Why is this so different from format shifting? Music industry makes a CD and says you can't play this on an iPod...shouldn't the music company have a right to say what boxes you can use to play your music? What if Microsoft says you can only install Windows on approved manufacturers (say, Fujitsu and Toshiba)? What if Microsoft says you can only run Internet Explorer on Windows? Anti-trust?
For many months the music industry allowed Amazon to sell music without DRM, while they didn't allow Apple's iTunes Music Store to do the same. I assume they had the right to do that, otherwise Apple would have sued them. This is not exactly what you asked, obviously. When you downloaded music with DRM from the iTunes Music Store, you actually only had a license to copy the music to iPods or burn them to a CD, nothing else (only iPods were capable to play the music anyway, but the license didn't allow any other players). That seems to have been legal as well. Now if someone sold CDs and I couldn't rip them and download and play the music on my iPod, I wouldn't buy the CD. A huge, huge percentage of potential customers would either ignore this, or not buy the CD. So the record company would lose lots of sales. That's why this doesn't happen.
With Microsoft, they have a monopoly in the operating system market. Apple is allowed to do things that Microsoft isn't allowed to do. (Actually, when Apple does the same thing as Microsoft, it is not the same. Like there is a difference between a six year old girl hitting you in the face and Mike Tyson doing the same thing. It just doesn't feel the same).
The last one, did you mean "only run Internet Explorer on Windows, not on MacOS X"? That's the case right now. Or did you mean "only run Internet Explorer on Windows, not Firefox"? That would be anti-competitive, because Microsoft wouldn't tell you what to do with _their_ software, but with someone else's software.
I should re-read the Psystar articles again, but I was pretty sure some of the penalties they are facing are because the Judge counted the contents of RAM as an extra copy.
You are actually completely wrong.
Yes, loading software into RAM means you are making a copy. That is bloody obvious. And when you have a license to use the software, then you automatically have the right to make the copy into RAM as well; when you don't have the license to use the software, you don't have the right to make that copy. But so far the judge has only decided that Psystar has indeed made copies without permission, made modifications without permission, and distributed the modified software without permission, exactly the three things that the copyright holder has the right to allow or not allow.
Damages are a second phase. Apple asks for two kind of damages: For copyright infringement, and for DMCA violation. For the copyright infringement, Apple apparently lets them get away very, very cheap: Apple only asks for $30,000 per work, once for MacOS X 10.5 and once for MacOS X 10.6. If you remember, Jammie whatshername was fined $80,000 per work, for 24 works, each work being not a complete operating system, but just a song that you could download for 99 cents or less. Apple didn't count how many copies were made when asking for damages for copyright infringement. If Apple gets what they want, then anyone in trouble with the RIAA should take very, very good notice of this.
However, Apple asks for $2500 per DMCA violation, and counts each computer shipped as one DMCA violation, and each upgrade disk that Psystar shipped as one DMCA violation. Apple thinks that starting each computer to check that it works would have been a DMCA violation, but doesn't ask for damages for that. And Apple says that every time a Psystar customer starts their computer, that is another DMCA violation, but not committed by Psystar. The DMCA violation is what will kill Psystar. That's also more important for Apple, because a company might be able to get around the copyright infringement, but they can't get around the DMCA violation.
I was raised to believe that possession is 9/10 the law. If I own the medium the software is contained on, and disagree with the license, which law is on the books that says it's illegal for me to run the software any which way I choose?
Part of the purchase agreement is that Apple only sells a box with MacOS X if you agree to the license. Up to the point where you agree to the license, you have a box in your hands that is legally Apple's, and Apple has money in its hands that is legally yours. You have the right to disagree with the license and return the box for a refund.
So before you agree to the license, you have no rights at all. You have the same rights as the postman who delivered the software to your home - he held software in his hands that wasn't his own, he had no right to install it anywhere. After you agree to the license, you agreed. Even Psystar did never, ever argue that Apple's license didn't in principle apply. They only disagreed (strongly) with certain terms in the license, not with the license itself.
Owning the medium of the software clearly means nothing. You could always buy a recordable DVD and make a copy of the software and you would clearly own the medium, but that wouldn't give you any rights either. And you don't own the software: You have a license allowing certain uses, and since you asked, it is _copyright law_ that doesn't allow you to make any copies without permission (license) of the copyright holder.
So at what point does Apple's behaviour become anti-competitive ? They *are* shutting out other manufacturers from making hardware that *could* run their software.
Apple doesn't stop any manufacturer up to one point: Macs contain a chip with a (not very secret) key that is needed to decrypt the MacOS X software. Dell could make a 100 percent Mac compatible computer up to the point that this key mustn't be there, because adding that key constitutes a DMCA violation.
