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Apple Sends Cease and Desist Email to Public Wiki Site, Bluwiki
MacBlogz - One Stop Apple News — ... EFF explains: At the heart of this is the iTunesDB file, the index that the iPod operating system uses to keep track of what playable media is on the device. Unless an application can write new data to this file, it won’t be able to “sync” music or other content to an iPod. The iTunesDB file has never been encrypted and is relatively well understood. In iPods released after September 2007, however, Apple introduced a checksum hash to make it difficult for applications other than iTunes to write new data to the iTunesDB file, thereby hindering an iPod ...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation Doesn't Like Apple's Attitude
OStatic blogs — ... Who knows why many open source users are also Macintosh users, but I've noticed a correlation there for years. Maybe it's because open source, like the Mac, rings of rebellion against the status quo. Nevertheless, if you think the love always flows in two directions, check out this post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. According to the EFF, Apple's lawyers recently put the kibosh on an ...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation Doesn't Like Apple's Attitude [OStatic]
GigaOM Network — ... Who knows why many open source users are also Macintosh users, but I've noticed a correlation there for years. Maybe it's because open source, like the Mac, rings of rebellion against the status quo. Nevertheless, if you think the love always flows in two directions, check out this post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. According to the EFF, Apple's lawyers recently put the kibosh on an ...

EFF Blasts Apple For Fraudulent DMCA Takedown Of Wiki Page
Techdirt — ... The EFF has stepped up to walk through the many, many reasons why there's no DMCA violation on the site, and Apple's takedown notice appears to be fraudulent. Yes, the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA do say it's illegal to offer a technology, product, service, device or device to get around DRM, but an open discussion on a wiki is not any of those things. Perhaps more importantly, Apple doesn't own the copyright on iTunesDB. Each iPod makes its own iTunesDB file based on what files they put on their device. The copyright is unlikely to belong to ...

Apple sends baseless takedown notice to hackers discussing iTunesDB code
CrunchGear — ... Leaving aside the layman’s issue of “why didn’t they do this years ago if it’s so illegal,” anyone who knows the DMCA can immediately see that this notice is total bull. Fred Lohmann at the EFF appears to know somewhat more than myself, so I’ll let him explain in detail, but ...

EFF butts horns with Apple over open-source iTunes take-down notice
Obsessable News Feed — ... with other platforms than the native. As the non-for-profit hacking group hasn't the means to defend itself against a DMCA order, the EFF has stepped up to defend the group's rights. A cursory review of the issues at hand confirms EFF's interpretation of the law: "Apple doesn't have a DMCA leg to stand on". There's no word yet on Apple's response. ...

Apple uses DMCA as a weapon against an open source iTunes hack
Betanews — ... "Failure to do so will result in legal liability." Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced it would represent Odio in court, if necessary. In Odio's defense, senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann is preparing to argue that the iTunesDB file stored on individual users' iPods no more belongs to Apple than does every Web page that has ever appeared in Safari. "The iTunesDB file is not authored by Apple, nor does it appear that Apple has any copyright interest in it," von Lohmann wrote yesterday . "Instead, the iTunesDB file on every iPod is the result of the ...

EFF berates Apple over open-source iTunes project
MacBytes.com — ... Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA explicitly prohibits the dissemination of information that can be used to circumvent such technology." Bluwiki's founder, Sam Odio, complied with the takedown request, but in an interview Tuesday he said that iPodhash's developer is not trying to get around Apple's copy protection. "He's not developing software to unencrypt the songs," he said. "What he's actually doing is unencrypting the database." Here's how the EFF explained the matter in a posting to its blog Wednesday by senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann: In September 2007, ...

Apple uses DMCA against iPod interoperability project
Technology: Technology blog | guardian.co.uk — ... The Electronic Frontier Foundation has offered to get involved, and has published Apple Confuses Speech with a DMCA Violation, a Legal Analysis by Fred von Lohmann. He says: "Short answer: Apple doesn't have a DMCA leg to stand on." There's also a long answer. ...

Apple Using DMCA To Limit What iPod Users Can Do
Podcasting News — ... The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that Apple appears to be using the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to limit what iPod owners can do with their portable media players: ...

EFF To Apple: Free Speech Isn't a DMCA Violation
ReadWriteWeb — ... The EFF web site goes into more details as to why the EFF believes Apple to be in the wrong, listing the numerous reasons why there's no DMCA violation on the site. ...

