On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Ray Hirschfeld wrote:
> > Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 20:06:32 -0800
> > From: Lucky Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > but it appears that an argument based on copyright would have been
> > a better approach.
>
> I conjecture they did it this way because the prohibition against
> circumventing effective technological measures that was added to
> U.S. copyright law in October 1998 (as part of the Digital Millennium
> Copyright Act, which implemented the WIPO Copyright Treaty) does not
> take effect until October 28, 2000. Cf. Title 17, Chapter 12. The
> section against trafficking in devices seems like it might apply,
> though, and doesn't seem to be subject to the two-year delay. But
> reverse engineering for interoperability purposes is explicitly
> permitted, and making information so obtained available to others for
> interoperability purposes also does not constitute infringement under
> the new law (cf. Sec. 1201 (f) (3)).
I'm a little confused. Are you saying that as of October it will be legal
to do any amount of reverse-engineering, publishing, and writing to APIs
you want without violating the original author's copyright? Does that mean
that, say, Bsafe will have the rug yanked out from under it by allowing
alternate non-infringing implementations?
(Doesn't the RSA patent expire in October as well? That's a mighty funny
coincidence ... for anyone other than RSA, anyhow.)
-Bram
