Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]

Alan Cox
2003-04-27T23:02:49Z

On Llu, 2003-04-28 at 00:08, Matthew Kirkwood wrote:
> > And government if it is smart will reply by enforcing reverse
> > engineering rights *for compatibility* (not cloning), or business (the
> > surviving bits anyway) will figure it out and do it themselves.
>
> Alan -- could you please explain what you see as the real
> differences between reverse engineering for "compatibility"
> and for "cloning"?
>
> It isn't obvious to me that there is a line-in-the-sand.

Oh indeed it is not. Have a look at EU reverse engineering law and
caselaw if you are really that curious to see where the line lands
(I'm not). A lot of it depends how you define "a product".

Writing a tool to extract BK repositories into an open format (ok
except that BK is basically already in an open format at the
moment but suppose it changed..) would be an obvious example.

You might however get your backside kicked if you had people
reverse engineer BK and then write a copy of it.

It isnt entirely that complex: Are a laser printer and its ink
cartridge two products, or a mobile phone and its battery ?

Alan