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Chris Travers wrote:
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cite="mid:5ed37b140912041522k39e73880xdc8886445169f0f4@mail.gmail.com"
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<pre wrap="">On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 2:13 PM, David Woolley
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:forums@david-woolley.me.uk"><forums@david-woolley.me.uk></a> wrote:
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<pre wrap="">Marc Whipple wrote:
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<pre wrap="">In any event, the concept of “reverse engineering” copyrighted material is
nonsensical under US law (and the law of many other countries.) If you had
enough access to it to reverse engineer it, you didn’t make a new work, you
copied an old one. If your new work otherwise is
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<pre wrap="">IANAL, but as I understand it there is a limited right to do white box
reverse engineering in the EEC. It is a lot more limited than is generally
assumed in open source circles, and would not extend to reproducing internal
behaviours.
As I understand it, the key points are:
- it must only be to the minimum degree necessary to interface with the
software;
- the author of the software must have refused to provide that information
on reasonable terms;
- the knowledge you gain cannot be published.
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
IANAL, but I think Marc is talking about something else.
In US copyright law, I understand that reverse engineering is
generally allowed provided that expressive elements of the code are
not included. Expressive elements could be anything from variable
names and comments to organization of the source code. Typically this
is accomplished by having one team reverse engineer the code and
provide a report of functional components to another team who then
writes replacement code.
The problem is that, although this process works fine on a functional
level for games, the storyline characters, concept, etc. are also
artistic, expressive elements. So while one could, say, clone the
Doom engine without too much trouble, cloning the Doom game would pose
additional problems which are substantial.
(Now, I suppose if you are reverse engineering The World's Best Chess
Game, this might not apply, but I assume this is not what we are
talking about here.)
Also this might be different in other countries.
Best Wishes
Chris Travers
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I thank all of you for your quick replys, and i can see the pattern
that emerged, that the parts that make the project worthwhile the plot,
the characters, the maps are protected as artistic, expressive
elements.And as don't want to create a generic game, i got my answer.
Tx all and you can consider this question closed.
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