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Apple Sues Tiger Leaks
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seems as though they dont want details or screen shots posted and they act very secretive when there is no need for it not to mention there is no way for it to ever happen. if you mean in morality/ if its right or is it wrong, like i said, the people who will put it to good use have already bought it and the people who shared it have seen for themselves they wasted their time and reinstalled panther. the damage is done, a slap on the wrist and scaring the carp out of the college kid, and maybe some money that apple doesnt even need will scare pirates... probably not. ' it's better to be a pirate than join the navy ' where was that said again?ChrisBrightwell said:
tveric said:
Has anyone been through the forums on MTKA? Its insane how much publicity this is drumming up. Its a little sad...they pretty much scared the shiznit out of these kids. Man, christmas for them must sure suck
~Shard~ said:I was going to reply with various reasons why it is wrong (it's ILLEGAL, idustrial espionage, EULA violation, etc.) but I see that many people have already beat me to the punch and informed you of this, so hopefully you see the light now.
And from a purely legal standpoint, yes, going 5 km over the speed limit is illegal. Case closed. Whether everyone does it, or it doesn't matter, yadda yadda, it's a moot point. Just like downloading software, it's illegal. Done.
See previous post. (Illegal: "So was Riding In The Front Of The Bus While Black under Jim Crow.") Illegal !=wrong. "I have the right to do it" != "I should do it." Apple has the *right* to sue. *Should* it do it? Another question entirely. Imagine if M$ were pursuing similar tactics (and they have of course.)
BTW in my 2 years as a law clerk for trial court judges (state and federal) I saw far more than my share of stupid-ass lawsuits, including over IP. Apple's suit qualifies, in spades.
JJTiger1 said:
Uh, no. 10.3.0 is the version that gets put in the retail box when it first comes out. The only betas are the developer betas, like the one we are talking about right now for 10.4. The retail box gets changed occasionally with a .X release when distrubtor supplies of the original CD's run are depleted. But generally you fill find a maintence release or two needing to be downloaded when you first install if you are buying sometime in the middle of the year.
Things aren't going to be any differnet. Some people like to refer to the original release as a "beta" because it has the most bugs. They seem to forget that it's only tested on developer computers before then so some bugs are not apparent.
Considering how much Apple ramps up production of the first run, that may be awhile. Plus, "deeply discounted" only happens at two times, before release (like on Amazon), and right before the next major version comes out (to clear inventory of the old version).
Since in all likelyhood you're going to have to download an update of some kind no matter when you buy your retail box, if you want to avoid the first inital version you should wait until after the 10.4.1 update comes out and then buy the retail box (which will be 10.4.0) and update as soon as you install.
Note that if you want a "deeply discounted" Tiger you have to buy the first version before 10.4.1 comes out, so you can't have your cake an eat it too. The discounted price is an early adopter perk in effect.
Illogical. Since every version of the MacOS has been faster than the previous version (in the end) by completely skipping Tiger you are choosing to remain with a slower OS eventually, even if it is faster in the beginning.
steveh said:
Let me put it this way. I took a Federal Income Taxation course in law school. During that course the instructor -- a former practitioner with the IRS -- baldly stated that the IRS does not go after rich people. It goes after people of modest means whom they know do not have the resources to defend a lawsuit. More revenue that way.
Apple's tactics are basically the same.
Smart business. Lousy ethics.
tveric said:
This is a commonly used and very interesting comparison. Please let us stop and think a bit, shall we?
Who is to decide wether it is not harmful to do 60 in 55 zone? And exactly when does it become harmful? 61? 65? 70? 100? Or put another way: why do you think there is a 55 there at all? Just for fun maybe?
By (more or less) democratic ways society has decided on certain limitations to our freedom: i.e. general traffic rules. To just discard those rules like that does more harm than people usually think; not maybe physically to anyone, but to the society itself: we start to accept certain flexibility to the rules.
The interesting part of all this; how far could we at any given time allow us to bend those rules - and who should decide on that?
