheme is documented a bit further in a couple of artictles: "TPM DRM" In Mac OS X: A Myth That Won't Die and Darwin/x86: Mac OS X Binary Protection. I'll leave it to you to manually decode the keys into ASCII, but will point out that they are normally retrieved from the hardware by a kext called "Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext". The reason your "special bootloader" works on vanilla hardware is that it replaces that kext with a version that contains the keys hardcoded into it; it will never install on any machine without replacing or patching that kext, EFI or not. (All of the bootloaders that can use unmodified installation media patch or inject this kext before passing control to the loaded XNU kernel.)
If you've gotten to the point where you're patching that kext, there's not much else that can be done to stop you, which is why they gave the kext its name and included the following plain-text string in the binary:
Specifically, it made three modifications: (1) replacing the Mac OS X bootloader with a different bootloader to enable an unauthorized copy of Mac OS X to run on Psystar's computers; (2) disabling and removing Apple kernel extension files; and (3) adding non-Apple kernel extensions.
So they never actually modified Apple's software - they just adjusted the settings and added some new plugins of their own (sort of like Bob's PC and Bait removing something from Windows and installing a driver for their their own Fish-O-Matic).
Apple feels that this alone is sufficient to constitute a derived work.
Forget anti-GPL fanboys; Apple is way more viral than anyone's ever claimed RMS and his licenses to be.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
This is news to me! I do not believe that there are any keys embedded in any shipping Intel Macs. In fact, I am pretty sure that OSX will install cleanly on any PC similarly equipped to a Mac and has EFI firmware.
Certain key Apple programs, including the desktop and Finder, require a decryption key in order to run. Said key is in the actual Apple hardware (the embedded controller, IIRC).
That limerick is completely misleading of course. No one is stealing Mac OS X. That kext does not prevent anyone from doing so. Its only purpose is to make it difficult to run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware. Running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware is not against the law and it is not stealing. Provided that it is legitimately acquired of course.
Psystar could easily avoid the 117(b) restriction by transferring ownership of the copy to the end user, and then have the end user authorize the copy and adaptation allowed by 117(a) to make the end user owned software work on the end user owned machine.
I believe you're thinking of "authorize" in terms of putting in a software key or serial number - i.e. a software authorization. The statute refers to "authorization of the copyright owner" - i.e. explicit permission by the copyright owner to sell the modified copy. Psystar couldn't transfer ownership of the modified copy to the end user without Apple's permission.
My apologies. There is a way around the problem though: Sell the machine and the software to the user first, then have them authorize you to install it with the necessary adaptations.
part (b) requires the permission of the copyright owner. Not permission from the owner of a copy.
part (b) requires the permission of the copyright owner. Not permission from the owner of a copy.
True. But since you aren't selling a derivative work, you don't need permission. The idea is this: Once the customer has the exact copy, you sell them your own, unique patch that does not violate any copyright laws. Essentially making 2 separate sales that accomplish the same thing. I think this could be a way around the issue, but only in a very dry reading of the law. It's pretty clear what the spirit of this law is, despite the loopholes in the letter. As such, I doubt the courts would let such a defense succeed.
"and officially ended on February 27, 1998" without a nPhone.
hey, stop giving the textbook-publishers ideas!
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
i could have sworn that recent issues with xp and later shows that microsoft considers swapping a motherboard (or putting together motherboard, GPU, CPU and other parts, and then moving the physical drive over) as a new install...
hell, doing that on a NT-related windows will likely give you a error about missing drivers.
so its not only apple that's playing mind games about installs, backups and whatsnot.
if it was not for the practicality of having the os on rewriteable media, i am sure they would have sold it as rom chips, just like it was back when the os was some IO and a basic interpreter...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
As someone who has written code from before PC's, I have to agree pretty much wholeheartedly here, with only minor caveats. There WAS a better dos extender that did multitasking (forget the name) but as a not-gui programmer at that time, was too gooey and slick for my needs (simple grinding of numbers and such).
I became, and in fact heard of MS first on M80 and L80, which I used under CPM (which I thought was fine stuff, but then again I did have the source code and could tweak to my heart's content). They were flat out the best software dev tools I'd ever discovered, though lined kind of stunk, there really wasn't that much to compare with -- at the time, the other alternatives involved punched holes in paper. So we didn't know any better.
Fast forward, I did pure hardware for awhile, so missed the early versions of devstudio mostly and the crummy compiler they had -- I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into C (despite I own a company named C-Lab, which is my last initial as well -- things worked out). I was and am an assembly language guy when performance matters, and it does more often than not. At first MS's C compilers weren't very good at all, but they learned fast, and by the last pre .NET release, DevStudio totally, utterly, completely ruled, and still does -- there's nothing like it in linux, which is all I use now. Don't tell me about the wannabes -- QT, Anjuta, etc all utterly suck compared to MFC if you know it's insides, and I do in all the cases. No really -- drag and drop dialog editing, cool MFC macros for connections you can really munge to do magic, and good message handler so that a single routine can be almost anywhere, and called up by menu, button, keystroke etc without having to write re-direction stubs, MFC rocks, and the others suck once you've used MFC and devstudio. I am tempted to port MFC to linux, drop it someplace anonymously, and run like hell. Along with DevStudio. Nothing would do more for linux that that would, in my hardly ever humble opinion.