You could have read the text of Judge Alsup's judgement. He had to look at exactly the question that you raised. And what he saw is that Apple tells you and anyone else what you can do with MacOS X. And that is exactly what copyright law is intended for. Apple does _not_ tell you what to do with anybody else's software. Apple doesn't tell you what to do with your computer as long as it doesn't involve Apple's software.
It's still inane. I argue this is similar to time-shifting. If they paid for the copies, who cares where they install them?
You can argue as much as you like, but Judge Alsup didn't agree with you. Mostly because that is not what happened.
Psystar paid for boxes with MacOS X and a license that allows installation on one Apple-labeled computer. They shipped their computers with these _unopened_ boxes. Whoever bought one of their computers now has a box with MacOS X which they can install completely legally on any Apple computer. Clearly these boxes have _nothing_ at all to do with the software that Psystar installed on their computers. Actually, the court saw evidence that the software in the boxes and the software installed was not the same. Psystar didn't even bother to argue in court that they bought boxes with MacOS X. Had they bought boxes with Windows 7, or boxes full of popcorn, it would have exactly the same legal effect - none whatsoever.
Let me say that again: Psystar bought boxes with MacOS X and sold them on. If you buy MacOS X and sell it on, then there are no rights that stick with you.
Some copyright is quite reasonable. What we need is a legalization of noncommercial copyright infringement. Leave the rest of copyright law perfectly as it is. I should be able to share all the files I want, but as soon as I start trying to make money doing that, that's when it should become illegal (as it is today).
I don't think there should be a distinction between commercial and non-commercial, there should be a distinction depending on the amount of damages, and obviously commercial copying would give more evidence of damages.
But consider what could happen if non-commercial infringement wasn't punished: Let's say Steve Jobs has an argument with someone who happens to be the boss of a record company. So Steve Jobs buys two dozen XServes, goes to a record store and buys all CDs made by that record company, plus orders all their back catalogue, hires someone to load these CDs onto the computers, then makes them available to the whole world, without asking for a penny. For a million dollars, he could drive that record company into bankruptcy. Completely non-commercial.
32 inch TVs with 1920 x 1080 resolution are available for under $500. I don't think they will play any TV without an antenna, so that's nothing to worry about. Only problem is that in the cheap price range, you only get VGA (poor quality) or HDMI, so you might need a DVI-HDMI adapter on top.
The thing is though if the top 1000 sites used robots.txt and the noindex meta tag to remove themselves from google, then google could just ignore robots.txt and the noindex meta tag for the top 1000 sites and index them anyway. Ultimately if the site is publicly accessible then google can index it and there is nothing anybody could do about it.
Either Google and other search engines respect this or they don't. If _all_ search engines respect robots.txt etc., then a site doesn't disappear just from Google, it disappears from all search engines. $1 million isn't much to commit suicide. And if some Microsoft search engine doesn't respect robots.txt, then why should Google?
About the only way for an Apple clone maker to stay in business is to make actual clones (which run an unmodified OS X) and distribute a boxed copy of OS X uninstalled with the machine. I think that's the only bullet-proof business model.
If the customer doesn't have the right to install MacOS X on the computer (which they wouldn't because it isn't an Apple-branded computer), and the machine has been built to contain circumvention of Apple's copy protection, then you get these two, and there is way around it.
And if the program in question happened to be MS Word? Then they'd have had a big problem. Of course, they probably don't let outside companies contribute code to Word, but this still works as good PR from Microsoft's point of view. They had to release the code for a fairly unimportant tool that they got a third party to write and they got to point to this as an example of the GPL forcing a big company to release their code. ('if even Microsoft is forced to release their code by the GPL then we'd better make sure we avoid it!')
They didn't have to release the source code.
Apparently some contractor illegally copied GPL'd code (selling the code the Microsoft without mentioning that it is licensed under the GPL is likely copyright infringement), and Microsoft distributed the code, unwittingly committing copyright infringement itself. Microsoft was not forced to publish the source code. They had the choice between publishing the source, making the distribution legal, or going to court for copyright infringement, and they choose the option that was cheaper. If GPL'd code was found in Word, Microsoft would probably go to court and pay whatever fine they were ordered to pay.
And seriously, you would have to be either stupid beyond believe or a criminal to think you could use anybody's source code without studying what license it comes with, and without deciding that following the license is acceptable. I can't say which category Microsoft's contractor fell under. And if you don't want to publish your source code then yes, you should avoid incorporating GPL'd code.
