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Re: Is it apropos? (was: Re: [Plug] DVD people taking the hackers to court)
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On Tue, 28 Dec 1999, Bill Jonas wrote:
> <QUOTE>
> (a) The reverse engineering (correctly referred to as "hacking" in the
> court papers) occurred in a country in which reverse-engineering is
> protected,
It doesn't matter if we agree with it. An injunction is an injunction.
> Also, if my understanding is correct, they never patented this encryption;
> instead, it is a trade secret and subject to less stringent "protection".
> If someone had gone "dumpster diving" and discovered, say, white papers
> outlining the method, or signed an NDA and then leaked the information, that
> would be a different matter.
The complaint does mention a suspected complicity of a licensee. This
would then meant that the software was based on illegally obtained
information.
> That said, I am not a lawyer. I don't even play one on TV.
This is a key point. It is a legal complaint, and their complaint has
demonstrated that the plaintiff is willing to go after people trying to
help spread the software, even off-shore. If PLUG were to be implicated
in helping spread the software when it is under injunction, PLUG, and its
members, would be in danger of legal action. The point here isn't whether
or not it's right. It's a matter of not dragging other people down in a
fit of pique (don't worry, I don't think you've done this).
> Once again:
>
> main()
> {
> insert(foot, open(mouth));
> main();
> }
>
> Seems I've been doing a lot of that lately. :)
Don't sweat it. We all do this peroidically (even me :).
Michael W. Ryan, MCP, MCT | OTAKON 2000
mryan@netaxs.com | Convention of Otaku Generation
http://www.netaxs.com/~mryan/ | http://www.otakon.com/
PGP fingerprint: 7B E5 75 7F 24 EE 19 35 A5 DF C3 45 27 B5 DB DF
PGP public key available by fingering mryan@unix.netaxs.com (use -l opt)
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