Legal Issues of Opening Up Proprietary Standards?

mrjb asks: "The Alesis HD24 is a 24-track, hard disk audio recorder with a built-in 10 megabit FTP server. To improve on file transfer speed, Alesis offers an external Firewire drive with a program called FST/Connect which reads the disks under Windows. I've contacted Alesis about a Linux solution, but none is planned. Also, they are (understandably) not very eager to reveal the file system specs. After a few days of staring at hex codes, I now know enough about the FS to read HD24 IDE disks under Linux (no Firewire required). As I know I benefit from the efforts of the Samba and OpenOffice teams, I'd love to share this info. I'm not, however, the least bit interested in Alesis suing me (in fact, I might want to send them my CV at some point). What would your advice be in such a delicate situation of conflicting interests?"

Comments

Put a layer of indirection

[Krach42]

Reverse Engineering is generally not illegal.

But, to CYA, your best bet is to just write up the specs as you understand them, then have someone else write the driver for the community.

You don't even have to share those specs. Give the author the specs, have him write the driver, then publish it, without your specs. Now, anyone who wants to reverse engineer the driver you wrote, is investigating a full layer of indirection from you. They're not even looking at the specs you wrote, but rather the code that was written upon those specs.

Re:Ask the Samba people

[smittyoneeach]

Oui, le French Cafe method:

http://samba.org/ftp/tridge/misc/french_cafe.txt

Re:Huh?

[Otter]

Well, that's half of the problem, but the idiots yelling "IT'S A VIOLATION OF TEH DMCA!!! YUO NEED TO MOVE TO RUSSIA!!!" on every case of perfectly legitimate reverse engineering are the other half. That's why it's important to explain that this guy is (unless he signed an NDA or the like) on perfectly safe ground, instead of feeding the persecution fantasies of the mob.

Chapter 12 of the DMCA

[Orrin Bloquy]

Chapter 12's permission vis-a-vis reverse engineering for compatibility purposes refers to copy protection and issues pertaining to copyright, not generic protocols:

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap12.html#120 1

Scroll down to "(f) Reverse Engineering." This section has to do with permitting one vendor to reverse engineer protected/encrypted content.

The notion of reverse engineering a driver for a pipeline which does not encrypt or otherwise disguise its content is theoretically outside the aegis of the DMCA.

Apple used (or misused, depending on your perspective) the DMCA against the OSx86 website because it infringed on protection measures Apple specifically set in place to prevent OSX from installing on whiteboxes. Real told its board members that they might be DMCAed over Fairplay because it unlocks copy protection on iTMS purchases.

If the submitter did not discover any authentication methods or trust related protocols in his reverse engineering, and his driver does not have code which specifically spoofs a platform or other form of identification, it sounds to this non-lawyer like a non-issue.

There may be other legal issues at hand, but AFAIK the DMCA is chiefly concerned with those who circumvent deliberate measures to protect copyright, and simply refusing to publicly document a protocol isn't the same thing.

Now, if the driver somehow replicates code that the vendor had to *license* from Microsoft, Microsoft may have an issue with you. Again, check with a competent IP attorney.