On Seg, 2002-01-21 at 01:25, Alistair Davidson wrote:
Klaus Schilling wrote:
And what about ICQ? Most clients have been obtained by rev engeineering, I believe.
That form of reverse engineering does not 'facilitate the infringement of copyright.'
You're right on that one. The only things that changes, in term of reverse engineering, with the EUCD is the inability to reverse engineer a "Digital Rights Management" product.
The "Software Directive" (1991)[1] already prohibited reverse-engineering fr other purposes other than interoperability with a "independently created computer program". The strange part to me is that the obtained information is not permitted "to be used for the development, production or marketing of a computer program substantially similar in its expression, or for any other act which infringes copyright."
I wonder if a OS driver for Linux classifies as a "substabtially similar" program of a Windows device driver.
[1] http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/lif/dat/1991/en_391L0250.html