Comments on: DMCA axes sites discussing Mac OS for PCs

Two water-cooler sites for hackers are down this morning, and one of them has credited the DMCA with the outage.

[TheShane]

Wow

This guy should practice what he preaches...

Has he ever seen a hacker? I mean in real life?

[KsprayDad]

Nice Attempt

But it won't work Steve....hiding behind the DMCA only works in the States...

It is amazing that a country so full of freedoms is getting 'Job'bed by this kind of commie crap.

I encourage everyone to post a link to maxxuss at the end of their signature on every board and blog you belong too.

In fact, I'm writing Apple today and it will be in my signature file.

http://maxxuss.hotbox.ru/

[indrakanti]

To all the experts...

out there. I don't see what is the issue here. If I bought a Mac and have the X86 version MacOS X, why can't I install it on a generic PC (Assumeing that everything works)?

If I know how to do the necessary tinkering to get it going on PC hardware (Sometimes known as Mac) how can Apple stop me?

I am no lawer but I have taken a look at the DMCA

www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

which clearly says that reverse engineering the copyright protection technologies is leagal as long it is for product interoperability.

I am not bying the EULA crap. A ton of PowerPC emulator have always existed that allowed you to rung Mac OS on PC. If that is not against EULA then this can't be either.

[Andrew J Glina]

I hope you are right

I think Apple are being un-reasonable. It is time that they got rid of their elitist attitude and re-joined the rest of the computer world. They have done the first step by moving away from PowerPC, now it is time to give consumers the choice of what computer they run their beloved MacOS on.

Besides, it is not like they own all of MacOS anyway. Much of it is borrowed so is it really fair to limit the usage of something that they only wrote half of anyway? It is bad enough that they charge for it.

[spclffred]

Thank you finaly

...someone agrees with me, that if i purchase something i should be able to do what ever the hell i want with it, especially if its a mac product seeing how they are so expensive.

[pwinterrowd]

Sometimes it's about cost

You may think it's legal. Most attorneys may think it's legal. Are you willing to spend a hundred thousand dollars in court and legal fees to prove it? A big company can assert it's will in matters like this through intimidation. As long as the area is gray enough to raise the question of legality, they can file lawsuits that will not be summarily dismissed. Lawsuits with the average small company, let alone the average Joe on the street, can't really afford to fight.

Steve Jobs has been short sighted in my opinion. They should have ported OS to Intel when Intel went 32 bit and got out of hardware design. Apple could have been the Microsoft we see today, except with better software. But Apple has never been able to see that. They've always held on to their proprietary hardware and it's always limited them. Computer hardware has become a commodity market. Margins are thin, competition is fierce. Why would you want to be in that business if you didn't have to? The day there's a Mac OS for generic PC software I will go down and buy it. But I've been waiting for that since I first saw a Mac in the late 80's, so don't hold your breath.

[rhyssleary]

DMCA is in conflict with another Federal Law!

Please read this article on a recent ruling between a consultant (Mr. Krause) and the company he created a custom application for (TitleServ).

The basic disagreement is that Mr. Krause asserted copyright ownership after failing to negotiate an extention to his consulting contract with TitleServe. However, he allowed them to keep using the suite of applications while disallowing them from making any further code modifications. TitleServe eventually would decompile his applications, fix bugs that were in the system and ultimately add new features to suit the changing business needs.

Mr. Krause then sued TitleServe where he lost and sued again with the same results.

This case is interesting, because it reaffirmed 17 USC SS 117(A)(1) as a legitimate defense against copyright infringement for anyone who

• Owns a physical copy of the program
  
• As an essential step in utilizing the program makes an adaptation in conjunction with a machine
  
• Uses it in no other manner
  

Based on this successful case, it appears that we can modify any software we buy.

This law appears to be in direct conflict with DMCA.

What does everyone think? Am I crazy on this??

The actual court opinion is here if you want to read it for yourself.

Summary of Case:
Mr. Krause
* Consultant (dba Special-T software)
* Copyright owner
* Terms of license allowed normal usage, no modification of code allowed
* Initiated termination of consulting relationship

Titleserv
* License holder of copyrighted work
* Failed attempt to acquire copyright ownership
* Modified copyrighted code
* Successfully defends itself against copyright infringement via 17 USC SS 117(A)(1)

The Case
* Not about work for hire
* Not about copyright ownership (Mr. Krause's copyright ownership is not in dispute)
* Clarifies what copyright infringement is

[GrandpaN1947]

Only in the USA

Sounds nice but the RIAA owns our law makers right now. In the end you will lose, they will lose, the PC industry will lose, and China with it's censorship will have more freedoms with their PC's than us.

With the DMCA, is it legal for us to even talk about circumventing it?