Apple says booting OS X makes an unauthorized copy | Hacker News Reader

Apple says booting OS X makes an unauthorized copy

groklaw.net

17 pointscesare14 comments

From the article:

Psystar copies the hard drive of a Macintosh computer containing Mac OS X (as depicted above on the left side of the diagram) onto its "imaging station" computer (shown in the middle of the diagram). This is the first unlawful copy.

Psystar then modifies this copy of Mac OS X to create a "master copy" that wil run on non-Apple computers. Psystar next uses "hard drive imaging" to install copies of its "master copy" of Mac OS X from the imaging station onto each computer it assembles. This is the second unlawful copy (a process repeated many times).

Finally, every time Psystar turns on any of the Psystar computers running Mac OS X, which it does before shipping each computer, Psystar necessarily makes a separate modified copy of Mac OS X in Random Access Memory, or "RAM." This is the third unlawful copy.

This "third unlawful copy" really highlights a glaring incompatibility between copyright law as it exists and digital technology.

As it now stands, it is possible to argue that purely incidental copies of digital data are subject to copyright law. The law that used to regulate what a mid-sized or large enterprise did with its printing press now regulates what happens when someone presses "play."

That's not to say that copyright lawyers and "big content" aren't pleased with the law as it stands, but it increasingly fails to generate a beneficial tradeoff between incentivizing content creation and supporting a rich public domain.

I don't see what the issue over this is. The headline is sensationalist and misleading, what Apple is claiming is technically correct. Booting a Pystar computer does create an unlawful copy of OS X in memory because OS X isn't licensed to run on these computers.

It's actually at least four unlawful copies. One in the cache memory of the hard drive, one in the RAM, one in the L2 and one in the L1 cache.

Just like playing a CD in an unapproved player (with skip protection) creates an unlawful copy in memory?

A copyright is not absolute ownership of a bit pattern, but a balance of the interests of consumers and producers. Apple is clearly attempting to abuse copyright law; such in-memory copies are implicitly granted with the disc as they're necessarily for the software to operate.

> such in-memory copies are implicitly granted with the disc

The story isn't saying no-one is allowed turn on their Macs because we're pirating OS X by making copies of it.

Apple's point is Pystar is breaking the license under which OS X is distributed by installing it on a non-Apple computer therefore any copy is an unlawful copy.

When you buy a CD, does it come with a license that only authorizes it for play in approved players?

No.

And if it did, would it be enforceable or laughable? How would playing an audio CD even require agreeing to a license? The original seller may have agreed to a shrinkwrap contract, but one purchasing a used CD certainly hasn't. Copyright protection coverts duplicating the content of an object, not use of the object.

Well, the fine print on most of my CD's include the prohibition of unauthorized LENDING of the disc.

Finally, every time [your name] uses Pandora.com, [your name] necessarily makes a separate copy of a song in Random Access Memory, or RAM and on the Hard Disk Drive, or HDD. This is an unlawful copy.

This is so ridiculous it is even not funny.

Not a very good analogy. The content on Pandora is licensed so every copy in the chain is completely legal and adheres to the license terms agreed to by all parties involved.

This is obviously more of a legal statement than a technical statement. If you go into it with the assumption that Apple's license agreement is valid then each time they touch Apple's bits without legal right they would be committing violations. If your legal goal is to prove damages you would obviously want to document each infraction. Not being a scummy lawyer myself it seems sort of similar to the damages awarded for piracy. I may only break the DMCA once by distributing one copy of a CD online however the damages reflect the number of subsequent infractions that occurred due to my failure to adhere to the license terms.

Clearly the solution is for Psystar to make a bootloader that takes an OS X DVD as input and results in an install as the output. Then the user is infringing, Psystar just sells a program that the user can misuse to install OS X "illegally".

If handgun makers aren't liable for murder (or wrongful death), then Psystar shouldn't be liable for copyright infringement.

Found on Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/submission/1105620/Apple-says-booting-OS...

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