Well I wouldn't want to charge my parents anything, even if I do get calls once a month about computer problems and have to walk them through every single step. Main reason being, what if my parents decided to send a bill my way for room and board and financial help they've given me, it could take me years to pay that off! It's a pretty sweet deal in my opinion.
What you can do is to write a bill, charging a reasonable rate like $60 per started hour including your journey time (if it is not at your home), and at the end give them a 100% rebate. Make sure that they see the real cost. Then take them to the nearest Apple Store. Show the bill to the salesperson and ask "what can we get for three times this amount". Obviously make sure that your bill is high enough to get them a nice suitable Mac.
The Sherman AntiTrust act and Section 3 of the Clayton act prohibit artificially tying two of your products together by contract if those types of products are normally available separately in an anti-competitive way: when you are a company that has the massive amount of economic power that Apple has.
What "massive economic power"? Is there any netbook that doesn't ship either with Windows or Linux?
Apple ships all Macs with MacOS X. That is tying. If Apple had a larger market share, like 30%, or 70% of all computers sold, then Microsoft could complain that this is anti-competitive against Microsoft, and at the very least Apple should give some refund to anyone removing MacOS X and installing Windows instead. Since Apple is nowhere near that kind of market share, the argument fails (and it would have been an argument about computer sales anyway).
The MacOS X upgrades that Apple is selling are not actually tied with anything. They have a product that due to its license is only useful to existing Macintosh owners. So how would someone selling netbooks be affected by that? What if Apple didn't sell MacOS X upgrades at all? How can Apple be anti-competitive in a market in which they don't even compete?
I'm curious if apple even has the legal right to restrict installation to apple hardware.
If it's presented after purchase, then you are not obliged to agree to it.
Yet if the store you're supposed to return it to says "all sales final" then wouldn't apple be on the hook for handling refunds of the "refused to consent to the EULA" variety
The MacOS X retail package has a note "sale is subject to acceptance of the license". A sale only happens when both sides agree that it happens. And since Apple doesn't agree to the sales contract unless you accept the license, there is no sale up to that point. No sale, no license, no right to do anything.
And of course Apple is on the hook for refunds if you don't agree to the license. That is what Apple itself says; they say that they will refund your money, as long as either (1) you didn't break the seal on software that was accompanied by a printed license, or (2) the software was not sealed or not accompanied by a printed license, and it is not installed on your computer.
My copy of 10.6 was neither sealed nor accompanied by a printed license, so I would have fully expected to get my money back if I didn't accept the license. On the other hand, without accepting the license there is no purchase (until you accept the license, you just hold a box that belongs to Apple, and Apple holds some money that belongs to you).
This is a free tool to transfer Windows 7 to a different installation medium. Even if this was infringement (and I'm skeptical on that point, the functions "infringed" look pretty standard and trivial to reimplement), they still aren't making a profit on this "theft." The OS is sold as is, they're just providing an additional tool to work with it for free, and separately.
1. It doesn't matter whether Microsoft charges money for that particular utility or not. The utility is a tiny part of a huge set of software that is meant to make Windows more useable to customers, which means more people will buy Windows, which means more money for Microsoft. If Microsoft _has_ copied code, then it was for commercial purposes.
2. Similarities in code don't mean copying happened. It would be even legal for Microsoft to have identical code, as long as it wasn't copied. The problem would be that it would be very hard to convince a judge that you ended up with identical code without copying. But if you have a very well-defined task, like parsing a file in some well-defined format, then it is quite likely that two independent developers would create very, very similar code without any copying.
Only if by "cutting into Apple's profits" you mean "allowing people to pay for OSX and use it on a non-Apple-manufactured machine". These are people who aren't going to buy Apple hardware anyway, but the do want to buy Apple's OS; most of the people would probably stick to Linux or Windows if they don't get their Hackintosh.
From what I am reading on macrumors.com, that is incorrect. Lot's of people posting there who say they are building a hackintosh _instead of_ a Macintosh to save money. I haven't heard of anyone switching from PC + Windows to PC + MacOS X, only from Mac + MacOS X to PC + MacOS X.
First the DMCA does not apply because Apple is not applying DRM or other technical controls on OS X, although that may change thanks to the Pystar lawsuit.
Actually, in the Psystar lawsuit Apple is accusing Psystar of DMCA violation, and Psystar's lawyer (the one famous for increasing his clients fine for copying 24 songs from $220,000 to $1,920,000) is trying his hardest to get documents unsealed where Apple describes their methods for preventing MacOS X from running on other computers.
I signed no EULA to purchase OS X. The EULA is not revealed until after the time of purchase. Doctrine of first sale applies; it's a commodity off-the-shelf good, not a work for hire under contract.
