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Apple loses copyright battle against security startup Corellium
- rvz 6y agoThis is huge. But it's not over yet. Hope Corellium is ready for Round 2.
- smoldesu 6y agoWhat is this supposed to mean? If Apple even tries touching them again, the courts will probably toss out their hearing for fear of double jeopardy. Apple will do the same thing it's always done, which is wince and smile for the camera. Apple might hate emulation of iOS, but they hate controversy even more.
- comex 6y agoThis is just a district court ruling. The case is almost certain to be appealed. (Also, the DMCA claims aren't settled yet.)
- wittyreference 6y agoDouble jeopardy applies to criminal prosecution by the state, not civil matters between non-state entities.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoCivil court has a similar thing regarding double jeopardy. It's just not called double jeopardy and doesn't apply to the state. Multiple people CAN sue you. A single person cannot continually attempt to sue you for the same thing every time they lose.
- typenil 6y ago> they hate controversy even more. Did you come from the Berenstein Bears universe? Apple does unpopular things constantly. The iPhone 12 doesn't come with a charger, and you think they're terrified of controversy? Apple's MO is to double down on controversy.
- enos_feedler 6y agoI don’t think its to double down on controversy but to not be afraid to make product changes they believe in despite the predictable ensuing controversy.
- macintux 6y agoRight. Apple commits to a direction and rarely changes course, which could be perceived as doubling down on controversy if you happen to think their motives are ill. I’ve long felt Apple is a Rorschach test. How you feel about the company and its products often says more about your priorities than the company itself.
- LocalH 6y agoHonestly, this can often (but not always) be true regarding social or political views, as well. Something about the ego projecting onto the external world.
- enos_feedler 6y agoCould you give an example of an ill motive?
- fakedang 6y agoExtracting profit under the guise of environmental activism, which actually ends up causing the opposite effect? I mean, the charger fiasco just happened... Likewise there are many examples of how Apple works against the public interest.
- macintux 6y agoWhen Apple stopped supplying chargers, they also dropped the prices on chargers. That's the kind of thing I mean: soundbite analysis of Apple's policies makes it very easy to cast them as the big baddies.
- sigzero 6y agoOkay Mr. Cracker Jack lawyer. Apple is sure to appeal it. You have no idea what double Jeopardy is and how it applies.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> If Apple even tries touching them again, the courts will probably toss out their hearing for fear of double jeopardy Res judicata, actually, as this is civil not criminal.
- comex 6y agoHere is the actual ruling: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16064642/784/apple-inc-v-corellium-llc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16064642/784/apple-inc-... The judge found that Corellium's use of iOS is fair use, in large part because Corellium's emulator satisfies the "transformative" test and is not a market substitute for normal uses of iOS. Interestingly, he explicitly mentioned Oracle v. Google, where Google's use of Java APIs was considered non-transformative, but distinguished this case from that one. Note that, like most cases involving novel legal issues, this is all but certain to be appealed by the losing party. Also, the judge only granted summary judgement on Apple's copyright infringement claim, not their DMCA anticircumvention claim, which he held involved a "genuine dispute of material facts" and thus would have to go to jury trial.
- webmobdev 6y agoEveryone should also know that Apple tried to buy the company first, but when talks failed, sued them. Typically bullying tactics of corporates.
- saagarjha 6y agoA surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. Still have to read the ruling, but it's nice that this seems to have gone well for Corellium–it's such a useful product that it would be undeniably worse for the world if it was forced to shut down.
- Simulacra 6y agoA small victory for the little guy.
- viro 6y agoIsn't the issues that Corellium allows you to side step the passcode brute force lockout? aka...... https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/the-fbi-is-secretly-breaking-into-encrypted-devices-were-suing/ https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/the-fbi-is-secr...
- g_p 6y agoNot really, by my understanding. Corellium is effectively providing a hosted virtual machine, presumably running on their own custom hypervisor, with their own management stack to give a convenient user experience. You "spin up" VM-based instances of emulated devices (i.e. booting an emulator from a filesystem image), and can then research vulnerabilities and explore, and downgrade/upgrade iOS versions rapidly, like you can with VMs. Real devices are fused to prevent downgrades. Side-stepping brute force lockouts on passcode would be irrelevant, since that's enforced on physical devices via the Secure Enclave - even if you dumped the flash from a real device, you'd not be any further forward as you would need the enclave's contents to derive the correct keys to do anything.
- CamJN 6y ago> Real devices are fused to prevent downgrades. Not quite, to install a version of iOS it must be signed by Apple, and Apple stops signing old versions soon after releasing a new one. Further you need to put the phone in recovery mode to install a lower version because the UI simply won't do it. You may be thinking of game consoles, which use fuses to prevent downgrades.
- g_p 6y agoThanks, I was thinking of the server-side AP Token system (i.e. the signed per-device authentication tags that confirm the firmware is up to date and able to be installed), but then ended up describing the Nintendo Switch fuse system. Indeed, in the past I believe people have used SHSH blobs to successfully downgrade, and also if Apple misconfigured their signing server to approve older versions, people have successfully downgraded during the window created due to the misconfiguration.
