Man Who Teaches People How To Repair Their MacBooks Alludes To Apple Lawsuit (gamerevolution.com)

New submitter alzoron writes: After the failure of New York's Fair Repair Act, independent third-party unauthorized Apple repair shops seem to be under attack. Louis Rossmann, owner of Rossman Repair Group, INC has uploaded a somewhat vague video alluding to his Youtube site, where he posts videos about repairing out of warranty repairs, possibly being shut down. Several sources (Reddit, Mac Kung Fu, 9to5Mac) have been speculating about this and whether or not Apple is behind this. Game Revolution reported on the video (Link is to cache version of the site since the report has since been removed), breaking down each section of the video. 6:52: Louis informs viewers that they can download YouTube videos. 7:41: Louis mentions that YouTube channels have a "finite lifespan," often because a large corporation has the power and money to shut them down. 8:42: Louis shares that he's happy when he's lived a difficult life so that he can be strong for the immense challenge that is ahead. 10:06: Louis shares that he is going to have to fight from his point onward. 11:22: Louis states that all his videos may soon be gone. 11:32: Louis mentions that his business may disappear. Given what Louis has mentioned, it's apparent that Louis has been threatened by Apple likely for condemning its policies to a growing subscriber base, but also for showing users how to repair its hardware without going through Apple support.

UPDATE 7/1/16: The headline has been updated to clarify that the lawsuit is unconfirmed. We'll continue to update the story as it develops.

Comments

Re:it can't be for distributing copyrighted materi

[l.a.rossmann]

I would say if this is does not constitute educational fair use than I do not know what is. You can only see tiny snippets, you are missing all of the information required to actually design this product.

Re:it can't be for distributing copyrighted materi

[Wrath0fb0b]

Board schematics are a factual description of a physical object. Factual information cannot be copyrighted; 1st amendment issue. You can patent the board, but that doesn't allow you to prevent dissemination of facts..

YANAL, and you have misinterpreted the distinction between facts that cannot be copyrighted, and a particular representation of facts that can be copyrighted.

For instance, I can open the phonebook and copy the entries into a separate database and sell it, because the phone numbers themselves are facts that are not covered by copyright, see [1]. But I could not photocopy an entire page of the phonebook and sell it elsewhere without permission. Similarly, I can take the same ingredients/methods in a recipe book and republish those recipes, see [2]. But I cannot simply photocopy the recipe book and sell it as my own. To quote [2] at length (my emphasis):

[PLAINTIFF's] compilation copyright in [ORIGINAL WORK] therefore may not extend to cover the individual recipes themselves, only the manner and order in which they are presented. Because the record demonstrates that the [DEFENDANT] offer these recipes in substantially altered form and in a manner and order different from that found in [ORIGINAL WORK] we hold that [PLAINTIFF] has not demonstrated the requisite likelihood of success on the merits.

So the question here is did the defendant copy the schematics verbatim or he did he read the schematics and produce a different form of the same factual information separately? Until you answer that question, you cannot reach the question of whether he violated Apple's copyright in the schematic.

[ And, FWIW, I haven't seen the schematics he posted versus the originals, so I can't answer that question and take a side. ]

Further Reading:

[1] Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 347 (1991)
[2] Publications International v Meredith Corp., 88 F.3d 473 (7th Cir., 1996)