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Australia Make Software Reverse Engineering Legal
Anonymous Coward writes "The Australian government passed legislation yesterday guaranteeing the right to reverse engineer software for the purposes of diagnosing and fixing problems and for interoperability." Looks like WINE and other Windows emulation projects ought to be headquarted in Australia, doesn't it?
I hope Canada (where I live) does something similar. I wish they'd pass a law specifically disallowing the shenanigans imposed by UCITA. If most countries passed laws banning UCITA-type restrictions, UCITA in the US would be worthless. With the Internet, it doesn't matter where you are...
Most murderers or serious criminals were shot, which leaves australia with a buncha bread crumb stealers ;p. -^Zer0^
America may have the puritans, and Australia may have the criminals, but at least we had the balls to steal our country. None of that royal crap for us! :)
Actually, Georgia (the US state) was a penal colony long before Oz.
Also, to anybody else inclined to join this fray, English and Irish "criminals" sent to Australia very often commited petty crimes for the express purpose of gaining free passage to Australia, as conditions in England and Ireland at the time were unbearable. My Australian Fiancee's ancestors stole handkerchiefs with their siblings around the age of 12, as anywhere had to be a better place than where they were. Note also Tasmania was originally van Diemen's Land, named for a poet who was exiled there for writing anti-state material. I can think of worse punishments. The word criminal may have persisted, but their crimes wouldn't be classified as such by today's standards, especially given the shocking lack of civility and sense in so much of the United States, the government in particular.
Got my RMs on right now!
Apologies for taking this thread further off track.
From the looks of it, the Australian law bans public release of interoperability info you obtain via RE. Hence it bans interoperability between Close and Open source software. So it seems Austrailia is just as bad as the US, both in maximum freedom removal mode.
Georgia is one of them.
This is the Scribe, author of the EmuFAQ. I dunno about overseas law, as I haven't had time to research that issue, but I do know that it is legal to reverse-engineer under U.S. statutory and case law. The whole EULA issue in the U.S. is governed by the Ziedenberg case, which restored the ability of vendors to impose extra conditions on purchasers under the terms of the Uniform Contract Code. This partially offsets freedoms previously assumed in the Kiwanee case. However, insofar as I have researched the issue, federal law still takes priority - and since reverse-engineering is now part of federal law (US 17 CFR 1201, paragraph f, signed into law last October as part of the DMCA), then it's legal to ignore the offending EULA clause. For example, almost all videogame EULAs nowdays say you can't rent the game. Yes, you can, according to the Copyright Act, so federal law trumps the EULA in this instance. It has to be a clear-cut instance for the federal trump to apply, though, and earlier discussions about certain kinds of rev-eng might not qualify under the terms of the DMCA. Hope that helps.
Wine Is Not an Emulator, damnit!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Our new law makes it illegal to "communicate the information" to anyone else. Couldn't you reverse engineer it in Australia, put the source on a shell box, give someone else in the US the password, and then, under their Constitutional rights, they could publish a book with the source code ? Because, theoretically, giving someone a shell password isn't really communicating the information ... like giving someone a key to the house isn't transferring ownership of everything in it ? Maybe someone could do what that PGP guy did and publish a book of the WinNT4/98/2k source ?
=) d
"Bastard Operators From Hell" is an anagram for "Shatterproof Armored Balls". =)
This is the first time I've seen something good come from Richard Alston the Minister of DCITA (Department of Censorship, Information Technuddities and The Asshole - The Asshome being Alston of course). Of course Alston is the looser that wants to sell Telstra (which may be a good thing?)... but to do so... he had to bribe Brian Haroldine or whatever his name is... and it just so happens to be that Haroldine is paranoided about Children seeing pornograhpy on the internet... so... Alston makes a deal with him to Censor it... loosers.. how dumb could Haroldine be... to believe that it can be censored? But back to the reverse engineering thing... I do see it's advantages on things like WINE and Samba... we Aussies can decompile that stuff... and post it to the internet... and it would be legal for the rest of the world to view =)
Well this step is not original. As far as I know several countries possess such legislation. Russia has done this step some years ago. Both russian and australian laws look similar in the sense on how and when reverse engineering can or should be applied.
