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Open Source and Legal Protection
"I'm in the middle of taking a current bastion of big science and making it open-sourced. I'm not going to say exactly what I'm working on right now but I'm alas confident that shortly after this codebase is released, I will be the target of numerous lawsuits by holders of patents and software patents. Although I am reverse-engineering everything from published work, it has been made clear to me that most of the implementation of the work is considered proprietary and the rest is considered trade secrets.
The field from which this work is drawn is currently in the hands of a minority of individuals, some of whom are scrambling to create startups based on their work. I have real ethical problems with their ongoing hoarding of valuable data and algorithms developed with public and defense money hence I am attempting to get their capabilities into the hands of any interested individual. Not everyone in the field acts this way, but enough do to make it a real issue with me and others.
So, my question is how do I cover my butt? After the DeCSS affair, I want to be ready for the attack lawyers before they come. Who knows, maybe they won't, but I've never gotten very far on optimism."
If the law permits corporations to send police to drag away 15-year-old geeks for trumped-up and bogus crimes, why should we honor those parts of it?
The copying isn't the illegal part. It's the distribution of copies that is illegal. I can copy a CD or DVD perfectly legally. If I then give that copy to someone else who hasn't paid for the right to own a copy of that work, I've broken the law.
This means you can only do what the owners WANT you to do. This means no copying, no broadcasting, and yes, even no playing.
Can you cite an instance where a license of this sort has been upheld in court as taking precedent over an individual's right to fair use? I've not heard of one, and until I do, I won't consider such licenses to be legal or enforceable.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It's much more legal if you do that with a lock that you own.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Well, you can always represent yourself, can't you? Plead that the corporation is trying to scare you into submission with the prospect of a costly trial.
Somehow, I suspect that the main difference between that and a summary judgement would be the number of days you have toi take off from work/school.
Until the law takes into account that in today's world, civil courts can be nearly as effective as criminal court at depriving an individual of freedom, and that furthermore, they allow any entitity with money to do it (rather than just the government in the case of criminal court), the best bet is stay anonymous or hope you can get an attourney to work pro bono or for a percentage of a countersuit.
The guy asking the question wants to release something legally to the community (meaning: allowing others to use it without being prosecuted because they use some dirty stuff that some 31337 d00dz have spread all over the net).
The problem is, the way the courts allow themselves to be abused these days, even if you do something that is legal, moral, and ethical, if it is inconvieniant to people and corperations with plenty of money, you can still be dragged through legal mud for years and face ruinous legal bills. It is entirely possable to have the court find in your favor every single time (initial case, appeals, additional and closely related suits etc) and end up loosing more money than it would have cost to settle in the first place. Eventually, you might well face one more suit and have no resources left to fight a summary judgement. For all practical purposes, a civil court decision can be bought. In such a case, it may be best to be anonymous and avoid all of that.
That is a perfect example of something that is legally acceptable even though it is ethically and morally reprehensable.
How long could they last? Are public defenders available for such cases?
Unfortunatly, no. The right to an attourney only applies to criminal court.
It might be a good idea to do a traceroute to the first remailer and make sure the packets aren't leaving a long trail through untrusted sources, such as satellites. See if you can route it via ground through trusted small ISP's that aren't an obvious portal to the NSA and FBI. Make sure at least the first remailer rotates the logs quickly or has no logs at all.
If the traceroute has a long way, such as 20 hops to the first remailer and, say *.maryland.core.gov or something comes up in the route, you are in deep trouble!
"I don't really care if it's legal or not in their home country, I think it's morally wrong to force our opensource ideals onto companies by tactics slashdot would raise holy hell about if the rolls were reversed."
Your opinion has been registered. Fortunately, there are alternative concepts of "morality" and "ethics" that are out there today. The standard set of morals that would lead you to believe that what the person asking the question in this article was doing is wrong is not the root of the way that everybody thinks about things.
Economics is morality, and morality is economics. They're essentially indistinguishable, and this is one of those examples where it's a bit more evident than in other places.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
The freenet team (check it out at SourceForge is working on such a solution, you post stuff totally anonymously, and once injected in the network, nobody is able to remove it, it's cached all over the place, but nobody knows exactly where...
at least that's the case with CDs. I don't see any reason why DVDs would be any different.
What are the published works you are 'reverse engineering' from? If they are patents, then you are probably in trouble. If they are journal articles, then I don't think you'll have any trouble. They could be prior art to disqualify the patents.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
I know it ain't this way anymore, but once upon a very long time ago, it used to be law that the results of research paid for with taxpayer dollars were public domain; unpatentable and uncopyrightable. Anybody who wanted to make a buck off the technology was free to create an added-value package using it (e.g., MatLab). The demolition of this policy, allowing university and corporate researchers to take proprietary ownership of technology developed with OUR TAX DOLLARS (e.g., RSA) is one of the biggest betrayals of the public trust by the U.S. government in recent times.
Most people around here do not believe they have that right. Implementations should be protected, and only pirates would argue against that. But there is apparently still some debate about whether or not the ideas and mathematics -- upon which implementations are based -- should be protected. When certain parties try to use "idea protection" (like software patents and the DMCA) to inhibit competing implementations and interoperability, then we have a problem.