As for people spreading the Tiger; there is a lot of reasons Apple should in fact try to limit this (no, they won't manage to stop it completely). One of the most important is that the Mac is a very tender eco-system, and if this kind of behaviour becomes the norm, people of lesser skills will eventually start installing bootlegged or beta versions of the OS, and who will get the PR problem when the Mac suddenly is not the rather secure and stable platform we all love? Apple has never been too much worried about controlling the license of the OS you install - their main focus is NOT to sell the OS itself (or any other of the basic softwaresuite). They all comes free with the hardware - which is what Apple is actually selling. As for iTMS and the music they sell, every piece (except the pro-versions) is just vehicles to sell hardware.
Point is: Apple does not worry about people copying their OS - what they are worried about is with the spreading alpha/beta versions in big numbers the image of the Mac-platform itself may suffer. They have to - and should - pursue behavior like this.
(my guess is they only bother because these guys were distributing the thing openly to the whole world - if it was kept close it would not harm)
QonoS said:
Yep, I agree. I never said anything about right or wrong, just that it was illegal. If people want to engage in illegal activities that's their prerogative.
Apple Sues Tiger Leaks
"Apple Sues Tiger Leaks"
I don't get it. Why would a fruit take legal action against feline urination?
Macrumors said:
"Apple Sues Tiger Leaks"
I don't get it. Why would a fruit take legal action against feline urination?
Gasu E. said:
No no no, you have it all wrong, they just missed an apostrophe, and the article is referring to a gal nicknamed "Apple Sue" and how her pet cat urinates, that's all. Make sense now?
I didn't think there was a question here. I merely posted some facts.Sun Baked said:
It is well known that all public performance of music needs to be licensed (via payments to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC - not to the RIAA.)
Some services like Muzak pay these licenses so that the venue doesn't have to. But those licenses only cover the music provided by the service. Anything else played at that venue (including a radio) requires a separate license.
But there is a need. If they publish screen shots, or allow reviewers to publish reviews of prerelease software, it affects the marketplace.rozwell said:
If a feature gets dropped, customers that saw the review will complain, and may even sue over it. It's happened before. And even if lawsuits don't happen, it hurts the company image when customers don't get the features they saw reviewed in magazines.
For instance, early articles about MacOS 8.0 described the "Appearence Manager" and showed screen-shots of a wide variety of novelty skins for the UI, that were intended as a technology demo. When system 8 shipped, none of these skins were provided. The Appearence Manage wound up purely as an internal facility used by Apple to facilitate their own UI changes. Many users (myself included) read the reviews and were expecting to have multiple skins provided as a part of the system and were quite disappointed when they didn't ship.
Now, Apple has announced several key features, like Spotlight. It is unlikely that those will go away. But there may be a lot of unannounced features in the pre-release builds that might not survive to the final release. Apple does not want the general public finding out about them, so that dropping some won't result in disappointed/disgruntled customers.
In order to keep these features secret, they have to release their betas under NDA, and they have to enforce that NDA through the legal system when they have proof that it was violated.
But the alternative is to do nothing and send a clear message to the world that Apple's NDA contracts don't mean squat. That's much much worse.rozwell said:
Or maybe these college kids are just incredibly brazen and took no measures to hide what they were doing or even pretend that they didn't know they were violating a signed contract.QonoS said:
It's also well known that you file suits when you have an open and shut case, regardless of how much money the defendent has.
ok, i got ya, that is a very valid point about the screen caps. you are right, it is their duty to do what they must, but if they completely crush that kid i would be disappointed. if you have read any of the TKA messages, he is scared s***less. i would be too... and its a situation like this that would change a person.shamino said:
If it was just a matter of screen shots being published, I'm sure they would've simply gotten a "cease and desist" letter. Think Secret has gotten plenty of these in the past for posting screen shots given to them.rozwell said:
But according to the C|Net article, they also made the software itself available for download, and that over 2500 downloads were made. This is far more serious, and Apple's response doesn't surprise me. The case should definitely go to trial, and they should be found guilty. If leniency seems appropriate in this situation, it should come in to play when awarding damages, not when determining guilt.
shamino said:
In my admittedly limited legal experience, which consisted of two years working as a law clerk for trial judges in federal and state courts, few to no cases qualified as "open and shut." And even fewer of them were "open and shut" when the defendant had resources to defend them. OTOH, quite a few non-open-and-shut cases probably became so when a litigant with lots of resources went up against a litigant with few. That, of course, is what the IRS's tactics are all about as well. There's a reason the RIAA went after grandmothers and 12-year-olds.
