Web Advocacy Group & BluWiki Sue Apple Over Chat Board Shutdown Demand
In an effort to enforce its iTunes copyright, Apple Inc. threatened last year to sue BluWiki.com if the website didn’t remove from its discussion board a project called iPodhash. The project focused on how one might retrofit iPods and iPhones with open-source software allowing them to work without iTunes.
BluWiki complied, but now the situation has indeed resulted in litigation—just not the litigation threatened by the computer Goliath. Instead, Odioworks, which owns BluWiki, is suing Apple with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The advocacy group provides a link to a copy of the complaint (PDF), which was filed yesterday in federal district court in San Francisco.
The declaratory judgment action seeks a court ruling that, contrary to Apple’s claims, the BluWiki discussion didn’t infringe Apple’s copyright or the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (The DMCA prohibits “circumvention” of embedded devices that protect copyrighted material—and may also preclude interfaces with competitors’ software and technology, explains a Chilling Effects Clearinghouse page on the federal statute.)
The suit additionally seeks an injunction to prevent Apple from making further efforts to shut down the BluWiki site based on claimed violations of copyright law, as well as attorney fees and costs. By squelching the iPodhash discussion, Apple is infringing on First Amendment rights, the complaint contends.
“Apple’s legal threats against BluWiki are about censorship, not about protecting their legitimate copyright interests,” says staff attorney Fred von Lohmann in an EFF press release. “Wikis and other community sites are home to many vibrant discussions among hobbyists and tinkerers. It’s legal to engage in reverse engineering in order to create a competing product, it’s legal to talk about reverse engineering, and it’s legal for a public wiki to host those discussions.”
A spokeswoman for Apple declined to comment when contacted by the ABA Journal because the matter involves pending litigation.
Additional coverage:
Ars Technica: “Apple sued over legal threats to wiki operator”
IDG News Service (PC World): “Apple Is Sued After Pressuring Open-source ITunes Project”
Updated at 3:50 p.m. to include Apple response.
