Barf wrote:Your arguments are very general, and it is not at all clear to the extent they appy to the current use case. (They wanted to proved a platform that could execute Tomb raider etc, we want to analyze existing code.) I know of at least some emulators that required the user to supply his own copy to the ROM of the machine to be emulated: that is another alternative, although I think it is not immune to legal problems.
Well, we can get as specific as you like... and I think the 'alternative' you suggest is precisely what I stated:
ncoig wrote:the emulators never contain the ROMs. Those have to be, ahem, self-procured. Legal quandary solved.
As to the specificity:
First, we can start with the premise that there is no legal prohibition on reverse engineering anything, this much we know. There are some instances where as part and parcel of a license agreement, users may forego that right, but click-wrap, shrinkwrap, etc. licenses which suggest a user give up rights like that are tenuous at best, and I'd argue, somewhat contacts of adhesion. I see nothing in the OFA/URC remotes that I've purchased new that indicate any prohibition on the decompilation/examination/reversing of any remote, so that would seem to be a non-issue; thus we would move to the issue of any possible IP in the code.
The content of the URC/OFA chips MAY be copyrighted/registered with the LoC. The enforceability of this copyright in an infringement setting is also dependent on the age of the registration, which, given the likely age of these processors, would be within the author's life, or the span given to entity-assignees of copyright. Assuming a valid copyright exists in that regard, we then move to the notion that (C) is only valid for the code - not the concept - of the chip. This becomes relevant moreso in the discussion below on the distro, as unless there is a "substantial similarity" (read: copy) of the URC code, there would presumably be no infringement.
If these "works" are *not* registered (I see no notice on these remotes of such, though that is not *necessarily* a pre-requisite for an infringement suit), but there remains a valid copyright by vested in the author or an assignee, then any damages OFA/URC could theoretically seek would be limited to actual damages, which, in our pursuits here on JP1, would likely be de minimis. This scenario is only even a consideration IF the ROM were to be distributed with the Java/RoR/whatever distro. Distributing a program which utilizes a ROM absent from the software is not a copyright violation, IMHO.
In the other instance, or what I would suggest, wherein the emu is distributed naked, and the ROM(s) are procured by the user either through the downloading of the ROM themselves from a device they own, and presumably have the right to reverse engineer, or through the typical, "on the DL" channels of Bittorrent/etc., then the author is not distributing anything that would violate the presumed copyright in the OFA/URC chips.
This returns us to my passing reference to contributory or inducing infringement, which would be, in my estimation, a flimsy claim to make against the author of an emu in this context, unless perhaps the distro included code to strip the URC/OFA executor out of a remote -- but even then... In sum, I think the copyright issue... isn't. Heck, distributing images of the remotes is probably a more blatant copyright infringement than building an emu.
Further still, I see nothing on my recent purchases that indicates any patent protection on the device internals, so I don't see that as an issue, either.
So, I would theorize that based on the above, and precedent with other emus of similar ilk, that suggesting legal issues are a non-starter, is, in and of itself, a non-starter.
Specific enough?
-N
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: THIS SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVICE AND IS ONLY PROFERRED AS PART AND PARCEL OF A GENERALIZED DISCUSSION ON THEORETICAL CONCEPTS
