Good news for Psystar

[Amdahl]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1557653/software-owned-licensed

THE BYZANTINE SOFTWARE licensing system in the US was dealt a blow by a federal court that denied Autodesk's bid to prevent the second-hand sale of its software.
...
Vernor's defence was that since he paid for the software he had the right to sell it on, and now the US District Court for the Western District of Washington has agreed with him.
...
In other words software companies have to be able to demand their software back in order to successfully claim that it is licensed and not purchased.

This is 'good news' for Psystar, because it means that license rules that attempt to limit the purchasers ability to use (or in this case, sell) the software are not enforceable, unless the software company actually is licensing the software, and takes the software back after the license expires.

 

[BaldiMac]

From the article you link to, this case appears to speak to the ability of a person or company to resell a software package and transfer the license. I don't think that is an issue in the Psystar case.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

The problem with the Psystar case, as I understand it, is that they are only enabling the EFI emulation, which in itself is no crime.

Then they give you a Snow Leopard DVD, which is legal because it's unopened and they are not the end-user (hence the EULA doesn't apply) and say do what you want. At the worst, they are enabling the end-user, much like Limewire does, but they are still paying for the license, so unlike Limewire they couldn't get in trouble or copyright infringement.

 

[BaldiMac]

The problem with the Psystar case, as I understand it, is that they are only enabling the EFI emulation, which in itself is no crime.

Then they give you a Snow Leopard DVD, which is legal because it's unopened and they are not the end-user (hence the EULA doesn't apply) and say do what you want. At the worst, they are enabling the end-user, much like Limewire does, but they are still paying for the license, so unlike Limewire they couldn't get in trouble or copyright infringement.

First, they are not "only" enabling EFI emulation. The also have no emulate the SMC to present a decryption key that Apple has embedded in the SMC. OS X will not run without it.

Second, Apple doesn't call their license a EULA. They call it an SLA (Software License Agreement). Psystar installs OS X on their computers. That is copyright infringement. If they did not install OS X, but they enabled their customers to be able to install it, that would be contributory infringement. Not much difference.

 

[couto27]

more the facts that we dont no if psystar buys them from apple,retailer etc or do some copys.