Actually, it's a moral argument
</NITPICK>
Well, if would be nice, if it was an ethical discussion, but at this point, it's not really much of anything
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Sues Psystar over OpenComputer
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Well, if would be nice, if it was an ethical discussion, but at this point, it's not really much of anything
If someone pays for, say, a movie, then they should be able to do whatever the hell they want with it short of redistributing multiple, separate copies. Make a dozen backups. Have it playing in two rooms at once. Invite the neighbours over for a movie night. Re-edit it to cut out all the sex scenes. Whatever. It's their copy. Further, they should also be able to engage the services of any third party to do these things on that copy.
No-one would think twice of doing any of these things to a piece of physical property (which "intellectual property is ostensibly the equivalent of). Can you imagine Honda bringing a lawsuit against you because you bought one of their cars and repainted it ? Can you even conceive of a furniture store telling you that you weren't allowed to let visitors sit on your sofa without paying the store more every time ? Would you respond with anything but laughter if a grocery store told you that you could only use their produce in Kosher meals ?
Finally, none of it falls outside of the spirit of copyright (or even Fair Use, as I understand it). Some of it may fall outside of current copyright law, but that is because the law is wrong. What Psystar is doing is exactly the same. It is well within the bounds of the spirit of copyright and "fair use" (although it will probably be found outside of the law, which will be just another nail in the coffin).
If it is legal for me to do something, it should not be illegal for me to engage a third party to do it on my behalf. If what Psystar is doing is illegal, then everything the OSX86 project is doing, must also (and firstly) be illegal.
Agreed. However, if Psystar DID modify something that they did not own - they sold it as the original - they didn't and still dont market it as PsyOS or whatever. They don't ahve the right to take someone else's work, modify and sell it as their own, or as the original. That is my point.
Even derivative OSs are bound by legal precedent, aka getting a license for the original work that allows derivative works to be sold.
drsmithy, did note that they modified or replaced .kext files -- which is what got a lot of the old upgrade companies in trouble in the System 1-9 days.
Then they learned how to do their work by patching around the OS and leaving all Apple's files unmolested -- and Apple left them alone.
Don't think the Psystar monkeys did anything more than sell an OS they got from a torrent site and charge you $25 for it.
Their legal smarts make me think they aren't smart enough to even be script monkeys and do it themselves.
At no point - at least as far as I can tell - are Psystar attempted to sell OS X as "their own".
The "modifications" they need to do to make it work, as far as I'm concerned, fall well within the boundaries of both the spirit of copyright and "fair use".
Again, if I can make a store-bought copy of OS X work on a PC I own and not be guilty of anything, there is no justifiable reason why Psystar should be guilty of anything for doing the exactly same procedure on my behalf. None. At all.
What Psystar have done goes well beyond fair use. I'm surprised that someone has mentioned it.
There's a lot of talk here about ethics, morals... the 'spirit' of copyright, none of which is worth a hill of beans in a court of law.
Are you saying that buying some piece of software (or music, or a movie, or whatever) and then tearing into it with a disassembler (or sound editor, or video editor) is not "fair use" ?
How about when I use code made available by Apple themselves to get their software to work in a way they'd prefer I didn't ? Does that fall outside of "fair use" ? Why ?
Hence my repeated statements that the law is wrong and that copyright has far exceeded the boundaries it should be working within. Psystar are, almost certainly, going to get blown away in court - but that is in every way a tragedy and in no way a triumph. They haven't done anything wrong, and they haven't done anything that, were they dealing with physical property rather than the imaginary stuff, would even be considered slightly unusual.
Strictly speaking, yes. 'Fair use' has a narrow and specific definition as understood under copyright law and does not permit a licensed work to be used in full and redistributed without the copyright holder's permission.
Fair use does not mean 'it should be fair to use it'.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Of course they've done something wrong. At least I've taken the trouble to read the filing; I linked to it upthread. We've had copyright laws for hundreds of years precisely because these are not physical items. I get the feeling that you think that all creative products of art, industry and commerce, including patents, should be freely available to all, to do with how they see fit. Is that an accurate summary of your view on these matters?
So which other things that are "fair use" suddenly stop being when I get a third party to do it on my behalf ? Can I get someone to make a backup copy of a DVD for me, even if they charge me $5 for their time ?
"Illegal" does not imply "wrong".
I'm not quite sure how you get from argument I've been presenting of "if you buy a copy of something you should be able to modify it for your own use, or pay someone else to do it for you", to "everything should be free".
Because you have it backwards. Telling owners of creative works that they can not control distribution of their own works is bad for consumers, because it will discourage the creation of those creative works in the first place.
Hello. McFly. Welcome to copyright 101.
Here's a better analogy that I used today to think this through myself.