You are wrong. If you look at the package of MacOS X 10.6, it says "sale is subject to acceptance of the license". You go to an Apple Store. You hand over money and get a box. You go home, open the box, stick it in your computer, reboot the computer, the installer comes up, shows the license and asks whether you accept the license or not. When you click "accept", that is the point when the sale has happened. You can instead click "decline", take the DVD out, put it back in its package, take everything to the Apple Store, tell them that you declined to accept the license, and get your money back.
Follow that through to its conclusion: by that logic Toyota, who spent millions developing each car model, can tell you where and how to drive the car. Your microwave oven manufacturer can tell you what brand of popcorn you can pop. Likewise the popcorn maker can tell you what brand of microwave to use.
Car manufacturers do that to a small degree; driving your car in unsuitable situations will likely void your warranty. If you buy a Toyota, use it on a Rallye through Africa and your engine blows up in the Sahara, they will tell you that you can forget about warranty.
Your Microwave might very well have something in the papers that come without that says you cannot use it for commercial use. If you do, and it blows and sets fire to your burger bar, they are not responsible. I don't know about popcorn, but there are coffees coming in special packages designed to be used with one coffee maker; they might come with a license for that coffee maker and not allow you to use it with any other.
What is different is what effect the license violation has. In the case of software, using it in breach of a license is copyright infringement. In case of the unlicensed use of coffee, it would just be a breach of the license with possibly no consequences except loss of warranty, and you can't complain if the coffee tastes bad.
The EULA on my copy of Snow Leopard says I should only install it on an "Apple labled computer". They do helpfully supply two apple lables in the box for you to use.
I'm quite sure that Snow Leopard comes with an SLA (Software License Agreement) and not a EULA, and I'm also quite sure that the license doesn't mention "Apple labled [sic] computers". Read the license carefully. Apple stopped that joke.
Actually in the EULA "Apple-branded hardware", I have a feeling just slapping on a sticker does not equate to being Apple branded, as Apple is not the one claiming it is theirs.
Apple changed the wording from their 10.5 license ("Apple-labeled") to the 10.6 license ("Apple-branded"). Slapping an Apple sticker on a computer would have never worked, it wouldn't have made the computer "Apple-labeled", but the new wording reduces the number of jokers who think it does. I think the small number of other companies named Apple (like Apple Corps, the company that released the Beatles music), could have built their own computers for their internal use, put their own Apple-stickers on them (not Apple Inc. stickers, but their own) and claimed that it was Apple-labeled. Of course they couldn't have sold those computers because Apple Inc is the only company having the trademarks to trade in Apple-labeled computers. But nobody but Apple Inc. can make an "Apple-branded" computer.
Considering I can buy a 1TB drive for less than $100, I don't particularly care which percentile I might inhabit... I see absolutely no reason to rip CD's at anything less than 320.
There is a reason. I don't know if this has changed with flash drives, but with the tiny hard disks inside an older iPod or similar player, the playing time is largely limited by the amount of data read. Playing 320 kbit/sec MP3s will empty the batteries much faster than 128 kbit/sec. Now my iPod is 98% of the time in my car attached to a charger, so I don't care, but some people will.
If you are close enough that you can copy songs from my computer over WiFi if I allow it, then you are also close enough to come to my computer, plug in a cheap external drive, and copy the whole lot, again if I allow it.
No, because not all Mersenne numbers are prime numbers. Example: 2 ^ 4 - 1 = 15 And 15 is divisible by both 3 and 5. It's highly unlikely for two Mersenne primes to be adjacent to each other as Mersenne numbers but not impossible. If you could verify your assertion, you might just be eligible. I'm guessing it's already been checked by no by GIMPS though.
Here's the complete list of all consecutive Mersenne numbers that are both primes: 3 = 2^2-1 and 7 = 2^3-1.
2^n-1 can only be a prime if n is a prime, because 2^(ab) - 1 is divisible by 2^a - 1 and 2^b - 1. And (2, 3) are the only two consecutive primes.
One may also argue that the "work" being accessed is the hardware itself. That argument itself is utter crap, on account of the hardware not being protected by copyright to begin with, failing the "protected under this title" portion.
The real failure is that DMCA covers copy protection that prevents _unauthorized_ access. That's why Lexmark fell flat on their face, because they prevented access to the software in their printer, but the owner of the printer was actually _authorized_ to access the software. The owner of the hardware is authorized to use it.
