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Comment by Rjevski | Hacker News Reader

An email address can be quite long, enough to pass off as a poem or other form of art which can be copyrighted.

Apple is doing the same with an encryption key embedded in Mac’s SMC chips. The key is something like “our hard work by these words guarded, please do not steal (c) Apple Computer Inc” and is used to decrypt system binaries.

While providing no actual security I guess it gives them a leg to stand on should anyone recreate a machine capable of running MacOS (the OS would not start without this key being in the hardware).

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Several machines are capable of running macOS. http://www.osx86project.org is a project focused on doing exactly this. However, these machines do not use SMC chips. They emulate the SMC.

By including the copyrighted phrase in the emulating kext, and thus violating copyright law. Yes.

That phrase is not copyright infringement. Apple lost that case in a court of law.

Perhaps they need to use a phrase that rhymes (see discussion about using poems elsewhere in this thread).

Some poems rhyme; some don't. It's a weird distinction to make, technically speaking, and not one I'm sure I'd hang my hat on.

Link to the case? if this hack actually doesn't work as far as law is concerned then I'm surprised it's still there.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-03/apple-los...

This is not a relevant case at all. OSK0 and OSK1 keys were never a secret. But they are a literary work more or less so still copyrightable.

Apple argued it is a trade secret; the judge disagreed with them on that one.

So this poem here:

Your karma check for today: There once was was a user that whined his existing OS was so blind, he'd do better to pirate an OS that ran great but found his hardware declined. Please don't steal Mac OS! Really, that's way uncool. (C) Apple Computer, Inc.

Is not a trade secret.

They could have used "all your rounded corners are belong to us". They had better outcome with courts with that argument.

It's actually "ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc"-a 512 bit AES key.

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