Xref: utzoo misc.legal:16973 comp.software-eng:3359 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!elephant.cis.ohio-state.edu!bruce_weide From: bruce_weide@elephant.cis.ohio-state.edu Newsgroups: misc.legal,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Should software ideas be protected? (Was Re: Software Copyright Law Keywords: copyright, patent, reverse engineering Message-ID: <79046@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 9 Apr 90 21:57:32 GMT References: <1093@goofy.UUCP> <14867@s.ms.uky.edu> <1990Apr8.003410.9841@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <4469@stpstn.UUCP> Sender: usenet_news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: Bruce Weide Followup-To: misc.legal Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 68 A couple quick thoughts on legal protection for software... It seems it would be helpful if we could talk about the legal or ethical question of whether reverse engineering (or whatever you want to call it) is PERMISSIBLE, separately from the technical question of whether it is POSSIBLE. I have missed some of this discussion, so if this is a repeat of someone else's comments I apologize. There is such a thing as a trade secret, which I gather is weaker than a patent but still legal protection. (I'm not a lawyer so I don't really know much about this.) Anyway, I would hope that--for reasons made clear by Warren Harrison in a recent article to this comp.software-eng--software developers/publishers would have SOME legal protection against people dismantling their object code in order in order to ascertain trade secrets. Of course one can at present (I didn't say "may" because that's a different issue, one that seems to be in question) disassemble object code and determine its constituent parts. But one can also determine how those parts are put together, which is often a trade secret, and therein lies the problem. IMHO, if one is reverse engineeering object code for the purpose of exposing a trade secret in this way one should, at the very least, be prohibited from profiting from it or disclosing it to others. Would it help to think that object code might be more like a chemical compound than a bridge or a car engine? What I mean is that it might be interesting if object code could NOT be disassembled so easily; if one really had to WORK at it to steal someone else's trade secrets... Sort of like figuring out how to make a chemical compound with given properties: you don't just throw together the elements in the proper proportions, even if the chemical formula of the desired compound is known. How could we get to this state? Well, if some hardware manufacturer put some sort of encryption mechanism on-board the processor chip and object code for that machine were always kept in encrypted form when externally stored and visible to a human, the question of whether reverse engineering is POSSIBLE (or at least economical) might have a different answer. I don't know, maybe someone has already done this... How would this affect people's views of the legal or ethical question of whether it ought to be PERMISSIBLE? Especially if it were provably uneconomical to try to "break into" the trade secret vault, I'd be inclined to think of those who did it as (perjorative term here) hackers who are not much better than people who create virus programs. I would conclude, therefore, that even though it is presently FEASIBLE to reverse engineer someone else's software for purposes of stealing their trade secrets, it is not ETHICAL. Part of the reason is that the feasibility is not something inherent in nature of object code; it is merely a characteristic of our current way of executing programs, and likely to be a transient one at that if people continue to use reverse engineering for this purpose. (And what other purpose is there?) Expecting some flames, -Bruce ------ Prof. Bruce W. Weide Dept. of Computer and Information Science The Ohio State University 2036 Neil Ave. Mall Columbus, Ohio 43210-1277 USA Phone: 614-292-1517 E-mail: weide@cis.ohio-state.edu