Re: WIPO treaty
Andrej Presern (andrejp@luz.fe.uni-lj.si)
Sat, 10 Oct 1998 21:20:38 +0200
On Sat, 10 Oct 1998, Slyglif Cain wrote:
>> However, in the US, reverse engineering in order to discover
>> interfaces so you can interoperate with something has been approved
>> in the court cases I'm aware of, so provided one is careful (i.e.,
>> make sure what one does corresponds to what the people who won
>> those court cases did), it should be possible to reverse engineer
>> to discover interfaces.
>
>The US Senate passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA or WIPO)
>today. If accepted by the House, and signed by Clinton, reverse engineering
>for any reason (other then scholarly research for the next 2 years) will be
>illegal. It also gives the shrink-wrapped licenses more power, as it is an
>addition to the UCE (Microsoft could now say that if you want to sue them, you
>have to do so in Burma). Clinton has said he will sign it, and the House has
>already passed a similar version, so I would expect them to accept this as is.
Congratulations. America is about to face a whole new dimension of criminality.
This act enables companies like Microsoft to jeopardize everything they don't
like. Change the OS so other vendor's products don't work anymore and the
vendor can't prove it because it's illegal for them to reverse engineer
Microsoft's work. Worse, they can get sued for trying to prove they've been
screwed.
It's a sad day when you are officially forbidden to find out (LEARN) things for
any reason at all.
Andrej
--
Andrej Presern, andrejp@luz.fe.uni-lj.si
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