Apple picks at Psystar counterclaim as court info goes secret - Page 5

How can one violate the DMCA if one doesn't live in the US or is not an US citizen?
You should realize that US laws do not necessarily apply to the whole world.

First and foremost, thanks for the clarification.


To my understanding, which could be wrong of course, if i don't alter any part of OSX i installed on my PC to make it run, i.e. patch kernel extensions and stuff like this, i don't violate any copyright laws. Basically it's the same thing as EFI-X is doing, but only without a hardware device, and EFI-X is considered basically legal as far as i could read throughout different forums.


See... in germany and i guess whole europe it's almost always handled like this. As soon as Apple (or any other company) brings their software to the free market they loose any right to control what people can do with this software in regards to reselling et al.
Of course copyright laws still apply, but they cannot prevent you from installing the software on any device (different laws regarding EULAs over here as well) and sell the device including the original data carrier afterwards.

I guess this is the point, which makes discussions on open forums quite difficult when people from different countries try to argue about the legal aspects of such a trade without recognizing that laws can be fundamentally different in different countries.

As far as i can see, and i really can be wrong with this, consumer rights in the US are far more restricted that f.e. over here in germany. To me it seems the customer gets a lot more protection from government and laws in germany than in the US as the customer is almost always in a much weaker position as a company (at least thats the view of the legislator in germany).

My conculsion is that Apple has to sue each and every company that sells PCs with preinstalled OSX in each country as a judgement in the case Apple vs. Psystar will only apply to other US based companies. And as laws sometimes are quite different in this aspect it may be that installing OSX on normal PCs and sell them afterwards might be perfecly legal in one country while in another country it's not.

So neither can one say "it's illegal", nor can one say "it's perfectly legal" as one always has to consider in which country a person lives.

Are you sure about this?

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4278.cfm

What has changed since Germany adapted the EUCD in 2003?



Read Part 1 Section VIII- Special Provisions on Computer Programs

http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/UrhG.htm

It's very similar to the Copyright laws we have here in the U.S..

You made a statement that the big names in finance were saying that this current situation was going to be much, much worse than anything that had been seen before. None of your articles provided anything like that.

No one is saying that the current situation isn't bad. I'm just replying to your fabricated sensationalistic nonsense (far, far worse than anything that has ever happened before). THAT is what you made up.

And I'm still waiting for an explanation of what is going to replace capitalism. The only thing you've suggested is a slightly modified capitalism. Even in what we call 'socialist' countries, there is still a free market, albeit with high taxes and high social services. That is still a capitalist economy. So what is going to replace capitalism (the free exchange of labor for goods via currency)?

I didn't say it was illegal.

I challenged you to boot from an OS X CD and install a working copy of OS X onto a Dell computer without any hacking. You failed to meet that challenge.

Where do one circumvent copy protection by using a bootloader?



Right... boot-132 or EFI-X do not violate these laws as far as i understand, but i'm no lawyer, so i may be mistaken.

The German law states:

"The right holder shall have the exclusive right to do or to authorize:

1. the permanent or temporary reproduction of a computer program by any means and in any form, in part or in whole. Insofar as loading, displaying, running, transmission or storage of the computer program necessitate such reproduction, such acts shall be subject to authorization by the right holder;"

That is, the right holder (Apple) has the right to authorize or not authorize any use, INCLUDING loading of the software. Since they have not authorized the use of boot loaders which bypass their startup disk, those actions are in violation of German law, as well as US law.

Most European laws are similar to either US or German law. Sweden is probably an exception, but their intellectual property laws are so weak as to be essentially non-existent in most cases.

Well, i loaded OSX onto a computer based on a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 board with an Intel E6750 Processor with 6 GB Ram, a 160 GB SATA-II Disk and a NVidida 8800GT based Gigabyte GFX-card with the native installer of a retail OSX 10.5.1 disk i bought last year.
Everything is working out of the box and without any alteration of kernel extensions or plists on the harddisk except for sound.

