Federal Judge Rules Against Reverse-engineering

zurab writes "A federal judge in Boston threw out a challenge to the DMCA brought by the ACLU for a Harvard Law School student. Ben Edelman decided to ask court's permission to reverse-engineer the Internet filtering software made by N2H2 in fears of being sued by the company. Of interest is a quote from the ruling: "there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass." Full story on Yahoo."

Comments

A sad state of affairs...

[sdo1]

This country is going to hell... quickly.

Write to your elected representatives. Do it now.

-S

Re:A sad state of affairs...

[fliplap]

The problem is, everyone on slashdot would rather just complain on slashdot instead of actually writing thier representative a well worded letter.

I was actually thinking about this the other day. What about a slashdot sponsered letter writing compaign that gave people a tangible reward for writing a good letter to thier congress(wo)man.

They could have everyone write an email about what really matter to them, any topic, preferably a technological one as thats what scores points around here. Then have them mail them to thier representative and CC a copy to contest@slashdot.org as well as post it as a comment. Say, 10 highest rated letters win a free subscription (however many page views that is). The cost would be negligable, but the impact of tons of well worded emails coming from intellegent people would have an amazing impact. So, editors, what do YOU think? --btw, the letters should be worded better than this post.

Re:A sad state of affairs...

[be-fan]

Send letters, rather than emails. Emails are too easy to ignore. But otherwise, I think this is a great idea. You've convinced me to scrounge up a stamp. Let's Slashdot Congress!

Re:A sad state of affairs...

[tconnors]

The problem is, everyone on slashdot would rather just complain on slashdot instead of actually writing thier representative a well worded letter.

Actually, the problem is a lot of /.ers are international. We see daily just how fucked up the good ol' US of A is becoming, and can do nothing about it. Now, that's not so bad - I don't ever want to travel to the USA myself, let alone live there, but in the meantime, our own counties are threatening to follow in their footsteps, so that we can further our trade agreements.

So in that way, we whinge about the USA laws, because they will eventually influence our own laws.

Holy crap the end is near

[Zork the Almighty]

If this stands up, it will be a kick in the teeth to freedom. A free society depends on public disclosure and peer-review. It's sickening to see how so many laws are being aimed at those two targets these days.

Re:Holy crap the end is near

[the gnat]

I would have said something different from the parent poster: scientific and technical progress depends on public disclosure and peer review. It also depends on the freedom to investigate a problem without interference from the government or companies (as long as no one gets hurt!).

Re:Holy crap the end is near

[ewhac]

Every company is entitled to keep trade secrets.

Except that when they sell those products in a retail marketplace, they no longer can reasonably expect to maintain any secrets those products may contain, especially in light of the fact that there is no contract binding the customer to keep those secrets. Companies examine their competitors' products all the time. You think Sony just sits there contemplating its navel? No, they're out there buying their competitors' products, tearing them apart, and using that knowledge to improve their own products. This isn't some weird, occult activity practiced in SubGenius rituals or something -- this is normal. Software vendors have no right to expect different treatment.

...And before you start waving that "license" around like it's Magna Carta, EULAs are horsesh*t. If it smells like a sale and looks like a sale and walks like a sale, then it's a sale regardless of what that (unsigned) piece of paper says.

Schwab

Re:Holy crap the end is near

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States. And of course my society does, generally. If a Ford fails, I tell my neighbor. My neighbor can buy a Ford and see for himself or ask around. Or choose another product.

There are entire free press and commercial tools available for this--they are called screwdrivers, _Consumer_Reports, review articles, etc. etc.

Such disclosure is both fair and open. And under peer review--society is that reviewer. You seem to be a little confused--this product the idiotic judge is saying reverse engineering constitutes trespass is a public, purchaseable product, open to consumption as a good. This isn't someone who cracked a safe on private property. This is knowledge included within the product being licensed.

If I want to know how an engine works, I can buy it and dismantle it. Take nearly any product; you can do this.

The government has defined trade secrets in several locations--simply, if it is "sufficiently" protected, it is considered a trade secret. The problem isn't the trade secret, it's the stinkin low grade definition of what determines sufficient for software, primarily defined by by the DMCA.

Under the DMCA, there is little case law which determines what is "secret" enough. rot13 may be protection enough.

Re:Holy crap the end is near

[nhavar]

Let us think about that for a moment. Suppose that you want to show the success or failure of a product who's maker claims the extraordinary. Back in the good old days you'd go to the store buy the product, test it out, take it apart and find out how it ticks. Most of the time you'd find out that the actual features were at a minimum technically misleading. At the end of your little test you'd post your results out to the web or tell your buddies or let other professionals know.