I agree. But that's not what this is about. For example, nobody really wants to "force" Microsoft to release their media player's source code, or to force Xing to release their DVD player's source code. We just want the specs for the media formats that these programs play. And that is the right that we demand: the specs for data formats and protocols. If you're going to send or sell me files, then they simply must be in an understandable format. Since the specs are unavailable, disassembling and reverse-engineering an existing implementations is what we have to resort to, so that we can infer the specs and start to make independant implementations. It's not pretty, but sometimes it's the only way. Congress understood the importance of that right, which is why even the highly-restrictive DMCA protects the right of reverse engineering. Unfortuantely, they didn't understand open source so now the right of distributing the knowledge gained by reverse engineering is now in danger.
That right is important to freedom, and you're going to hear a lot of screaming around here whenever it is endangered..
You are implying that there's a double-standard here. But there isn't. If someone were to copy GPL'ed code into a closed-source implementation, that would be a copyright violation and you can bet your ass that there would be an uproar. But if someone were to study that code to understand how it works, or to understand the format of the data that it manipulates, and then they were to write their own closed source implentation that is based upon that knowledge, there would be no "moral outrage" at all. Yeah, I bet a few people might question the business sense of whoever does this (i.e. trying to sell a product that competes with an already existing open source product) but that's another issue.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That could be a good idea, indeed. However, the most important advice (document everything) will then become very tricky. The ghost author will have to explain how he has acquired the information, written the code, and so on. The ghost author will also need one or several friends who can testify that he has found all this by himself.
Nevertheless, finding a friendly party in a country that allows reverse-engineering might be a good solution for people living in the USA or in other countries that have stupid restrictions on reverse-engineering. Alas, even European countries are now modifying their laws to prohibit reverse-engineering because of the pressure from several big companies.
-Raphaël
*IANAL*
Put simply, your best chance here is probably to have had a previous case on a similar subject decided in your favor. If the companies see that they can crush open-source projects like DeCSS they'll get bolder and do it as a standard business practice.
If however, DeCSS beats the DVDCCA and MPAA, most specifically if they beat them in a very public and somewhat humiliating manner, you may well see the companies thinking about who they sue before they sue.
Even better, if the Judge's ruling in one of these cases were to actually address the issue of reverse engineering and either implicity or explicity allow it you stand in very good shape.
So you stand to lose a lot with the DeCSS case, keep this in mind. Write editors of newspapers asking them to give fair and balanced coverage, organize a protest where it will get noticed by the media, and above all, BE POLITE! Don't do anything that would make everyone think we're a bunch of law-breaking freaks who deserve to what we get. This battle will be fought much more in the court of public opinion than any particular jurisdiction.
I'm not judging you in any way, but something seems very clear to me.
If what you are doing is illegal, why should you be able to simply use 'open source' as a shield?
Why? Code is code, period.
All software should be free.
Who cares if it's in binary.. it's *STILL* instructions that are understood by a computer, and I have every moral right in the world to read those instructions and translate them into whatever language I want.
This won't help if the author lives in the US.
The US Govt will still say 'americans found it, americans can get ahold of it, and this guy is an american, therefore, he must abide by american law'
We shouldn't, and I'm not debating that.
What I am debating is.. If you *know* what you are doing is illegal, Open Source is not a shield.
What Jon did in the DeCSS fiasco, he thought he was allowed to do, and at best, it's a grey-area thing right now. He did not set out to commit a crime.
If you are stating that you want to reverse-enginner something, and you believe what you are going to do is illegal, and you want to challenge that in court, that's up to you.
And you know what's missing from the law? Retribution for misuse of the law. By one right, Jon was accused of some heavy crime, and was arrested for it. By the same token, if it turns out there was no heavy crime, and any part of the clam was bad..... someone should pay.
Yes. The community should support what is ethically right.
I guess I read the question more along the lines of 'I know what I am doing is blatantly illegal. How can Open Source protect me?'.
(admittedly off-topic, but hopefully still worthwhile ;)
This appears to be a fairly popular tactic now for people without the skills to do something constructive with their time.
Perhaps the moderation system should adapt to handle it. I propose that moderators not lose points for marking trolling posts like this, but not actually lower the score of the post until a certain number of moderators have rated the post as a troll. Perhaps 3.
With the current system, I'm sure that this could be handled simply by increasing the number of points available in the system, granting moderation more frequently, and allowing moderators to (as this "enlightening" series of posts states) waste points putting the smack-down on the richly deserving. But this really goes against the spirit of moderation, which is to spend as many points as possible elevating good posts. Simply cleaning up is a waste of moderator time and cheapens the responsibility of it.
Another option would be to let it ride and tell people to read at 1+. The downside here is that we could miss insightful AC posts, and links to comments from other news sources will still be loaded with trash (BTW, I love the idea of defaulting to posts to be ordered descending by score to make Slashdot more presentable to the rest of the community).
