Psystar Loses Appeal In Apple Case 258
The dispute between Mac cloner Psystar and Apple has been a long and twisty one; now, reader UnknowingFool writes that "Last week, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled mostly against Psystar in their appeal of their case with Apple. The Court found for Apple in that they did not misuse copyright by having conditions in the OS X license. Psystar won on one point in which some of the court orders should have not been sealed."
They didn't need good lawyers (Score:4, Informative)
There was never any question that Pystar was in the wrong. Their activities were blatantly and obviously illegal.
Their whole market was based on selling hardware to run software that wasn't licensed to run on that hardware.
Their lawyers would have had to be completely incompetent buffoons to lose the case.
Appple doesn't sell OS-X (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They didn't need good lawyers (Score:4, Informative)
The Apple license explicitly forbids installation on non-Apple hardware. You may not agree with those terms, but that does not give you the legal right to IGNORE those terms.
Re:That's too bad... (Score:5, Informative)
The court should have ruled in favor of Psystar because copyright law is only supposed to kick in when somebody actually makes a copy, and Psystar didn't do that (installing the software doesn't count; there's a specific exception in the law allowing that).
Here is what Psystar did: The took OS X on an Apple machine, then modified it to run on a non-Apple machine by replacing the bootloader and some system libraries. Then they used that copy to mass install onto non-Apple machines. Then they sold the non-Apple machines. I don't see how you can argue that they didn't "copy" it. If Psystar did not sell the non-Apple machines, they are still within copyright laws. Selling them constitutes redistribution and copyright infringement. Copyright law clearly says that modification and redistribution require the permission of the copyright owner which Psystar did not get.
Re:That's too bad... (Score:5, Informative)
As for your assertion about redistribution, last i heard those copies were pristine installed by the end user.
What part of "Psystar modified OS X to run on non-Apple machines, installed it on non-Apple machines and sold the machines" is not clear?
If you're argument were correct, then there'd be no reason why Psystar couldn't keep distributing the patch set and machines with the end user left to procure a copy of OSX for themselves. This ruling goes way beyond that and bans the patchset as well as Psystar selling compatible software.
And where was Psystar getting the patch sets? They were taking Apple updates, modifying them, and redistributing them. The court has no problem with Psystar selling compatible software. Psystar was taking Apple's software and modifying it and redistributing it which is against what copyright law allows.
Re:That's too bad... (Score:5, Informative)
On top of that, there is no law saying that folks can't replace any libraries on their computer that they want.
And that's not what this lawsuit is about at all either. This is about someone making modifications to Apples copyrighted software and selling it. It has nothing to do with GRUB or LILO, it's nonsense to even drag them into this. The point is: Apple is selling some software available under certain conditions, if you modify their software in violations of their conditions you are breaking copyright law. This is why you cannot re-license GPL code under the BSD license unless you are in fact the copyright holder. This is inherently a good thing.