Did the 'professional' tech media actually verify that Apple had actually sent the DMCA?
Quoting from this jailbreaker on Twitter:
@axi0mX Reddit finally sent the full DMCA takedown notice to @qwertyoruiopz
We reviewed it and confirmed that it was someone impersonating Apple. It was not sent from their law firm, which is Kilpatrick Townsend. There are issues with grammar and spelling.
Update: The DMCA takedown that took the checka1n post down is fake.
There were two separate takedown notices. One on reddit. One on Twitter.
Twitter was verified. From the article: "Apple explained to Motherboard that it reconsidered the original request, but the decision to retract the DMCA claim arrived after Twitter had complied with the takedown notice. The tech giant subsequently asked Twitter to restore the tweet, which is live as of this writing."
The reddit takedown notice was not verified: "Apple did not confirm it was behind the Reddit takedown and moderators of the site were unable to identify the origin of the DMCA request. "
FWIW, as i recall the DMCA makes the act of breaking encryption illegal, whether the content is actually copyrighted or not. I’m not sure if that played into Apple’s argument here or not.
Breaking encryption is against the law as a result of the DMCA, so I see Apple as having legal justification for this action if encryption is being broken to accomplish the hacks, which it likely is.
A DMCA takedown is a protective measure covering copyrighted material. Encryption algorithms aren't copyrighted material and arent' subject to DMCA restrictions. Apple probably knew that but figured some wonk at Twitter in control of takedowns wouldn't know that, so they gave it a shot. It worked. Unfortunately for Apple, it also came with the Streisand Effect. It made Apple look as if they were abusing the DMCA. That Streisand Effect probably made Apple reverse that decision PDQ.
Wrong
Are you sure? I know zero about the subject just did some digging because your one word answer seemed so sure.
There is no copyright on algorithms. ... There are some cryptographic algorithms which are patented, but most are not and some used to be patented (but patents ultimately expire).
Breaking encryption is against the law as a result of the DMCA, so I see Apple as having legal justification for this action if encryption is being broken to accomplish the hacks, which it likely is.
Breaking encryption isn’t against the law as a result of DMCA, only breaking encryption to facilitate copying, is against the law under DMCA. Ridiculous side effect is, that even copying that was explicitly deemed fair use becomes criminal if you break encryption; as such the ridiculous DMCA allowed corporate sponsored legislation to do an end run around the courts.
It’s a bit of a stretch to interpret security research or even jail breaking being covered by that, since it would require to assume that the prime reason for jail breaking is copyright infringement, which in my case it never was; loading apps that don’t fit Apple’s App Store guidelines, isn’t exactly piracy. Can’t even sell a decent network scanner on the AppStore these days; in times past, VoIP apps weren’t allowed, etc.
Comments
Twitter was verified. From the article: "Apple explained to Motherboard that it reconsidered the original request, but the decision to retract the DMCA claim arrived after Twitter had complied with the takedown notice. The tech giant subsequently asked Twitter to restore the tweet, which is live as of this writing."
The reddit takedown notice was not verified: "Apple did not confirm it was behind the Reddit takedown and moderators of the site were unable to identify the origin of the DMCA request. "
It’s a bit of a stretch to interpret security research or even jail breaking being covered by that, since it would require to assume that the prime reason for jail breaking is copyright infringement, which in my case it never was; loading apps that don’t fit Apple’s App Store guidelines, isn’t exactly piracy. Can’t even sell a decent network scanner on the AppStore these days; in times past, VoIP apps weren’t allowed, etc.