Juli Clover:
In macOS Ventura and earlier, reviving or restoring a Mac requires a second Mac that has the Apple Configurator app installed, but in macOS Sonoma, Apple Configurator is no longer required.
Restoring or reviving using Finder is basically the same process as restoring with Configurator, just without the need for additional software. The two Macs will still need to be connected to one another through a USB-C cable, and the same steps will likely apply. Both machines will need to have macOS Sonoma installed to use Finder for a restore.
Previously:
Update (2023-08-18): Howard Oakley:
I’m not sure that this actually simplifies anything: the tricky bit is putting the target into DFU mode. Configurator is valuable for the details in its Help book describing that. (It has also been the case since the first developer beta in June.)
It’s also annoying when building a macOS VM. When the Finder sees the IPSW during VM installation, it offers to connect to a Mac in DFU mode and restore it. Have to close that every single VM build.
Apple Configurator Finder Mac macOS 13 Ventura macOS 14 Sonoma
Dan Torres:
Inside the addTearDownBlock, we can assert if sut and spy are deallocated by asserting if they’re nil. We hold sut and spy with weak references so that they won’t be strongly retained when executing the block.
[…]
But adding this block to all your tests may reduce readability. So we can add an extension to XCTestCase, which will allow us to use it in any test. We would also add the file and line so the failure message can be at the exact line and file where the test failed.
I’ve found this sort of thing very helpful. I don’t recall why I didn’t use weak closure captures. Instead, I’ve been using associated objects that fulfill XCTestExpectations when they’re deallocated. Sometimes it takes a run loop cycle before objects are deallocated.
In order for this to work, you have to be careful of when you and Cocoa autorelease objects. For example, creating an NSWindow or setting its title will end up extending the life of its view controller. So does changing the selected tab view item or some other tab view properties. You may think you’re avoiding leaks by using NSHashTable to store weak references, but adding or reading the objects causes them to be retained and then autoreleased.
See also: Bruno Rocha, Paul Samuels, John Sundell.
Previously:
Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) Cocoa Mac macOS 13 Ventura Memory Management Programming Swift Programming Language Testing Xcode
David Streitfeld:
He unveiled the National Emergency Library, a vast trove of digital books mostly unavailable elsewhere, and made access to it a breeze. […] On Friday, the publishers said through their trade association that they had negotiated a deal with the archive that would remove all their copyright books from the site.
[…]
The archive had a muted response, saying that it expected there would be changes to its lending program but that their full scope was unknown. There is also an undisclosed financial payment if the archive loses on appeal.
[…]
Six thousand writers signed a petition supporting the lawsuit, and a thousand names are on a petition denouncing it. The Romance Writers of America and the Western Writers of America joined a brief in favor of the publishers, while Authors Alliance, a group of 2,300 academics whose mission is to serve the public good by widely sharing their creations, submitted a brief for the archive.
Via Glenn Fleishman:
I am an absolute fan of the Internet Archive and all the work they’ve done to preserve cultural and technical history. But as this article makes clear, they are fighting a legal battle they cannot win, because the law is clear. They need to be fighting a structural battle, all about the law, because they will not win these cases. A judge would have to come up with novel interpretations that would surely be overturned at appellate or Supreme Court level.
They are conflating multiple different battles about copyright, some of which affect current authors, making a living from their work, and some of which relate to orphansed works or works that should be out of copyright but due to vagaries, their status is unknown. If they focused, I believe there would be a much happier outcome. Their legal arguments are highly unconvincing to me. But their moral arguments have real standing. There’s also a lot of nonsense in copyright law about older works.
Dan Moren:
As an author, I think there’s yet a third level to this discussion. At the end of the day, the writers are usually the ones who get squeezed.
Most authors don’t make a living from their work, but I think the vast majority of them (if not all) support libraries and the free access to information. Most of us have used libraries a lot during our lives, some have even depended on them. I don’t think most writers view people borrowing their books from the libraries as lost sales—we view them as possible lifelong fans of our future work.
The solution, perhaps, is to find other ways to recompense authors for their work being borrowed. Right now, ebooks are usually sold to libraries under licensing procedures that regulate how many times a title can be loaned out before a new license has to be purchased. It’s an uncomfortable compromise, but the power remains in the hands of the publisher (as it usually does).
Previously:
Update (2024-04-30): Bryan Lunduke (via Hacker News):
On April 19th, The Internet Archive filed the final brief in their appeal of the “Hachette v. Internet Archive“ lawsuit (for which, judgment was handed down, against Internet Archive, last year).
What is curious, is that this final brief fails -- almost completely -- to reasonably address the core issues of the lawsuit. What’s more, the public statements that followed, by The Internet Archive, appeared to be crafted to drum up public sympathy by misrepresenting the core of the case itself.
