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Apple Legal May Be Collecting Evidence


bofors
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Last year on the Mac Bittorrents site (MTKA), Apple Legal contacted the site admins and demanded that they turn over logs to identify the IP addresses of forum users, which they foolishly did and resulted in three MTKA users getting sued by Apple.  Clearly, that same thing could happen here possibly with a subpoena.  This means PM's could be used to build cases against individual OSx86project users as identity is establishable from IP addesses.

 

No, they could not be - care to explain what the correlation between demanding server logs of a known p2p site, to our actual discussion of entrapment, and fair use, is? I tell you: nothing at all.

 

As previously established, you continue to spout doom and gloom, with little correlation to actual facts.

 

 

 

Now, perhaps you would care to explain why this site has yet to receive some kind of "cease and desist" letter from Apple Legal?

 

Oh, I don't know. I'm sure you'll figure it out.

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I'd like to set a couple things straight:

 

First of all, stop throwing about the word "entrapment". Setting aside, for the moment, the terrible Sean Connery film, the term has no meaning outside of criminal court cases. Entrapment is only relevant to a POLICE OFFICER inducing someone to commit a criminal act. When we talk about Apple "suing" someone, it's civil court (i.e. for money). Entrapment doesn't apply and is meaningless.

 

Second of all, big companies don't "build cases" against individuals violating copyright or the DMCA. They rely upon the ordinary person's lack of resources to defend themselves in a major court case -- even if they're in the right. Yes, it's bullying, but that's just the way it works. If Apple threatens to sue me for having a picture of a burning iMac on my webpage, sure I might be well within my rights to display my own images but I don't get to just say -- forget about it, I'm right. Apple has full-time laywers working for it, and I have to take severals days (even if its a quick one) off my job to go down to court. Yes, I have to pay for the transportation and all the expenses.

 

As soon as they identify it, as others have noted, they send a cease and desist order. Most people will comply because it's just easier than trying to fight it (even if they're in the right!). After the cease and desist, then Apple can consider at length whether it's worth it for them to pursue a case against the person for monetary damages.

 

If you want to control a leak or infraction, the first thing you do is to shut it down at the source, and then figure out how to deal with it. You DON'T fish around over time with PMs and tricks while the so called "damaging" information is still being provided. If they actually did this, and it was known, it could actually hurt any legal action they were considering.

 

Indeed the shut down & demand for IP addresses is the (up to this point) standard practice.

 

--Nessus

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Second of all, big companies don't "build cases" against individuals violating copyright or the DMCA. They rely upon the ordinary person's lack of resources to defend themselves in a major court case -- even if they're in the right. Yes, it's bullying, but that's just the way it works. If Apple threatens to sue me for having a picture of a burning iMac on my webpage, sure I might be well within my rights to display my own images but I don't get to just say -- forget about it, I'm right. Apple has full-time laywers working for it, and I have to take severals days (even if its a quick one) off my job to go down to court. Yes, I have to pay for the transportation and all the expenses.

 

As soon as they identify it, as others have noted, they send a cease and desist order.  Most people will comply because it's just easier than trying to fight it (even if they're in the right!). After the cease and desist, then Apple can consider at length whether it's worth it for them to pursue a case against the person for monetary damages.

 

If you want to control a leak or infraction, the first thing you do is to shut it down at the source, and then figure out how to deal with it. You DON'T fish around over time  with PMs and tricks while the so called "damaging" information is still being provided. If they actually did this, and it was known, it could actually hurt any legal action they were considering.

 

Indeed the shut down & demand for IP addresses is the (up to this point) standard practice.

 

--Nessus

And if Apple hasn't acted yet against this forum and others like it...we can only conclude that Apple is interested in its survival. We're doing something useful to them.

 

It seems that, at least partially, John Dvorak was right.

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And if Apple hasn't acted yet against this forum and others like it...we can only conclude that Apple is interested in its survival. We're doing something useful to them.

 

Do not EVER assume that, and most of all, do not EVER publicly rely on such a statemnet.

 

Again, wishful thinking does not make it so.

