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PlayStation Reverse Engineering Stands Up In Court
hobbs writes: "The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Sony,
suing Connectix (Bleem) for reverse engineering their
PlayStation BIOS. This wasn't about copyright, just
reverse engineering, which the courts say fell under
"fair use". CNET
Article
I find this interesting in the States since reverse engineering here is not usually well accepted/protected legally." This seems like a small clearing in the creeping intellectual property tangle. Of course, that law suit probably wasn't any help to Bleem, despite the outcome. [Updated 3rd Oct 0:13 GMT by timothy] Thanks to the several readers who have pointed out by e-mail or in comments, as Kufat does, that "Bleem is not made by connectix. Connectix makes Virtual Game Station; Bleem is a competitor to VGS."
I find this interesting in the States since reverse engineering here is not usually well accepted/protected legally." This seems like a small clearing in the creeping intellectual property tangle. Of course, that law suit probably wasn't any help to Bleem, despite the outcome. [Updated 3rd Oct 0:13 GMT by timothy] Thanks to the several readers who have pointed out by e-mail or in comments, as Kufat does, that "Bleem is not made by connectix. Connectix makes Virtual Game Station; Bleem is a competitor to VGS."
You seem to have missed the point. The point is that it's stupid to have a law that allows you to reverse engineer for compatibility reasons as long as the original product doesn't encrypt its content (even with trivial encryption), but not allow reverse engineering of those who do, even for fair use purposes. That's why the law makes no sense.
Maybe Kaplan's ruling will help clear things up. Since he's basically saying that fair use is overridden by the DMCA clause prohibiting the circumvention of "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." This will either wake people up to what's going on, and it will get fixed by Congress, or big corporations will rally behind the ruling and Congress will go cower in the corner, allowing the ruling to become permanent law.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Denial of cert means the lower court decision stands, yes. However, it doesn't mean the Court agrees with the lower court's decision.
If the Court agrees with something, then the Court's opinion becomes the law of the land, from Washington DC to Guam and Puerto Rico. If the court disagrees with something, the Court's opinion applies over the same region. If the Court takes notice of anything, it affects the entire nation.
Appellate courts only affect regions of the country, not the country itself. The Court of Appeals which supported Connectix has defined caselaw, but only for that region.
If the Court agreed with the lower court, then the Connectix case would be caselaw for the entire country. Similarly if the court disagreed. Since the Court denied cert, that means the Court is saying "this isn't worth our limited time".
What often happens in matters such as these is that the Court will wait for another, similar case to be decided differently in another circuit. If the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decides a case one way, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decides a similar case another way, then that creates an inconsistency in how the law is applied. The Court will then step in and declare one of the two interpretations to be correct, thus removing the inconsistency.
Wait for another reverse-engineering suit to be filed in another circuit, and wait for it to be decided differently. Then the Court will grant cert, and we'll finally have definitive SCOTUS guidance on the reverse engineering issue.
Last time I checked, fair use covered criticism and classroom use, not reverse engineering, which is what this is. But I guess times have changed. I'm not familiar with the "fair use doctrine" cited in the article. I mean, I look at the statutes I'm familiar with and I don't see the word doctrine anywhere :)
Mind you, they're not now using the Sony bios, right? So they should not be sued for using it today, which is the only thing fair use COULD cover - And it wouldn't. Or at least shouldn't. If Sony is going to sue them for anything, they should sue them for the arguably illegal (though stupidly so) reverse engineering.
I own a playstation. I do not own Bleem!. I don't own a mac, so VGS would do me no good regardless. I play my playstation games (all of which I've paid for, so far) on a real playstation because the experience is complete; Sure, Bleem! and VGS might have better graphics (Bleem! certainly does) but you just have to spend more money to use a dual shock controller, and my television (25") is bigger than my monitor (19").
So, I wasn't following the saga from day one, but if Connectix was distributing Sony BIOS with their systems at any point, they should be punished. If the only thing they ever used it for was reverse engineering, that's more or less protected and they didn't do anything wrong.
That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
First, Connectix VGS and Bleem are separate, but similar products.
Second, Sony is probably correct that it didn't cost much more than $150,000 to develop VGS. Even if it cost $1 million, this is 1/500th the cost that Sony had to develop the machine, which at the time was a very advanced machine.
Third, the reason Sony sued Connectix was that they purported that VGS was only developed because Connectix literally copied the BIOS from a Playstation (a little like copying ROMs for MAME). I do not know that factuality of that statement. It appears that Connectix went through some serious hurdles to make sure they had a comletely from scratch replacement, but that they may not have been as rigid in doing so as to avoid a lawsuit.
