Apple sued for threatening fan wiki
THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION and a San Francisco law firm sued Apple yesterday, accusing the Cupertino flogger of expensive PCs and personal technotoys of having illegally suppressed open discussion of its gadgets on a fan forum late last year.
The lawsuit is based on a threatening letter Apple's legal department sent to Odioworks in November 2008 demanding that Odioworks take down a thread about Iphones and Ipods on the Bluewiki web site.
The thread contained posts by Bluewiki users discussing strategies and methods for potentially making the Iphone and Ipod interoperate with non-Apple music files and software. The Bluewiki users hadn't succeeded in actually jail-breaking the devices.
Odioworks took down the Bluewiki thread at the time, but now it's claiming that Apple's takedown notice was an illegal suppression of its users' rights to free speech under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
The lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief from the court, "to clarify the rights of the parties and to refute Apple's baseless assertions of copyright infringement and violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act...."
The 11-page complaint is available for reading at your leisure here (PDF). µ
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Apple has been removing threads from sites for a long time now. I remember them removing linked sites that Toms Hardware had posted up not to long ago. I can't remember what the story was but, they did it twice. You would click the link to see the rest of the story or get more details from another site Toms had linked and it would be taken down already. The screen issue story, that's what it was, so they have been doing stuff like this for awhile. Good damage controll yes, bad judgement, absolutely. I don't like Apple by the way.
Hrumph. Not surprising, given that almost all Apple employees are prissy, sissy boys who can't handle when people just don't fall at their feet worshiping them and their overpriced bling. Unable to admit that their products aren't perfect and that they can walk on water.
But then, what should one expect from a company based in gay fantasy land?
Now, if Apple were to openly solicit advice from its users for improvements, now THAT would be news.
Sounds like a frivilous lwasuit to me. People are too sew happy these days.
Maybe you should "sew" your school for failing to properly instruct you in the language arts, grammar, composition, use of the dictionary, and etc.
Nice use of double quotes vs. single. Perhapse you should sue your own school.
@Rich Wargo - the 'news' in this article is not that Apple is cockblocking, it's that Apple is being sued for cockblocking
Yes, "A privately owned websight (sic) has the right to remove whatever they wish." However your reading comprehension skills seem to have failed you. It's OdioWorks, the owners of BlueWiki, who filed the lawsuit, not the users who posted the removed messages.
the Cupertino flogger of expensive PCs and personal technotoys
Thanks!
This great description made me laugh early in the morning.
Btw, Im using Rockbox on the Ipod I got as a Xmas bonus at work(?).
Once you buy a piece of hardware, you should be able to do what you want with it.
Whether its this:
http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=ipod
adding some other OS or software or even using it as a door stopper.
I dont see Honda forbidding people to mod civics in the tackiest way possible (riceburners).
If I want to paint it aqua, its my car.
I use Mandriva Linux and not Mac OS10. I need to get the Ipod to work with my OS of choice. If you cant/Wont help, then please get the F*** out of the way and the community will do what Apple wont.
For those interested, Im using the Rayboradio theme for Rockbox found here:
http://themes.rockbox.org/index.php?target=ipodvideo
Should enlist the help of the world + dog's foremost expert on all things rotten Apple: Nick Farrell
"Its [Apple's] cult of emotionally immature Apple fanboys police the Internet screaming their religious doctrine of superiority found in owning an expensive gadget to any hack who dares say that there is."
It is easy to see where the fanbois derive their impudence; THE APPLE DOESN'T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE - There's an App for that (So all yous trolls going pastel on Nick are simply showing your true colours_ get an ilife, already). sheesh Angel to Zen
I agree that what Apple is doing is simple intimidation and doing it knowlingly with no real legal force. I imagine that Apple's behavior doesn't fall under free speech violation. I bet it would fall under frivilous litigation or litigious harassment.
Good thing California has an anti-SLAPP statute.