Ah ha, and that sorts it all out nicely. Not being a lawyer or even very well-informed as law goes I understood the term "crime" to apply only to non-civil violations and wasn't aware it had application in civil matters. My confusion partly stems from the fact that I've had conversations about this with lots of people where they have explicitly stated that Hackintosh users are doing something that is illegal in the sense that if caught they can be held non-civilly criminally responsible (i.e. possible jail time). Intuitively that just didn't make sense, but I just assumed they understood the terms they were using better than me.
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Psystar Announces Program for Third-Party PC Manufacturers to Enable Snow Leopard Installation
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Ah ha, and that sorts it all out nicely. Not being a lawyer or even very well-informed as law goes I understood the term "crime" to apply only to non-civil violations and wasn't aware it had application in civil matters. My confusion partly stems from the fact that I've had conversations about this with lots of people where they have explicitly stated that Hackintosh users are doing something that is illegal in the sense that if caught they can be held non-civilly criminally responsible (i.e. possible jail time). Intuitively that just didn't make sense, but I just assumed they understood the terms they were using better than me.
So far the the only government action going on here is the fact that it is being argued in a government court. They are the party host, but they are not an involved party. They could be in a criminal or civil matter, but I don't see where they could have a say right now. Perhaps the IRS or the FTC could file separate charges, but thats way hypothetical.
Exactly. Because we are interchanging "legal vocabulary" and "street vocabulary" all over the thread.
My only experience as a lawyer comes from reading alot of case history, so I have a lot of background on this case specifically. I also credit some actual lawyers and a lot of past discussion. Unlike several other people preceding us, you admit that you were mistaken. You have my respect for that.
As a rule of thumb, any legal issue is complicated and prone to confusion. Add in emotion and you can end up in a mess. Your confusion is understood and we can go on from there. In other words, you're cool with me (if that means anything around here
). Glad we straightened things out.It becomes twice as difficult to avoid that when you remember that lots of us (including me) are not lawyers and we have to communicate on different levels.
Apple Should License OSX for PC's
Apple should offer OS X certification and licensing themselves. If they had done that years ago we would not have Windows and Bill Gates would still be selling software out of the back of a van at flea markets.
Apple should offer OS X certification and licensing themselves. If they had done that years ago we would not have Windows and Bill Gates would still be selling software out of the back of a van at flea markets.
Apple should offer OS X certification and licensing themselves. If they had done that years ago we would not have Windows and Bill Gates would still be selling software out of the back of a van at flea markets.
They did do that years ago. It failed simply due to the fact that when you try to compete against Microsoft toe to toe, you will loose. Apple is a hardware company first. You might as well ask them to abandon that market altogether.
Apple should offer OS X certification and licensing themselves. If they had done that years ago we would not have Windows and Bill Gates would still be selling software out of the back of a van at flea markets.
Daring Fireball's The Art of the Parlay, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Platform Licensing and Market Share
Your confusion is understood and we can go on from there. In other words, you're cool with me (if that means anything around here
Thanks for hanging in there with me. To clarify, my interest in hashing this out is not to justify Psystar's actions or my own. My interest is simply to grasp the relevant issues enough that I can make true statements about the issues and correct false statements about the issues.
You're welcome. I always try to make sure people understand the importance of some of the more important things in the Mac world. The problem these days is that people tend to make rash snap decisions and take sides long before they understand why. They then see any contradiction as either an attack to them (Iv'e see it) or the rantings of delusional fanboys who are blinded by Steve Job's RDF enjoying the Kool Aide. You can't convince everyone, but I try to make rational arguments whenever possible.
For the record I really never saw you as a Psystar supporter, more as someone who just was misinformed about the nature of the case due to the complexity of its technical nature.
If you sell a car with a BMW logo (or even a logo "too similar") on it that is not a BMW, then the BMW company can do exactly what Apple is doing and start legal action against you - misue of trademark at the very least. If you're simply "Joe Average" you're likely to end up with a big fine very quickly ... a greedy corporate of course will simply continue to waste court time with numerous appeals and cross-appeals despite everyone with an ounce of common sense knowing they're in the wrong ... just like Paystar.
You don't even have to be selling it to get yourself in trouble. The UK car show Top Gear had their live show here in New Zealand and Australia a while ago, and there were stories about people wanting their money back, etc. because the so-called "Ferrari" was rumoured to be a Mazda modified to look like a Ferrari.
Completely and utterly incorrect ... and unfortunately it is what the vast majority of poeple mistakingly believe.
Apple (and most other software makers) sell you a license to use the software. When you install the software you are agreeing to that license agreement (whether or not you read it is your problem), which is just as binding as any other contract. You are only legally allowed to use the software within the bounds of that agreement. For example, "Education" priced software is not allowed to be used for business, so students are not allowed to buy Adobe CS and then start their own company using it (even if only part-time while still a student). They have to buy the full priced license for business use.
Under similar license agreements, you cannot legally sell the original software after buying and installing a cheaper "upgrade pack" (a great recent example being Snow Leopard!). If you want to sell the now-unsed and uninstalled original, then you should buy a full priced, full license pack.
