Dungeon Master Forum

Is reverse engineering illegal? Apparently not!

http://mckeeoffice.com/blog2/2009/09/23 ... g-illegal/

No, it's not. So I'm glad to see that being upheld.

I had always thought that it was! Quite surprised to find out it's not.

That said, how would you feel if someone reverse engineered your work?

Well, lawyers from big software companies are certainly trying to make it illegal.
I dug up an interesting (albeit slightly old) article:
http://lwn.net/Articles/134642/

As for me, I wouldn't care, but I have never (partially by choice, partially by circumstance) worked on code where keeping the inner workings of it secret is a particularly big deal.

I think this depends on licenses too. If you agree to a license nowadays, it usually includes a rule that reengineering even just of parts of the pack is forbidden. Then again - I'm not sure that such a license it legal at all. You buy a product (with no information on the box that you will face such a page) - then you can do nothing with it if you refuse to accept, because it simply will not launch. And if you click 'agree' - that's not a real handwritten signature which is still the only relevant thing for any treaty in most of the countries.
It surely depends on the intention what to do with the result of reverse engineering.
Just last month the chaos-computer-club of hamburg/germany did analyze a trojan of the our secret service. Spotted that it did a lot more than allowed (and that it was worse programmed!).
Whereby 'allowed' and a trojan are terms that don't fit together in my opinion. And its good that there are people who check those who check.

Gambit37 wrote:I had always thought that it was! Quite surprised to find out it's not.

That said, how would you feel if someone reverse engineered your work?

you mean like CSB? .....

Bit wrote:It surely depends on the intention what to do with the result of reverse engineering.

Well, a person's intention is the subject of a whole other thread