Comment by odomus

8 months ago

Is defeating a 40-year-old copy protection mechanism still illegal under Section 1201 of the DMCA, or have they changed the law to make an exception for "very old" software?

9 comments

odomus

Reply
yesturi  8 months ago

BTW, in the European Union, reverse-engineering is perfectly legal, if it is done to ensure compatibility with the current tech.

I cannot cite the reliable sources for it, though.

TheDong  8 months ago

Once it hits 70 years from the lifetime of the author (so probably another 80 or 90 years from now) and is in public domain, that might change things since there will no longer be copyright being protected.

In terms of copyright terms, this software is still pretty young, not even halfway to public domain. It's disrespectful to call it "very old".

  • direwolf20  8 months ago

    Defeating a copy protection measure is illegal, even if the copy protection measure is not copyrighted.

    • TheDong  8 months ago

      I'm not talking about the copy protection, but the software being protected.

      Surely if the work being protected isn't copyrighted, there's nothing to circumvent in terms of the DMCA?

      2 replies →