Free Software Linux

It amazes me how much coverage Psystar gets in the press and how much people want to speculate about its future. Yes, I’d love to run OS X on any hardware I choose, but that doesn’t matter one bit here. What matters here is intellectual property, copyrights, patents, trademarks and licensing. It’s hard to think of an area of IP law Psystar is not violating doing what it does with Mac OS X. Sure, I’d love to see them win so I can run OS X on my PC tomorrow, but I fear for what impact such a nonsensical precedent would create. In fact, I would not want to see Psystar win because of the irreversibly bad precedent it could create.

The privacy issues underlying this discovery request are troubling. What’s next? Will Viacom now send every ISP a discovery request for the people whose DSL/cable IP address shows in the log? Will Viacom then take a page out of the RIAA’s book and start suing home owners? Will the RIAA suddenly see this as a great way to collect royalties on music embedded in videos? I may have to stop watching YouTube video… but Viacom… well unfortunately they own Comedy Central and I won’t give that up.