Tag Archives: DMCA

[News] Blogosphere Under Attack by Righthaven LLC

Wired.com published an article about the business strategies of Las Vegas based law firm Righthaven LLC. Righthaven’s strategy to “save” the media world is simple:

buy copyrights of newspaper articles
instead of sending takedown notices under the DMCA,
they rather sue blogs and website, who repost articles without consent of the owner

Righthaven’s first client is the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Between March and July 2010 Righthaven has filed at least 80 lawsuits against bloggers and website owners.

And this is just the beginning, according to Wired.com:

[Steve] Gibson says, he’s just getting started, Righthaven has other media clients that he won’t name undtil the lawsuits start rolling out (..).

Links

» Wired.com: Newspaper Chain’s New Business Plan: Copyright Suits
» Law.com: Is This the Birth of the Copyright Troll?
» Spiegel.de: Abmahnungen gegen Blogs – Notwehr als Geschäftsmodell (german only)

[iPhone] EFF sues Apple for wrong DCMA notice

EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann has filed action for a declaratory judgment against Apple. In october 2008, on Odioworks’ BluWiki portal pages have been released that explained in detail how Apple uses encryption to tie iPods solely to iTunes and how Apple bars third party software like Songbird.

Although the writers in the wiki were not able to circumvent Apple’s encryption algorithm, in november 2008, Apple demanded immediate removing and of course Odioworks followed their demand.

Apple argues the algorithms that calculate hashs to tie iPods to iTunes are part of Apples FairPlay protection, thus falling under the DMCA, that disallows circumventing or public discussion about circumventing.

In the view of the EFF and other IT professionals this is not true as the calculated hash is only required to access the iTunesDB. In the means of the YMCA the iTunesDB encryption is not part of a copy protection. Therefore releasing information about circumventing the hash cannot be illegal. Moreover the DMCA explicitly allows decryption for the purpose of compatibility.

» Heise.de: Bürgerrechtler klagen gegen Apple (german)…
» TheRegister.co.uk: EFF accuses Apple of muzzling iPhone hobbyists…

[e-Biz] A Nasty Conspiracy Behind Psystar?

1 Reply

What might sound like a conspiracy book by John Grisham is reality. Apple obviously believes that another company or even companies are secretly backing up Psystar. Groklaw.net explains that this might be an explanation why a major law firm took this case. Apple’s lawyers wrote:

(..) Apple will seek leave to amend this complaint to show the unknown John Doe Defendants’ true names and capacities when they are ascertained.(..)

Apple seeks revenge and these new claims read badly for Psystar. Apple even added claims for DMCA violation. So the main question is: Is Psystar about to go down, or do they have aces in their sleeves? You may find the whole article on Growlaw.net.

Unimpressed by this current development Psystar is continuing to sell their MacClones…