Remember, Apple's contract states that they can sue you for posting a SCREENSHOT. (The caps are Apple's, btw.) Not that they necessarily *will,* but that they *can.* That's the beauty of being a billion dollar corporation who gets to write the contract of adhesion. ("Contract of adhesion" is legal speak for "we are a billion-dollar corporation, you are one person, we dictate the terms, your only choice is Accept or Reject. Resistance is futile. We may never sue you, but we can, because we say so, and if we do, defending the suit will cost you so much money that we will bankrupt you if you do not bend over.")
Possibility of damage?
What about the person that goes over the speed limit and kills a pedestrian? What about the person who downloads a pirated copy with the intention that "it goes no further than that". But then someone comes along who means Apple harm and somehow downloads it from "the innocent downloader"? Paranoia? Yes. Are companies paranoid? And should they be? Yes. Do they have to protect themselves from these things? Yes.
Look at our country now. Do we plan contingencies for worst case scenarios? Yes. Do we hope to have to use them? No. But it's better to be prepared to fight than to have to ramp up your arsenal and then figure out where to attack. Don't believe that's right? Look at WWII.
I see this as something that is illegal, but most times, there's no damage to anyone. It's when there's potential for damage. That has to be defended where possible. In trademark law, if you don't defend your trademark, you lose the abilitiy to defend it later. I'm sure there's some law or precedent out there that says something similar for this. (But hey, i'm no lawyer)
If Apple doesn't defend their OS and the Developers who legitimately paid for the right to preview and debug the OS, Apple leaves themselves open to Developers NOT paying and just downloading the pirated versions. And the developers' reason for doing so is, "well, X and Y person downloaded the same thing i paid $500 for and *they* didn't get caught. So why should I pay for it?" Does this help Apple at all?
Sueing isn't just for the intended reason of stopping the people who did it. It also defends the people who are legitimately paying for something. Please remember that it's not always about you (the downloader). No, it probably won't prevent other people from pirating stuff in the future, but to do nothing on Apple's part is the beginning of opening their doors and saying "OK world, go ahead and rape our R&D department that we invest millions of dollars on. It's on us. FREE!!" In this case, suing is the appropriate response to a violation of an NDA.
Happy Holiday Season to everyone! Enjoy time off if you have it. If not, sorry, hope you're earning double time.
What about the person that goes over the speed limit and kills a pedestrian? What about the person who downloads a pirated copy with the intention that "it goes no further than that". But then someone comes along who means Apple harm and somehow downloads it from "the innocent downloader"? Paranoia? Yes. Are companies paranoid? And should they be? Yes. Do they have to protect themselves from these things? Yes.
Look at our country now. Do we plan contingencies for worst case scenarios? Yes. Do we hope to have to use them? No. But it's better to be prepared to fight than to have to ramp up your arsenal and then figure out where to attack. Don't believe that's right? Look at WWII.
I see this as something that is illegal, but most times, there's no damage to anyone. It's when there's potential for damage. That has to be defended where possible. In trademark law, if you don't defend your trademark, you lose the abilitiy to defend it later. I'm sure there's some law or precedent out there that says something similar for this. (But hey, i'm no lawyer)
If Apple doesn't defend their OS and the Developers who legitimately paid for the right to preview and debug the OS, Apple leaves themselves open to Developers NOT paying and just downloading the pirated versions. And the developers' reason for doing so is, "well, X and Y person downloaded the same thing i paid $500 for and *they* didn't get caught. So why should I pay for it?" Does this help Apple at all?
Sueing isn't just for the intended reason of stopping the people who did it. It also defends the people who are legitimately paying for something. Please remember that it's not always about you (the downloader). No, it probably won't prevent other people from pirating stuff in the future, but to do nothing on Apple's part is the beginning of opening their doors and saying "OK world, go ahead and rape our R&D department that we invest millions of dollars on. It's on us. FREE!!" In this case, suing is the appropriate response to a violation of an NDA.
Happy Holiday Season to everyone! Enjoy time off if you have it. If not, sorry, hope you're earning double time.
quagmire said:For all those people who think downloading Tiger Beta version does no harm to anyone and apple and say we should be able to download tiger Beta freely; just be happy I am not an admin.
I, for one, am very happy you're not an admin. Censoring people for an opinion they hold - well, what does that remind you of? Should we all hold the same opinions as admins or risk being removed from the board?
Hopefully you'll never be one, with an attitude like that.
Granted. But when someone signs a contract with explicit language and then violates that language, it isn't hard to realize that the person is guilty.QonoS said:
An NDA isn't a shrink-wrap EULA. It's a physically signed contract between two parties.
What about it. They can also sue you if you talk about the program with your friends in a bar.QonoS said:
That's the point of an NDA. You get the software on the condition that you don't disclose anything about what you've seen. If you are unwilling to keep it to yourself, don't sign the contract and don't take posession of the software.
Why do you think poor people shouldn't be bound to the terms of the contracts they sign?
toughboy said:
Now that is funny....
I love to hear MS bashers....
Where is Apple's dignity and grace?
What does Apple do that makes you think they are so great?
They make and sell visually appealing products that are for the most part middle of the road in terms of performance... which are at the same time overpriced compared to their competition.
Which is the main reason their market share will always be so low.
Im not saying Apple doesnt make decent stuff. But it isnt steller either.
Also remember Apple is a hardware company... that is forced to write software for their machines... because almost noone else does.
Heck IMO Apple's product line didn't even become interesting until the G4 and OS X. Before those it was just a pile of manure.
When Apple writes an OS that runs on as many different hardware platforms as Windows does. And when it runs even half as well as Windows does. Then you will have a reason to tout how great Apple is.
But I assure you that Apple will never even give it a try.
They dont have the development team or mindshare to even begin to support the diversity of products that windows already runs on.
Now I not saying Windows is so great either, But imagine how stable it would be if MS only had to support a captive hardware platform like Apple does.
Personally I like OS X and think it is a good OS.
But remember this Apple still writes buggy code just like everyone else does.
Maybe even worse if you consider that they have a captive hardware platform to write to.
And before you start on the virus/security problems with Windows, consider Apples miniscule market share. When someone writes a virus or attempts a hack, they dont waste their time to write it for a platform that has very little market penitration.
Difficult to read.
Posts full of sentence fragments.
Dyslexia understood. But others please. Subject verb predicate in any order. When writing a sentence make attempt.
Marketing copy writing not appropriate for everyday writing.
Especially when trying to get point across.
This thread - multiple examples.
Posts full of sentence fragments.
Dyslexia understood. But others please. Subject verb predicate in any order. When writing a sentence make attempt.
Marketing copy writing not appropriate for everyday writing.
Especially when trying to get point across.
This thread - multiple examples.
shamino said:
The practice of students sharing files may not be legal in the eyes of the law, however the majority of those doing so are not doing so for any financial gain.
They are not selling pirated software for profit.
Most are simply giving it a trial run to see how they like it.
In many cases they will still purchase a fully licensed version
for any professional use.
If the product is any good at all, most who have learned to use a particular
program in school will probably continue to use that product in the workplace.
The FREE constructive feedback these trial users provide also helps
the developers perfect their product.
This in effect gives the developer an invaluable "outside the box" technical analysis of overall product quality.
In some ways I'm sure Apple is delighted that so many people are
taking interest in their products and word of mouth does lead to sales.
Still, I understand why Apple would not want any negative publicity about
O.S. bugs or weaknesses before the final release.
We should be mindful of that next generation of low life UNIX hackers who will gladly exploit any O.S. security weaknesses just for kicks.