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Psystar Loses Appeal In Apple Case
The dispute between Mac cloner Psystar and Apple has been a long and twisty one; now, reader UnknowingFool writes that "Last week, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled mostly against Psystar in their appeal of their case with Apple. The Court found for Apple in that they did not misuse copyright by having conditions in the OS X license. Psystar won on one point in which some of the court orders should have not been sealed."
It's not too bad - what do you think would happen to Linux's GPL if the court had ruled that all you have to do to ignore the distribution license is buy it from someone else? You can't just buy a copy of an OS, make a copy, and then sell the copy. For that you need a license. In the case of Apple, they obviously won't give Pystar a license. In the case of Linux, the GPL allows you to do this - but then you need to provide the source in a reasonable way.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
AFAIK this is the first instance where a court has backed Apple's ridiculous claims that they can tie the use of their OS to their hardware by simply adding a clause to their EULA. In the past it wasn't possible for the simple reason that they were using an incompatible architecture.
I'll interpret this as I should, evidence that the justice system in the US is broken and desperately in need of reform.
Their activities were blatantly and obviously illegal.
violating a licensing agreement is not "illegal"
Their whole market was based on selling hardware to run software that wasn't licensed to run on that hardware.
The real problem is that Apple's market is based on selling software with terms that dictate what hardware you use it with.
What else can you SELL and then dictate how it be used to the customer? If I as a copyright holder sell you a copy of my CD do I get to dictate what brand CD player you use?
Yet apple gets to sell software, and then dictate what brand of hardware you use it with. And if you don't do as they say, then they argue the software is "unlicensed" (since when do you need a license to use something you bought?!). By "buying" it you have the right to use it.
But then if you install it you are making a "copy" and violating copyright law. And that makes it illegal.
Except that you don't actually need a license to install software you bought a copy of. The act of purchasing a copy gives you the right to install it.
You don't need an explicit license to put the software you bought on a hard drive for use, or for that copy to be copied into ram for use, or for portions to be copied into l1/l2/l3 cache for use, or for portions to be swapped out to disk during hibernation.
So it is absolutely an abuse of copyright law to argue that the copy Psystar made to install the software is unlawful "distribution".
That the courts went along with Apple's whole licensing installation copies farce is a tragedy.
What else can you SELL and then dictate how it be used to the customer?
Well, I'd think all software released under the GPL and similar licenses would qualify. Particularly GPL3 which was explicitly created to prevent released software from being run on non-compliant hardware. You don't like Apple restricting what hardware their software can run on? Fine, but any loss for Apple in that area is a direct blow to the enforceability of the Open Source license of your choice.
To my mind, software upgrades are an economically efficient and pro-user offering. They are good for both the production and use side of the equation, allowing users to pay directly for the additional cost of development since their last version rather then all the original work and value that went into the product. They allow developers to reward their own supporters and more efficiently allocate resources. Additionally, "upgrades" should be (again, from a user perspective) simply full versions, identical, except cheaper and for existing users. This is how all commercial software I use works as well.
However, the entire concept of upgrades depends completely on legal licensing: that I can have a clause that says "you may not use this unless you previously owned a full version". I already see a number of posts, both here on Slashdot and on other forums (such as the comments with the Ars Technica article on this story), that are enraged at the result, and that argue that Psystar was "adding value" by "lowering hardware costs". The underlying argument is that, if a piece of software is sold, that should be that. However, how do those of you who argue for that square it with upgrading? Do you simply agree with the App Store take, where upgrades don't exist at all? Or do you have some other way of squaring things away?
As things have existed, Mac OS X offerings have all been upgrades and have been priced accordingly. There seems to be a reasonable consideration on both sides here: buyers pay less money, but in exchange have the restriction of needing to have a Mac as Apple has chosen to build their development around an integrated model. Do some of you think that such integrated models should be illegal, regardless of what benefits they offer? Should Apple be required by law to sell a "full" version of Mac OS X, and would you actually be willing to pay what that might cost (ie., if they said "full version, $400")? I'm genuinely curious about people's thoughts around this.
The court should have ruled in favor of Psystar because copyright law is only supposed to kick in when somebody actually makes a copy, and Psystar didn't do that (installing the software doesn't count; there's a specific exception in the law allowing that).
Here is what Psystar did: The took OS X on an Apple machine, then modified it to run on a non-Apple machine by replacing the bootloader and some system libraries. Then they used that copy to mass install onto non-Apple machines. Then they sold the non-Apple machines. I don't see how you can argue that they didn't "copy" it. If Psystar did not sell the non-Apple machines, they are still within copyright laws. Selling them constitutes redistribution and copyright infringement. Copyright law clearly says that modification and redistribution require the permission of the copyright owner which Psystar did not get.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
As for your assertion about redistribution, last i heard those copies were pristine installed by the end user.
What part of "Psystar modified OS X to run on non-Apple machines, installed it on non-Apple machines and sold the machines" is not clear?
If you're argument were correct, then there'd be no reason why Psystar couldn't keep distributing the patch set and machines with the end user left to procure a copy of OSX for themselves. This ruling goes way beyond that and bans the patchset as well as Psystar selling compatible software.
And where was Psystar getting the patch sets? They were taking Apple updates, modifying them, and redistributing them. The court has no problem with Psystar selling compatible software. Psystar was taking Apple's software and modifying it and redistributing it which is against what copyright law allows.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
On top of that, there is no law saying that folks can't replace any libraries on their computer that they want.
And that's not what this lawsuit is about at all either. This is about someone making modifications to Apples copyrighted software and selling it. It has nothing to do with GRUB or LILO, it's nonsense to even drag them into this. The point is: Apple is selling some software available under certain conditions, if you modify their software in violations of their conditions you are breaking copyright law. This is why you cannot re-license GPL code under the BSD license unless you are in fact the copyright holder. This is inherently a good thing.
-- Linux user #369862