Allowing moderators to strike down large groups of posts after several moderators have decided they are pointless trash would go a long long way towards quickly cleaning up messes like this.
- StaticLimit
If I was getting paranoid, I know what I'd do. Put on a cap and dark glasses then head off on foot at a busy time of day. Make sure I'm wearing very anonymous clothing and not carrying anything. That way, I'm harder to track by CCTV.
Next, go to a net cafe, paying with cash. Open a webmail account with fake details - not exactly tricky - and use that to submit it to as many different servers as I could think of. But don't do anything else or it's easier for someone to establish a usage pattern and identify you. DEFINITELY don't log in to any other services...
Finally, go. Flush the cache on your machine manually, take all media with you and go. But go via a park (or somewhere else secluded with plenty of cover) and remove a top layer of clothing - say, cap, glasses and jacket. Dump these in bushes or wherever and go home.
Would that be secure enough for most people?
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Although this is not what you want to hear, there really is only one meaningful answer to this question. Get ready!
In other words, talk to a full-blooded lawyer about the question before you release. Have materials and papers ready, being ready to ambush the ambushers with motions and declarations before the ex parte and rush TRO hearings. Have all your ducks in a row, to the extent you do have a legal defense, and make certain that you don't overstep or lose on a technical glitch.
The only way to do this right is to have a lawyer, whom you have retained for your particular problems. If money is an issue, you may have to find someone willing to do it pro bono, which may be possible if the cause is worthy. This may require some shopping, and I'd be pleased to help guide you to finding such a person working in your jurisdiction.
But do this ALL UP FRONT, with a clear sense of what you are doing and why you are doing it. In a recent thread, slashdotters lambasted the legal system for moving too quickly. Count on it to move quickly, too quickly, once you release. In the meanwhile -- YOU CONTROL -- when that happens. So be ready for the deluge, before it descends upon you.
Although its not what you want to hear, the only way to be ready, legally speaking, is to be ready, legally speaking.
hmm
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
One thing I always prefer, is diversity, for exactly the objections you have. It seems you don't really object to any of these methods except to say none of them do the total job. I will always argue that multiple funding methods are needed - that's usually the best way to deal with a broad problem space.
But, like I said before, the patent system discourages alternate funding systems, so I would like to see it go.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
...what would happen? Well, firstly, everyone could start selling all the still-protected drugs really cheaply, since virtually all the costs come from research and clinical trial costs. So, you could buy a box of Viagra for $5, or whatever. I just wanted to point that out first.
Second, all the bio-tech start-ups and research departments shut right down. No company on earth could afford to spend that kind of money unless a government supported monopoly was the reward.
Third, there will be a lot of scientists out of work who would very much like to still be working.
Those scientists still want to do research for reasonable salaries (say $60-200k). Some would do it for less, of course, but I doubt many would reject these salaries (cause i don't believe there are many scientists out there doing it for the stock options and the getting rich part).
So, what those scientists need, is spending money. A software tax is an interesting idea. The basic plan is fund it with public money. This would be fine. I personally wouldn't like delegating the choice of what which research projects to fund, but this would be an improvement over the current patent system.
The typical argument against public (tax) funding is that it's inefficient and will cost a lot. Here's where I bring up point 1: do you have any idea how much we'll save in health costs? I don't, but I bet it's a handsome amount. Health insurance costs would come down, significantly. Medicare and Medicaid would cost less to administer. In the public funding system, our money would go directly to research, bypassing patent and court costs. Strikes me as more efficient. And, all scientific findings would be public domain (even those no one would have wanted to patent before). Another bonus.
There are other ways to fund as well. Charities get money - scientific foundations could be formed which receive donations. That way, people could choose which projects they fund. Probably not enough people are educated enough to go straight to this, but some sort of hybrid could probably be worked out. ie, whatever you donated to a foundation could be subtracted from your research tax.
Socialist, you say? Maybe so. Do you think there's no place for socialistic concepts? The biggest argument against socialism is that the government can never allocate resources as efficiently as the market. I happen to agree very strongly with this argument, so I would prefer a more chaotic system than having our legislators "legislate" where the funding goes. I would prefer that each individual gets to "vote" for their favorite research foundation. That way, the allocation of research funding could change very quickly to meet the demands of the people. Currently, Michael J. Fox has to go before congress to try and work out increases for Parkinson research. With my way, he could go directly to the people and it would happen immediately, according to the people's desires.
But, I don't think any other funding model could work or be put into place so long as Patents are around. Patents make any other source of funding something only a fool would choose to do since you'll be paying for those government supported monopolies either way. Get rid of patents, then we'll be open to other possibilities.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
I just wanted to pick on one little bit of your post (which otherwise was quite good :-)
If we did not have laws protecting IP then there would be no incentive to create works and/or new products.
