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This is something Apple does in their 'DSMOS' (don't steal Mac OS X) code (but they use copyright, not a trademark). Mac OS X looks for a set of firmware varia

This is something Apple does in their 'DSMOS' (don't steal Mac OS X) code (but they use copyright, not a trademark). Mac OS X looks for a set of firmware variables containing a non-formatted version of following haiku (reproduced for the purpose of artistic comment): our hard work by these words guarded please dont steal © Apple Computer Inc If you shipped a transparently Mac-compatible x86 machine, you'd have to include this haiku (in some form) in the firmware.

anon4 11y ago
Serious question: if I made a computer with the purpose of booting Mac OS X, noticed that it aborted after trying to read some bytes from the firmware, then wrote a program to iteratively test longer and longer sequences, would I be committing copyright infringement? What if I never look at the output of the program as text, but only as hex values?
- teacup50 11y ago
  IANAL, but speaking generally, the courts seem to take a dim view at technical workarounds, and instead focus on the actual intention and result. In this particular case, I believe what you would have produced would be classified as a "circumvention" device under the DMCA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention). The state of "IP" law makes me very sad.
e12e 11y ago
If GNU is copyleft, is this then copy far right?
wbl 11y ago
Sega tried this to prevent third party games from running. It didn't work: because their string was required for functionality, it wasn't protected by copyright. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade for details.
shabble 11y ago
Cute. I remember some anti-spam outfit trying to "protect" emails with a copyrighted poem in the headers: http://www.oblomovka.com/writing/habeas%3A_the_antispam_haiku.php3 http://www.oblomovka.com/writing/habeas%3A_the_antispam_haik... I wonder how far back in OS(X) it dates?
- teacup50 11y ago
  It was introduced as part of the Intel transition, prior to public release. Internally, Mac OS X ran on commodity PCs for quite some time before that and didn't include DSMOS.

anon4 11y ago

Serious question: if I made a computer with the purpose of booting Mac OS X, noticed that it aborted after trying to read some bytes from the firmware, then wrote a program to iteratively test longer and longer sequences, would I be committing copyright infringement? What if I never look at the output of the program as text, but only as hex values?

teacup50 11y ago
IANAL, but speaking generally, the courts seem to take a dim view at technical workarounds, and instead focus on the actual intention and result. In this particular case, I believe what you would have produced would be classified as a "circumvention" device under the DMCA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention). The state of "IP" law makes me very sad.

e12e 11y ago

If GNU is copyleft, is this then copy far right?

wbl 11y ago

Sega tried this to prevent third party games from running. It didn't work: because their string was required for functionality, it wasn't protected by copyright. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade for details.

shabble 11y ago

Cute. I remember some anti-spam outfit trying to "protect" emails with a copyrighted poem in the headers: http://www.oblomovka.com/writing/habeas%3A_the_antispam_haiku.php3 http://www.oblomovka.com/writing/habeas%3A_the_antispam_haik... I wonder how far back in OS(X) it dates?

teacup50 11y ago
It was introduced as part of the Intel transition, prior to public release. Internally, Mac OS X ran on commodity PCs for quite some time before that and didn't include DSMOS.