Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!bbn.com!rsalz
From: rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Publishing the code?  (Was Re: No RTM trial?)
Summary: It's protected by copyright
Message-ID: <1209@fig.bbn.com>
Date: 16 Nov 88 16:12:47 GMT
Organization: Totally unrelated to BBN
Lines: 23

Gene Spafford:
    Publishing the code is not illegal in any way...
Rahul Dhesi:
    I suspect it is.  The worm code is an unpublished work, and Robert
    Morris is the copyright owner.
Gene Spafford:
    You are correct.  I meant to say "publishing any reverse-engineered code
    is not illegal..."

I think you're still wrong.  Decompiling an object file would be
considered a translation, and therefore still subject to copryight.  Also
check out the flack with Phoenix/Microsoft/IBM and attempts to clone the
BIOS in the IBM-PC firmware.

HOWEVER, since there was no copyright in the code, and since it was NOT
distributed to a small number of sites, and since the perpetrator (whoever
it is) did not make any attempt to retrieve the copies but just stopped
further propogation, I believe that the author of the worm has effectively
relinquished the copyright on his or her program.

	/rich $alz
-- 
Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.