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Why is this so different from format shifting? Music industry makes a CD and says you can't play this on an iPod...shouldn't the music company have a right to say what boxes you can use to play your music? What if Microsoft says you can only install Windows on approved manufacturers (say, Fujitsu and Toshiba)? What if Microsoft says you can only run Internet Explorer on Windows? Anti-trust?
For many months the music industry allowed Amazon to sell music without DRM, while they didn't allow Apple's iTunes Music Store to do the same. I assume they had the right to do that, otherwise Apple would have sued them. This is not exactly what you asked, obviously. When you downloaded music with DRM from the iTunes Music Store, you actually only had a license to copy the music to iPods or burn them to a CD, nothing else (only iPods were capable to play the music anyway, but the license didn't allow any other players). That seems to have been legal as well. Now if someone sold CDs and I couldn't rip them and download and play the music on my iPod, I wouldn't buy the CD. A huge, huge percentage of potential customers would either ignore this, or not buy the CD. So the record company would lose lots of sales. That's why this doesn't happen.
With Microsoft, they have a monopoly in the operating system market. Apple is allowed to do things that Microsoft isn't allowed to do. (Actually, when Apple does the same thing as Microsoft, it is not the same. Like there is a difference between a six year old girl hitting you in the face and Mike Tyson doing the same thing. It just doesn't feel the same).
The last one, did you mean "only run Internet Explorer on Windows, not on MacOS X"? That's the case right now. Or did you mean "only run Internet Explorer on Windows, not Firefox"? That would be anti-competitive, because Microsoft wouldn't tell you what to do with _their_ software, but with someone else's software.
I should re-read the Psystar articles again, but I was pretty sure some of the penalties they are facing are because the Judge counted the contents of RAM as an extra copy.
You are actually completely wrong.
Yes, loading software into RAM means you are making a copy. That is bloody obvious. And when you have a license to use the software, then you automatically have the right to make the copy into RAM as well; when you don't have the license to use the software, you don't have the right to make that copy. But so far the judge has only decided that Psystar has indeed made copies without permission, made modifications without permission, and distributed the modified software without permission, exactly the three things that the copyright holder has the right to allow or not allow.
Damages are a second phase. Apple asks for two kind of damages: For copyright infringement, and for DMCA violation. For the copyright infringement, Apple apparently lets them get away very, very cheap: Apple only asks for $30,000 per work, once for MacOS X 10.5 and once for MacOS X 10.6. If you remember, Jammie whatshername was fined $80,000 per work, for 24 works, each work being not a complete operating system, but just a song that you could download for 99 cents or less. Apple didn't count how many copies were made when asking for damages for copyright infringement. If Apple gets what they want, then anyone in trouble with the RIAA should take very, very good notice of this.
However, Apple asks for $2500 per DMCA violation, and counts each computer shipped as one DMCA violation, and each upgrade disk that Psystar shipped as one DMCA violation. Apple thinks that starting each computer to check that it works would have been a DMCA violation, but doesn't ask for damages for that. And Apple says that every time a Psystar customer starts their computer, that is another DMCA violation, but not committed by Psystar. The DMCA violation is what will kill Psystar. That's also more important for Apple, because a company might be able to get around the copyright infringement, but they can't get around the DMCA violation.
I was raised to believe that possession is 9/10 the law. If I own the medium the software is contained on, and disagree with the license, which law is on the books that says it's illegal for me to run the software any which way I choose?
Part of the purchase agreement is that Apple only sells a box with MacOS X if you agree to the license. Up to the point where you agree to the license, you have a box in your hands that is legally Apple's, and Apple has money in its hands that is legally yours. You have the right to disagree with the license and return the box for a refund.
So before you agree to the license, you have no rights at all. You have the same rights as the postman who delivered the software to your home - he held software in his hands that wasn't his own, he had no right to install it anywhere. After you agree to the license, you agreed. Even Psystar did never, ever argue that Apple's license didn't in principle apply. They only disagreed (strongly) with certain terms in the license, not with the license itself.
Owning the medium of the software clearly means nothing. You could always buy a recordable DVD and make a copy of the software and you would clearly own the medium, but that wouldn't give you any rights either. And you don't own the software: You have a license allowing certain uses, and since you asked, it is _copyright law_ that doesn't allow you to make any copies without permission (license) of the copyright holder.
So at what point does Apple's behaviour become anti-competitive ? They *are* shutting out other manufacturers from making hardware that *could* run their software.
Apple doesn't stop any manufacturer up to one point: Macs contain a chip with a (not very secret) key that is needed to decrypt the MacOS X software. Dell could make a 100 percent Mac compatible computer up to the point that this key mustn't be there, because adding that key constitutes a DMCA violation.
