Behind Your Business

Apple has backed down from threatening legal action against BluWiki, a hosting Web site that discussed how users could circumvent Apple's iTunes software. Apple and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit public-interest group based in San Francisco, have stopped legal proceedings.

While EFF believes Apple's withdrawal against OdioWorks came because of EFF's legal threats, Apple attorney Sadik Huseny of the law firm Latham and Watkins said the code discussed on BluWiki is no longer an issue.

"Apple has stopped utilizing the code in question, rendering the code obsolete for the purposes at issue in this action," Huseny wrote in a letter to the EFF.

"While we are glad that Apple retracted its baseless legal threats, we are disappointed that it only came after seven months of censorship and a lawsuit," said EFF senior attorney Fred von Lohmann. "We hope Apple has learned its lesson here, and will give those online discussions a wide berth in the future."

Discussions Triggered Feud

The legal feud began after Apple learned that BluWiki was hosting discussions on how to sync iPods and iPhones without using iTunes and instead using other software, including Songbird and Winap.

Last November, Apple threatened BluWiki with legal action, saying the discussions were violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions. In response, BluWiki took down the wiki pages in question.

Five months later, defending the rights of OdioWorks, owner of BluWiki, the EFF and the San Francisco law firm of Keker and Van Nest, representing OdioWorks, asked a court to reject Apple's claims and allow BluWiki to restore the discussions.

They said the discussions weren't illegal because no information was posted on how to actually circumvent iTunes.

OdioWorks's owner, 24-year-old Sam Odio, said he takes the free-speech rights of BluWiki users very seriously and Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by threatening...