This is simply untrue. There are usually at least two motivations to invent something - one is economic, and the other is the joy/satisfaction of doing the thing itself. Thousands of open-source coders should have clue'd us in to that by now. For scientific research, this is even more true. The problem is, how do we fund research, not how can we profit from it. Given money, there will be more than enough people who will do research regardless of whether they can sell a product as a result. Patent law is unnecessary - what's necessary is a new funding model.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
I agree with most of your post - particularly where you talk about the economic benefits of an open knowledge system versus the patent system. If you examine all the economic costs involved, I think it becomes clear that patents are not efficient. Problem is, many of the patent costs are hidden, whereas we're talking about making those costs very apparent. I think that's a good thing to, but it means it's harder to sell it to people.
I do disagree with one point, however - that of your "award" system. I don't like award systems. They inherently favor small, cheap solutions to problems, whether or not that's the best way. Who would undertake to build a brand new operating system based on an award system? Who would risk drug development based on the possibility of getting an award, but having to foot the bill in the meantime?
I think the reason you chose an award system, and this public body, are to create a valid way of determining who is deserving of funding. But, as I said in another post, I prefer a more dynamic way of determining who gets funded. Let the people decide individually. You can still have a public body that generates a list of valid projects if you like, to protect against fraud. But, the point is, projects get funded up front, and money is free to switch projects when people choose to do so.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
About the shrink wrap license -- do they attempt to get around the "I bought it second-hand at a garage sale" defense ? I.E., does the license deny you the right to re-sell the DVD player or mandate that you keep the license intact when you transfer it ?
Not that I think that these shrink-wrap licenses are ever going to stand up in a higher court. But they do give the big money a tool to harass people with until they can afford to appeal up to an educated judge.
Could one of the people who actually bought one of these devices post the text of the claimed license ?
Sounds like a prime target for corruption.
> Factoring primes is easy. I'm sure you knew
:)
> that. But I would hate for anyone else to be
> confused - it's such a common mistake.
Yes I know....slip of the fingers.
Anyway...you know what I meant
Slashdot needs a new posting system that scans
a post, and posts what the author meant instead
of what he typed. It will solve alot of problems.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Why?
All that an evesdropper would be able to tell is
that you sent an email through remailer A.
Since it is encrypted, they would first need
to break the encryption (IDEA or RSA...I doubt it)
Just to find out what the second remailer is.
and then it has to be broken again to get the
next step.
Since noone knows what you are sending prior to
it reaching the final remailer, there is no reason
for them to suspect anything and go through the
effort. (and breaking the encryption of PGP is
most probably very hard work...even for the NSA)
Even if the NSA themselves could break PGP
easily and decode every message going to every
remailler....they would gain nothing and lose
alot by admitting to the fact that they can...
so it wont matter anyway.
That is of course unless you are releaseing
source code to an algorithem that can factor
large primes in linear time. Then you can expect
to arouse their attention.
anyway... 6 hops through remailers in at least
3 differnt countries should do the trick.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Why go through the trouble?
Find encrypting anonymous remailers. Get their
public keys.... encrypt the message a few times
over with them....
then bounce it through 6-10 of them, all in
differnt countries, then into a mail to usenet
gateway.
Is this still viable? I havn't checked out
anonymous remailers in years but...I would
imagine that tracing back to you would be nearly
impossible if done right.
Too bad annon.penet.fi is gone. (am I the only
one still lamenting their demise? whats it been
4 years now?)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Sure, it's complex. But I don't see that it's any more arbitrary than "Lets make some random laws and rely on people to sue each other all the time and hope that everything just works out".
It's an ambitious enterprise certainly. But it's worth the effort because the potential rewards are enormous.
Don't forget that patents and intellectual property are articficial constructs. They were created at a time when information was scarce and economic progress was paramount.
Now, technology has brought us to a state where information could be made free and the sum of human knowledge could be harnessed for everbody's mutual advantage. How sad then that antiquated laws remain, stifling the economy and providing little more than a way for businesses to stab each other in the back and extort monopoly power.
Quite easy. New products get registered and published. Anyone is free to take them up, package them and sell them. Over the next yaer or two, surveys are done on the uptake of different types of products. Awards are given to creators based on how well used the products are, with a modifiying factor for the type and complexity of software.
I don't think that is particularly hard to administer. With reasonable data gathering a fairly small team of people could distribute awards to a whole industry. If people get missed out, you can always give them an award later when the true potential of their idea/product is realised. A democratically elected steering committee can stamp out abuses, but I think these would be relatively few since the process would be open to public scrutiny.