Let's say I purchased a book written by Steven King. Now let me ask a series of questions.
1) Does it violate copyright for me to sell the book? No.
2) What if I wrote some notes in the margin and my name on the inside front cover? No, still ok to sell it.
3) What if I draw lines through the last page, write my own ending on the backside of the page, and slap a sticky on the front of the book saying "includes the 'saltyzoo' ending!"? Probably still ok, if it's one copy.
4) What if I do #3 and begin mass production? I'd probably be sued to the stone-ages and lose badly.
So then, I asked myself these questions.
1) Forget the law, does it *harm* Steven King for me to sell the book as described in #1 above? No, he sold one book, and there is still only one book out there that has been paid for.
2) Does it *harm* Steven King for me to do #2? Nope
3) Does it *harm* Steven King for me to do #3? Nope, he was paid for the copy of the book, he is getting full credit for writing the book, the changes I made are clear to anyone that can see well enough to read, and they know exactly what they are buying, my work cannot be confused for his, and vice-versa.
4) Mass production of #3. Here's where it gets sticky. Deep down, I don't feel that he would be harmed. But the problem is that he *may* be harmed by what I'm doing. So it's difficult to take that away from him.
I really want OS X to be opened up. But when I look at it objectively I cannot argue with the fact that it is violating Apple to allow this to happen. I really, really want to be wrong, but sadly, I'm not. If only they would do it themselves.
Let's say I purchased a book written by Steven King. Now let me ask a series of questions.
1) Does it violate copyright for me to sell the book? No.
2) What if I wrote some notes in the margin and my name on the inside front cover? No, still ok to sell it.
3) What if I draw lines through the last page, write my own ending on the backside of the page, and slap a sticky on the front of the book saying "includes the 'saltyzoo' ending!"? Probably still ok, if it's one copy.
4) What if I do #3 and begin mass production? I'd probably be sued to the stone-ages and lose badly.
So then, I asked myself these questions.
1) Forget the law, does it *harm* Steven King for me to sell the book as described in #1 above? No, he sold one book, and there is still only one book out there that has been paid for.
2) Does it *harm* Steven King for me to do #2? Nope
3) Does it *harm* Steven King for me to do #3? Nope, he was paid for the copy of the book, he is getting full credit for writing the book, the changes I made are clear to anyone that can see well enough to read, and they know exactly what they are buying, my work cannot be confused for his, and vice-versa.
4) Mass production of #3. Here's where it gets sticky. Deep down, I don't feel that he would be harmed. But the problem is that he *may* be harmed by what I'm doing. So it's difficult to take that away from him.
I really want OS X to be opened up. But when I look at it objectively I cannot argue with the fact that it is violating Apple to allow this to happen. I really, really want to be wrong, but sadly, I'm not. If only they would do it themselves.
In the scenario I outlined, where some fascist regime that does not respect copyright, forces Apple to sell OS X for stand-alone x86 hardware, I am sure Apple would modify the $129 retail box so as to be a true upgrade, requiring a previous install to be present.
The point of this example was not to outline a real strategy for Apple to follow, but to point out that short of resorting to fascist communist tactics, you can not force Apple to sell OS X for generic x86 hardware anymore than you can force an artist to paint a masterpiece.
Then that topic goes beyond the nature of this discussion, and has no bearing on this impending court case. I have some sympathy; I break the occasional law now and then (having worked in publishing and design I try to not knowingly break copyright laws) but that greater discussion belongs elsewhere. Apple are fighting this case on the laws of the land, not in some intangible court of morality and public opinion.
That's why I asked, because you seem to be blurring the notion of ownership of an item and the ownership of the intellectual property. You do not possess the moral right to amend a licensed work; however, enforcing that is often impractical. The moral right belongs to the creator and owner of the content, not to you.
I dont think I ever said that IS what you were saying, however, I did ask, because that is the only way to actually find out where you stand.
This is not about paying someone else to do OSX86 for you, it's about a copy basing their entire business on modifying someone else's work for their own profit. (If that is in fact what Psystar did, that, we will find out later.)
If they overcharged for it, I don't think I would want to pay $1000, but I certainly wouldn't mind paying more than Vista Ultimate costs. I think OS X is really that good that it's worth it to spend the money saved by not purchasing a Mac on the software itself.
These are the points that always baffle me: OS X is so good I'm willing to pay more for it, but not so great that I am willing to get a Mac. It is a quite a balancing act, isn't it?
well theres a difference between 300 (assuming as he said would pay for vista priceish) and 1200(cost of a mac)
well theres a difference between 300 (assuming as he said would pay for vista priceish) and 1200(cost of a mac)
You mean that one comes with a whole computer?
i mean for those who have a perfectly working pc and dont need a new computer but still want osx
To listen to the pundits, Apple is throwing money away by not offering the "Mac Semi Pro" tower and the Sony Vaio kicks the entire MacBook line every way from Sunday. And yet Apple continues to see strong product sales growth.