In fact looking at both laws the logic of them is quite clear. Why I shouldn't reverse engineer a product if I need to adapt it to some specific needs? Specially when almost everything needs a small touch of the "magic wand"??
For many people reverse engineering may look as something extraordinary. However many don't understand that a lot of "features" and "bugs" can be circunvented by this processes. For several years I've been working around I had several times to reverse engineer a lot of stuff. It's true that the advent of Internet made this need not so critical. One can wait for the next patch, bug-feature or hope that the developer hears you.
However this was at the beginning. Reverse-engineering has seen some new revivals in the open source era. Most of it because original developers cannot hold up their buildups anymore. It is humanly impossible for many to proceed a wide and stable path of development for their products. And while, at the beginning, Internet almost helped to kill reverse-engineering, now it is delivering its detractors to extinction.
Frankly it is time for US to THINK seriously about reverse engineering. In a good frame of Law this thing is deeply fundamental for the future of the industry.
Except the Word (and friends) file format as it is in the MSDN library is contained in a 'OLE compound document' (MS calls it a filesystem within a file) which is less well documented. (Although there is a project to try and document it - sorry forgot the address for it)
Not always. Normally I have all right to abandon my rights. By the Danish laws there are only a few rights I can't abandon by a contract
Oops, I allready wrote that.
Yet Another Debian User
It's not so much that some Australians are
descended from criminals that worries me. It's
more that some must be descended from prison
wardens.. (sorry, old Joke - I love Australia
really.)
once you've chosen to abandon them, can you then change your mind, at will, and re-assert them?
You still need to source code for bug fixing. Replicating source code by way of reverse engineering is EXTREME tedium.
Some things you can reverse engineer with relative ease, like API's, resource DLL's, file formats, etc. But generating human-readable source code from a non-trivial application isn't worth the effort it takes.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You're not allowed to communicate the information for any other purpose. Open source software comes with source code, which communicates the information; and you have no control over what purposes someone uses the source code for. This will make it illegal to reverse-engineer and use what you've learned in open source.
Although, indentured servants could be "sold" to anyplace in the colonies, two of the thirteen original American states were founded as penal colonies. Know which ?
It's legal in Russia, too, and even without limitations for results publishig. Now the only question is left: is it legal to telnet there from US and do the work ?
Every country that is a member of the European Community has to follow the guidelines set by the EC. In one of those guidelines you can read that the right for reverse engineering for inter- operability is a right that can not be exonarated (spelling?). So, whatever the EULA says, you can reverse engineer. The guideline also states that you are only allowed to disassmble those parts needed to ensure operability. But how can I know which part of the program that is until after disassembling everything?
WINE isn't / doesn't have to be a replacement for Windows -- it might just be a way to make quick and dirty ports to Linux -- not to replace Windows, but to increase the value of the program by making it avalible for more users.
Reverse engineering is a right guarantueed be law in Norway, given the reverse engineering is necessary to make the product in question perform satisfactorily . So there are more countries than Russia and Australia where it's legal.
Hello - lets look at the facts more criminals were actualy sent to the US from Britain than to Australia. And today there are still more crims in the US than Australia.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard that the government in Australia have passed a law that makes ISPs responsible for ensuring that material being transferred over their networks is "of a decent and sound nature". This includes swearing, and that makes the Linux kernel illegal in Australia because of all the swearing in it. Anyone else heard this?
full of puritans.
There's two places where you can get this sort of information. Search AltaVista for title:LAYOLA, or email me (Troy Rollo - finding the email address is left as an exercise for the reader). I've fully deciphered this and we have source code that we're willing to give to open source projects for this.