Since I graduated in economics, the issue of incentives to innovate has always been a fascinating subject to me. I have never been happy with the concept of "ownership" of an idea, but as a practical person I see the need to guarantee that the important innovations actually occur. Some people seem to think that patents are in some way neccessary to create innovation. This is demonstrably untrue. People have been programmed to regard ideas as property, but this is a lie perpetuated by a combination of inertia and vested interests. If you look at the issue with an open mind, you can see that there is in fact no need for intellectual property at all. So what is the solution? There are many good ones, but I think my solution is relatively simple and effective. All ideas / algorithms / techniques are to beconsidered public knowledge. This has big economic benefits, since it ensures competitive markets and guarantees that the benefits of science will be utilised to the maximum extent, which is *not* the case when you are restricted by patents. Now, the incentive to innovate is created by a public body that is independant of the government, perhaps even with its own democratically elected committee. Its role is to reward those who create useful innovations with hard cash awards. Awards are only given if an innovation is a proven success, i.e. people take it up and use it effectively in the market. In a way, the award is meant to reflect what the inventor would have been able to earn under a patent system. Note that the product could be produced by anyone, not necessarily the inventor, which is a good thing because the market will now be competitive, driving economic growth and further innovation. Funding for the awards will come out of general taxation. This is the fairest solution, since innovations now benefit society and the economy as a whole. I would estimate that this would be a fairly small addition to the tax burden, which would be more than compensated by greater economic progress. The award system will undoubtably cost money to set up and run effectively, but will probably still be cheaper than the current patent system, if you include all the legal expenses paid by firms. Biggest bonus of all is that since all ideas are now free, innovation and research can occur much faster without being encumbered by other people's patents, the need to patent your own ideas or any of the frightful legal wrangling that currently occurs. Of course, there are a lot more complicated economic arguments behind all this. But I'm pretty convinced any country that adopted this model would surge ahead of the rest of the world in technological and economic development. Not only does it have practical economic advantages, I think it is also philosophically more elegant and more morally justifiable in terms of freedom.
Since I graduated in economics, the issue of incentives to innovate has always been a fascinating subject to me. I have never been happy with the concept of "ownership" of an idea, but as a practical person I see the need to guarantee that the important innovations actually occur.
Some people seem to think that patents are in some way neccessary to create innovation. This is demonstrably untrue. People have been programmed to regard ideas as property, but this is a lie perpetuated by a combination of inertia and vested interests. If you look at the issue with an open mind, you can see that there is in fact no need for intellectual property at all.
So what is the solution? There are many good ones, but I think my solution is relatively simple and effective.
All ideas / algorithms / techniques are to beconsidered public knowledge. This has big economic benefits, since it ensures competitive markets and guarantees that the benefits of science will be utilised to the maximum extent, which is *not* the case when you are restricted by patents.
Now, the incentive to innovate is created by a public body that is independant of the government, perhaps even with its own democratically elected committee. Its role is to reward those who create useful innovations with hard cash awards.
Awards are only given if an innovation is a proven success, i.e. people take it up and use it effectively in the market. In a way, the award is meant to reflect what the inventor would have been able to earn under a patent system. Note that the product could be produced by anyone, not necessarily the inventor, which is a good thing because the market will now be competitive, driving economic growth and further innovation.
Funding for the awards will come out of general taxation. This is the fairest solution, since innovations now benefit society and the economy as a whole. I would estimate that this would be a fairly small addition to the tax burden, which would be more than compensated by greater economic progress.
The award system will undoubtably cost money to set up and run effectively, but will probably still be cheaper than the current patent system, if you include all the legal expenses paid by firms.
Biggest bonus of all is that since all ideas are now free, innovation and research can occur much faster without being encumbered by other people's patents, the need to patent your own ideas or any of the frightful legal wrangling that currently occurs.
Of course, there are a lot more complicated economic arguments behind all this. But I'm pretty convinced any country that adopted this model would surge ahead of the rest of the world in technological and economic development. Not only does it have practical economic advantages, I think it is also philosophically more elegant and more morally justifiable in terms of freedom.
Yeah, the award system is more geared towards tangible things like patents, innovations and copyrighted works. It's a big thank-you from society for those who make the world a better place.
For things like ongoing drug research, it might be better to focus on funding practical scientific research through universities and suchlike. Getting research grants beforehand is certainly much less risky for innovators.
Still, I think the main beauty of the award system is that it virtually eliminates potential corruption and uncertainty about the value of a project. Awards are only given for things which are a proven success, at which point the innovator has certainly shown themselves to be deserving.
Ultimately, I guess that the exact nature of funding would be somewhat dependant on the nature of the field being researched. You'd also need a transitional period as these new systems are introduced, although I think this could be managed quite easily provided the long term objectives are always bourne in mind.
What's ironic here is that the standard practice of government you just described is often frowned upon by corporations: it's "not invented here", so we don't touch it. And of course, I mean the very corporations that benefit from IP developed under government contract.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
In either case, what you'll need to worry about is what restrictions were put on the material you used. The problem with the DVD issue is that they use a shrink wrapped licence stating that you can't reverse engineer it, but as long as nothing like that applies (in which case you'd have to fight that what you're doing is covered by laws making it legal), what you need to worry about are the usual trouble spots in reimplemantation. Is it clean? Can you document that you at no time used unlawfully attained information? Did you have access to any information for which you're bound to NDAs? Etc.
The biggest problem, probably, is that the companies could sue you whether or not they thought they could win, to frighten you into submission. Assuming you live in the US of A where everyone has the God given right to sue anyone else, there is nothing you can do to prevent this, only fight and win.
-- Eythain
Hey! That's a terrific idea!
Let's create one. I'm willing to contribute ... after all, I make money off Linux, and not being a programmer don't have any opportunity to contribute. But I know fundraising and non-profits.