Now you can't own the product. It's not yours. Not only is it not yours but you can't tinker with it. Tinkering with it is illegal. If the manufacturer says it's the safest product ever devised and you suspect that it's full of holes you aren't allowed to look. If they say it has technology developed by NASA and you suspect code looted from a GPL'd product - you can't check - it's illegal.

If I'm doing a term paper on the effectiveness and accuracy of "filters" and I can't test the product, or publish my findings, how do I progress. When someone else is doing a study on the long term effects of filtering (i.e. what knowledge was lost/missed due to improper filtering) how can one do so without looking at how and what the filters filtered.

Look at some EULA's lately. One EULA I got a couple of years ago said that "reviews can only be published after the written consent of 'COMPANYX'. COMPANYX reserves the right to sole editorship of any published reviews of it's products." This meant that ANY review that you saw on the web or in a magazine they effectively wrote. The problem was trying to find any real data on the product - every review was glowing, no problems, no benchmarks, and no real information.

At the end of the day the product was a piece of crap. But the only way you could find out it was a piece of crap was by purchasing a license at 700+ per seat and doing your own testing. Which the company assured wouldn't be accurate without having a "production" environment to test against.

More and more companies are hiding behind their EULA's, patent law, trademark law, copyright law, and so called "trade secrets" to hide the fact that their products are not of the quality nor even contain the feature sets that they advertise. And the judges and the politicians give them more and more room to maneuver every day. Filtering companies claim "Advanced Artificial Intelligence" and "Intelligent Algorithms" and we can't tell that they aren't just using a handcompiled blacklist updated regularly. And these are the companies that the politicians want EVERY LIBRARY and EVERY SCHOOL SYSTEM to use for filtering. I don't reallistically think that the government is going to make the effort to keep these vendors honest so I think WE should have the ability to do so. The only way to do that is through some ability to reverse engineer their products.

Re:Holy crap the end is near

[Jeremi]

Every company is entitled to keep trade secrets. It either that or they must patent their inventions. Patents require disclosure. So take your pick.

Of course a company is entitled to keep their trade secrets secret, if they can. What's at issue is: Should they be allowed to finesse the government into making it illegal for anyone else to discover those secrets via reverse engineering?

Copyright was never meant to be a way to prevent people from learning secrets. It was meant to prevent people from redistributing copies of others' work without their permission. The fact that the DMCA is being used in this way shows how overbroad and ill-advised the DMCA is.

Re:Holy crap the end is near

[PyromanFO]

"the market will know soon enough"
How? Its illegal to talk about how it doesnt work, because you are defeating their encryption in order to prove that it doesnt work.

Re:Holy crap the end is near

[LarsG]

Every company is entitled to keep trade secrets.

As long as they don't publish or make them generally available - then the law doesn't (or shouldn't) protect you if someone out there discovers the secret and tells the world about it.

It is not illegal to appropriate someone elses trade secrets, it is only illegal if you misappropriate the trade secret.

To quote:

"Misappropriation " means: (i) acquisition of a trade secret of another by a person who knows or has reason to know that the trade secret was acquired by improper means; or (ii) disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied consent by a person who (A) used improper means to acquire knowledge of the trade secret; or (B) at the time of disclosure or use knew or had reason to know that his knowledge of the trade secret was (I) derived from or through a person who has utilized improper means to acquire it; (II) acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or (III) derived from or through a person who owed a duty to the person seeking relief to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or (C) before a material change of his position, knew or had reason to know that it was a trade secret ad that knowledge of it had been acquired by accident or mistake.

Does this leave IBM free...

[kmeson]

to sue all those who reverse engineered their BIOS and made the clone PC industry possible?

Re:um ...

[West Palm Beach]

After reading that it would seem that by default, he can go ahead and decrypt the software. But in reality, he'd be under fire from the lawyers as soon as it was discussed publically.

It's sad that he was denied permission, after all how many hackers acually take the time and trouble to request permission before a judge? He should have gotten permission for the effort!

2 big problems..

[MrLint]

he first one relates to the article "Edelman had asked a Seattle company called N2H2 for a list of sites its software blocks, but was rebuffed."

