Judge Orders Permanent Injunction Against Psystar

AdmiralXyz writes "It appears to be the end of the road for infamous Mac clone-maker Psystar, as a federal judge has issued a permanent injunction against the company, banning it from selling its OS X-based hardware products, following November's ruling that Psystar was guilty of copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Specifically, Judge William Alsup's ruling prevents Psystar from 'copying, selling, offering to sell, distributing or creating derivative works of Mac OS X without authorization from Apple; circumventing any technological measure that effectively controls access Mac OS X; or doing anything to circumvent the rights held by Apple under the Copyright Act with respect to Mac OS X.' The ruling does not include Psystar's Rebel EFI software, which (in theory) allows users to boot OS X onto some Intel computers, but Alsup said that too would be unlikely to stand up in court if Apple decides to make a formal challenge."

Comments

Re:first sale

[Theaetetus]

The judge should have thrown *this* case out based upon the doctrine of first sale.

Instead, the case hinged upon the fact that Psystar didn't have trained monkeys sticking each separate Mac OS X disk into each machine, retarded.

Well, no, the case hinged on the fact that Psystar loaded an image of OSX (permissible format shifting), modified the image (permissible fair use), and then copied that image (impermissible reproduction), and sold the modified image (impermissible creation and distribution of a derivative work). But sure, go on believing that the judge is a moron who doesn't understand network installs, in spite of the fact that he's expressly referred to them twice in his decisions. I'm sure you know better.

Re:Just for fun

[crmarvin42]

No, you are wrong.

They are trying to weasel around the injuction by doing what you describe NOW, but originally they were selling PC's with OSX pre-installed. That means that Pystar was doing the illegal modification and re-distribution. The RebelEFI product they came out with recently is an attempt to shift the burden of legal responsibility to their customers.

The legal status of RebelEFI was not decided explicitly by the courts injunction, but the Judge indicated that he doubted it would be exempt from the degree, and that Pystar proceeded with its sale at its own peril. That is because selling tools to circumvent DRM is as illegal as doing the circumvention yourself. That the RebelEFI is reported by some to be ripped off work from the Hackintosh community just makes Pystar that much more reprehensible IMO. Many can get behind the idea of "Screw the Man", but they appear to be trying to "Screw the Masses" as well.