Whack a Lawyer

25 February 2006

Whack a mole is a popular arcade game across the decades.

Lawyers and proof-reading

A letter from Apple to theplanet.com, the webhost of Win2osx.net, has been posted online at Chilling Effects: Apple complains of decrypted code, links for OS for x86.

It is interesting that Apple's own lawyers have named the decrypted files that allow you to run OS X on non-apple hardware, "The Maxxuss Patches". It is also interesting that how little care seems to have been given to composition of the letter. You can always tell that something has really been written by a lawyer by the presence of strange grammar mistakes. Not only shifty grammar (it takes one to know one!) but also it seems to have a few signs of "editorial fatique".

> The foregoing materials posted on the Win2osx Site and linked to from the Win2osx Site are primarily designed and produced for the purpose of circumventing these technological measures. Accordingly, providing or offering them to the public through the Osx86project Site constitutes a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA at 17 U.S.C. Â§Â§ 1201(a)(2) and 1201(b)(1).

For instance, if you read the above paragraph, you will notice that the letter seems to be based on correspondence that was first addressed to the other forum (OS X 86) as the reference to "Osx86project Site" has been accidentally carried over. The rest of the text does sound very 'cut and paste', the sentences are only just holding together and the cases have been completely ignored.

The reason that the email had been so badly drafted was because the author was in a rush, acceptable perhaps in a blog like this or a Slashdot comment but not in a threatening legal letter. The poor overworked lawyer is in such a rush because he is trying to hold back the flood by plugging the holes with his fingers.

Whack a mole

In Maxxuss Site Shutdown, Apple to Blame?, Hisham is spot-on when he describes this process as "whack a mole". There comes a point when something becomes so firmly embedded in the public domain that it can never be removed, despite the best efforts of multi-national governments. The two ends of the spectrum would be a religious text such as the Bible at one end and a privately recorded tape of a celebrity on the other.

Hisham also has a very useful post about Norton Ghost. Someone I know who is doing a software testing project this week asked me what I know about Ghost and I had to answer that at this very moment I know zip. I will email him a link to Hisham's how-to.

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