 

It seems that, at least partially, John Dvorak was right.

 

John Dvorak is an idiot who is wrong so often, that the only times he may claim to be right, is when he accidentally says something, that accidentally turns out to be related to a true turn of events.

 

case in point - almost every industry pundit has claimed, at one point or another, that Apple needs to switch to intel, or that they will switch to intel (sometimes as far back as 15-20 years). Now, despite Apple having had various projects that involved Mac OS ports to intel, the current switch underway does not make any of the right.

 

Hence, whatever Dvorak claims to say, he is talking out of his ass. Plain and simple.

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There are far too many people to go after with lawsuits based on the PM thing.

 

The best and fastest way to shut things down at this point would be cease and desists to all the forum owners. Not the individual users of said forums. That alone would send a strong message to everyone without resorting to expensive lawsuits, and bad P.R. It is never a good idea to sue your customers. Case in point, look at the backlash Metallica caused over MP3's.

 

Then there is the publicity Apple is getting from all of this. Shutting it down now, would be an end to that. Apple has not gotten this much free press in ages. Not to mention interest is higher than it has been since Apples early days.

 

 

Apple is getting a lot of free testing they could not do on their own in a rapid amount of time. Even if they do not decide to release it, without TPM, I am sure they are watching and learning. They could open it based on our research, or, they could take what we did and use it to really lock it down now that they know our methods and its weak points.

 

I think they are not as likely to come after people as many seem to think for a few reasons though. Taking over MS's side of piracy would be one good one. Why would they want that? Domination. If you can win over the pirates, the legit users will follow. Lets face it, TPM was rather quickly (easily?) bypassed and Darwin helped make it possible, something they offer as open source. They had to see that as a loophole (or was that just a HUGE oversight on their part?), and where was M$ during these conversations (and rumours) with Intel. It really does lead one to think Apple may very well release a non locked version soon, based partially on the work done but people like us. Few people will deny that piracy helped M$ gain the desktop market. Apple could do the same, and lets face it, the market is ripe for it, Jobs more than likely wants it, and he could really deal MS a nice blow right where it hurts if he did. However he would more than likely wait for the initial sting to wear off, and keep that secret up until they are ready to announce it.

 

 

Take this all with a grain of salt, obviously, as none of us know Apple's true motives, but they are playing a strange game.

 

I am not saying do not be fearfull of Apple, they really could do some damage, but for the moment, I think we are doing more for them, than against them. Or it is just taking their legal team a while to catch up. They are not used to this much flack.

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I am sure they are watching and learning. They could open it based on our research, or, they could take what we did and use it to really lock it down now that they know our methods and its weak points.
Let's hope not. Though sites like this one can be easely googled and with frontpage refferals like on Neowin.net does generate so much publicity that I can not believe that Apple is not watching along. Just like I suspect they must have been looking at Pearpc.net one moment of another...maybe even got the Rosetta inspired from it...
Taking over MS's side of piracy would be one good one. Why would they want that? Domination. If you can win over the pirates, the legit users will follow.
This makes sense. M$ was spread through a bulk of illigal copies. Why wouldn't Apple follow the same road...? I know: their main income is hardware, not software. Would they ambition be to switch from hardware to software as their main income? :(
Take this all with a grain of salt, obviously, as none of us know Apple's true motives, but they are playing a strange game.

A strange game indeed.

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Let's hope not. Though sites like this one can be easely googled and with frontpage refferals like on Neowin.net does generate so much publicity that I can not believe that Apple is not watching along. Just like I suspect they must have been looking at Pearpc.net one moment of another...maybe even got the Rosetta inspired from it...

 

A strange game indeed.

 

It's definetly hard not to notice what has been going on in the community from day one. Ever since the Harddrive files from the WWDC test machine were leaked Apple has been paying close attention to the goin on's of the community. Looking back, there are many things that Apple could have easily pursued in potential lawsuits, but hasn't (or maybe still is?). For example....

 

>> The WWDC leak, and it's leaker.