Now supposedly the judge says that this list of blocked sites is copyrighted. Excuse me but I'm totally baffled as to how a 3rd party company has copyright on a list that contains domain names that belong to a 4th party. I really need someone to explain this. Does merely making a list of otherwise publicly available information make it copyrightable? Does the mere listing make it something new and special?

The second big problem here seem to go against (IIRC) previous case law on reverse engineering. If this ruling stands you might as well kiss RE good bye. Every company is the US is gonna whine DMCA and "invasive and destructive trespass".

Why do I hear a huge sucking sound?

Re:2 big problems..

[Ian_Bailey]

I'm a little bit confused on this as well.

First, I think the 'copyright' here is actually not too far off the base from Google's PageRank technology.

• They use some algorithm to sort web sites (into rankings for Google, and into blocked or not-blocked for this case).
• They then both base their entire service around the effectiveness of this algorithm.

I think the company's fears (which at least makes sense, even if they are ridiculous) that if they gave a complete list of their blocked sites, their algorithm could be deduced. If you were given a complete listing of all sites in Google's Directory sorted by PageRanking, would you figure out the algorithm? Of course, I imagine the algorithm in this case is several degrees simpler than PageRank.

Additionally, the difficulty is defining on how you can reverse engineer the product. Okay, so we can't get the list of the company, says this judge, what next? Are we allowed to test out the software ourselves to find out what sites are and aren't blocked?

Poor test of DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

This case was a poor choice for the ACLU to cahllenge the DMCA on. Edelman was clearly trying to grind his ax against a web site filtering company. The ACLU needs to find a single issue case to pursue. I think the guy who is being sent to jail for selling XBox mod chips would be a good case to challenge the DMCA on.

People like Edelman need to realize that the filtering companies are doing nothing but building products to meet a demand in the market place. If they are actually concered about cencorship, they need to focus on regulating the implementation of these products by public organizations. As for businesses, they are free to censor all they want.

constitutional interest?

[quantaman]

there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass.

no constitutional interest eh?

Edelman had asked a Seattle company called N2H2 for a list of sites its software blocks, but was rebuffed. ...

"It's highly desirable that these products are accurate, that when they say they're blocking pornography, they're really blocking pornography, not people running for Congress who talk about the evils of pornography," he said Wednesday. "Yet the research to date indicates they make a lot of mistakes."


Hrm... I'm not completely familiar with the American constitution but I was under the impression that Freedom of speech and by implication the right to discover what speech you were being denied access to would outweigh the right to protect copyrighted material. Oh and BTW how does finding the list constitute an invasive and destructive trespass.? Yes it could hurt them if competitors used their list in their own products (after all the accuracy of such a list would be the essential element of their system) but I hardly feel it would be destructive in any way. Is the judge just refering to economic damage or is there some other potentiaal cause for damage?

Re:constitutional interest?

[Waffle Iron]

Oh and BTW how does finding the list constitute an invasive and destructive trespass.?

The whole concept of copyrights (as well as patents) was invented so that people would not keep their works secret. It was invented solely to encourage people to publish their work.

Obviously, when the U.S. Constititution was written, nobody expected or imagined that any copyrighted work could be obfuscated or encrypted. The technology didn't exist at the time. Copyright was invented to encourage the publication of plain human-readable text in books and newspapers, nothing else.

It is clear then, that the exception to free speech carved out by the copyright clause does not cover these technical tricks that shroud hidden secrets in the goods you buy. These tricks do not "promote progress in useful arts and sciences".

You are entitled to keep your trade secrets hidden from others. The way to do that is keep the secrets in your own posession. You can lock them in your safe. Someone breaking in to that safe would be trespassing.

However, once you put those secrets in a product and sell them, you are at risk that somebody will decode the secrets. You sold them a copy of the damned secrets; they have every right to try to decode them, as they now own a copy of them. (Copyrights and patents may prevent your customers from replicating their purchase or using your secrets, but they don't prevent them from just knowing your secrets.)

Copyrights and patents exist to protect the producers' interests in this case, but only in return for revealing the secrets. That's how it is supposed to work: you reveal your hard work to the world, and in return you get a (formerly) limited-time monopoly. Extending the concept of copyright beyond this clearly goes outside the bounds defined for it in the Constitution, and enforcement of such an expansion interferes with your rights to use your own property. That is why the DMCA is unconstitutional.

I can't understand how somebody can possibly "tresspass" on a copyrighted item, when it is, by definition, publicly published information.

Broad implications?