Assuming all 200,000 people on that other board use Hackintoshes, that's 14% of Apple's shipped product just from last quarter. And Psystar is evidently not seeing millions of sales, even though they offer the product the entire Mac community is evidently demanding. Plus if Apple could sell 10 Mac Semi Pros for every Mac Pro they're selling now, well what does Apple care? Charge $3799 for the Mac Pro and really soak the people who have to have it while making a shedload on the Mac Semi Pro at $1799.
Personally, I think this is more a worry about cloning in general and not a worry about Psystar offering a product Apple doesn't. If Psystar wins its case, this will open the Apple hardware market up to the same level of cloning that happened with the original IBM PC. It won't be just Mac Towers, anymore. We'll have cheaper and better clone laptops and all-in-ones and HTPCs and SFFs and such. People will buy commodity hardware and all Apple will have is the money they make from the copies of OS X they sell to those folks with non-Apple clones.
Which means OS X is going to have to get a heck of a lot more expensive to cover the cost of making it since hardware won't be subsidizing (or even driving) the development. OS X could become Vista - priced in the hundreds of dollars with multiple versions with varying levels of crippled features all designed to drive everyone to buy the most expensive version. And DRM up the arse to keep people from pirating it. And with Apple not in control of the hardware anymore, will we see new features like Grand Central? Or will it just be "bloatware" and pretty icons to extract maximum revenue from minimum effort like we have with Windows?
When IBM lost control of the market (and the revenues), they responded with the PS/2 - a technologically more advanced platform, but one that was so closed it didn't work well with the installed base. Will we see the same with Apple? Will it be the return of PowerPC and NuBus? Will the next generation of ACDs use "ADC-Plus"?
Personally, if people want to experiment with Hackintoshes to scratch the itch Apple won't, more power to them. The niche is small enough that it has no real impact on Apple's future.
But having lived through the PC/Windows era, I'd really hate to do it again with the Mac/OS X.
I like it here, just the way it is.
Assuming all 200,000 people on that other board use Hackintoshes, that's 14% of Apple's shipped product just from last quarter. And Psystar is evidently not seeing millions of sales, even though they offer the product the entire Mac community is evidently demanding. Plus if Apple could sell 10 Mac Semi Pros for every Mac Pro they're selling now, well what does Apple care? Charge $3799 for the Mac Pro and really soak the people who have to have it while making a shedload on the Mac Semi Pro at $1799.
Personally, I think this is more a worry about cloning in general and not a worry about Psystar offering a product Apple doesn't. If Psystar wins its case, this will open the Apple hardware market up to the same level of cloning that happened with the original IBM PC. It won't be just Mac Towers, anymore. We'll have cheaper and better clone laptops and all-in-ones and HTPCs and SFFs and such. People will buy commodity hardware and all Apple will have is the money they make from the copies of OS X they sell to those folks with non-Apple clones.
Which means OS X is going to have to get a heck of a lot more expensive to cover the cost of making it since hardware won't be subsidizing (or even driving) the development. OS X could become Vista - priced in the hundreds of dollars with multiple versions with varying levels of crippled features all designed to drive everyone to buy the most expensive version. And DRM up the arse to keep people from pirating it. And with Apple not in control of the hardware anymore, will we see new features like Grand Central? Or will it just be "bloatware" and pretty icons to extract maximum revenue from minimum effort like we have with Windows?
When IBM lost control of the market (and the revenues), they responded with the PS/2 - a technologically more advanced platform, but one that was so closed it didn't work well with the installed base. Will we see the same with Apple? Will it be the return of PowerPC and NuBus? Will the next generation of ACDs use "ADC-Plus"?
Personally, if people want to experiment with Hackintoshes to scratch the itch Apple won't, more power to them. The niche is small enough that it has no real impact on Apple's future.
But having lived through the PC/Windows era, I'd really hate to do it again with the Mac/OS X.
I like it here, just the way it is.
Right - for them Apple's business model is even more genius: why sell a retail box of software, when you can sell a whole computer?
It's their creative work, and they can sell it how they chose, in whatever manner they think will maximize profits. Taking away a very profitable business model to creating a great OS will only discourage the creation of great OS's in the future. You don't see that?
do you not see some people cant afford/dont need a new computer but would be willing to spend 300ish to put osx on their existing one, which they can upgrade themselves?
however, the root of the problem is not offering a mid range solution. i cant afford a macpro and i do not want an imac where i cant even upgrade the hd. offer a mid range solution and many people with hackintoshes would get it (i know i would). this is the issue that opened up the whole psystar can of worms is it not