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Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

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Re: Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

#21

Post by shmerl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #20
shmerl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the DMCA was passed through the normal legislative process. Wrong. First of all those treaties took place before DMCA (including 1201) was passed. And there was nothing normal about it. Normal process actually rejected such idiotic restriction outright (since DRM proponents first attempted to pass it normally). When they were kicked by normal democratic process, they turned to WIPO treaties which have no democratic…

> First of all those treaties took place before DMCA-1201 was passed. But they aren't self-executing, and, in any case, DMCA 1201 isn't -- despite being in part of the DMCA titled for various treaties that were implemented in that Title -- part of them in any case. DMCA (the whole thing, including 1201) was passed as normal legislation by the House and Senate and with the signature of the President. You can argue tha…

See my response here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840676), it quotes the creator of DMCA himself who clearly states that he intended to bypass the democratic process. That's unquestionably corruption and a perfect example of undemocratically passed law.

It also highlights how broken the current system is, when corrupted international treaties are used to shape the law bypassing normal democratic ways.

> A tactic which is not actually effective when Congress wants to ignore the "international obligation" at issue.

It should ignore it in theory, but in practice it doesn't have the guts and gives the power away to USTR and the like. That's what all this fast track idiocy is exactly about.

Re: Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

#23

Post by dragonwriter »

shmerl wrote: post #21
dragonwriter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all those treaties took place before DMCA-1201 was passed. But they aren't self-executing, and, in any case, DMCA 1201 isn't -- despite being in part of the DMCA titled for various treaties that were implemented in that Title -- part of them in any case. DMCA (the whole thing, including 1201) was passed as normal legislation by the House and Senate and with the signature of the President. You can argue tha…

See my response here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840676 ), it quotes the creator of DMCA himself who clearly states that he intended to bypass the democratic process. That's unquestionably corruption and a perfect example of undemocratically passed law. It also highlights how broken the current system is, when corrupted international treaties are used to shape the law bypassing normal democratic ways. > A…

> See my response here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840676), it quotes the creator of DMCA himself who clearly states that he intended to bypass the democratic process.

How he describes his intent is irrelevant. The fact is that the law was passed through the House, Senate, and Presidents signature in exactly the manner laid out in the Constitution, not "by WTO treaty". And, while some of the law implemented things previously agreed to in WIPO and other treaties, the particular provision at issue -- Section 1201 -- did not.

It might be undemocratic and/or corrupt, but if so the undemocratic/corrupt mechanism by which Section 1201 was passed is the normal US legislative process.

> It should ignore it in theory

It does in practice, when it is something that Congress doesn't want to do anyway -- this happens quite a lot on non-trade issues.

> but in practice it doesn't have the guts and gives the power away to USTR and the like.

More likely, on trade issues Congress takes advantage of treaties to provide for political cover for things Congress would like to do but where there might be greater political costs without that cover.

Re: Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

#24

Post by shmerl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #23
shmerl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my response here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840676 ), it quotes the creator of DMCA himself who clearly states that he intended to bypass the democratic process. That's unquestionably corruption and a perfect example of undemocratically passed law. It also highlights how broken the current system is, when corrupted international treaties are used to shape the law bypassing normal democratic ways. > A…

> See my response here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840676 ), it quotes the creator of DMCA himself who clearly states that he intended to bypass the democratic process. How he describes his intent is irrelevant. The fact is that the law was passed through the House, Senate, and Presidents signature in exactly the manner laid out in the Constitution, not "by WTO treaty". And, while some of the law implemen…

> How he describes his intent is irrelevant. The fact is that the law was passed through the House, Senate, and Presidents signature

Using corrupt manipulation scheme and pressure by international trade agreements like described above. When democracy doesn't work, the fact that it's called democracy on paper is pretty meaningless.

> It might be undemocratic and/or corrupt, but if so the undemocratic/corrupt mechanism by which Section 1201 was passed is the normal US legislative process.

Yes, it is undemocratic and corrupt and it was passed through the legislative process, but as I said there was nothing normal about it. That process is not supposed to be manipulated by such treaties in such corrupt fashion, yet it is.