[cspen001]

I'll leave this to the lawyers, but consider this. If reverse engineering is not a valid means to an end, where does this leave any preexisting incidents? Does IBM now have a valid case against anybody and everybody using the bios that was reverse engineered from the original IBM PC? Or maybe I'm off base, can somebody shed some insight?

You're right.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're correct. The decision was the right one. Too often, people think the court's decision should be one based on morals, popular decision, or what's best for everyone. That belief is wrong. The court's job is to analize the situation and see how it applies to law. When you do this, you may ONLY see how the law interperets the situation, not morals or the like.

So, as it seems to be a wrong move for innovation, information, and public knowledge, the court was actually doing it's job CORRECTLY. This is so vital because that's what the judicial branch is meant to do, nothing else. Additionally, the decidions that the judicial courts make, will heavily influence all other cases in the future which seem to pend on the same law.

In summation, though the decision reached may seem unfair, morally wrong, or detremental to the public's ability to check and balance situations like this article, the court did it's job correctly.

And if you look through history, I believe this branch of government has probably been the most honorable and noble in terms of their jobs.

Paul Revere is busy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Got himself a nice TV set and recliner. He doen't give a fuck about anything anymore. Living room and television. Television and living room. One positive effect of his chosen lifestyle is the eventual transition from living room to nursing home won't require much adjustment at all.

Re:Here is my beef.

[Billly Gates]

But reading files are now illegal!

If your office has all their documents in excell and word how can openoffice work if its illegal to read these file formats. After all Microsoft lawyers can now use this case to equal reverse engineering= tresspasing.

Sigh.

SCO can now sue Linus and redhat as well. They reversed Unix to make Linux unix compatible in regards to SysV. Now Its payback.

DMCA Allows This

[waldoj]

I don't see the problem here. (I'm not denying that there is one -- I just don't see it.) The DMCA has been modified to allow exactly this:

"Certain software products, often known as ``filtering software'' or ``blocking software,'' restrict users from visiting certain internet websites. [...] Critics charge that some filtering programs unfairly block sites that do not contain undesirable material and therefore should not be filtered. [...] Several commenters assert that manufacturers of filtering software encrypt the lists naming the targeted sites and that they are not made available to others, including the operators of the targeted sites themselves. R56. These commenters assert that they have no alternative but to decrypt the encrypted lists in order to learn what websites are included in those lists. [...] Such acts of decryption would appear to violate 1201(a)(1) if it took effect without an exemption for these activities. [...] The case has been made for an exemption for compilations consisting of lists of websites blocked by filtering software applications."

Although some disagree, I think that this was the great victory of the CPHack case.

-Waldo Jaquith

He DESERVED IT. Trying to Cheat USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to Cheat an American company of its HARD EARNED money

Reverse engineering are evil, you unAmerican liberal SCUM

We live in a capitalist society and evertything has a price and if you DONT pay it you are a THIEF

N2H2 is a great American company and has helped us maintain dominance over everyone else

You are insulting such a great company by questioning their desire to make their rightful profit.

LIBERAL SCUM

WATCH some TV you MORON

SEE who has WON

USA ALWAYS WINS

USA! USA! USA!

Did you bleeding heart liberal scum see how much love and respect the iraqi people showered on our brave troops. We are ALWAYS right.

If you DONT love it, LEAVE IT.

Actually, no, they did not rule against it

[Anonymous Coward]

They said he didn't have standing. This was because he was not in danger of immediate harm.

"there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass."
- In other words, nothing in the Constitution allows him to sue at the present time.

Furthermore, this was more like an advisory opinion, something courts virtually never grant to begin with.

So, how does this ruling affect the DMCA? It doesn't. Doesn't give it more weight, and it doesn't dilute it.

If he wanted this case to be tried on the merits, he should have contacted some of the web pages blocked and had them file suit claiming that their businesses were economically harmed by the block placed on them. That's the only way I can see.

Re:my school uses that..

[NeoSkandranon]

You make one big assumption---that given the run of all the message boards on the internet, students will only go to the "good" ones---that is, the ones that promote discussion and whatnot.

All I can say is, it must have been awhile since you were a student. The purpose of blocking message board sites is so kids dont dick around when they're supposed to be working, tying up what might be already scanty bandwith (my highschool had 1400 students with several labs and all teachers' computers on a 64k ISDN line.) doing things that are not at all school related.

Re:Writing your congressman works!

[Gleef]

Just so you know, you don't need a PAC to lobby your own congresscritter. Many congresscritters are happy to hear from their constituents, and really give some consideration to what they have to say. Sadly, senators often have a much less substantial relation to their constituents.

