RPL 1.5 discussion

[Walter van Holst]

Van: Alexander Terekhov [alexander.terekhov at gmail.com]
> Given that most jurisdictions that I am aware of have chosen to apply copyright law
> to software in a significantly more restrictive manner than 'classic' copyright, as in:
> hardly any equivalents of fair use are applicable, any technical copy of the software
> (including that made during execution of the software) is one that falls under the
> copyright holders' rights etc., ...

>You must be unaware of 17 USC 117 and EU 91/250/EEC Article 5
>Exceptions to the restricted acts and Article 6 Decompilation, I
>suppose.

I am indeed unaware of 17 USC 117. Please read EU 91/250/EEC Article 5 again, think for a while and wonder about the extreme dearth of court cases in which this clause has been tried, let alone succesfully used, to escape a infringement claim while you're at it.

For the reading comprehension impaired: the reverse engineering exception of the Software Directive is extremely limited in scope and is for all practical intents and purposes almost completely useless. It a) is only applicable to software-to-software interfaces, b) may only be invoked after the copyright holder has denied requests for information, c) may not be used to duplicate functionality and d) the reverse engineer may only reverse engineer those parts that are strictly necessary to obtain the required information, which requires advance knowledge of the parts of the original software where such information resides.

You can disprove me by providing a remotely practical  example in which you think the so-called decompilation (which is a wrong term, but whatever) exception applies and that clearly dodges the restrictions mentioned above.

Regards,

 Walter