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From: hes@ccvr1.ncsu.edu (Henry E. Schaffer)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,comp.software-eng
Subject: Should software ideas be protected? (Was Re: Software Copyright Law
Keywords: European Community, copyright, reverse engineering
Message-ID: <1990Apr8.003410.9841@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Date: 8 Apr 90 00:34:10 GMT
References: <1093@goofy.UUCP> <14867@s.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: hes@ccvr1.ncsu.edu (Henry E. Schaffer)
Organization: NCSU Computing Center
Lines: 49

In article <14867@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:
>dennis@goofy.UUCP (Dennis Godfrey) writes:
>
>[saying this is a Bad Thing]
>
>|2.	Any type of reverse engineering of someone else's object code
>|	will only be permitted if you get a specific written license
>|	from the someone else.  Reverse engineering in this context
>|	means such things as using a disassembler to try and figure out
>|	what their object code does, taking memory dumps, single
>|	stepping through code, monitoring comms. lines and so on.
>
>Why is this a Bad Thing? Wouldn't this be the same thing as publishing
                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  It seems to be prohibiting reverse engineering per se (e.g., even
without publishing.)  

>derivative works, which is already a no-no? Or does this imply that one
>can't even disassemble for personal use?

  A simple reading of "Any type of reverse engineering ..." would
indicate that intent, such as personal use, is irrelevant.

  This whole thing bothers me very much.  It is giving software ownership
priveleges which other owners of intellectual property do not have.
If I buy a patented machine, I am certainly allowed to take it apart,
to observe how it works, and to learn from it.  If I buy a copyrighted
book, or map, or design, I am certainly allowed to look at it, to
study it and observe how it "works", and to learn from it.  In these
cases I am allowed to alter the item I bought to make it more suitable
for my own use.

  However, what if I buy some copyrighted software?  Am I allowed
to study its innards and learn from it?  Well, doing this would be
called "reverse engineering", and all of a sudden this has become
a pejorative term.  Copyright does *not* make it illegal to learn
an idea from the copyrighted item and then to reuse the idea - it
is the expression of the idea which is protected.

  So it seems to me that some software owners want legal protection
far beyond what the copyright provides and are entering into the
political arena to get legal protection against even looking at
the innards - and calling it "reverse engineering" because that
sounds ominous.  (Next thing, you'll hear of bans of ownership
of semi-automatic disassemblers!  :-)

--henry schaffer
>-- 
>***  Sean Casey          sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitnet, ukma!sean