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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 .
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're right.
The single vendor lock-in is just killing them. They were doing so well when they allowed others to build Mac clones, they should just go back to doing that. Jobs was obviously an idiot for cancelling the scheme - if he hadn't the company may have been a household name by now, instead on teetering on the brink of disaster.
Advanced users are users too!
Meh. Apple is pretty happy where they are. If their hardware suits you and fits your needs, buy it as necessary. Otherwise, avoid it. Many many people have a hard time doing that. If Apple finds themselves needing to change because of this down the road, they will. It's that simple.
If you're building a hackintosh, good for you. Tinkering with things like that can be fun. But please don't start acting like Apple is supposed to support you. Don't install it on production machines. The hacking part of the hackintosh is supposed to be half the fun anyway. But that is it.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
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.
This statement seems silly on the face of it, and would benefit from some, you know, supporting evidence.
Mac's marketshare has been steadily increasing for quite some time now. Not to mention that I know lots o' Windows folks who swear by HP/Dell/Sony (pick one) for their personal computers, and Unix/Linux admins who will only buy Sun or SGI or whatever.
Even outside of the computer realm, people become enamored of particular brands all the time - be it automobiles, televisions, appliances... whatever. And once they lock themselves into that mindset, it is not easy for them to change their opinions.
#DeleteChrome
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.
This space left intentionally blank.
The claim that OS X is "absolutely irrelevant to any reasonable person" [emphasis mine] isn't a terribly reasonable statement.
By that logic, Windows is irrelavent (to any reasonable person) because you are tied to a single software vendor.
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.
I would speculate that Apple is not really threatened by Frankenmacs in general. The kind of hobbyist who is technically inclined and is willing to put something like this together is probably outside of their target audience. I have known people who bought Macs not because they were fans of Apple, but because they were dissatisfied with PCs loaded with Windows. They were not technically inclined and most of their PC problems could be put into two broad categories: configuration issues and malware. They found Macs to be a breath of fresh air not because they think Apple is "hip" and "cool" but because they found its GUI to be easy and intuitive and its underlying Unix system to be rock-solid stable and not prone to malware. They felt like they found something that "just worked" and felt like that is what they were paying a higher price for. I think of these folks as Apple's target audience.
For those reasons, TPM would be a rather extreme measure. They are, at least for now, taking the "other option" of going after commercial Frankenmac producers legally instead of technologically. The precendent this sets is quite likely to discourage other companies from doing the same. The only ones left who are building Frankenmacs are doing so personally and not commercially and for the reasons I mentioned above, are probably not Apple's main market.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Who are these few people that you speak of? If you mean slashdotters, that might be true. The average person buying a computer doesn't care. They mostly care if the computer they are buying will work for them. They should care more about these things but they don't.
Yes, we've heard the death knell of Apple before. That may have been closer to being true ten years ago when Apple was in deep trouble. Today they are sitting on $34 billion in cash. That doesn't account for total assets, that's just cash.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Let's see:
Anti-SCO - check
Anti-MS - check
New entry Pro-Apple - check
I hereby declare Psystar to be a reverse trojan horse. Apple created Psystar so they could sue themselves and once and for all crush any thoughts companies might have of trying to produce generic Apple-compatible platforms for OSX.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
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.
Grand Central Dispatch is interesting, written fro scratch by Apple, and open sourced. You lose.
I don't need to "convince myself". I know better than you do because I bought one, and I know why I bought one. You didn't make that choice, and you're imagining reasons for whay other people (that you despise) did so. Which is rather ignorant of you.
The irony here is that you are the one who is arguing like an emotional sorority girl.
Agreed. Apple is very good at refining the little details that ultimately make the end user experience much better. Almost every competitor seems to miss this. Incredible attention to fine details is not something you can just copy and then hope to make a lot of money from. It's a motivation that has to come from within.
(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
To innovate is not to generate something entirely unique from a vacuum.
Innovation is defined as "making changes in something established by introducing new methods, ideas, or products."
Microsoft is accused of "cloning" because the methods, ideas, and products that they introduce do not generally constitute an improvement.
Lotus to VisiCalc, Netscape to Mosaic, Java to C++, Playstation to SNES, Apple Mac to Xerox Alto...the list goes on and on. It's what the entire industry does.
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?
Seriously, these specific users you talk about don't find Mac's GUI immediately "easy and intuitive" nor the underlying "Unix system" "rock-solid stable" nor do they even know. These are things Mac fanboys like to say, however.
Maybe I'm not part of Apple's target market - since I use a MacBook I inherited from my wife when she upgraded - but I like Apple for many of the same reasons I like Linux (or BSD for that matter). The convenience of being able to bust out a zsh shell counts for a lot when performing operations that are actually quicker and simpler when performed from the command-line than with a GUI. I was actually somewhat (pleasantly) surprised to find that OS X in fact comes with zsh "out of the box". I had figured this would be considered an unnecessary detail on a Mac, but obviously not.
Apart from that, life with Apple is a trade-off between having everything "just work" and having an inflexible GUI of Apple's choice rather than my own.