Sony brings up the financial issue partly to distract from the real issue, but partly to demonstrate how easily this supposed copyright infringement (as opposed to outright reverse engineering) assisted Connectix in becoming a Playstation competitor.
We should all be very grateful to the 9th District court and the Supremes on this one, since it looks like this will ultimately cause the MPAA a lot of trouble as they continue to litigate against DeCSS, DivX, and any other DVD players, decoders, etc, which are not sanctioned by their lackeys, er, members.
I do not have a signature
DeCSS allows people to both view/play and copy DVDs to different format.
I believe this is the crucial difference.
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The cnet story is very poorly written, so I understand how it was interpretted by the original submittor, but Supreme Court ruling only confirmed the 9th Circuits ruling that SONY was not entitled to injunctive relief, therefor allowing the release of the Mac version of Virtual Game Station.
Here is today's ruling as report by the wire services. AP.
"The court, without comment Monday, let Connectix continue selling its Virtual Game Station until a lower court rules on Sony's claim of unfair competition."
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Connectix's VGS emulator is not Bleem (made by Bleem Inc.). IIRC, Bleem didn't use the bios at all and Sony couldn't sue them over that.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Compaq made the first 100% compatible PC clones. There were three essential items that had to be reproduced to make a true clone:
1) The processor -- no problem, IBM used a standard, off the shelf Intel Chip
2) The OS -- no problem, IBM contracted MS-DOS, but neglected to acquire an *exclusive* contract with MS. Boy how it came back to bite them.
3) The BIOS, used for booting and low level disk access. This was IBM's proprietary chip, and thus a problem.
Compaq could buy the OS and processor, but not the BIOS. So, they reverse engineered it. Compaq brought in a team of engineers, handed them an IBM BIOS and told them "document every single thing this chip does". The engineers did their work and came up with a very thick document which provided a full functional description of the part. Compaq paid them, and sent them on their way. Then a second group was brought in, who had never met the first group and never seen the part. They were handed the functional description and told "build me a chip that does exactly this", and they did. Thus the Compaq BIOS was born.
With the BIOS they had all the parts they needed to build clones, and that they did. IBM took them to court, but the courts ruled that Compaq's implementation was built in a completely "clean room" fashion, and was thus perfectly legal. Woe to IBM. This, of course, threw the doors wide open and other clone makers started in. Soon, IBM lost the PC market to smaller, faster companies, and that brings us to today.
Ah...PC history. Historically, Compaq has been a rather important company (first clone, first portable PC clone, first 386-based PC). It's too bad their modern machines are so terrible.
--Lenny
Thank heavens for the Ninth Circuit.
sulli
RTFJ.
Unless you are going to try to argue there was no innovation or content developed before the DMCA was passed. In which case I'd ask whether you worked for the MPAA, the RIAA, Microsoft, or just forgot to take your medication. :)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
DMCA covers devices that control access to copyrighted works (eg CSS). AFAIK, changing the delivery method is all good, as long as the new method also prevents copying.
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Sheesh, I should hope that this trick isn't illegal. Otherwise one could argue that 20 years of IBM PC-combatible hegemony was all based on an illegal technology.
You're correct with that assumption that consoles don't drop off sharply in price because their vendors realize that they have a guaranteed customer (the PlayStation, after release, didn't get any less popular) and they can keep the prices high on their outdated components for longer than they ordinarily would.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
DMCA provides for devices that allow for interoperability, but outlaws devices that allow copyright infringement. Doesn't that mean that it matters what a program does with its output?
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Yes, there's no copyright control device to be circumvented. That's why DMCA wasn't used as an argument, they were trying to argue something about the IP in the BIOS.
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Since the Supreme Court is refusing to hear the case, they're not doing the one important thing the Supreme Court does:
Setting a precident
Without a precident there's no reason a company won't do this again in another case with the same circumstances.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
This is something which arises so frequently that it's become a major annoyance to the Court. The Court will deny cert ("deny cert" == "refuse to hear arguments") on a case, and presto, the popular press and most of America thinks that means anything.
It means nothing.
Denying cert only means the Court won't hear arguments. It doesn't mean the Court thinks the legal reasoning is correct; it doesn't mean the Court is approving the lower court's decision; it doesn't mean anything .
Many cases are denied cert because their legal issues are not as clear as the Court would like ("bad cases make for bad law", as the axiom goes), or the Court wants to give it a few years to let legal scholarship tackle the issues, or the Court thinks this is an issue which Congress will soon issue "direction" (read: legislation) on, or... any of dozens of reasons.
It is tremendously unwise to think that the Court's denial of cert means anything, no matter what the Court says in their response.
