A company in the US state of Virginia is suing computer giant Apple for allegedly stifling free speech after Apple took down pages on a wiki site about its iPhone and iPod Touch devices.
OdioWorks has filed a suit in the Federal Court in San Francisco and is being represented by two law firms. The suit alleges that Apple filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice ordering OdioWorks to take down pages on BluWiki, but violated free speech rights in the process.
BluWiki is similar to online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows users to write and edit articles. Several users were reportedly discussing how to use alternative software to iTunes, including the “Songbird” and “Banshee” programs.
The pages that Apple wanted removed had information regarding methods on how to enable iPods and iPhone devices to “sync” with desktop software solutions other than the official iTunes software.
The lawsuit claims that “hobbyists” shared information on how to “manage their media with whatever program they chose”.
Apple’s legal counsel has said in a letter to the Electronic Frontier Foundation – which has contributed its own legal counsel to the team at OdioWorks – that the pages were an infringement of copyright.
The letter also claimed that the BluWiki pages described how to bypass the official Apple technology which “protects the rights of Apple’s content providers”.
“Apple’s legal threats against BluWiki are about censorship, not about protecting their legitimate copyright interests,” EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann told ITwire.com.
“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.”
Apple has historically been very protective about its products. It still objects to its users “jailbreaking” iPod and iPhone devices, which allows owners to download and install third-party apps that have not been approved by Apple.
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Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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