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I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There's a lot of railing against copyright law, EULAs, etc. which have nothing to do with what I'm asking. I didn'

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There's a lot of railing against copyright law, EULAs, etc. which have nothing to do with what I'm asking. I didn't ask "is this legal?", I asked "is this ethical or moral?". Apple invests what I assume to be a huge effort into making the Mac and selling it, including MacOS. I think we all agree that MacOS is an important part of the "Mac experience" that Apple is selling. I'm going out on a limb here to say that people who spend a bunch of effort to subvert the technical controls that stop MacOS running on other hardware know that those are in place because Apple sells the MacOS as part of Mac; regardless of the legal technicality of whether they actually clicked through the EULA, read it, or their opinions on whether that license is legally binding. We have a situation where Apple, the creator of a piece of work - MacOS, only wants people who purchase its hardware to benefit from it. Other people understand that, and try to benefit from it anyway. What is the ethical and moral position you need to take to say "it just doesn't matter what Apple, the creator, thinks." So what's your theory here? Apple is big enough and profitable enough that meaningful harm to Apple is the determining factor? So it's OK to infringe on IP rights of big profitable companies, or where you weren't going to buy the hardware product anyway? Or is it that no concept of property exists outside of the physical realm - so that e.g. musicians should have no control over who records their performances, nor artists over who reproduces their work, nor developers over who uses their software and for what purposes?

pxc 5y ago
> There's a lot of railing against copyright law, EULAs, etc. which have nothing to do with what I'm asking. Intellectual property is a legal construct, and the thing being violated here is a EULA. (I'd also hardly describe what I wrote as ‘railing against’ anything. I just stated some facts about what IP is.) > So what's your theory here? Apple is big enough and profitable enough that meaningful harm to Apple is the determining factor? My ‘theory’ is that meaningful harm is a pretty good criterion for ethical objections in general, and that well-founded moral objections to things which are harmless are exceptional. This isn't a novel or controversial view; it's foundational to liberalism. > Or is it that no concept of property exists outside of the physical realm - so that e.g. musicians should have no control over who records their performances, nor artists over who reproduces their work, nor developers over who uses their software and for what purposes? I'd say that physical property is also an instrumental legal concept. Its existence, like the existence of intellectual property, is mostly grounded in histories of power and its exercise. But there are good arguments for its usefulness in certain contexts, and there are good moral arguments related to ownership. And the best arguments relating to ownership of physical things don't apply to ideas because ideas are not like physical things. Your question, as posed, also overlooks the fact that intellectual property as it actually exists in fact does little to ensure that artists have control over their work. In the same way, Apple's policy on the use of macOS on non-Apple hardware is totally outside the control of actual developers who work at Apple. If you'd like to tell me about how developers at Apple have an interest in ensuring that macOS is not used on non-Apple hardware... congratulations: you've just started outlining a case for how projects like the one in the OP are meaningfully harmful.

pxc 5y ago

> There's a lot of railing against copyright law, EULAs, etc. which have nothing to do with what I'm asking. Intellectual property is a legal construct, and the thing being violated here is a EULA. (I'd also hardly describe what I wrote as ‘railing against’ anything. I just stated some facts about what IP is.) > So what's your theory here? Apple is big enough and profitable enough that meaningful harm to Apple is the determining factor? My ‘theory’ is that meaningful harm is a pretty good criterion for ethical objections in general, and that well-founded moral objections to things which are harmless are exceptional. This isn't a novel or controversial view; it's foundational to liberalism. > Or is it that no concept of property exists outside of the physical realm - so that e.g. musicians should have no control over who records their performances, nor artists over who reproduces their work, nor developers over who uses their software and for what purposes? I'd say that physical property is also an instrumental legal concept. Its existence, like the existence of intellectual property, is mostly grounded in histories of power and its exercise. But there are good arguments for its usefulness in certain contexts, and there are good moral arguments related to ownership. And the best arguments relating to ownership of physical things don't apply to ideas because ideas are not like physical things. Your question, as posed, also overlooks the fact that intellectual property as it actually exists in fact does little to ensure that artists have control over their work. In the same way, Apple's policy on the use of macOS on non-Apple hardware is totally outside the control of actual developers who work at Apple. If you'd like to tell me about how developers at Apple have an interest in ensuring that macOS is not used on non-Apple hardware... congratulations: you've just started outlining a case for how projects like the one in the OP are meaningfully harmful.