Is this possible on a Dell machine? I don't know as i don't own one (and probably never will, 'cause i think Dell computers are worth sh*t). But maybe you send me a Dell computer at your expense to try it out?
Fact is, as long as the hardware you use is using similar parts (i.e. southbridge/northbridge, cpu, network chips et. al.) to an original Mac chances are very good that OSX will run vanilla on this computer.

And i ask you again, where do i alter the software on the disk, i.e. either modify the software on the retail disk or the installed software copy on the harddisk, when i use boot-132 or EFI-X to natively install and run OSX on a compatible PC?

No alteration, no copyright violation.
Violation of EULA... well, maybe in the US, i don't know, but not in many other countries outside the US.

Yes, but neither EFI-X, nor boot-132 bypass the bootloader of OSX, as the OSX bootloader actually runs and executes the installation program of OSX after inserting the retail disk into a compatible computer. With boot-132 you are in fact running the original Apple darwin bootloader which is published under an OpenSource license by Apple itself.

So i really question the copyright violation if i use an official Apple bootloader to boot and install a retail disk.
I think it makes no sense to prevent a retail disk of OSX to boot on non Apple hardware, but giving out all needed tools to publish an open source license a bootloader that can (legally) be altered to do just that.

Alteration is not a criteria for copyright violation. You can violate Copyright law by making an exact copy of a copyrighted work and selling it or giving it away. It is a copyright violation if you use some else's copyrighted work for commercial profit, without permission. Even if you didn't alter the work. For instance, you can not use a song you bought on a copyrighted CD for a commercial promoting your product without permission from the copyright owner.

On the other hand you can alter some else's work and not be in violation of Copyright laws. You can record yourself singing a song you got on a CD for your own personal use. You can put a song you got from a copyrighted CD into Garage Band and change the tempo to use in a home movie. You can alter software to make it run on your own personal computer.

However, you can not sell a CD of you singing that song. You can not show your home movie, with the altered song on it, in a public forum. You can not sell or give away that altered software. All of these action requires the permission of the copyright holder.

In your case, you most likely will not be found guilty of any copyright violation (in US or Germany) when you use that boot-123 disk to load OSX into your own personal PC, for your own personal use. Providing you don't sell that PC with OSX still on it. But I doubt very much that anyone can sell a PC that has OSX loaded on it, by using that boot-123 disk, without violating any US or Germany Copyright laws.

However violating DMCA is another matter. Apple is claiming that they have in place a DRM that prevents a retail copy of OSX from loading on to a non-Mac HD. And that Psystar must have circumvented this DRM in order to get OSX to load on their PC's. If this is true, (and I see no reason why Apple would lie to the Judge) then there is a DRM in place that the boot-123 must also be circumventing. In order to get a retail disk of OSX to install on a generic PC.

And then you got this little tibbit from the DMCA.

"It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as Digital Rights Management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works and it also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself."

So you see, the fact that you had to circumvented DRM to get OSX to load is in itself illegal. Even if you did not alter any of the copyrighted material when you got OSX to load.

Does that even apply when Apple itself is giving me the necessary tools and the appropriate license to alter the bootloader? (and i guess that the DMCA doesn't apply to me as i'm no US citizen and not living in the jurisdiction of the US).
Btw. the source of the modified boot-132 which is originating from the open source boot-132 from darwin is available, so everyone could check if there really is a DMCA violation.

Apple is giving tools for a different purpose. They are most certainly not giving the tools for use to install OS X on generic hardware. So you are violating the copyright to those tools by operating outside of licensed areas.

...which could only be cleared by another case. The Apple Public Source License doesn't explicitly forbid further development to boot-132 to enable it to boot OSX on generic hardware, but it explicitly allowes you to modify the source code and release it to third parties as long as you provide the modified source code as well (just like the GPL).

Oh well... it's getting to complicated for me here.
I'm glad i'm having a real mac as well for productive work so if someday some court in my country says "it's illegal for everyone, even for private use, to install OSX on generic hardware" i'm not lost.

So i'll just watch and see what the courts decision will be in the case of Apple vs. Psystar.