Come over here and say that.
At least, that compensates a bit for the free speech issue...
C.
Overseas developers have been able to do this (reverse engineer) for some time, particularly in Europe and the United States of America where Australia's main competitors in this sector are located.
.idl (or .tlb) file to produce a product that works with it?
Is this right? Am I allowed to "reverse engineer", say, MS Excel's COM
OK, bad example. Could I do this on a library that has an unpublished API?
Confused I am...
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
That's what you get for sending all the criminel ppl to one place and get them to form their own country :)
Initially I read that as Australia had criminalised reverse engineering and took the rest of the posting as sarcasm. Still can't believe legislators would actually do something sensible.
Aah now I understand looks like this is already legal everywhere else (the article mentions this being legal already in Europe and USA) and concerns about fixing Y2K bugs bought the stupidity of criminalizing reverse engineering into light, bit late now though!
The biggest argument in favour of Free Software is IMO that it gives you the user the ability and the right to fix bugs. With this ruling Australians will have the ability to do so without the source code, so at least in Australia the argument saying You need the source code to debu is no more valid. It will be replaced by : it you'lld be easier if it was open sourced because we you'lld have the source code.
none Yet.
This may be a stupid question, but it won't be my first nor my last: If I am in a US state where it is made illegal to reverse engineer, but remotely used hardware in Australia for exactly that purpose, do I go to the big house and lose my life savings? How about if I write and store all of my notes on the Australia box?
Is telneting into the Australian box commuting to work? If so, how can I be breaking the law? Does our location decide the laws that we live in or the location of our work?
If our location decides the laws, then since I worked at home, I want the taxes back that I paid to the town my company was located in.
Happy Friday the 13th!
But the "cannot be used or communicated to others for any other purpose" clause would probably be used in cases where something like WINE is being developed to *replace* the product being reverse engineered.
ok .. this sounds great ... but ...
.au ... and I reverse there then move the source to my local box ... will that be legal ..
.au just need to setup a nice shell box and we can all referse there and publish everwhere !!! :P
does this mean that if I ( living in sunny South Africa where we are not allowed to do this.) have a shell account ona Box in
coz then somebody in
bain
Sanity is a majority vote.
I think I read somewhere about the government /encouraging/ reverse engineering... lemme see...
.
.
signal, noise, to me it's all the same.
So maybe they're not all criminals, eh?
So, all a company needs to do is embed obscenities and hidden pornography in their application, and then it's illegal to download it in Australia in any case. Worse still, put obscenities in the fuc^Hnction names, so publishing the resulting interface description becomes illegal under Australian net censorship laws :-)
What you want to look at is European Council Directive 92/250/EEC on the legal protection of computer programs. In England and Wales this was implemented by the Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations 1992 (S.I. 1992 No.3233)
Anonymous Cowards want to know.
Sounds like Copenhagen airport lounges may become a convenient place to run one's decompilers. I hope they have ample AC outlets :-)
I've been thinking about a move... Hmmm.
If you RE MS-Word's file format, you can't put it into Open Source because you can't control the purpose your publication will be put to.
However, as Open Source comes up with its own innovations, propriatary software can incorporate it into their code with reckless abandon.
A one-way valve, carefuly crafted for non-public interests.
So, the government greatly reduced existing rights, increased cost to citizens, denied them choices, and hails the move as a wonderful thing. Everyone buys it. People are so stupid.
> --> Does this mean you are NOT allowed to
> disassemble something when a minimum
> level of documentation has been reached. Does
> that documentation have to be correct
> and how could you prove it if you can't
> disassemble.
You'd code to the published interface and see if it works. Whether or not you could disassemble if it didn't work, I don't know. It seems to me that you ought to be able to on the grounds that there must be some part of the interface for which information is not readily available.
Jeff
1). Decompilation of a program will be allowed without the copyright owner's permission for interoperability or security testing only if the information on the program's interfaces or on ensuring system security is not readily available.