I can, at this time, donate:
1. Web hosting space and e-mail (on Pacbell.net)
2. Small amounts of cash after tax day.
3. 4 years of non-profit expertise.
But, of course, this requires Open Source community participation. Who else is interested?
This is serious. Please reply to agliodbs@pobox.com with "OSLDF" in the subject line.
-TheFuzzy (Josh Berkus)
This individual is working from the idea that someone else came up with, just like millions of others have before him. Making the claim that he's 'stealing' anything without the evidence of wrongdoing seems to be a hallmark of the (in)justice system of the U.S. where guilty until proven innocent seems to hold sway..
If this individual is gleaning information from articles and trade papers he's not stealing; he's availing himself of freely available information to take an idea, whether patented or a 'trade secret' (oxymoron if I ever heard one), to a further level, or along a different path to reach the same result. Much akin to building a homemade skateboard; you know someone patented the idea, but are you really going to hurt their business by 'rolling your own'? If you try to sell the resulting product is one thing, but creating something for yourself, IMHO, cannot be a crime.
I for one am glad that there are individuals like this in society who are willing to step up and make ideas happen, even in the face of the extremely juvenile patent law system of the U.S.; juvenile in the sense that it is not sufficent to deal with the current state of intellectual property, and has no provisions to give a clear cut reach to law regarding trade secrets.
Third, release it anonymously.
That people have to release useful, open codes anonymously in order to avoid terrible corporate punishment is a very sad thought.
I should hope that I would have more sense, but I would be very tempted to release such codes with my name on them. To me, the support of the hacker community is worth the price of corporate crackdown. Then there's that whole ego thing a la esr.
Anonymous internet access? May I recommend wireless lan with the usual 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11, signal unencrypted, and default settings. I leave it as such and anyone in my town can park their car in the neighborhood with their laptop and use it (ssh is your friend.) Someday it will be abused and I'll have to lock it, but its there and I'm sure many other people have their links in the open too.
US Law gives us that right.
The law differentiates certain protections. Copyright protects an expression of an idea. But the ideas in a work are unprotected, and reverse engineering is allowed as a way to retrieve those unprotected ideas, so long as you don't infringe on their copyright by copying the expression.
This isn't a new concept. Society doesn't recognize a permanent right of creators to keep their ideas secret. You have a right to try to keep it secret (trade secret, aka don't tell anyone without contracts), or you can release it fully in exchange for temporary protection (patents).
First, release it from a country where the patents and trademarks do not apply. You might have to do some digging to figure that out. At the very least, that confuses the jurisdictional issues. Second, release it to the public domain. Third, release it anonymously. If you don't have the resources to fight the legal battles (and it sounds like you don't; and it also sounds like you might lose them) then the best thing you can do is simply make it available to those who might have the resources, or who might be in a better position to win the battles. For example, it might turn out that European users will be able to make use of your software, whereas U.S. users may not. Obviously since you haven't said what you are doing, I don't know :-)
Bad advice. If the intent of the author is to release something to the community, then he probably wants to be sure that it would be possible for others to use his work. Releasing the code or documentation anonymously would not help anyone, because they would have to prove that the original information was obtained legally, which would be impossible if it comes from an anonymous source.
If the author is in a country where reverse engineering has been made illegal (probably at the behest of Software and Media Mogules such as Microsoft, the RIAA, MPAA, and DVD Forum), then he or she is probably not in a position to take on the overfunded lawyers of these organizations (or other, similar entities), much less have a snowball's chance in hell of winning. However, you are correct, anonymous release of trade secrets doesn't do anyone any good, because we can't show it was obtained legally and therefor can't use it safely.
But, the author could find a friendly party in a safe country and have them take credit for the release. In this way, the author gets the protection of anonymouty (especially if he or she uses an anonymous (e.g. cypherpunk) mail forwarding service to maintain true anonymouty throughout (which I would recommend in case the "friendly party" turns out to be a malicious plant). At the same time, the community gets the benefit of a product which has been legally reverse engineered and made available.
This doesn't guaruntee the community complete safety. After all, the CSS algorithm was legally reverse engineered abroad and that hasn't appeared to slow down the MPAA and DVD Forum from sending the secret police in to drag children from their farms, or go after every Tom, Dick, and Harry for having a link on their web page which might, somewhere, lead to the offending (though perfectly legal) code. Alas, there is no complete safety when taking on powerful, established entities with a monopoly or (in the DVD case) quasi-legal trust to protect.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Here is a good place to do a little research:
i ng_links.shtml
http://www.softpanorama.org/SE/reverse_engineer
But even the most rigorous dosumentation won't protect yo from litigation. What you need is a "big daddy", someone to front you on any legal expenses. Talk to the Free Software Foundation. I know that is you assign rights to the FSF under specifically and release it under the GPL they have lawyers to help protect your copyrights. Talk to them, if you think the software you have developed is that important they are lieky to listen and maybe even help.
Please send inquiries about GNU and the FSF to
Free Software Foundation
59 Temple Place - Suite 330
Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
Voice: +1-617-542-5942
Fax: +1-617-542-2652
gnu@gnu.org
or WWW.FSF.org
People seem to be confusing the protection that patents offer with the protections offered by copyright or trade secrets.