Don't get happy; the Court hasn't done anything for us.
AFAIK, a program that read in a DVD and produced an MPEG that had SCMS (serial copy management system) on it, such that it couldn't be recopied... that would be legal.
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I find the last statement odd, reverse engineering is a time honored tradition that goes back a long way. Remember all the early "non-ibm" BIOSes were reverse engineered. The hoops that manufacturers went through to insure the integrity of the reverse engineering were pretty intense. For a long time reverse engineering for the BIOS was done as follows.
- team 1 of engineers inspects pokes and generally fiddles with a known BIOS, and then writes a report on what a BIOS should do based on what they discovered the BIOS that they were fooling with did.
- team 2 of engineers who have 0 contact with team 1 then use said report to design a new bios without ever seeing the source code or the other bios in action.
I think in most states laws were passed or clarified in Court so that the procedure became greatly streamlined. This allowed a lot of smaller players to get into business and do some reverse engineering WITHOUT needing to pay 2 separate teams of engineers. The problem had been some recent bad legislation that seems to contradict time honored reverse engineering/fair use laws.The other problem is our patent system. I think this is a small victory, the real challenge lays ahead. That challenge is deciding what can and cannot be patented.
Too bad that it had to drag on for so long before a decision was rendered. If your pockets are deep enough you can sue, even if your wrong. The technological window time wise is so small that any chance your competition had is gone before the litigation is finished.
I wonder what this means for Cue cat?
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Here's the "real" story : ;-)
They got the code, not by reverse engineering, but through the illuminati (they know everything, ya know)...
The courts jumped in, but since the illuminati move everything with their 'invisible hand', and have such immense power, they forced the courts to concede. And the courts did.
To further prove my theory, this post should get moderated down to -1 soon after I post it, so those that actually see if will know the truth!
IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY!
-- "Microsoft can never die! They make the best damn joysticks around!"
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
To be only legal when big companies do it. But not when individuals do it. Well I hope that the cue:cat hackers get thier day in court and win.
Connectix reverse engineered the Playstation for the purpose of allowing Playstation games to interoperate with an IBM-PC. This is fully covered under the DMCA. Nothing has changed.
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The DMCA is not about circumventing a copyrighted protection method. The copyright status of the method is irrelevant to the DMCA. THe DMCA is about circumventing a protection method that protects a copyrighted work. The relevant copyright is on the protected work, not the protection method. This is an important distinction. Also, you can violate the DMCA without infringing copyright, as they are two seperate charges. "Fair use" will get you off on a infringement charge, but not on a DMCA charge. Judge Kaplan's ruling set that precedent, unfortunately. (Just ask the DeCSS defendants who have been ordered to not deal in DeCSS, and to pay the court for the procedings against them.)
The DMCA states: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title".
Check out the relevant section of the DMCA for yourself: 17 USC 1201
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Right...so you patent an unspecified device that implements the algorithm. This patents the algorith for all practical purposes, as it prevents anyone else from creating a device that implements the algorithm without your permission. This would also preclude writing software which causes a computer to implement the algorithm.
I think it is a political / money issue. Where is Sony and the Connectix? sony is based out of japan, is Connectix us based? hmm.
I also wonder who is shelling out more money here?
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
For the product.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
There is a difference between interacting with a program to understand how it works (or writing a second program to interface with it) and just dumping the binary to look at the machine code.
Almost certainly the latter is illegal, which I believe is what you are talking about.
If you can look at the machine code and make use of it in your own program, just look at ALL the machine code and you can copy ALL of their software! That can't be right.
if someone guesses coca-cola's formula, and duplicates it exact,...
William Poundstone's "Big Secrets" book (ISBN: 0688048307) has the Coca-Cola (tm) formula, reverse engineered. Lot of good that will do you. Want to sell franchises, on the basis of just your formula, to others to open up bottling plants all over the world?
Since its a trade secret not a patent that means someone can market the soda as a cokelike-copy right?
Well, no, not exactly. You can market the same formula but you would not be wise to call it by any name that might confuse people who wish to buy the trademarked beverage.
Since it's a trade secret, supposedly locked up in a safe with access only by a few people, the formula is safe--even if a formula is published, who's to know if it's really the right one?
Reverse engineering is not theft--it is a normal engineering practice with a long, honorable history. Of course, some companies howl when others perform successful reverse engineering and figure out how their products are made--and where the weaknesses are--but then those same companies do the same thing to any competitor anyway. I think instead of calling it by a jargon word, we ought to see it as legitimate competition, exactly what we need instead of monopolies to promote progress.
