Rotten Apple Uses Fraudulent DMCA Takedown to Suppress Free Speech on Wiki Site

[mandy]

Slashdot reports that Apple has sent a "cease and desist" email to bluwiki, a public wiki site, demanding the removal of postings there by those who are trying to figure out how to write software that can sync media to the latest versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Short answer: Apple doesn't have a DMCA leg to stand on...

Here are just a few of the fatal flaws in Apple's DMCA argument.

Where's the "technology, product, service, device or device"?

The DMCA provides that:

    No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that ... is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner....

The information posted on the wiki appeared to be text, along with some illustrative code. Nothing that I saw on the pages I was able to review would appear to constitute a "technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof." In fact, the authors had apparently not yet succeeded in their reverse engineering efforts and were simply discussing Apple's code obfuscation techniques. If Apple is suggesting that the DMCA reaches people merely talking about technical protection measures, then they've got a serious First Amendment problem...

full article: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/app...-violation