Which suggests that The Internet Archive is very much aware that they are likely to lose this appeal.
Update (2024-06-25): Ashley Belanger (Hacker News):
As a result of book publishers successfully suing the Internet Archive (IA) last year, the free online library that strives to keep growing online access to books recently shrank by about 500,000 titles.
[…]
“We use industry-standard technology to prevent our books from being downloaded and redistributed—the same technology used by corporate publishers,” Chris Freeland, IA’s director of library services, wrote in the blog.
However, what got Internet Archive in trouble is that they had not been using this technology. It was more like Napster than a library.
Books Copyright Internet Archive Lawsuit Legal The New York Times Web
Chris Freeland (PDF, Hacker News):
Late Friday, some of the world’s largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project, a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old.
[…]
Of note, the Great 78 Project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium. Through the efforts of dedicated librarians, archivists and sound engineers, we have preserved hundreds of thousands of recordings that are stored on shellac resin, an obsolete and brittle medium. The resulting preserved recordings retain the scratch and pop sounds that are present in the analog artifacts; noise that modern remastering techniques remove.
[…]
These preservation recordings are used in teaching and research, including by university professors[…]. While this mode of access is important, usage is tiny—on average, each recording in the collection is only accessed by one researcher per month.
hn_throwaway_99:
While I strongly disagree with the length of copyright protection, after reading this and reading more about the case, from a purely legal perspective, I just don’t see how IA has any defense. They basically just seem to be saying “these are old records, so we should be able to copy them. Also, our work is mainly for academic researchers.” My guess is that they are arguing fair use, but I just don’t see how that applies here when they make copyrighted works available, for free, over the Internet.
mlyle:
The fourth part of the fair use test rests on whether the use of the work impacts the commercial market for the work.
Given these works are often:
- Not offered in their original form
- Would likely have little residual commercial value if so offered
- And, the article states, are only accessed by one researcher per month
Indicates that the research, educational, and cultural value from this use likely far outweighs the impact to the commercial use of these works.
I find this confusing because, even if true, how could this be known in advance? Is the idea that they are so sure the recordings won’t be popular that they are comfortable risking the inevitable lawsuit? How is the average number of accesses across the collection relevant to the commercial value of any particular recording? It’s hard to believe that nothing in the collection has commercial value. With no DRM, how do we even know how many accesses there were given that the MP3s can be downloaded and redistributed?
It seems like Internet Archive is being increasingly aggressive, and I hope this doesn’t backfire and end up in the destruction of the organization and the uncontroversial parts of its stewardship.
Andy Maxwell:
From IA’s perspective, the project is all about the preservation of art. From the diametrically opposed view of the plaintiffs, the defendants willfully made copies thousands of recordings to which they own the copyrights. The digitized copies were then uploaded to the Internet Archive from where they were illegally distributed to users of the website millions of times.
The complaint lists 2,769 individual works from some of the most fmaous artists of all time, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and Louis Armstrong. Listed songs include “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby, “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman, “Peggy Sue” by Buddy Holly, and “Roll Over Beethoven” by Chuck Berry.
[…]
The record companies further reject claims that the music being made available illegally needs to be ‘saved’. They claim that of the 2,749 recordings listed in the complaint, all but a “small sample” are already available to stream or download from licensed online platforms so they “face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.”
Via Nick Heer:
While versions of some of these recordings are present in newer formats, there is to me a vast difference between preserving these specific pressings compared to making available any version. I have no idea if that makes a legal difference — again, not a lawyer — but there are artistic and technical reasons which should not be ignored. Different record pressings sound different, sometimes by a lot.
Besides, it is not as though people are treating the Great 78 Project as a replacement for a streaming service. The Internet Archive does not show total plays or downloads, but the most-viewed recording in the collection has less than 140,000 views as of writing. Notable for a 1942 folk recording, for sure, but the most popular song from the same artist on Spotify has over half a million plays.
Glenn Fleishman:
What IA and many others should be doing (and some have done in a limited way) is press Congress for cultural-preservation exceptions to digitization of out-of-print/out-of-media works. Instead, they are going boldly forward in ways that the courts will likely firmly find against, giving even more ammunition to media companies on ancient copyrights. There should be exceptions; what IA is doing is clearly outside the rules; the laws should change.
Previously:
Update (2023-08-22): Craig Grannell:
I remember the same conversations 20 years ago when it was clear loads of 8-bit games were gone. IP owners don’t care. The ONLY reason we now have eg a fairly complete C64 archive is the pirates. It shouldn’t be that way. But it is.
Copyright Internet Archive Lawsuit Legal Music Web
