carnegie

gatorguy said:

carnegie said:

gatorguy said:

One day after Corellium announces they will sponsor research into the new on-iPhone CSAM initiative and the security and privacy behind it? Huh. 

There shouldn't have been much doubt that Apple was going to appeal the decision regarding its copyright claims.

But even if there was such doubt, Apple indicated a couple of days ago in a different fling (i.e. its joint filing with Corellium stipulating to the dismissal of certain claims) that it was going to appeal the copyright claims decision. That filing asked the court to enter a final judgment so that Apple could file its notice of appeal.

I saw that this morning. More than one Apple-centric site indicated confusion about Apple seemingly backtracking on its settlement agreement announced last week. It wasn't until late yesterday that the other filings were published and became more widely known today.

I saw the other filing a couple of days ago. A few days before that the court had, acting on its own initiative, ordered the parties to make such a filing. Regardless, I don't think it was ever likely that Apple wasn't going to appeal the copyright infringement decision. It has good reasons not to want to leave the court's fair use reasoning floating around  out there. Apple certainly wants something more definitive and more consistent with its own arguments on the issue, and for that it needs to file an appeal. It may lose; but that's a chance it's willing to take. To believe it wouldn't, I'd have had to seen an actual court filing in which it stipulated to a dismissal of the copyright infringement claims.

I would add that, I've found that reporting on legal issues and legal processes is generally pretty poor. There are some legal blogs that do a good job. But reporting from most sites that aren't dedicated to legal issues just isn't very good. It often seems not to understand the crux of the legal issues, or gets important details wrong, or mischaracterizes reasoning or decisions or the implications thereof. That's not a criticism of particular sites, but of legal reporting in general. And often such reporting is largely  restatement of what other sites - e.g., Reuters or AP - have reported, where those other sites got stuff wrong, left out important details, or lacked fundamental insight. 

gatorguy said:

One day after Corellium announces they will sponsor research into the new on-iPhone CSAM initiative and the security and privacy behind it? Huh. 

There shouldn't have been much doubt that Apple was going to appeal the decision regarding its copyright claims.

But even if there was such doubt, Apple indicated a couple of days ago in a different fling (i.e. its joint filing with Corellium stipulating to the dismissal of certain claims) that it was going to appeal the copyright claims decision. That filing asked the court to enter a final judgment so that Apple could file its notice of appeal.

22july2013 said:

It's Apple's OS. Nobody can force Apple to write its OS to their specifications. Even the EFF probably support Apple's legal right to decide what goes into their OS. This isn't a question of legality it's a question of morality, reputation and profitability. And that's fine.

For the most part people here are arguing what Apple should be doing, not what it legally must be doing. But even those people who are arguing that Apple should not be doing this aren't arguing that Apple legally must not be doing this.

I'm finding questions of morality to be rather boring. I'm interested in issues that are of legal importance.

People might not be talking about them as much, but what Apple is doing does raise some legal questions.

Apple is generally a private actor. But courts have found that private actions can represent violations of the Fourth Amendment under some circumstances. There are a  number of tests which can apply, depending on context. There's a function test which asks whether a given private actor was performing a traditional government function. There's a compulsion test which asks whether a given private actor was coerced by the government. And there's a nexus test which asks whether a given private actor was cooperating with the government. There's still considerable gray area on this issue as courts haven't agreed on how or which tests apply.

But one of the questions here is whether Apple was somehow coerced by government actors to implement this software and program. Even if Apple wasn't coerced, was it encouraged by government actors? And if so, what's the intent behind Apple's policy? Is it trying to help law enforcement or is Apple doing this for its own business reasons? If Apple is undertaking searches in order to help government actors catch criminals and not because Apple thinks this policy helps its business, then the Fourth Amendment might be implicated.

There are also questions when it comes to whether these actions would constitute Fourth Amendment searches anyway. If the only thing a hash-value scan can reveal is whether something illegal is present, then under Supreme Court doctrine (see, e.g., U.S. v Place (1983)) such a scan might not be considered a Fourth Amendment search because it doesn't implicate legitimate privacy interests. Notably this is a question which the 6th Circuit recently expressly left open in its U.S. v Miller (2020) decision.

lkrupp said:

I believe Steve Jobs worked for $1/yr when he came back. Yes/No?

Mr. Jobs received a $1 annual salary during his second stint with Apple, yes.

But he was otherwise financially well compensated. He received a RSU grant in 2003 which was valued at about $75 million at the time. When the shares vested in 2006 they we worth around $650 million. Those shares, if held today, would be worth more than $40 billion. (They aren't still held, of course. For starters, nearly half of them were withheld for tax purposes.)

Mr. Jobs also received an airplane which was initially reported as representing a total cost to Apple of $90 million.

(5) This section may only be enforced to the extent not inconsistent with federal law and 47 U.S.C. s. 230(e)(3), and notwithstanding any other provision of state law.

(9) This section may only be enforced to the extent not inconsistent with federal law and 47 U.S.C. s. 230(e)(3), and notwithstanding any other provision of state law.

In other words, in most contexts, much of the new statutes created by sections 2 and 4 of this law is unenforceable. Much of what the legislators are pretending to do, Florida can't do because it is preempted by federal law. But, hey, they get to enact a bunch of words into law and pretend they're doing some things that their constituents might want done.

Some provisions of this law raise serious constitutional (i.e. First Amendment) concerns as well. But the bigger roadblock for much of it is Section 230.