You could have read the text of Judge Alsup's judgement. He had to look at exactly the question that you raised. And what he saw is that Apple tells you and anyone else what you can do with MacOS X. And that is exactly what copyright law is intended for. Apple does _not_ tell you what to do with anybody else's software. Apple doesn't tell you what to do with your computer as long as it doesn't involve Apple's software.
It's still inane. I argue this is similar to time-shifting. If they paid for the copies, who cares where they install them?
You can argue as much as you like, but Judge Alsup didn't agree with you. Mostly because that is not what happened.
Psystar paid for boxes with MacOS X and a license that allows installation on one Apple-labeled computer. They shipped their computers with these _unopened_ boxes. Whoever bought one of their computers now has a box with MacOS X which they can install completely legally on any Apple computer. Clearly these boxes have _nothing_ at all to do with the software that Psystar installed on their computers. Actually, the court saw evidence that the software in the boxes and the software installed was not the same. Psystar didn't even bother to argue in court that they bought boxes with MacOS X. Had they bought boxes with Windows 7, or boxes full of popcorn, it would have exactly the same legal effect - none whatsoever.
Let me say that again: Psystar bought boxes with MacOS X and sold them on. If you buy MacOS X and sell it on, then there are no rights that stick with you.
Some copyright is quite reasonable. What we need is a legalization of noncommercial copyright infringement. Leave the rest of copyright law perfectly as it is. I should be able to share all the files I want, but as soon as I start trying to make money doing that, that's when it should become illegal (as it is today).
I don't think there should be a distinction between commercial and non-commercial, there should be a distinction depending on the amount of damages, and obviously commercial copying would give more evidence of damages.
But consider what could happen if non-commercial infringement wasn't punished: Let's say Steve Jobs has an argument with someone who happens to be the boss of a record company. So Steve Jobs buys two dozen XServes, goes to a record store and buys all CDs made by that record company, plus orders all their back catalogue, hires someone to load these CDs onto the computers, then makes them available to the whole world, without asking for a penny. For a million dollars, he could drive that record company into bankruptcy. Completely non-commercial.
They have to know that they're never going to get the source code. A) It'd be an incredibly earth-shattering precedent...
SCOs lawyers received a server from IBM with every single version that IBM ever produced of the software both companies were arguing about.
32 inch TVs with 1920 x 1080 resolution are available for under $500. I don't think they will play any TV without an antenna, so that's nothing to worry about. Only problem is that in the cheap price range, you only get VGA (poor quality) or HDMI, so you might need a DVI-HDMI adapter on top.
Otherwise, Dell has a nice 27 inch 1920 x 1200.
The thing is though if the top 1000 sites used robots.txt and the noindex meta tag to remove themselves from google, then google could just ignore robots.txt and the noindex meta tag for the top 1000 sites and index them anyway. Ultimately if the site is publicly accessible then google can index it and there is nothing anybody could do about it.
Either Google and other search engines respect this or they don't. If _all_ search engines respect robots.txt etc., then a site doesn't disappear just from Google, it disappears from all search engines. $1 million isn't much to commit suicide. And if some Microsoft search engine doesn't respect robots.txt, then why should Google?
About the only way for an Apple clone maker to stay in business is to make actual clones (which run an unmodified OS X) and distribute a boxed copy of OS X uninstalled with the machine. I think that's the only bullet-proof business model.
1. Contributory copyright infringement.
2. DMCA violation.
If the customer doesn't have the right to install MacOS X on the computer (which they wouldn't because it isn't an Apple-branded computer), and the machine has been built to contain circumvention of Apple's copy protection, then you get these two, and there is way around it.
And if the program in question happened to be MS Word? Then they'd have had a big problem. Of course, they probably don't let outside companies contribute code to Word, but this still works as good PR from Microsoft's point of view. They had to release the code for a fairly unimportant tool that they got a third party to write and they got to point to this as an example of the GPL forcing a big company to release their code. ('if even Microsoft is forced to release their code by the GPL then we'd better make sure we avoid it!')
They didn't have to release the source code.
Apparently some contractor illegally copied GPL'd code (selling the code the Microsoft without mentioning that it is licensed under the GPL is likely copyright infringement), and Microsoft distributed the code, unwittingly committing copyright infringement itself. Microsoft was not forced to publish the source code. They had the choice between publishing the source, making the distribution legal, or going to court for copyright infringement, and they choose the option that was cheaper. If GPL'd code was found in Word, Microsoft would probably go to court and pay whatever fine they were ordered to pay.
And seriously, you would have to be either stupid beyond believe or a criminal to think you could use anybody's source code without studying what license it comes with, and without deciding that following the license is acceptable. I can't say which category Microsoft's contractor fell under. And if you don't want to publish your source code then yes, you should avoid incorporating GPL'd code.