>> The DVD leak, and the leaker

>> The various authors of the many patches, cracks, harddisk images that are spread throughout the internet

>> The owners and members of many more sites such as ourselves, and those similar to it.

 

It begs the question, as to what Apple is really doing here. Apple goes after a site such as MacBidouille, for simply displaying pictures and videos, but instead has done nothing, to say, someone like Deadmoo who put up a complete, cracked, working installation of OSX on torrent sites. I'm not saying that any action SHOULD be taken against someone such asDeadmoo, I'm simply stating, how easy would it be for Apple legal to retrieve the IP of someone of of this or other forums, and easily track down their location, address, etc? It's dreadfully easy, in a day and age like this....

 

We know that Apple legal has the power to pursue cases like this, and has done so in the past, but the question is, when, and against exactly who are these allegations going to come about....

 

That's my 2 cents....now flame away. :)

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Apple is using us all to test an unfinished unsupported Operating System! I believe that us using this is not a threat to the mactel systems they will release because of the complexities of getting this developer release to work. I.E. after something like 10 hours of troublshooting I still can't get my Pcmcia wifi card to work correctly with the OS. I'm gonna suggest that Apple was hopeful that such interest would be generated around this release! When was the last time you heard of people who thought it was worthwhile spending hours developing hardware support for a Windows PPC port?

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I'm kinda torn on the issue... there's no question in anyone's mind that what we are doing here is 100% illegal piracy... not the talking about the OS, but actually downloading and installing it. So, what's Apple to do? They could easily crack down on this site, bring people like deadmoo and Maxxuss to court, and win every single case. So the question on everyone's lips is: why haven't they? Judging from what I've read/my own twisted logic, they are biding their time. They see that we are fully able to kick the {censored} out of their current security, and they want to see how. Let us all break their OS, then fix it.

 

And now there's evidence for these claims. The rumored release of Mac OS x86 v10.4.2 would be an opportunity for them to flex their proverbial muscles and try out the newest security advances they've developed. Besides, they could probably shut down each and every one of our copies of the OS via a small, undetectable downlad directly into the kernel itself. Someone said in a different topic thatif something can be constructed, it can also be deconstructed. This works both ways: if Apple can build an OS, they can also kill it. Maybe this is their first step...? Maybe they won't notice, maybe they don't care, but don't count on it.

 

A very strange game, indeed...

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I'm kinda torn on the issue... there's no question in anyone's mind that what we are doing here is 100% illegal piracy... not the talking about the OS, but actually downloading and installing it. So, what's Apple to do? They could easily crack down on this site, bring people like deadmoo and Maxxuss to court, and win every single case. So the question on everyone's lips is: why haven't they? Judging from what I've read/my own twisted logic, they are biding their time. They see that we are fully able to kick the {censored} out of their current security, and they want to see how. Let us all break their OS, then fix it.

 

I think that Maxxus, Deadmoo and others are safe.

 

 

A court will frown on the fact that Apple has waited so long to try and stop it. Waiting this long, means they did not care enough to bother.

 

With I.P., copywrite, patents and such, as soon as you see an infringement you have to go and protect it or you lose the ability to do so later.

 

Basically Apple looks likw a fool waiting this long to drag them in because basically, the cat is out of the bag. Larger companies know this. Apple basically missed their chance. As for the next release, I would expect them to start playing hardball the closer we got to release date.

 

 

 

 

Which fortunately (unfortunately?) this means they expected it to be leaked and used it as a test. face it, it is a crippled O.S. and always will be. Especially after Apples announcement.

 

However if I were a developer who had just spent weeks/months making compatible binaries only to have Apple say "sorry, we changed it, start over, I would be PISSED. Apple wasted a lot of peoples time and money doing that.

 

Treating developers like that is NOT a way to get them to write code for your system. Not that Apple has never shot vendors in the foot before (ATI).

 

I wonder how many lockers Gates and Jobs were shoved into in school.

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  • 4 months later...
OSX86Project (the whole site) is serving as the "home page" for several modifications which potentially (and in Apple Legal's mind, do) violate the DMCA. The forums are not what will get this site sued, it's the WiKi pages that serve as the readme files for the cracks that will.

