- Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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We've got a number of tools in our armoury [Not weapons? Ed.] - UK government minister
Apple accuses Psystar of destroying evidence
UPSTART MAC CLONE MAKER Psystar has been accused by Apple of having destroyed evidence it was legally required to preserve in their ongoing court battle.
Apple's accusation came in a letter brief (PDF) filed with the court. Though much of the letter is redacted and most of the accompanying exhibits are sealed, the thrust of it looks to be related to Apple's claim that Psystar violated the US Digitial Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), which forbids circumvention of technical means used to protect copyrights.
In this case, the copyrights at issue are those that cover Apple's Mac OS X operating system, which Apple contends Psystar improperly modified or reverse engineered "to enable Mac OS X [to run] on Psystar computers".
In its letter to the court, Apple wrote, "Defendant, Psystar Corporation, has destroyed relevant evidence that it was legally required to preserve. Specifically, Psystar has overwritten -- i.e., erased -- infringing versions of the software code used on computers sold to its customers."
The allegation goes to the heart of Apple's complaint against Psystar, in which it claims that Psystar violated the DMCA in order to infringe Apple's copyrights on Mac OS X by modifying and installing it on computers not made by Apple, which Apple further claims violated the terms of its Mac OS X licence.
Apple says it found out that Psystar erased prior versions of its software when it deposed Rodolfo Pedraza, Psystar's CEO, in order to discover how the Mac clone maker was going about circumventing its "technological protection measures".
Apple's letter asks the court to order Psystar to produce all master copies of its source code and related documents and, if Psystar can't, to impose sanctions.
If proven, such an allegation can have serious legal consequences for a litigant. The legal term for destroying evidence sought by an opposing party in the discovery phase of a civil lawsuit is 'spoliation'. Courts take an extremely dim view of such acts, especially, as in this case, when a party is subject to a court order directing that it preserve all evidence relevant to an ongoing civil lawsuit.
Psystar could find itself in deep kimchee over this, ranging from a stern warning by the judge - not likely here, as Apple's case might depend upon the evidence that Psystar allegedly destroyed - through a directed inference that the evidence destroyed was unfavorable to Psystar, a directed finding of liability against Psystar, a default judgment in favour of Apple, up to any of the above plus contempt sanctions against Psystar and even its lawyers. µ
L'Inq
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You'd have thought Apple would have anonymously bought one of them Psystar machines anyway as proof.
I thought reverse engineering was legal anyway (look at Compaq for instance cloning the IBM PC), or has all that been stopped due to the DMCA?
Rob
And, it could be more Apple smoke and mirrors. It could be false or even malicious, it could be anything but the things SPECULATED here.
It is well known that Apple is as heavy handed with it's legal romping as is the music industry. They just choose bigger targets, though are careful to avoid the really big ones.
There was an article that circulated on the web 3 years ago on how to run MacOSX on a PC so I built one. ECS motherboard and all. It works fine to this day. I didn't reverse engineer anything.
"I've built a mac-clone myself with no reverse engineering."
"There was an article that circulated on the web 3 years ago on how to run MacOSX on a PC"
Did it ever occur to you that the article you use on "how to" WAS the reverse engineering that you so astutely claimed not to do! LOL
Geez! :D
most companies would be glad of a potential expansion to the market for their software.
Not Apple because they think they must prevent others using OSX so they can monopolise it to sell hardware at twice the going rate. There is a case for anti-trust here, shirley.
For all their pretended belief in their own technical prowess Apple cannot seem to grasp the simple math which suggests the total potential sales of OSX in the PC market is vastly greater than the profit margin on sales of overpriced Apple branded hardware. Thus disproving the myth of their own intelligence.
QED
At last an Article thats not full of bashing anything. We might actually see some journalism on The Inq.
About the more expensive Macs, just read some articles.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/apple-mac-leopard-windows-vista,1985.html
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9023959/Mac_vs._PC_cost_analysis_How_does_it_all_add_up_?taxonomyId=12&pageNumber=1
It just comes down to choice, not price.
Tomshardware's article is skewed badly. They compare the top end overpriced laptops to the top end over priced mac hardware.
Of course they are going to be the same. But try going midrange with a Macintosh or low end. You have to create a hackintosh in order to get a midrange or low end laptop. Apple refuses to give up their profit margin and that is what this bollock-laced lawsuit is all about.
Your argument is so flawed I needed to point this out.
I hope apple loses. They have been fighting off clones since the power mac era.
So if Microsoft locked software to certain hardware they would be sued. Remind me why it's legal for Apple to lock software to what is essentially a regular PC with a huge price markup? This is so backwards.
Well, if Apple wants to sell their OS to all PC owners they would end up in the same mess as M$, different HW means different drivers and necessary testing and support. By selling their os on their HW they need to support only products they sell, much easier to maintain/develop. By supporting only their hw they can tweak OS so it runs perfectly on their HW.
To be honest, if i was in their position i wouldn't think about selling the os to other PC users at all.
Lets see what is inside each of those "overpriced" laptops that everyone loves to bash about is completely useless arguments. People are forgetting simple facts and simple things that are in one PC and in another PC to start with. Like - how slow your cheep laptop will work if you put on bed, and you block all the ventilation system that is designed to push hot air to the bottom of laptop? How good is your mic in your craptop? When you enable bluetooth in your crapt what happens to your wireless link? How good is camera integration? As far as i have seen - you have to have some weird dongle to use bluatooth, your mic sux in such a bad whay, that noone hears you, or everyone hears you typing and clicking mouse. Ventilation is nonexistent if you put it on bed or some other soft surface. If you see laptop with these flaws removed it will cost the same, maybe a bit less. If i want these features, my only option is to buy something that is not cheep, and as result some vendors like sony think that i want high end laptop and stuffs it full with other crap i dont need, like dual GPU. On the other hand, if you put your laptopn only on desk, you dont want to talk to eveyone through voicechat and dont care about bluetooth - buy any reasonable laptop, but dont claim that you have laptop on par with macbook. People just cut the crap.
The most beautiful Apple Mac's generations was Apple PowerMac that they uses the best architecture in the world. I hope they could back to the days without Intel.
Hi, Glenn.
Congrats for managing to get OS X on your PC with such a method. From your sayings, I presume you modified your hardware (motherboard) to trick the OS X disc into thinking your PC is a mac.
Can you please send the link on how exactly to do such a procedure? All the results I get on google is how to install patched (aka "reversed enginered") versions of OS X and virtual machine stuff.
Any guide to makr my machine into a mac clone?
The reason i want this is that i would never say bye to 1500$ to get a laptop with no bluray support, flimsy casing that breaks for no reason and a dvd drive that wears out every 2 years. Better go to linux mint. But it would be nice to get it on my exisiting machine. Just for a try.
Apple thinks that the fact there is no evidence implies that it was destroyed. I'm sure Psystar will claim that no evidence implies no act or evidence of act ever existed and Apples claims are false.