- toni 6y agoThe article mentions that "Apple initially attempted to acquire Corellium in 2018". Any idea why the deal fell apart?
- nacs 6y agoEither not enough money offered or the authors knew Apple was just buying their company to shut it down.
- nirushiv 6y agoOn the surface, this is an easy case for Apple. Their argument is simple: iOS is not a licensed product like Windows. You can’t run it - virtualized or not - without Apple’s permission. I do think Apple will win the follow up appeal. For even a billion dollar company (let alone a 2 trillion dollar company), their legal team has had some surprisingly bad failings. I recall another “cupcake” case they lost a few years ago because they walked into the courtroom without sufficient evidence (despite it being clear the other party was a copyright-infringing troll) and lost the ruling. Once a legal team starts taking things for granted, it’s time to find a new one.
- wmf 6y agoBut what about fair use? That's the argument Corellium used.
- ProAm 6y ago> iOS is not a licensed product like Windows Do developers not need to pay $100 a year to write code for it? (for software that will run longer than a couple weeks on a device). To run IOS no, it develop for it, yes?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rad_gruchalski 6y agoThat’s an interesting way to ask that question. GP claimed that iOS is not a licensed product while your question is about developing for iOS. While the answer to your question is: > Membership includes access to beta OS releases, advanced app capabilities, and tools needed to develop, test, and distribute apps and Safari Extensions. You must be 18 years or older to join. essentially: yes. You need to pay to develop, the core thing is: is does not give an iOS “license”. These are orthogonal.
- ProAm 6y agoyeah its interesting, and that is why I asked it that way to see if people smarter than myself could argue it (either side of the discussion). I find it weird that if I were to buy and apple device, and I wanted to write my own program to use only for myself on it I would have to pay an annual fee to Apple to get permission to run it. I think it does sort of boil down to a semantics argument about what is a license for a device you own or not own? Or if you want to want to sell and distribute something you need to pay an annual fee plus 30% of every sale (or 15% if you do their multi-year subscription magic, Or are large enough like Netflix). Apple is very hostile towards their customers and developers/business partners.
- Flockster 6y agoAnd it seems, that Christopher Wade, the cofounder of Corellium received a full pardon by Pres. Trump last week for cybercrime charges. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-regarding-executive-grants-clemency-122320/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-pr...
- ackbar03 6y agoWhat crimes did he commit before? I couldn't find anything on it
- Steko 6y ago> his sentence is under seal, as are the offences under which he is convicted.
- ineedasername 6y agoIt's rather scary that such a thing is possible.
- xxpor 6y agoIt's common after convictions that judges can seal or expunge charges. It's with the permission of the convicted. The point of a public trial is to protect the defendant, not just so the public is aware generally.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoNo, public awareness is an explicit goal of the system, and one of the factors that must be considered in a motion to seal legal filings.
- ineedasername 6y agoI believe the interests of the public are best served with transparency of our justice system. Unless public knowledge would truly pose more harm to the convicted than the sentence itself and stigma that any conceited criminal bears, then it should be public. If sealed under the "additional harm" principal, the public should be provided with at least the broad strokes of that potential harm so that public scrutiny of our justice system is possible. The more such scrutiny is lacking, the more room for abuse.
- lukeh 6y agoI haven't read the ruling, but I'm surprised. Surely iOS is only licensed to run on Apple hardware, and any other usage would involve making an unlicensed copy?
- dragonwriter 6y agoSince the ruling turned on fair use, that the use is unlicensed is a given but also not dispositive, since fair use is an exception to the copyright holders exclusive rights.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- inopinatus 6y agoThe law is not a programming language, no matter what herds of software engineers may like to believe. Every license is subordinate to legislation, statute, rights and obligations, tests of reasonableness and the public interest, jurisprudence etc. The delusion that one can magically conjure otherwise with a few words and a tickbox, leads straight down the path that Apple followed.
- ineedasername 6y agoThat's an interesting ruling, but seems overly broad to allow an entirely unlicensed copy simply because there are (apparently extensive) debugging tools incorporated into the emulation. Then again, this sort of debugging it already possible on less locked-down OS's with valid paths to licensing them. I like the end result, but not the means by which this ruling gets there: I'd rather something like compulsory licensing under reasonable terms for certain purposes like this, something along the lines of the system used for compulsory licensing in music.
- EMIRELADERO 6y agoThe whole point of this is that it should be debuggable without any permission from the copyright holder.
- ineedasername 6y agoI agree, which is why I would rather a legal framework of compulsory licensing. This seems an overly broad interpretation of fair use.
- gorkish 6y agoCan’t legislate from the bench. But there already is a subtext here. If one could license iOS for this, what they are doing here probably wouldn’t fall under fair use. Instead it could fall under the terms of Apple’s own license agreement. I’m personally kind of sick of Apple’s shit in the virtualization/emulation/kernel/cloud/hackintosh/thumb-on-developers area though, and I fully realize my bias to applaud this decision regardless of whether or not it is fair or right to Apple or whether Cornelium deserved to win. Seems there is a lot of smoke billowing out of this thing...
- ineedasername 6y agoYes, I'd rather see legislation to resolve this issue as well.