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From: hal@krishna.cs.cornell.edu (Hal Perkins)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: 6.0.5 by ftp only (was Re: Thank you, Apple! (for again singling out 'the rest of us'))
Message-ID: <39690@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 10 Apr 90 17:05:02 GMT
References: <1990Mar25.125336.8932@uwasa.fi> <2314@tellab5.tellabs.com> <1990Apr7.235132.15047@uokmax.uucp> <14964@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> <23016@netnews.upenn.edu>
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Reply-To: hal@cs.cornell.edu (Hal Perkins)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
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In article <23016@netnews.upenn.edu> Jeff White writes:
>In article <14964@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> S. D. Ericson writes:
>>I believe the issue was one of being able to track who gets the software.
>>They were finally able to convince the lawyers that ftp tracks (logs) the
>>connections and thus they would know who got the software.
>
>  It's often been mentioned that an individual is supposed to be able to go
>to a local Apple dealer and have them copy the software for you.  If this
>is truw (I've never done it), do they make any records of it (ie. ask for 
>some type of ID)?  If they don't, I don't see ftp'ing the software is much
>different.

Hey folks, remember we're talking about Lawyers here, not common sense
or reality.  I'm pretty impressed that the DTS folks managed to get
the systems software on the internet at all.

Apple's lawyers apparently have great paranoia about unrestricted
electronic distribution of the system software.  When you get it from
a dealer, presumably the dealer verifies that you're a real Macintosh
owner and entitled to it, at least to the satisfaction of the legal
types.  With most online services and with ftp, there's at least a
record showing the user id of the person who copied it.  If anyone
could copy the software and put it up for anonymous ftp on their
machine, Apple has no record of who else copied it.  Given the chaotic
state of intellectual property law, the lawyers might be right to worry.

Hal Perkins           hal@cs.cornell.edu
Cornell CS