 

Apple Legal can only send C&D's for forum contents, but they can sue if the site is supporting and furthering work that breaks the TPM's authenticity checks.

 

Think again. The EULA clause tying MacOS to Apple hardware is invalid. Have a look at DMCA §117:

 

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117

 

$ 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. - Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner

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$ 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. - Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner

BOOM! Is that it? The missing point here?

 

Pretend this: I go and buy a windows XP licence. I cant run this on a (example) Sun workstation. What if Sun makes a driver / patch package which I can download for free and it enables my legally bought copy of Microsoft Windows to run on a Sun workstation? Could Microsoft do anything? Guess not according to this article.

 

To be honest, I dont like the apple idea. I understand it but I dont like. Oh man, imagine Microsoft had done that. Taking the biggest and best parts of open source (like POSIX), add a shell and sell this as WINDOWS LXE. The world would go crazy instantly and you bet someone would sue them.

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reminds me of napster vs metallica... first metallica went for napster, then went for almost all the end users. it was ridiculous, but it taught me to never put things past the "Big boys"... they got plenty o money to play with, and people still buy metallica albums.

 

anyway, yes I'm new here. I'm running 10.4.1 right now, currently working on upgrade.

 

hardware:

1.6ghz P4 (not quite fine wine, it's got some age on it)

1gb 266mhz DDR memory

200gb and 80gb 7200rpm harddisks

SB Extigy (not working yet)

Suse linux, Windows MCE, and ofcourse, (you guessed it, I won't implicate myself)

8x DVD+/-RW (thanks to Herrie's firmware page for the - addition)

1500/128 DSL

SMC 10/100 card (internet works perfectly)

NVidia MX440 64mb

 

Suprised it works so well with all this dated hardware

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  • 1 month later...

§ 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. — Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

 

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or

 

(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.

 

:D

 

Ok, I'm not a lawyer but does this basically say; I have the right to take legally owned software (OS X) and 'adapt' it (apply patches) for 'a machine' (my custom built pseudo-mac) to use/run??? It can't be that simple, just go out to a staples, or order it directly from apple.com and be legally allowed to run osx our intel/amd based systems. Also, has anyone noticed you can't buy Mac OSX for intel based apple's yet? You can only order 10.4.3 for powerpc based systems. Does that prevent the use of this limitations on exclusion rights as a defense? Is this a way around this exclusion since you can't legally purchase this software, without purchasing the hardware right now (i assume until 10.5 leopard is released)??? Not trying to be a pain in the ass, just playing devils advocate here.

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The flaw in this reasoning is that this law applies to copyright, not to usage licenses. It's the license to use the software (which you agree to by opening/installing the program) that legally prevents you from installing OS X on generic hardware, not copyright law (the current lack of a legal way of purchasing the software notwithstanding).

 

That being said, several courts have ruled that "click-wrap" licenses cannot be enforced, so depending on your location, this may or may not apply to you.

 

Suprised it works so well with all this dated hardware

 

Hell, OS X runs fairly well on an old 500Mhz G3 with 256MB of RAM, so long as you aren't doing much beyond e-mail and web browsing or listening to music.

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Would it be legal for M$ to have a clause that said you cannot install Windows on other PCs than Dells e.g.?

 

I´m just not so sure that it is legal of Apple to prohibit people to install the software on generic PCs... at least I doubt that the French would accept if the issue would be brought to courts...

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Would it be legal for M$ to have a clause that said you cannot install Windows on other PCs than Dells e.g.?

 

I´m just not so sure that it is legal of Apple to prohibit people to install the software on generic PCs... at least I doubt that the French would accept if the issue would be brought to courts...

 

 

I seriously doubt bill gates and M$ really care what system you install their operating system on just aslong as you buy it and don't pirate it. If you go to the store and buy their system, you can put it on a car stereo if you want to...just don't release the source code...they'd be pissed if you did that!

 

As far as Apple, I hope you're right and it gets thrown out of court if it went. In the US I'm not so sure it would go that way. Here if you have a ton of money, things tend to go your way

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