PsyStar Claims Apple's Mac OS X Copyright Is Invalid
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 24th Dec 2008 20:49 UTC, submitted by judgen
Legal The legal back-and-forth between PsyStar and Apple is slowly but surely moving into the twilight zone. Not too long ago we had Apple going all black helicopter on PsyStar claiming people and/or companies other than PsyStar are involved in the clone maker's unlawful practices, even though Apple could so far not name any of them because, well, they don't know who they are yet. If that wasn't enough, PsyStar now claims that Apple's copyright on Mac OS X is invalid.
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RE: Tying
by apoclypse on Thu 25th Dec 2008 22:55 UTC in reply to "Tying"
apoclypse
Member since:
2007-02-17

There is nothing wrong with product tying, if I'm not mistaken. The only reason it was an issue with MS was because they were and still are a monopoly with full control over the PC market. The other issue was that IE was tied directly to the OS without any hopes of removing to install something else (at the time Netscape) and very little chance that a third party would be able to do the same with their browser (though we now know how bad an idea that was). Your argument holds very little water, you should be able to sue Canonical for including Firefox as default, or Apple for including Safari, but that is not the case because they are not a monopoly and thus can't sway masses of users by including one app. Product tying is not illegal and its done all the time, xbox, PS3, Wii, you name it, all of these products are tied to software or hardware or both. As it has already been legally established Apple is in competition with other PC manufacturers, what differentiates them from other OEM's is OSX, they have the eright as a company of selling their product with whatever they think will gain them an advantage. To to top it off they support running other OS's on their systems.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[2]: Tying
by sbergman27 on Thu 25th Dec 2008 23:15 in reply to "RE: Tying"
sbergman27 Member since:
2005-07-24

There is nothing wrong with product tying, if I'm not mistaken. The only reason it was an issue with MS was because they were and still are a monopoly with full control over the PC market.

Nothing wrong as in "It's only illegal for monopolies"? Or nothing wrong as in "It shouldn't be illegal for non-monopolies"? I'm starting to wonder whether "tying" shouldn't be considered anti-consumer, and against the best interests of "We, the people (of the World)" across the board. The company I worked for for 20 years is tiny. Microscopic, really. And it certainly did a lot of things that were anti-consumer because the law allowed it. The clients in my charge were, to a great extent, insulated from that. And our owner wasn't a bad guy. Just someone who operated within the law and felt legality was more or less equivalent to morality. I'm descibing him in more of a negative light, here, than is really warranted, because he had a conscience and a value system that I respected, or else I wouldn't have worked there for 20 years. But let's just say that our ethical systems diverged.

I have to wonder if tying of materials and services should be quite as legal as it is. Would it be better or worse if it was not... as long as everyone had to play by the same rules?

I'm pretty much just putting this out for discussion. I'm not sure where I actually stand on it.

Edited 2008-12-25 23:18 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 3