Well I wouldn't want to charge my parents anything, even if I do get calls once a month about computer problems and have to walk them through every single step. Main reason being, what if my parents decided to send a bill my way for room and board and financial help they've given me, it could take me years to pay that off! It's a pretty sweet deal in my opinion.
What you can do is to write a bill, charging a reasonable rate like $60 per started hour including your journey time (if it is not at your home), and at the end give them a 100% rebate. Make sure that they see the real cost. Then take them to the nearest Apple Store. Show the bill to the salesperson and ask "what can we get for three times this amount". Obviously make sure that your bill is high enough to get them a nice suitable Mac.
The Sherman AntiTrust act and Section 3 of the Clayton act prohibit artificially tying two of your products together by contract if those types of products are normally available separately in an anti-competitive way: when you are a company that has the massive amount of economic power that Apple has.
What "massive economic power"? Is there any netbook that doesn't ship either with Windows or Linux?
Apple ships all Macs with MacOS X. That is tying. If Apple had a larger market share, like 30%, or 70% of all computers sold, then Microsoft could complain that this is anti-competitive against Microsoft, and at the very least Apple should give some refund to anyone removing MacOS X and installing Windows instead. Since Apple is nowhere near that kind of market share, the argument fails (and it would have been an argument about computer sales anyway).
The MacOS X upgrades that Apple is selling are not actually tied with anything. They have a product that due to its license is only useful to existing Macintosh owners. So how would someone selling netbooks be affected by that? What if Apple didn't sell MacOS X upgrades at all? How can Apple be anti-competitive in a market in which they don't even compete?
I'm curious if apple even has the legal right to restrict installation to apple hardware.
If it's presented after purchase, then you are not obliged to agree to it.
Yet if the store you're supposed to return it to says "all sales final" then wouldn't apple be on the hook for handling refunds of the "refused to consent to the EULA" variety
The MacOS X retail package has a note "sale is subject to acceptance of the license". A sale only happens when both sides agree that it happens. And since Apple doesn't agree to the sales contract unless you accept the license, there is no sale up to that point. No sale, no license, no right to do anything.
And of course Apple is on the hook for refunds if you don't agree to the license. That is what Apple itself says; they say that they will refund your money, as long as either (1) you didn't break the seal on software that was accompanied by a printed license, or (2) the software was not sealed or not accompanied by a printed license, and it is not installed on your computer.
My copy of 10.6 was neither sealed nor accompanied by a printed license, so I would have fully expected to get my money back if I didn't accept the license. On the other hand, without accepting the license there is no purchase (until you accept the license, you just hold a box that belongs to Apple, and Apple holds some money that belongs to you).
This is a free tool to transfer Windows 7 to a different installation medium. Even if this was infringement (and I'm skeptical on that point, the functions "infringed" look pretty standard and trivial to reimplement), they still aren't making a profit on this "theft." The OS is sold as is, they're just providing an additional tool to work with it for free, and separately.
1. It doesn't matter whether Microsoft charges money for that particular utility or not. The utility is a tiny part of a huge set of software that is meant to make Windows more useable to customers, which means more people will buy Windows, which means more money for Microsoft. If Microsoft _has_ copied code, then it was for commercial purposes.
2. Similarities in code don't mean copying happened. It would be even legal for Microsoft to have identical code, as long as it wasn't copied. The problem would be that it would be very hard to convince a judge that you ended up with identical code without copying. But if you have a very well-defined task, like parsing a file in some well-defined format, then it is quite likely that two independent developers would create very, very similar code without any copying.
Only if by "cutting into Apple's profits" you mean "allowing people to pay for OSX and use it on a non-Apple-manufactured machine". These are people who aren't going to buy Apple hardware anyway, but the do want to buy Apple's OS; most of the people would probably stick to Linux or Windows if they don't get their Hackintosh.
From what I am reading on macrumors.com, that is incorrect. Lot's of people posting there who say they are building a hackintosh _instead of_ a Macintosh to save money. I haven't heard of anyone switching from PC + Windows to PC + MacOS X, only from Mac + MacOS X to PC + MacOS X.
First the DMCA does not apply because Apple is not applying DRM or other technical controls on OS X, although that may change thanks to the Pystar lawsuit.
Actually, in the Psystar lawsuit Apple is accusing Psystar of DMCA violation, and Psystar's lawyer (the one famous for increasing his clients fine for copying 24 songs from $220,000 to $1,920,000) is trying his hardest to get documents unsealed where Apple describes their methods for preventing MacOS X from running on other computers.