Now that it's visual basic and .NET -- I tossed it, and MS in the trash -- no fun anymore and most people who use that are the monkeys in the "enough monkeys and typewriters" parable. If you have a need for an interpreted language that will run a few places with no change -- to hell with Java, try perl and be happy. And Gedit syntax highlights it scary-good,
so it's not write-only. And Tk works on a lot of platforms if you don't need real complexity and utter slickness.
Try that with other stuff -- it's way not there. Nothing MS is cross platform, truly, and it's obviously on purpose, to make others run in place while they get ahead.
So, MS earned my loyalty for awhile, then earned (in spades) the opposite. No, I'm not a fair weather friend, but neither will I tolerate more than a moderate abuse.
I no longer have to write slick guis for a living, so now I took a step back and use Gedit and whatever compilers (I do a lot of embedded work, my opsys) and I'm happy.
Too bad microsoft lost the "developers, developers, developers" mindset and went to "lets make it so monkeys can pretend to program" when the best place for them is far from computers -- this hasn't improved the ecosystem at all.
I was recently struck when a guy mentioned his computer didn't do what he wanted, and my first thought was, simply write a program or even a script to do that.
I suddenly realized that I was not at all a typical user, and things look very different to me -- to a computer, I may as well be god -- right down to the individual bits, not a "user of canned crap". For awhile, the nice platform API, and tools made MS my thing of choice, and I could whip out a fancy gui far faster than any VB or Java "expert" and proved it once while a consultant, against teams of both -- beat them by such a long mile, I'd implemented the underlying logic along the way, while they hadn't gotten all the "Features" displayed yet.
So, a lot of this is a matter of pers
Most people download the pre-cracked OS X from torrents and other means. I don't know anyone who has actually bought OS X to run on their hackintosh, even though Snow Leopard upgrade disk is only $29
The DMCA applies to "effective access control", but the OS X hardware lockout does not actually control access. 100% of the content on the OS X DVD is accessible without it.
As of yet, I don't believe the DMCA has been applied to this kind of software runtime check. Whether this would hold up against someone with competent lawyers is a good question.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Psystar couldn't transfer ownership of the modified copy to the end user without Apple's permission.
Right. However, they do not have to ship the computer to the user for ownership to transfer. All they need to do is complete the sale (e.g. have the customer pay them) before being authorized, by the end user, to install the software the user now owns on the computer the user now owns. The latter is what 117(a) explicitly permits.
Part (a) requires permission from the *owner* of a copy. Part (b) prevents the owner from transferring the modified copy without the copyright owner's permission. Part (b) permission is not required, if the end user owns the copy and the computer prior to the installation, no matter who the installation is done by, provided the end user authorizes it to be done.
The first sale doctrine doesn't cover copying ever. It covers transferring the one copy you bought to another, not making copies of the one copy you bought.
Unfortunately for you, there are things called "licenses." You tend to agree to an expansive one when installing software, but not when buying a car. Accordingly, your analogy is fundamentally flawed.
There is one way to get access to a sizable ROI based on this scheme. What PSYSTAR is/was doing is buying an UPGRADE license and installing it on a new computer. What if they succeded and then started to buy Windows/office upgrades distros, cracking the install codes and selling machines with this software installed. A full windows/office install (Home premium W7 plus Office Pro) is about $600 the upgrades are about $350, split the difference and you have a pretty good markup on a $400 worth of hardware system.
Very good on this. Charlie Perperidis
Unfortunately for you, there are things called "licenses." You tend to agree to an expansive one when installing software, but not when buying a car. Accordingly, your analogy is fundamentally flawed.
A license is a legal agreement that grants you certain rights in exchange for certain terms. If you don't need or want those rights, you can decline the license and stick to the set of rights you were granted by copyright law. For example, you don't need a license to copy an OS onto your hard drive or into RAM, because as the owner of an original copy of the OS, you already have that right.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Yeah really - mod parent up. This is largely an issue of contract not copyright. The Apple EULA says "thou shalt not do X" Pystar did "X" and the court said that they had to stop it. Pystar raised some copyright issues but the big shut down is because the EULA is enforceable in court. Am I following along?
Apparently.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
You're misconstruing the law. If you buy OS X, you buy the physical media that contains software. You cannot make a second copy of the software without permission. This is textbook copyright law.
The EULA gives you permission to make a copy.
So when you say
you are wrong.
Carroll Shelby built his cars at the behest of the Ford Motor Company.
You're misconstruing the law. If you buy OS X, you buy the physical media that contains software. You cannot make a second copy of the software without permission. This is textbook copyright law.