What might end Apple’s open source pass
Open Source — ... sell. It had to become a big advocate of the DMCA to keep its suppliers. But now those suppliers have learned the only real beneficiary of DRM technology was Apple. It cemented their monopoly and control over the suppliers. Some are rebelling, in small ways. Apple has embraced those moves, yet it continues to use the DMCA as a cudgel, aiming to kill open source competitors with claims of copyright violation. Will the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s latest slam of Apple, over its attempt to kill a BluWiki thread with a DMCA order, ...

Apple Confuses Speech with a DMCA Violation
The Apple Core — ... demanding the removal of postings by users who are trying to figure out how to write software that can sync media to the latest versions of the iPhone and iPod touch. According to the EFF : Apple doesn’t have a DMCA leg to stand on. At the heart of this is the iTunesDB file, the index that the iPod operating system uses to keep track of what playable media is on the device. Unless an application can write new data to this file, it won’t be able to “sync” music or other content to an iPod. The iTunesDB file has never been encrypted and is ...

Apple's Ban On iPod Sync Software Stymied By Wikileaks
InformationWeek - All Stories And Blogs — ... system." The Electronic Frontier Foundation disagrees with Apple's position. Last week, the cyber liberties advocacy group said that Apple's ...

Apple attempts to silence iPhone hack discussion
APC - Tagged Articles - Apple — ... , Apple demanded that discussions of how to calculate the checksum used in the main iTunes information storage database be removed, claiming that it was an attempt to circumvent its FairPlay DRM a legal offence under the DMCA. By the EFF's analaysis , that's a huge heap of garbage: "Apple doesn't have a DMCA leg to stand on," wrote EFF staff attorney Fred von Lohmann. The argument centres around the iTuneDB file, which is an index of all the media stored on a given iPhone or iPod. Since September 2007, Apple has used a checksum when writing to the file, which makes it ...

The EFF on Apple DRM CRAP
p2pnet news — ... Apple uses DRM to prevent recent iPods from syncing with software other than iTunes (Apple claims it violates the DMCA to reverse engineer the hashing mechanism); ...

Apple Shows Us DRM's True Colors
MacBytes.com — Apple uses DRM to lock iPhones to AT&T and Apple's iTunes App Store; Apple uses DRM to prevent recent iPods from syncing with software other than iTunes (Apple claims it violates the DMCA to reverse engineer the hashing mechanism); Apple claims that it uses DRM to ...

Coming? DRM-adapted eyeballs—or at least eyeglasses? Hypocritical Steve Jobs would love the idea for e-books if you go by the new iPod Shuffle
TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home — ... "Normally, of course, independent headphone makers could simply reverse engineer the interface. The "authentication chip" is there so that Apple’s lawyers can invoke the DMCA to block those efforts. So this shows us, yet again, what DRM is for — not stopping piracy, but rather impeding competition and innovation." ...

Hardware DRM: Has Apple Joined the Dark Side?
Cult of Mac — ... , the authentication chip was then derided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as Apple’s attempt to invoke the Digital Millennium Copyright Act not to stop piracy, but to impede competition and innovation. ...

EFF, Wiki Site Sue Apple Over DMCA Takedown Request
AppScout — ... BluWiki users started a thread last year about how one might make iPods and iPhones interoperable with software other than iTunes. Apple attorneys wrote to OdioWorks, claiming that the thread was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and demanded that it be removed. OdioWorks complied. ...

Big Brother Apple Sued For Thuggish Trampling of Free Speech
Silicon Alley Insider — ... (.pdf) against Apple claims no law was broken by BluWiki because the writers of the wiki threads “had apparently not yet succeeded in their reverse engineering efforts and were simply discussing Apple’s code obfuscation techniques,” writes Fred von Lohmann, an EFF attorney. “If Apple is suggesting that the DMCA reaches people merely talking about technical protection measures, then they’ve got a serious First Amendment problem.” ...

Apple is being accused of stifling free speech; again
The Apple Core — ... file in 6th-gen iPods, but it was quickly reverse-engineered. They changed it with the release of iPhone 2.0 and a project was started to reverse the new hash, but wasn’t successful yet. My guess is Apple used the same algorithm as FairPlay for the new hash, so Apple could use the DMCA to prevent competing apps like Songbird and Banshee from talking to iPods/iPhones. BTW, don’t tell Apple, but the project uses a wiki, so the old page versions from before the takedown are still there.” EFF explains: At the heart of this is the iTunesDB file, the index that the iPod operating ...