No, it does remain unspecified. The algorithm is described in great detail, but the device is usually pretty general. The actual description of the device might be "A device consisting of an electronic microprocessor, a mass storage unit, and volatile electronic memory" or something like that. I've seen such patent applications. They describe the device so vaguely that ANY computer which implements the very detailed algorithm will violate the patent. That's the point.
The district court in the DeCSS said that it does not matter if the anti-circumvention provisions prevent fair use. The judge claimed that that must have been the way Congress intended it to be. Of course, this nonsense should be reversed, but that won't directly follow from the Connectix case.
So all the need to do is say it contains some encryption routine, implement their XOR 0xFF encryption or something similar, use it in their new games and consoles, and presto, reverse-engineering it is now illegal in at least one jurisdiction. Law is strange, isn't it?
Thank goodness I'm not a lawyer, I couldn't force myself to deal with such illogical laws on a day to day basis, I'd go nuts.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
A better analogy would be disassembling your own copy of Photoshop. But ask a lawyer first.
But doesn't a denial of cert mean that the decision of the lower court stands?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
While not quite the ideal outcome, we can definitely chalk one up for The Good Guys here.
The ideal outcome for this would have been for the SC to hear the case and explicitly rule in Connectix's favor; that would make things a lot less ambiguous. But this is certainly much better than nothing at all (or worse, a ruling in Sony's favor).
Now, the inevitable question: how can this best be applied to DeCSS and the DMCA?
----------
INTERACTIVE
great comedy company.
Now I'm not a lawyer, or even all that bright, but doesn't this ruling have serious implications for other 'products' that are created as a result of reverse engineering.
So my small brain spits out two theorys, anyone know which is (more) correct.
Theory 1.
It's the content that is copyrighted, not the delivery method, thus copying the content would be illegal, but changing the delivery method (i.e. DeCSS) is all good.
Theory 2
Hold on there sparky, this has nothing to do with DeCSS or anything else because the motion picture industry has declared the method itself copyrighted. Sony just missed that trick.
Anyone?
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
...though it's entirely possible. It would involve the software developers at Bleem! or Connectix to get off their duffs and convert the executable to Win32; as they stand right now, they will only execute in Windows 9x. I didn't filch the Volume 10 Sony demo disk for nothing!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I've posted this in reply to another comment here, but that's just going to get buried, and everyone else here seems to be making the same mistake. IANAL.
The Connectix case was about traditional copyright law. Sony said, "Reverse engineering is illegal!" Various judges said, "No, reverse engineering is not illegal."
The DeCSS case is about the DMCA. The MPAA is saying, "Reverse engineering a copyright protection mechanism is illegal!" It remains to be seen what the judges will say to that, but the DMCA seems to be on the MPAA's side.*
Let's try some basic logic here.
"It is not always illegal to reverse engineer."
"It is illegal to reverse engineer a copyright protection system."
Those two statements do not contradict eachother. Consider:
"It is not always illegal to swing a baseball bat."
"It is illegal to swing a baseball bat at someone's head."
Does that help? I'm sorry if this is not the most articulate explanation, but people constantly misunderstand legal issues due to a poor grasp of simple logic. I can't think of a better way to explain it, so I have to settle for speaking slowly and using small words.
* I know, there's a lot of room for argument here, but it's still a very different situation.
MSK
So it's illegal to look at command.com in a hex editor? I think not. It would be illegal to copy significant portions of the code for my own product, but looking and understanding is ok. I could then write a report about it, give the report to another engineer, and he could implement a command.com replacement. This is called clean room reverse engineerng and is how Compaq first produced a PC-BIOS clone.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
I wonder what affect, if any, it will have on the DeCSS case?
What we really need is a free (beer and speech) development environment for the newer console systems.
It is only a recent trend where reverse engineering has been given a bad name (DeCSS). More specifically, when someone over at Connectix makes a playstation 2 BIOS, its okay. Yet, when someone over in Norway figures out who DVD players work it's piracy. The distinction between the two is Connectix is a for profit company, while distributers of DeCSS are Hackers. As well all know, what is good for a company is good for America and Hackers (like those evil 2600 kids) are out to destroy the nation.
So logically, what needs to be done is some "Hackers" need to start a for profit company to sell DVD players for Linux (at .$50 a download) and see what happens.
Burn Hollywood Burn
I think that this, plus the Betamax case, should be strong enough to make the DeCSS case go the right way on appeals. Heck, the PS case was under the shadow of the DMCA as well.
While ambious, I really hope that the DeCSS is the one that is pushed all the way to the SC to kill the DMCA bill, or at least provisions that trend on fair use. The 'success' of this case shows that the legal background is there.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST: