Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 07:40:23 -0800
From: Ed Gerck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
List:
If you can't cope, sue. The reverse-engineering
argument, that it trespasses on property, was already
used by Microsoft many years ago (ca. 1993) against Stacker.
In short, Stacker (the then market leader for on-the-fly
disk compression software) found out that Microsoft had
pirated its code for disk compression in Doublespace, and sued
Micrsoft -- but Microsoft countersued saying that Stacker
could not have reverse engineered Microsoft's code without
a court order. The argument is the same as if you think that
your stolen property is within a certain house -- you can't
trespass or invade the house in order to verify it, you
need to get a court order. Stacker won in part, but lost
a lot. As an aside, the then market leader (Stacker), now
is no longer even a player.
Thus, what happened here is not new and those that want to
effectively combat "hidden" features, pirated code or covert
weaknesses by decompiling code should be aware of it. The
end, however merit it may have, cannot justify the means.
Your point here is muddy; I'm not exactly sure what you're saying.
However, it sure sounds like you're saying that reverse-engineeering
is equivalent to an unwarranted search of a person and their home, a
violation of the US Fourth Amendment. This is the wrong analogy, for
at least two reasons, the first being, of course, that the people who
did the reverse-engineering are -not- government actors.
The second reason is that this is truly the wrong analogy. A closer
analogy for the Stacker case would be to consider a case in which your
copyrighted book was translated without your permission into a foreign
language (clearly, a derivative work). Is it then illegal for you to
buy a copy of the book and have it translated back into its original
language in order to see if infringement has occurred? What about if
the book jacket has language on it claiming that you have no right to
do this?
The take-home conclusion, of course, is that prohibitions against
reverse-engineering are evil and that any existing law to support it
is a bad idea akin to eating our seed corn.