Patents protect a process or an idea. In order to have patent protection the subject of the patent must be fully documented and publicly available at the patent office. This means that reverse engineering should not be necessary for any product which is covered by patents, because all of the inner workings must be documented.
Trade secret, as we all know from the DeCSS debacle, keeps the "how" out of public knowledge, but (theoretically) once the cat is out of the bag, and someone comes across the secret (by proper means) the trade secret protection is lost. Here is the area where people are trying to use trade secret law, combined with contract provisions against reverse engineering to maintain an unprecedented amount of control over intellectual property.
Copyright, the third traditional form of IP protects a method of epression. But copyright does not protect the idea behind the expression, only the precise expression that was used.
You really need to see an IP lawyer to have him/her identify which forms of protection are currently being asserted over the IP you are working from. Then you can figure out how to complete your project while minimizing the legal consequences.
Dane Torbenson
Easier said than done... However, this brings an important point: it is crucial to check for patents before releasing something that is considered to be a trade secret. If something is proprietary but not patented, then it is perfectly legal to re-implement it (as long as you use a "clean room" process and you do not copy anything directly from the current solution). But if anything is patented, then it is not possible to release this to the community.
Why? If he has spent a significant amount of time studying the problem and the existing solutions, I doubt that he would be happy to see some companies taking his solution and making a proprietary product out of it.
Bad advice. If the intent of the author is to release something to the community, then he probably wants to be sure that it would be possible for others to use his work. Releasing the code or documentation anonymously would not help anyone, because they would have to prove that the original information was obtained legally, which would be impossible if it comes from an anonymous source.
I think that the only good advice is: document everything. If you want to release something (possibly controversial) to the community, then the only way to make sure that others can really benefit from what you have done is to be accountable for it. You have to be able to prove that all the information was obtained legally, and that it does not come from any confidential documents. If every source of information is legal, then the community can benefit legally from your work (and you will be able to cover your back because you can prove how you obtained the information).
-Raphaël
Of course, IANAL, and there is much more to lawsuits than mere law (as we all know).
Now I don't know what field you are in, but lets say you are reinventing coca cola.
You may analyze a bottle (Reverse engineer) or use open sources (what is printed on the bottle i.e water, sugar, artificial flavoring). If you never seen the real recipy (trade secret) you are in the clear as long as you dont try to call your product "Coca cola" or something too similar.
If, on the other hand, you are making a simpler way to shop online (i.e. one click shopping). Assuming that Amazon's patent would hold in court, you can't recreate it in any way unless you can show that what you have done is really different to what is patented.
In short: Against patents you are screwed if their lawyers find you. Against trade secrets *they* are screwed as soon as you can show that you did the same independently.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
First off the issue at hand is NOT about stealing anyone else's code. It is about implementing some algorithm in code. This algorithm has (presumably) either been published in major journals or enough information is availible in the field to figure this algorithm out WITHOUT stealing anyone else's code.
Certainly from a moral standpoint (and a legal standpoint involving copyright but not patent) their is no theft occuring if I figure out hos someone else did something independently and implement this algorithm myself. (In some sense this is what DeCSS is about. Someone figured out the algorithm mapping encrypted to decrypeted files. This algorithm, being unpatented, should be perfectly within our rights to use as we see fit. No one copied their code and is distributing it.).
From a moral issue there is no reason whatsoever to assume that using someone else's idea is wrong or incorrect. They do not lose anything when you use their idea (to say they lose the rights to it is fallacious as it assumes that they have said rights in the first place) like they do when you take physical property from them. The arguments for Intellectual prooperty are ENTIERLY economic. If we did not have laws protecting IP then there would be no incentive to create works and/or new products. It is interesting to note that these laws were all originally choosen to have reasonably limited durations but that lobbying from various companies has pushed up the copyright time to a ridiculous level.
For a while after the revolution the United States had no copyright law to speak of. Of course during this period we produced little literature and became a 'pirate country' reprinting books from other countries beyond their law.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
You shouldn't be asking these questions here or in any other public forum. I, for one, will not answer these questions. It is asking for trouble to answer legal questions in places such as this.
My advice to you is hire a lawyer, or don't release your work. You'd better know the legal implications of what you're doing before you do it, and the description of what you're tyring to do is too vague for anyone, even a lawyer, to give you any kind of decent answer.
BTW, YOU WILL end up in court if someone has made it clear to you that what you are reverse engineering is considered a trade secret. If you've had any kind of access to that trade secret, and you knew it was a trade secret, you'll probably get sued, and you'll probably deserve it.
Now, we just have to get the Slashdot crew to stop posting these things.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
As much as I admire and enjoy slashdot, it is about the last place I would seek legal advice (which is what this is.) A perfect illustration of why is that your initial post, and the replies that have followed, have failed to distinguish between patents, trade secrets, copyrights, etc.
