Apple says booting OS X makes an unauthorized copy

From the article:<p>Psystar copies the hard drive of a Macintosh computer containing Mac OS X (as depicted above on the left side of the diagram) onto its "imaging station" computer (shown in the middle of the diagram). This is the first unlawful copy.<p>Psystar then modifies this copy of Mac OS X to create a "master copy" that wil run on non-Apple computers. Psystar next uses "hard drive imaging" to install copies of its "master copy" of Mac OS X from the imaging station onto each computer it assembles. This is the second unlawful copy (a process repeated many times).<p><i>Finally, every time Psystar turns on any of the Psystar computers running Mac OS X, which it does before shipping each computer, Psystar necessarily makes a separate modified copy of Mac OS X in Random Access Memory, or "RAM." This is the third unlawful copy.</i>

I don't see what the issue over this is. The headline is sensationalist and misleading, what Apple is claiming is technically correct. Booting a Pystar computer does create an <i>unlawful copy</i> of OS X in memory because OS X isn't licensed to run on these computers.

Finally, every time [your name] uses Pandora.com, [your name] necessarily makes a separate copy of a song in Random Access Memory, or RAM and on the Hard Disk Drive, or HDD. This is an unlawful copy.<p>This is so ridiculous it is even not funny.

This is obviously more of a legal statement than a technical statement. If you go into it with the assumption that Apple's license agreement is valid then each time they touch Apple's bits without legal right they would be committing violations. If your legal goal is to prove damages you would obviously want to document each infraction. Not being a scummy lawyer myself it seems sort of similar to the damages awarded for piracy. I may only break the DMCA once by distributing one copy of a CD online however the damages reflect the number of subsequent infractions that occurred due to my failure to adhere to the license terms.

Clearly the solution is for Psystar to make a bootloader that takes an OS X DVD as input and results in an install as the output. Then the user is infringing, Psystar just sells a program that the user can misuse to install OS X "illegally".<p>If handgun makers aren't liable for murder (or wrongful death), then Psystar shouldn't be liable for copyright infringement.

Found on Slashdot: <a href="http://slashdot.org/submission/1105620/Apple-says-booting-OS-X-makes-an-unauthorized-copy?art_pos=2" rel="nofollow">http://slashdot.org/submission/1105620/Apple-says-booting-OS...</a>