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."

Comments

Only Denial of Preliminary Injunction Upheld

[Cy Guy]

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."

This is a beautiful thing.

[sulli]

The impact on other cases such as DeCSS may be quite substantial and positive. After all, what are LiVid and related tools but a VGS-like implementation to play DVDs? And if so, is not css-descramble just a component of such a solution? If this sort of reverse engineering is protected under fair use, then so also DVDs, methinks.

Thank heavens for the Ninth Circuit.

Totally meaningless.

[rjh]

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.

Implications for DeCSS, CueCat, etc.

[jayfoo2]

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?

Re:Logic - no land for the courts

[kaphka]

Well, the courts seem to be unable to relate their results to each other for some sort of consistency. With this ruling (which is better than Judge Kaplan's against 2600), it can be reasoned that emulating a simple DVD player is as legal as emulating a PlayStation.

Fortunately, the courts are still smarter than most Slashdot posters. (Congress is another story...) They actually read the laws... and they know that the DMCA prohibits reverse engineering of copyright protection technologies. VGS is not designed to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." DeCSS is. (I know, it's a little more complicated than that. I've been through all the arguments.)

So, to answer all those wise asses who ask, "Am I violating the DMCA when I use an emulator? Am I violating the DMCA when I view the source of a web page? Am I violating the DMCA when I wash my socks?": No.

I highly recommend that everyone read the text of the DMCA, as linked above. It's an important issue which will only become more important in the coming years, so it would help if everyone knows what they're arguing about.