It goes double if you happen to be a business. Joe public might be able to get away with it once (and I say might depending on how he sold it), but once you play in business land your exceptions on knowing if your practices are legal or not go way higher. You can't really go "I didn't think that was wrong" and expect to get much sympathy. Businesses have responsibilities and expectations that are higher than individuals.
And part of this very case is based on trademark infringements because Apple controls and owns the brands and images related to OSX either directly or by extension to the licenses that they have obtained.
Well not entirely... When you buy a copy of Show Leopard you do own the physical disc and you can pretty much do with it the you please (SLA even says that). Of course the software on the disc is not purchased and is restrictively licensed. The disc is just a delivery mechanism. Of course the Snow Leopard Disc is practically useless as anything else other than as a software product, but you get the point.Completely and utterly incorrect ... and unfortunately it is what the vast majority of poeple mistakingly believe.
But you are practically right.
This is a reply to:
From the court record:
Congress upheld the principle to make copies of computer software to the owner.
If you read the entirety of the linked document, the court upheld its prior determination of Vernor owning the Autodesk software and therefore its right to resell it. As owner, the court denied the Autodesk claim that the Autodesk software is leased. The provisions of the lease, namely Vernor's right to resell the software, were not upheld.
Since I too had noted the implications of the Autodesk v Vernor case and thought it may have provided support to Psystar or others to challenge certain provisions of software licensing agreements. That is only speculation on my part. I am not privy to what Psystar may have thought. I would also like to concede that I am not a lawyer. I advocate anyone interested to read for themselves and determine whether I or weckart are only seeing what we wish to see. Certainly this case and the background are interesting as the legal precedent is not about computer software at all, but rather from motion pictures. So, in this case, it is the court that is seeing what they want to see. However, they do have 26 pages of explanation of different aspects of leases and copyrights. It is the court that decided that Vernor was the owner of the software and could thus sell it or make copies of it (for his use).
While CTA may have violated an agreement with Autodesk as to the disposition of their software, the court did not sustain any claim by Autodesk on Vernor. I found that part of the document confusing as I was uncertain whether CTA had violated an agreement to destroy a prior version of the software, whether that muddied the CTA-Autodesk agreement, or what it meant. It appeared that CTA sold copies of software that they affirmed to Autodesk that they destroyed, but I am uncertain if that was the case. However, it did appear as though CTA may have breeched the contract with Autodesk in one or more ways. The court did not consider how an Autodesk-CTA contract would affect Vernor buying the Autodesk software at a garage sale.
So, I just had an interesting conversation with a lawyer. If I'm understanding things right, according to her, the concept behind "crime" is not broken down into civil-crime and, for lack of a better term, criminal-crime. There's just criminal-crime, or crime.
Also, she said that unless a breach of contract is a violation of a term that also happens to do with something criminal in the law, then mere breaches of contract are not crimes. They're just breaches of contract and they're taken to civil court, not as civil-crimes, just as breaches of contract. But if a person were prosecuted for a crime that also happened to be in a contract, they're not being prosecuted because they broke a contract. They're being prosecuted because they committed a crime. It would just so happen that the crime they committed corresponds with a term in a contract; and thus, it would also just so happen that they were in breach of contract. But, that has nothing to do with their crime-committing and wouldn't really come into their prosecution for the crime they committed.
She did re-affirm that not all copyright infringements are crimes. Some copyright infringements are just civil matters. Some copyright infringements are crimes. Most of the case law, according to her, has to do with civil copyright matters, even though some of those cases my involve a copyright infringement crime, copyright infringement crime is rarely prosecuted.
Anyway, just thought I'd report, for the interested.
any make all of today's systems stop working?
but even then you can build a $1500 system pay $1000 for the os hit the same price as the mac pro and still have X2 the ram, bigger HD and MUCH better video card.
what if BMW said if have go to dealer and pay $75+ for a basic oil change and if you went to jiffy lube you voided the EULA or if you got you car fixed any other place you also voided it.
Right, the term crime though does have common vernacular meaning along with its legal twin. But it doesnt really matter because whatever we call it, it still is a civil issue between two parties.
Right. I have no quarrel with that statement. Nothing so far that the government has been involved outside of an official.
Again, right. You go to the head of the class. Those in back need to pay attention.
Im actually impressed. Not many people would go that far. Good work!
That's just an odd way of putting it. Imagine two people, Bob and Tom, and each one goes to Best Buy and buys a legitimate full installation version of Snow Leopard. They report to a computer lab where they're instructed to install Snow Leopard on two computers. Each computer is hidden behind a wall and each one has the exact same Apple LCD, keyboard, and mouse attached. The difference is that one is a Mac and the other is a Hack.
Unknown to Bob, he installs Snow Leopard on the Mac. Unknown to Tom, he installs Snow Leopard on the Hack. According to you, it seems that Tom is a pirate and Bob isn't.
Of course, things can get even more bizarre. What exactly is Apple hardware? Do Apple engineers design the logic of the mainboard? What about the CPU? The audio controllers? The GPUs? How about the hard drives? It seems that the only thing we can say Apple is genuinely an engineer of is the case, the design of the LCDs (not the internal components), the keyboard, and the mouse.
So, now let's imagine that each computer, the Mac and the Hack, are using type-identical internal components (or as type-identical as possible). Essentially the same mainboard, type-identical CPU, same hard drive, same GPU, and same Apple branded peripherals. The only material difference, then, with respect to the actual computer, is the case.
Thus, if this Hack-makers are Pirates charge is valid, then it's also true that in the case that two individuals actually legitimately purchase a piece of software and perform type-identical procedures with respect to installation and use, one is a pirate and one is not simply because one performs the same set of procedures as the other on type-identical computer components inside a certain sort of case and the other does not. Thus, being a pirate, with respect to Apple's OS supervenes on by whom the case is made...
That would be a taste of their own medicine if it's also true that the other company didn't pay Psystars asking price for their bootloader. What evidence do we have that Psystar is failing to pay for the copies of OSX that are installed on the machines they sell?
So far, the only thing I've seen offered as support for the claim that they're not paying for copies of OSX is that they "lost" records. Suppose somebody has Snow Leopard installed on their authentic Mac. Furthermore, suppose they've thrown away or lost every record relating to their acquisition of the copy of Snow Leopard running on their Mac. Does it follow from that fact that they stole the copy of Snow Leopard that's installed on their machine?
How do you know that? Here's an unscientific way of getting at the questionableness of your claim. A search in Primate Labs results browser for "Mac Pro" yields 2,369 pages of results. A search for "imac" yields 738 pages of results. A search of "macbook" yields 2032 pages of results. A search of "mac mini" yields 199 pages of results.
There's roughly 5338 pages of results for authentic Macs. There's 1163 pages of results for "hackintosh". At least in this very rough analysis, 1163 is a non-inconsequential number compared to 5338. That's not even taking into account the fact that there are a significant number of seemingly authentic Mac results that are actually Hack results because people edit certain files to get their Hacks to report as Macs.
Naturally, we ought to keep people from doing non-dangerous things that they have the ability to do and want to do.
Well, that's just obviously false since there are loads of people running OSX on a non-Apple computer–me. I take it what you mean is something like "regardless of the kind of machines Apple sell or whatever their policies are, the only computers that are suppose run OS X remain Apple Macintosh's according to Apple."
i agree, it also seems that some people don't believe that you are innocent until proven guilty
Yes but then some people here, get into arguments so big they can't keep up with themselves and then they look like idiots.
If you are car manufacturer selling a brand new vehicle under warranty and you are placing shiny new BMW logos on the car and selling them as a "BMW" model then you are screwed, as I said in the original post, if you sell "a" car as in singular with a BMW logo on it but make no claim as to it being an original BMW and describe it either as the original brand/make/model customized or similar then you are fine.
I can go out and get two BMW badges today and use them to replace my Saab badges and then sell my car without any legal repurcussion. I don't need to own a BMW to be in posession of BMW badges.
The car customizers can do all sorts of things in regards to changing the appearance of a vehicle, they can't be sued by an auto maker for it, BUT, you can void all of or portions of your original warranty if you make changes while the vehicle is still under warranty. The only other requirement would be that the vehicle meet all applicable laws in the area in which the car is driven so it can be registered/titled/etc so that you can drive it legally on the street. Should you not drive it on the street and keep it only for track purposes then the sky is the limit.
Back to Apple and Psystar, Psystar is not making any claims to my knowledge that they are building an "Apple" branded pc, they call it "Open PC" or something. As to the installation of the Apple OS that is for the court to decide. On one hand it is the purchaser requesting the install and thus the violation of the EULA, on the other it is Psystar making it possible.
Of course it is so much fun to see people saying it is perfectly acceptable for them to have their own hackintosh which violates the EULA but when it comes to Psystar doing the same thing it is a crime that should be punished by death.
It is obvious this company is a total scam. Eventually Apple's legal team will shut them down because they ARE violating the EULA that says you cannot install OS/X on a non-apple machine. So what is their real angle? How do they expect to make money? By getting Apple's license terms overturned in court? Fat chance of that. But I suppose until they do get shut down, they can dupe a bunch of buyers into parting with their money for junk. Think Bernie baby...
If you go back to Psystar's website as of April 2008 when they launched, you can see that the Open PC was originally named the OpenMac. They wrote this here (note that the page does not render correctly, but is still readable):
And we have this little gem:
From the Snow Leopard EULA (2 MB PDF):
And finally,
All emphasis mine. Psystar is breaking the EULA at least three times if you count the ROM, enabling others to install it, and installing OS X itself seperately. After 'losing' their financial records of all purchases of Mac OS X, it's truly a wonder that they are still in business.
And we have this little gem:
From the Snow Leopard EULA (2 MB PDF):
And finally,
All emphasis mine. Psystar is breaking the EULA at least three times if you count the ROM, enabling others to install it, and installing OS X itself seperately. After 'losing' their financial records of all purchases of Mac OS X, it's truly a wonder that they are still in business.