You mention that the work you are attempting to re-implemenent is the subject of "proprietary" protection and "trade secrets", but then you claim that you will be the subject of patent litigation. I'm sorry - what are you referring to? If they have patents on the technology, then what are the patent #'s? Further, if they have patents, then their technology is NOT a trade secret - patents are published.
You mention that "most of the work is considered proprietary, the rest is considered trade secrets" this doesn't make much sense. First point - "proprietary" is NOT a subset of intellectual property. IF a technology IS the subject of either patent, copyright or trade secret protection, only then can they consider it proprietary.
So again - if there is no patent, there is no patent protection. If the technology is contained in published works, then there is no trade secret protection (unless what you are referring to is object code software that has been released to the public - you are not clear on this point). (If however, you gained knowledge of the technologies you are trying to re-implement under an implicit or explicit agreement of secrecy, then you may be in hot water.) If you are not copying source code verbatim, then you are NOT violating copyright by re-implementing the algorithm.
Further than that, you simply haven't provided enough information to help you in any meaningful way.
I recall watching Cringeley's first special on computers a few years ago. In order to claim that the reverse engineering was clean, there were two sets of engineers. The first set of engineers had access to the device being reversed (IBMs PC BIOS) and compiled a set of rules. The second set of engineers worked _only_ from the rules obtained by the first set and supposedly never came into contact with the device being reversed.
I get the impression from your posting that there really isn't even a product available yet to be reversed, but that there is enough information to design a parallel process. Whether or not this can stand as 'clean room' reversing would depend on how the data you obtained was presented.
I agree with one of the prior posters; If it was obtained from patent documents, you might have some problems.
I am curious whether or not, if the data was obtained from published commercial/scientific documents, copyrights might also be claimed?
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
IANAL, but this seems more or less clear:
a) Stay down. Barring your own vanity, releasing something anonymously on the Internet is not that difficult. Put everything together nicely, and then send it to a mailing list or newsgroup on the subject through a Mixmaster or Cypherpunk mailing list. Leave spreading it to the power of the masses and of the Internet, by just creating it you have done enough.
This means major paranoia though, possibly you are not careful enough even when submitting this Slashdot. How sure are you that Rob and Andover are _really_ wiping the logs?
Yes, it sucks to have to be anonymous to speak freely, but such is the nature of living in a non-free society (and I won't even dignify anyone who says we do with a reply). Possibly you could sign the message with a public key, so that when (if) freedom comes you can take credit for your work. Consider that possesion of the private key would be very incriminating however.
b) Make a matyr of yourself. Contact a lawyer, and maybe a charity that is ready to help you first. Then just go out and tell the truth, ready to be the case that gets taken to the supreme court. It's a risky strategy, but it is a lot more glamorous then the first, so some people may still prefer it (being a pompous asshole myself, I think I might). And at least in this case you have a better chance of the data actually becoming legal, so that using it is not thoughtcrime...
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
One thing I've been trying to wrap my head around lately is, why do people believe they have the right to decompile and start distributing someone else's hard work? It seems to me that the mantra of the opensource movement is free as in freedom not free as in beer; and what these people are doing is reversing that and making it "free as in beer". Haven't people ever thought to work within One thing I've been trying to wrap my head around lately is, why do people believe they have the right to decompile and start distributing someone else's hard work? It seems to me that the mantra of the opensource movement is free as in freedom not free as in beer; and what these people are doing is reversing that and making it "free as in beer". Haven't people ever thought to work within the system... (use your most whiny voice) "oh, but it takes to long", "oh, they didn't want to the first time, so I'm going to make them", "we didn't have it for X platform and I want it now!", "oh, I'm spoiled little brat who can't wait for something".
Forcing a company to release source code really isn't freedom, it sure seems me like strong-arm mafia tactics by snotty brats. Slashdot sure brings itself into a huge fit when a mention of the GPL being violated, now where is our moral outrage that someone is wanting advice on a premeditated violation of someone else's license.
I don't really care if it's legal or not in their home country, I think it's morally wrong to force our opensource ideals onto companies by tactics slashdot would raise holy hell about if the rolls were reversed. If a company doesn't want to release something opensource what right to we have to TAKE AWAY THEIR FREEDOM? I love opensource, I am a firm believer in giving back to the community; but this premeditated stealing of someone else's code I can't agree with.
- Lab books should be properly bound and have sequential page numbers
- Each page should be dated and signed by the researcher and a witness/supervisor
- Blank spaces should be crossed through and initialed/signed
- Computer printouts should be glued in, not just kept on disk
- Any crossings-out/deletions should leave the original text readable. No tippex/whiteout
- Abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and explained where unclear
That's probably not an exhaustive list, and the poster of the article may know this already. Hopefully it will be useful to somebody.Document, Document, Document. The key to a good defense is to be able to prove HOW you did something. Keep a daily diary with the steps you've taken and plan to take. Document all results, and all versions of the code you are using. If you can prove that this was reverse engineered 'cleanly', then your legal problems will be much less than they would be. I'd also hire a good lawyer NOW. And not one that handles wills and property transactions. I mean one that understands copyright law. Good luck to you.