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From: tyler@drivax.UUCP (William Tyler)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Cloning the new IBMs without violating copyrights
Message-ID: <1485@drivax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-May-87 17:16:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: drivax.1485
Posted: Wed May  6 17:16:59 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 9-May-87 04:43:35 EDT
References: <766@vaxwaller.UUCP> <2643@phri.UUCP> <3087@diku.UUCP> <489@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <2522@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Reply-To: tyler@drivax.UUCP (William Tyler)
Organization: Digital Research, Monterey
Lines: 17

In article <2522@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> tim@cit-vlsi.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay) writes:

>Here is a work around:  Put an encrypted version of the IBM copyright
>notice in the correct place in the ROM, and have a circuit in the clone
>that decrypts just that part of the ROM when a certain bit is set.  So,
>the defacto ROM contains only gibberish.  However, before you run the
>IBM'd program, you have to turn on the decryption.

I doubt very much if encrypting a message gets you around copyright laws.
If it did, I could do something as simple as encrypting the entire IBM ROM,
and attaching a decrypter to the output.  The encryption could theoretically
be as simple as adding a constant to each byte, modulo 256, or reversing 
the sense of certain bits.  This sort of foolishness has to be covered by
copyright law.
-- 

Bill Tyler ... {seismo,hplabs,sun,ihnp4}!amdahl!drivax!tyler