Also, even without cash (well, other than to buy stamps and paper, or to pay the phone bill), you can get involved. A congressman almost always has a local office in their district that they visit, for at least a few weeks while Congress is not in session. You might want to talk to his staff about getting some time to visit and talk directly while your representative is in town. If you get access, do your homework ahead of time and bring copies of supporting documents that you can give (executive summaries are nice too here).

You can also offer time. If your congresscritter is doing a good job, volunteer to help on their campaign. If your congresscritter is doing a bad job, look over there opposition and see if there's someone there you'd like to help out instead. Nothing modifies a congresscritter's opinion faster than popular support for an opponent with a contrary opinion. If you hate all of these bozos, consider running yourself.

Basically, the more involved and visible you are (in a friendly, non-wacko, non-stalker sort of way), the more likely the congresscritter is to give credibility to your opinion. Involved people don't just vote, they influence other peoples' votes, and that means a lot to someone who is up for reelection every two years.

why make a choice?

[Erris]

Every company is entitled to keep trade secrets. It either that or they must patent their inventions. Patents require disclosure.

Yes patents require disclosure in return for Federal protection of the exlusive use of the thing described. They are very expensive for a company and they give away all your hard work so that others can use it.

Now, thanks to the DMCA, you don't have to chose. Neat eh? You can have your trade secrets published publically in an encrypted form and the US Government will make sure others don't tell anyone about how it works even when they are bright enough to figure it out. They will protect your feble trade secrets from "invasion"! This is really cool, now no one has to tell anyone anything AND be protected by the government. What a great trade! I pay taxes which are used to keep me from understanding the things I own.

Well, I used to own things. Now that I can't do what I want with them or share what I do with my friends, I think some of my things belong to the people who made it. Just imagine this being applied to software! Oh wait, this is software! Really really neat. If I install that program on my computer so that I'm not tempted to look at things someone else thinks are nasty, I'm not only giving up my right to read, I'm giving up ownership of my computer! That's just unbelievable. Next thing you know, you won't be able to share what you know about BIOS. Well, it's good that other people are willing to be responsible for the things I want to use. That way I don't have to worry when they break. Someone will always take care of me.

Re:my school uses that..

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple years ago, I saw a reverse-engineered list of the keywords that Bess considered illegal. In addition to the standard seven unprintable words, there were many context-sensitive words like "breast". But the really disturbing find was "MacMillan" - a rival publishing company.

OK, I'll admit some of the politically sensitive oversimplifications in their scientific textbooks were obscene, but not enough to ban them for.

Tried to find the link again, but this is the closest I could come up with on short notice:
http://danny.oz.au/freedom/censorware/ifi lter.html
I know it's not an authoritave source, but this is slashdot.

Re:my school uses that..

[orangesquid]

I think one of the main points of school is to lock kids up and keep them out of (most) trouble. But anyway...

Banning reverse engineering?!?! What's NEXT?! I bet they're going to rule against literary analysis in English! Reading too far into something would endanger the author's critical intellectual property---if we knew *how* he (or she, of course) wrote what he wrote, there would be countless knock-offs and imitators! Oh wait, there already are..... so?

Anyway.

Might as well move to Iraq

[StarTux]

As they may get some form of Democracy....Its sad that whilst we fight for "Freedom" in other countries the US internally is becoming more like the monster it is trying to fight.

StarTux

Stop, Read, and Relax

[Thalia]

The Court actually simply decided that there was no case in controversy. Edelman sued, before he did anything for a declaratory judgement giving him permission to reverse engineer. The court said they wouldn't decide the case, because it's not sure that N2H2 would sue, or that Edelman would do anything. The only time a court will make a decision if nothing has happened yet (like here, about future potential lawsuits) is if a fundamental right is at question. While copyright Fair Use is important, it is clearly not a fundamental right. So, chill. And wait for someone to actually be sued under the DMCA for reverse engineering for research purposes. If the Court then holds that there is no right to reverse engineer anymore (in spite of Sega v. Accolade.

Thalia

BYU and N2H2

[Anonymous Coward]

BYU is using N2H2, and I have been repeatedly blocked from Google's news site over the last two days. The block notification states that it is ``Inappropriate Content Blocked by Override List.''