--> Does this mean you are NOT allowed to disassemble something when a minimum level of documentation has been reached. Does that documentation have to be correct and how could you prove it if you can't disassemble.
2). Information derived from decompilation of a program about its interfaces with other software or about errors in a defective copy, including Y2K problems, or which is required for testing system security cannot be used or communicated to others for any other purpose, without the copyright ner's permission.
--> Once you have found out the 'useful' information you can not publish it without permission, does this also apply to source code based on it (which in effect discribes it totally)?
There is still a little further to go...
mungewell
From the text, the bill "will allow software engineers to decompile computer software in limited circumstances so they can develop interoperable products."
It sounds to me like an Australian division of, say, Corel or StarDivision or Applix, could decompile MS Office to improve the reliability of their document import/export functions. The ability to share documents is an old, established interoperability mechanism, and Office itself contains foreign format import/export for interoperability reasons.
Could this be the practical end of proprietary document formats? I doubt it, but I sure hope so.
I don't think a law like this helps OSS at all. It says that any information derived from decompiling cannot be communicated to anyone else for any purpose without the copyright holder's (e.g. Microsoft's) permission. It's almost like RE is permitted under a sort of "anti-GPL" that makes all derivative work illegal.
Note the smiley at the end.
However, many software companies now include a no-reverse-engineering clause in their licence agreements. Since you can't legally run the software without agreeing to their licencing terms, you still can't produce compatable software.
I don't know if this has been tested in court though. I'd be really surprised if a European court accepted half the crap that corporate lawyers put in EULAs.
Why aren't the icons on the top of my page changing to match the stories.. 3 stories have gone up in the last half hour and the icons havn't changed. Not to mention the 5 minutes it takes to submit a comment.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There is a tax home (defined by the IRS and state law)
There is a legal residence (in the US this is a combo of US and state laws)
There is an effective location (defined by both for sales and property tax and breaking laws)
These don't have to be the same place (or even only one place)... And usually, it's not to your
advantage... They've got you coming and going...
Samba
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Sounds like this country would be nice for you guys, heh...
Why aren't the icons on the top of my page changing to match the stories.. 3 stories have gone up in the last half hour and the icons havn't changed.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The major thing about the Australian legislation is that it actually renders a license term on reverse engineering null and void. Such a term is now illegal and cannot be enforced.
> Initially I read that as Australia had criminalised reverse engineering....
So did I, but I caught it earlier. Is Slashdot learning how to use subliminal messages?
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
If you RE MS-Word's file format, you can't put it into Open Source because you can't control the purpose your publication will be put to.
:-)
Why bother reverse engineering it, since it's published on http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?
(ok ok you were probably just picking an example, but i've heard a lot of people complain about how microsoft is very closed about the binary file formats for office, when they've been releasing all the gory details for years
Australia and Canada are just thumbing their noses at the American Gov. Yes! It's wonderfull. Not only is the Government in America bullying its own citizens and not looking after their interest, I'm sure they are trying to use a lot of influence to block these things, the encryption and reverse-engineering cans of worms. -p
Old news (In Sweden anyway) if you know Swedish take a look at this: http://www.riksdagen.se/debatt/sfst/index.asp in the SFS field enter 1960:729 and in the law look under "26 g " Yawn, Swedish guy.
Of course, if the reverse-engineering is done in Australia (or for that matter in a State that neglects to follow UCITA on reverse-engineering) and the specs are posted to the Net, it becomes a First Amendment issue instead of contract law.
How sad.
Also, as a practical matter, it might be difficult to sue hundreds of anonymous contributors who just might have done the RE work even if they are in UCITA states, especially if the gatekeeper is in Australia (etc). Australian courts might be a tad reluctant to issue subpoenas against Australian citizens who don't want to cooperate with a US civil action over activities explicitly legal in Australia, and US courts don't have jurisdiction.
Dang! Try harder next time, Bill.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,