The European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, is kind of on a roll lately. We already discussed how they outlawed generic ISP-side internet filters, and now, in an opinion (so it's not a ruling just yet), Yves Bot, an advocate-general at the Court, has stated that functions provided by computer programs, as well as the programming languages they're written in, do not receive copyright protection. The opinion is very well-written, and relatively easy to read and grasp. Note: Brilliant quote from a comment over at Hacker News: "Copyright makes you write your own code. Patents prevent you from writing your own code."
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Member since:2007-09-06
Since the EU does not cover North America, I'd guess that one would have to buy.. er.. get a similar ruling from a North American court. Sadly, if copyright/patent law where made less favorable to big content control lobbying; the terrorists win.
(hard not to be cynical once you start to pay attention to copyright/patent shenanigans)
Member since:2005-07-06
Actually (if you can't be pedantic on tech sites where can you be?! :p ), many overseas territories of the EU should have large enough integration level for this ruling to essentially apply - so it might easily apply also in quite a few ~EU islands in the Caribbean, which are considered a part of North America.
Then there are, much more clearly N. American, French islands Saint Pierre and Miquelon (though those seem like the integration might be a bit too tenuous).
Or maybe Greenland, in a way. They did choose to leave the EU, but they're still part of Denmark ...not sure how much the laws need to "synchronised" for that to work in any meaningful way. Still, the Greenlanders are full EU citizens, via their Danish citizenship.
Member since:2005-07-06
You can reverse-engineer legally in the US (don't know about Canada), but you have to use clean-room techniques. That means that the people decompiling the code to create the specs can't be the same people recreating the code. That makes it easier to prove that there is no direct copying.
IANAL, but the makers of the Mac emulator named Executor employed lawyers, and then explained this in the legal section of their docs. Unless there had been a major revision in the law since then, this should still be the case.
Oh course this only applies to copyright. Patents are, by definition, a monopoly on an idea, not on its expression. The case referenced in the article above was an attempt for SAS to treat copyright law like patent law, but the rights each conveys are different, and the opinion above is that you can't get patent-like protections from copyright. I don't know to what extent software patents are allowed in the relevant jurisdiction, but if they exist then SAS should have used them instead. If they don't, then they are SOL.
Disclaimer: None of the above should be taken as an endorsement of software patents. I don't like them.
Member since:2009-12-16
"In the first episode of Microsoft's new film series 'On the Whiteboard', Editor Pamela Woon chats with two-time Oscar winner Randy Thom about the (often underestimated) importance of sound in human-technology interactions. Thom, the lead sound designer at Skywalker Ranch who worked on films such as The Incredibles, Castaway and Forrest Gump, says that people rarely consider the significance of those signature sounds that come from their trusty devices, whether it be a cell phone, a computer or a tablet."
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Member since:
2006-03-23
If there is a ruling to agree with the opinion, then what? Will developers be able to reverse-engineer software legally? What about in North America?