Re: Legal issues

On Friday, Dec 27, 2002, at 21:12 Europe/London, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> Well, I have read all 999 messages, but there was mostly an expression 
> of
> fear that the DMCA might be violated, which I think is not true.

Au contraire.

Both the DMCA (for those in the US) and the EU Copyright Directive (for
those in the UK) outlaw reverse engineering to a large extent.

For the DMCA, http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/ and
http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/faq.cgi have some
more information.  I don't have any references for the EU
Copyright Directive to hand just now...

 From my own point of view, I'm relying on the fact that
a) The UK hasn't enacted the Copyright Directive into law yet and
b) As I understand it, there is a history of precedents in UK law
allowing reverse engineering in cases where the manufacturer has
ceased trading or ceased supporting a platform.

Besides, I have a feeling that preventing me from working to
make use of a product I have bought on a platform unsupported
by the manufacturer would go against the EU Convention on Human
Rights.

Buggered if I want to be a test case though.

And if Sony get pissed off about this stuff, I think I'll
be avoiding US juristrictions for a while (remember Dmitri
Skylarov).

Pete.