On Fri, Mar 17, 2000 at 04:01:08PM -0800, Ed Gerck wrote:
>
> I guess that there is no doubt that reverse engineering is illegal when the
> software copyright owner so denies.
There most certainly IS a doubt of exactly that!
I know of no other industry where you are not allowed to examine
your purchase to your utmost ability. Would you buy a car from
a manufacturer that wouldn't let you look under the hood, ever?
Would you buy a book from a publisher who decreed that you could only
derive one particular meaning from the work, and that all other
thoughts that might be generated from it were forbidden?
The programs themselves are already protected under copyright law,
making copying illegal. The ideas and algorithms (and even APIs) therin are
protected by intellectual property laws (i.e. patents). Those laws
already serve to protect the IP in programs. You can't legally sell a
program containing a patented algorithm that you obtained through
reverse-engineering.
Anti-reverse-engineering laws serve only to protect shoddy programs from
discovery.... which exactly what is happening in this case.
--
Eric Murray www.lne.com/~ericm ericm at the site lne.com PGP keyid:E03F65E5
