Archive for the ‘EFF’ tag
Apple claims iPhone jailbreaking violates their copyright
CNET reported that Apple recently told the U.S. Copyright Office that it believes iPhone jailbreaking is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and infringes on its copyright, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The EFF is trying to get the Copyright Office to grant a DMCA exemption on behalf of iPhone owners who have chosen to jailbreak their iPhones, or bypass the restriction Apple places on standard iPhones that only allows the installation of applications from approved sources: the App Store. In its response to the Copyright Office (click here for PDF), Apple disagreed that such an exemption was proper because the very act of jailbreaking the iPhone results in copyright infringement.
The EFF’s argument is that jailbreaking your iPhone is protected under fair-use doctrines, and that the Copyright Office should grant an exemption because “the culture of tinkering (or hacking, if you prefer) is an important part of our innovation economy.” But Apple’s response is that few users of jailbroken iPhones actually jailbroke it themselves; instead, they downloaded software created by other parties to make that happen.
YouTube’s copyright filtering system goes crazy
It seems that the filtering system from YouTube just pushed the limit of what you can do with content to a new level. The EFF’s Blog reported that in January, a teenage girl singning “Winter Wonderland” has seen her video removed by the filtering system since it was considered infriging on Warner Music copyright. The main problem seems to come from YouTube’s system who is unable to make a difference between a real copyright infrigement and fair usage of it. The EFF intend to appeal the decision.
So be carefull with posting your next birthday party video, as you may or may not know, the “Happy Birthday to You” song is copyrighted and you may end in violation the law 