One of my biggest gripes with the system is the way it is implemented; we, as college students, are told ``Ah, ah, ahhhh! This page is a big no-no,'' and we are not even given the option to override the decision of the censoring software if we know for a fact that the page does not have any ``inappropriate content.'' There is no link given, nor is there any contact information, about how to appeal a blocked site. How about letting the students decide for themselves which content is or is not ``appropriate?''

Invasive and Destructive Trespass

[kevinank]

If it were either invasive or destructive I'd have more respect for this Judge and his ruling. Despite arguments to the contrary, altering the flow of bits through a computer that you own doesn't invade anyone, and the notion that bits can be destroyed is laughable. The Judge needs to reissue his ruling without resorting to terms don't mean squat in the virtual world.

Re:my school uses that..

[ATMAvatar]

As much as I would like to agree with you, i think that companies do have the right to protect their copyrights.

I'm curious - what does reverse engineering a program/device allow you to do, infringement-wise, that isn't already covered under older copyright law? IANAL, but it would seem logical that taking a program/device, reverse engineering it, then selling a slightly modified version would be breaking older copyright law, much like paraphrasing a research paper or article without giving credit is plagiarism. What's the main reason to criminalize the act of reverse engineering itself (as is done in the DMCA)?

More importantly - how would a student reverse engineering filtering software to discover its ban list pose a threat to the company's copyright?

Re:my school uses that..

[Minna Kirai]

have the right to protect their copyrights.

Reverse engineering is independent of copyright violation.

To break a copyright, you make copies of the material.

Reverse-engineering means you come to understand material already in your possesion.

It does not damage copyright at all, except via circular reasoning.

Re:Preemptive legal action

[Lord Sauron]

A judge, as in this case, is not likely to accept preemptive lawsuits because all he can claim is he wouldn't use them

If a nation can perform a military preemptive attack with no proofs beyond reasonable doubt and expect the world to accept it, then why should a judge of this very same nation refuse to accept preemptive lawsuits without proofs ?

Re:my school uses that..

[Greyfox]

Why don't you demand that they provide you with coursework that will actually challenge you instead? Most people are complacent idiots and your school's administration is no different. Their cookie cutter mould will work for 95% of their students and unless you make them work for you they'll be happy to sit back and do nothing. See if you can get a head start with comp-sci at the local university or something. You can actually get to the point where what you're learning is more interesting than the games you're playing. Once you hit that point, it's rewarding work to try to stay there.

Or not. It's your life, after all.

Keep pounding... I think we'll need more hammers.

[Craig Maloney]

The DMCA is continually pounding more nails in the coffin of American ingenuity and relevance in the high-tech sector. Until America wakes up and realizes that the proper way to grow both business and society is without laws granting broad protection for "intellectual property". America is already falling behind in the technical arena to other countries with more permissive laws about reverse engineering. Companies should be held to the same scrutiny that research is held to in matters of security, which means full access to the source and algorithms. As a company I would welcome such peer review. Copyrights should be enough to prevent my competitors from "stealing" my secrets. I would also be wary of using any company's products that actively prevents people from putting my product through such peer reviews.

Honest question here

[liquidsin]

Isn't copyright law intended to protect *published* works? If I made my own internet filter software (why would I want to? I don't know...) and my banned list ended up the same as theirs, could they nail me for copyright infringement? Isn't this more of a trade secret than a copyright?

Re:my school uses that..

[Minna Kirai]

The court has ruled against decrypting copyrighted material in order to accomplish reverse engineering.

Yes they have, and that is bad.

The particular court ruling in this article isn't especially applicable (since the judge was simply deciding a particular case was outside his authority).

However, the general character of the DMCA, and the rulings that have followed it, is strongly against reverse engineering!

US citizens were allowed to reproduce copyrighted works when it's necessary or very helpful to use the work in the normally legal way. For example, you can copy software from a CD to your computer's internal memory. This is technically "duplication of a copyrighted work", and is in violation of copyright laws, but we've been given an exception in this area.

However, the DMCA is undoing that. Reverse engineering was also a legal activity, and you could violate copyright in pursuit of it. The Sony vs Connectix case shows this very clearly. Connectix was accused of breaking copyright when the loaded Playstation code into alternative hardware to study what it does. But because they weren't distributing it, or using the work more than once at a time, the case was thrown out, as their right to reverse-engineer was stronger than Sony's right to a strict application of copyright. It was a fair-use!

However, today, if Sony had placed a "circumvention prevention device" on their code, that reverse-engineering would be illegal.

Our right to reverse engineer has been greatly reduced, along with all fair-use rights, which can now be selectively removed by publishers.