Technically Legal

Episode 60: Thesis, Introduction, Conclusion

Thesis v. WordPress and the GPL, Massachusetts and the Right to Repair, Facebook and the CFAA.

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1 Comment Posted in: Podcast on July 26, 2010

Episode 52: One Year Down

Twitter to Sell Trademarked Ad Terms, Senators Call to End Privacy Of Pre-Paid Phones, Apple v. GPL

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Twitter to Sell Trademarked Ad Terms

Twitter May Allow Competitors to Purchase Trademarks as Keywords for Sponsored Tweets

Senators Call to End Privacy of Pre-Paid Phones

Senators call for end to anonymous, prepaid cell phones

Apple v. GPL

GPL Enforcement in Apple’s App Store
More about the App Store GPL Enforcement

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on May 31, 2010

FSF Tries to Enfore GPL on Apple’s App Store

This is a bizarre story. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) issued a press release about an unnamed third party developer who released an unnamed third party application via the iTunes App store. This unnamed program uses GPL code, and is itself a port of GNU Go. So the FSF sent a letter to Apple asking Apple to bring the App Store in complaince with the GPL.

The FSF press release also indicates that they’re in talks with the application developer for violating the GPL, but they’re also implying that Apple is somehow at fault. The FSF’s theory is that Apple, by distributing this code in a non-GPL-compliant way, is also violating the GPL.

This would probably fail under a contract theory of the GPL, because there’s no evidence that Apple knew the underlying code was subject to the GPL. However, Apple cannot claim ignorance to insulate themselves from liability for copyright infringement. The safeharbor provisions of the DMCA would provide Apple protection from liability on that front, which explains why they took the application off the store as soon as they had knowledge of the infringing nature of the product.

Update: Another good reason why Apple wouldn’t be liable for breach of contract, is that they were not a party to the contract. Unless the game had the GPL as a license agreement (unlikely), and the iPhone App approval agent clicked “OK,” the FSF would have a tough time proving that Apple was party to the GPL here. Even if all of that were true, it wouldn’t be an open and shut case.

Comments Off Posted in: Commentary on May 26, 2010