Reverse engineering
On 9 Mar 1999, Stephen Zander wrote:
> >>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen Carpenter <sjc@delphi.com> writes:
> Stephen> Which police State do you live in? I thought (it has
> Stephen> been a while) that you lived in the US?
>
> If you don't think the US is a police state then you haven't been
> paying attention lately. :)
>
> There has been a bill meandering through Congress that supports WIPO.
> Either because of this, or due to specific riders on this bill,
> reverse engineering *would* become illegal. Much furor has ensued in
> the cryptographic communities because it would make cryptoanalysis
> illegal by extension; crytanalysis being nothing more than a very
> specific form of reverse engineering. :)
In Europe, my understanding was that reverse engineering is normally
considered a copyright violation.
There is a specific exception to the effect that reverse engineering is
legal if it is done for the purposes of interoperability. So I can
legally reverse engineer Word 6 if my sole purpose is to work out what the
Word 6 document format is, so my word processor can read it.
It had been my understanding that it worked the same on the other side of
the pond.
Jules
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| Jules aka | jules@debian.org | Richmond, Surrey |
| Julian Bean | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk | TW9 2TF *UK* |
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| War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. |
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