No, I'm applying a section of the law that you seem to be unaware of: 17 USC 117, which explicitly allows the owner of a copy of a software program to create copies or adaptations, or to have a third party make them on his behalf, as long as they are (1) for archival purposes or (2) necessary for using the software with a machine. This is also "textbook copyright law", unless your textbook is 30 years old.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I imagine if you tried to sell the modified GM vehicle, GM would come after you with their lawyers.
Carroll Shelby, Mopar, and Magnuson Moss think you're full of crap.
Remember the Slashdot rules:
Always use a car analogy?
[UID-HeinzIntel]
And i believe you lack basic reading comprehension. There is no sale of a modified version in the proposed scheme.
Well put, sir.
It's this deluge of traffic of unlicensed copyright material by freetards that's giving media companies the ammunition they need to get these crazy laws passed. And people buying their products that give them the money to buy them.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
No, I don't think so. The ruling starts:
A. Reproduction Right and Section 117.
According to Apple, Psystar has violated its exclusive right to copy Mac OS X. Psystar admits that it has made copies of Mac OS X and installed those copies on non-Apple computers
i.e., The first copy to the imaging server was not legal, and therefore every subsequent copy/adaption was also illegal, regardless of the EULA & first sale doctrine.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
(Also I have to complain. 90% of the discussion here is computards arguing Apple sucks/Apple rules/I like my iPod, and ignoring the issues at hand. Slashdot is really full of knuckledraggers nowdays.)
You must be new here.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Im replying to you on a $80 windows machine because my mac broke for the second time on friday. I wont be buying another mac, not because of the shit they pull, but because they aint all they are cracked up to be.
Wohoo, Jesus Christ has just awarded me the Reader of the year prize!
PsyStar is piggy-backing on Apples research and development. They subsidize a lot of apps and the OS itself with the computer sale.
Apple tried making nice with clones in the past and they reduced their margins, without really expanding the market.
Now, I think it should be OK for a company to clone a platform or reverse engineer -- but PsyStar has been going well beyond that and selling Apple packages.
I have to admit -- I'm tempted for a Cheaper Mac that has real expandability -- but PsyStar was an antagonistic parasite and they did it the wrong way. My sentiment on that has not much at all to do with liking or disliking Apple. The other thing is that they cannot guarantee compatibility with the next OS update.
And for balance -- I don't have a problem with companies selling unlocked iPhones. However, they have to buy them at the unsubsidized cost, because it's kind of stealing because you are borrowing the money upfront.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Thinking strategically starts with knowing and focusing on your desired end goal. So for whom was Psystar's business model a desired end goal? I can't think of anyone but Psystar. Microsoft is not aided in any way by weakened EULAs or weakened software copyrights. Even if Psystar won this case, Apple would be under no duty to support these installs of OS X, and Dell, HP, and other system manufacturers are not going to install an OS on their computers unless they have commercial support for it. Not to mention the reaction they would receive from Microsoft if they started pushing PCs with OS X instead of Windows.
Even if I accept everything else you wrote about strategery, I still don't buy it in this case, because I don't see what a hand in the puppet would gain (unless it were Psystar and its investors).
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Partisan, are we?
It's a little hard to tell mind with words like "Psystar just got what's coming to them in the California case."
With wording like that, it's hard to figure out where you stand...
DMCA allows interoperability hacking.
It's been 1 hour, 58 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
I'm pretty sure you can't read, as you skipped Step 2. But hey, could be wrong, you might be willfully ignoring facts that interfere with your storyline.
1st: How much does Apple pay you? Every one of your posts *ever* is defending them.
2nd: I already covered step 2 in my first post, so maybe you can't read. But hey, could be wrong. You could just be a dumbass troll that forgot what thread he was responding to.
1st: How much does Apple pay you? Every one of your posts *ever* is defending them.
Say you run into a gaggle of idiots who say that Britney Spears likes some bestiality with after a nice dinner amongst her fellow cannibals. You point out that this is absurd, that Ms. Spears doesn't engage in bestiality or eat other human beings.
Does this now make you a Britney Spears fanboy?
2nd: I already covered step 2 in my first post,
No. You didn't. You're talking about sribbling in the margins, not replacing sections of the book with your own passages and reselling it for a profit. You're comparing Apples to oranges.
But hey, could be wrong.
This would be a change?
Just as long as it's not the cover. Ever see that warning at the front saying something like "If this book doesn't have a cover it has been reported as destroyed and is being sold illegally"?
As for pages in the book, nope. If you buy it new you can take it back for a replacement, though, since it is defective. Used, tough luck, should have checked first.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Just wondering- have you tried out OS X? I especially like Office Mac better then the Windows versions, but that's just my preference/opinion.
I also blew off Apple from around '98 until my wife bought me a Macbook Pro for Christmas in 2006.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
But the grandparent's assertion was that any "real geek" would have Linux, Windows and OS X machines.
Microsoft didn't create the SCO situation, but they were certainly friendly toward their shenanigans.
I worked for an Apple dealer at the time of OS X's launch. I tried it, but was unimpressed. I haven't looked back since.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Mono gives Windows, Linux, and OS X have official support, and BSD community support.