Apple Applies For Automatic Shutdown and Piracy-Fighting Patents
The first notable filing deals with automatic shutdown of a device and/or host after certain conditions are met, such as after a portable media player's battery is finished charging, or after a file transfer is complete. Apple suggests a scenario where an iPod or iPhone is plugged into an iMac to charge, but the user wishes for both to go to sleep or shutdown after the charge is complete (which may take several hours). The application, #20070294546, initially filed June 19, 2006 was made public today.
The other filing, patent application #20070288886, deals with attempts to fight software piracy.
A digital rights management system permits an application owner to cause code to be injected into the application's run-time instruction stream so as to restrict execution of that application to specific hardware platforms. In a first phase, an authorizing entity (e.g., an application owner or platform manufacturer) authorizes one or more applications to execute on a given hardware platform. Later, during application run-time, code is injected that performs periodic checks are made to determine if the application continues to run on the previously authorized hardware platform. If a periodic check fails, at least part of the application's execution string is terminated--effectively rendering the application non-usable. The periodic check is transparent to the user and difficult to circumvent.
Apple has thus-far resisted industry trends towards activation of software, and currently only uses such methods in some of its most costly professional software. While it is clear that Apple has been working on methods to combat piracy, it remains to be seen how far Apple will employ the methods in its software. Readers are reminded that only a portion of the applications filed end up making it to shipping products.jeffis this the same http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/10/0022201?
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no... new patent.
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I think that's a great idea. I hope something like this comes about soon.
Which, the charge-and-shutdown? Or the anti-piracy code?
Or were you just hoping to make First Post? ;)
I'm not a big fan of anti-piracy or activation measures, but I definitely understand the need for them. Personally I don't tend to pirate Apple software because I find it to be high-quality and well-priced and such a joy to work with, that I *want* to give money to reward the people who wrote it. There may be some merit to the psychology of Apple trusting its users to do the right thing, and me wanting thusly to live up to that expectation.
Ultimately I think that's the best anti-piracy measure you can have. Make quality software that's well-priced, and trust your users to do the right thing.
This could be used to prevent all of Apple's software and Mac OS from running on non-Apple sold hardware. So the hackintosh's would be dead in the water. Sounds like a good thing for Apple. I've been curious to try OSX on my HP mini tower just to see it work, and software protection would lock that out.
IMHO the hackintosh's are no real threat and history tells us that most, if not all, protection schemes are circumvented.
well-priced
Yah. Except define exactly "well-priced"...
It could be zero and the thieves will still dowload it illegally. Justification is a wonderful thing to those that pirate.
It costs too much, I wasn't going to buy it anyway, the Developer is big, he won't missed my money.. blah blah...
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