I signed no EULA to purchase OS X. The EULA is not revealed until after the time of purchase. Doctrine of first sale applies; it's a commodity off-the-shelf good, not a work for hire under contract.
You are wrong. If you look at the package of MacOS X 10.6, it says "sale is subject to acceptance of the license". You go to an Apple Store. You hand over money and get a box. You go home, open the box, stick it in your computer, reboot the computer, the installer comes up, shows the license and asks whether you accept the license or not. When you click "accept", that is the point when the sale has happened. You can instead click "decline", take the DVD out, put it back in its package, take everything to the Apple Store, tell them that you declined to accept the license, and get your money back.
Follow that through to its conclusion: by that logic Toyota, who spent millions developing each car model, can tell you where and how to drive the car. Your microwave oven manufacturer can tell you what brand of popcorn you can pop. Likewise the popcorn maker can tell you what brand of microwave to use.
Car manufacturers do that to a small degree; driving your car in unsuitable situations will likely void your warranty. If you buy a Toyota, use it on a Rallye through Africa and your engine blows up in the Sahara, they will tell you that you can forget about warranty.
Your Microwave might very well have something in the papers that come without that says you cannot use it for commercial use. If you do, and it blows and sets fire to your burger bar, they are not responsible. I don't know about popcorn, but there are coffees coming in special packages designed to be used with one coffee maker; they might come with a license for that coffee maker and not allow you to use it with any other.
What is different is what effect the license violation has. In the case of software, using it in breach of a license is copyright infringement. In case of the unlicensed use of coffee, it would just be a breach of the license with possibly no consequences except loss of warranty, and you can't complain if the coffee tastes bad.
The EULA on my copy of Snow Leopard says I should only install it on an "Apple labled computer". They do helpfully supply two apple lables in the box for you to use.
I'm quite sure that Snow Leopard comes with an SLA (Software License Agreement) and not a EULA, and I'm also quite sure that the license doesn't mention "Apple labled [sic] computers". Read the license carefully. Apple stopped that joke.
Actually in the EULA "Apple-branded hardware", I have a feeling just slapping on a sticker does not equate to being Apple branded, as Apple is not the one claiming it is theirs.
Apple changed the wording from their 10.5 license ("Apple-labeled") to the 10.6 license ("Apple-branded"). Slapping an Apple sticker on a computer would have never worked, it wouldn't have made the computer "Apple-labeled", but the new wording reduces the number of jokers who think it does. I think the small number of other companies named Apple (like Apple Corps, the company that released the Beatles music), could have built their own computers for their internal use, put their own Apple-stickers on them (not Apple Inc. stickers, but their own) and claimed that it was Apple-labeled. Of course they couldn't have sold those computers because Apple Inc is the only company having the trademarks to trade in Apple-labeled computers. But nobody but Apple Inc. can make an "Apple-branded" computer.
Considering I can buy a 1TB drive for less than $100, I don't particularly care which percentile I might inhabit ... I see absolutely no reason to rip CD's at anything less than 320.
There is a reason. I don't know if this has changed with flash drives, but with the tiny hard disks inside an older iPod or similar player, the playing time is largely limited by the amount of data read. Playing 320 kbit/sec MP3s will empty the batteries much faster than 128 kbit/sec. Now my iPod is 98% of the time in my car attached to a charger, so I don't care, but some people will.
If you are close enough that you can copy songs from my computer over WiFi if I allow it, then you are also close enough to come to my computer, plug in a cheap external drive, and copy the whole lot, again if I allow it.
No, because not all Mersenne numbers are prime numbers. Example: 2 ^ 4 - 1 = 15 And 15 is divisible by both 3 and 5. It's highly unlikely for two Mersenne primes to be adjacent to each other as Mersenne numbers but not impossible. If you could verify your assertion, you might just be eligible. I'm guessing it's already been checked by no by GIMPS though.
Here's the complete list of all consecutive Mersenne numbers that are both primes: 3 = 2^2-1 and 7 = 2^3-1.
2^n-1 can only be a prime if n is a prime, because 2^(ab) - 1 is divisible by 2^a - 1 and 2^b - 1. And (2, 3) are the only two consecutive primes.
One may also argue that the "work" being accessed is the hardware itself. That argument itself is utter crap, on account of the hardware not being protected by copyright to begin with, failing the "protected under this title" portion.
The real failure is that DMCA covers copy protection that prevents _unauthorized_ access. That's why Lexmark fell flat on their face, because they prevented access to the software in their printer, but the owner of the printer was actually _authorized_ to access the software. The owner of the hardware is authorized to use it.