Unless you simply mean that such level of corruption is generally a norm and this participial incident should be a default expectation of how Congress would function. It doesn't fit with what Lehman said that initially his attempts to pass these laws were rejected. I.e. he didn't manage to manipulate the Congress directly, and had to pull the weight of international agreement to change that.

> It does in practice

No it doesn't. Otherwise such stuff as fast track proposals to relinquish Congress oversight won't be even considered.

Re: Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

#25

Post by TD-Linux »

jcr wrote: post #7
lsiebert wrote: post #5

I'm curious if reverse engineering software which is classified or otherwise protected from disclosure by the force of government is legally risky. I presume doing so for those who have access to such software because of a security clearance might face a legal penalty under national security laws.

Good question, particularly if interpreted in a very broad sense. The FCC is the portion of the US Fed Gov that handles things like validating the acceptable RF interference and frequency transmit/receive parameters of products. If you reverse engineer something, and the resulting reimplementation violates the FCC rules, then you'll have legal trouble. Similar would be true for Europe with the CE regulatory/testing b…

There is nothing "secret" about the operation of basebands, or what they put out on the air. This is just the companies protecting trade secrets, trying to avoid patent litigation, or just general open source averseness.

Linux includes an open source regulatory information database that several open source wifi drivers use, so FCC licensing is not an issue for open source software either. It is not a form of DRM and does not require any "black boxing". Obviously you might be able to modify the software so you violate FCC rules, but you can also build your own radio transmitter and violate the FCC rules just as well. There's no special case for it being software.

If you want to experiment on the radio bands, you can trivially get a ham radio license and modify the radio as you see fit, as long as you stay within the ham radio limits.

Re: Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

#26

Post by lstor »

drdaeman wrote: post #11
lstor wrote: post #2

In Norway, we have an un-waverable right by law to reverse engineer computer systems for learning purposes. They are described in Åndsverkloven §§ 39h and 39i. Roughly translated excerpts: § 39h Whoever has the right to use a computer program, can copy, change and work on the program to the extent necessary in order to utilize the program in accordance with its purpose, including in order to correct errors in the pro…

> for learning purposes > A few limitations on utilization of the information I don't know how it is in Norway, but I see those clauses as problematic. There is not much point in reverse engineering a piece of software if you can't use the results freely, including implementation of directly "competing" software. That is, most of RE is just figuring out the data formats and protocols. And I fear that in too many juri…

As far as I know there is no legal precedence (and I'm not a lawyer), but I think that figuring out data formats and protocols counts as "ideas and principles" -- which is okay. It's hard to say, really, courts aren't famous for showing any understanding of computer science.

There is the DeCSS-case, which led to acquittal in Norwegian courts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS

Re: Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

#27

Post by lstor »

gpvos wrote: post #4
lstor wrote: post #2

In Norway, we have an un-waverable right by law to reverse engineer computer systems for learning purposes. They are described in Åndsverkloven §§ 39h and 39i. Roughly translated excerpts: § 39h Whoever has the right to use a computer program, can copy, change and work on the program to the extent necessary in order to utilize the program in accordance with its purpose, including in order to correct errors in the pro…

Nice. The only problem I can see with this (I'm not a lawyer) is that I hope 39i.c is interpreted broadly - e.g., some tools disassemble an entire executable when you only need to look at a part.

I don't know for sure, but anything else would surprise me, really.

Re: Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

#28

Post by mrsteveman1 »

This post comes at a perfect time for me, as I'm currently documenting the undocumented API of Ubiquiti's Airview2[1] device, a cheap ($39, 5 years ago) 2.4GHz spectrum analyzer USB stick, which they've now stopped selling and abandoned in every way.

Just the other day I was pondering who to contact to determine whether my current method of figuring out how the undocumented API works (typing command guesses over the CDC-ACM serial interface in gtkterm) puts me at risk, but it doesn't look like it. I'm not dumping the firmware and don't have a copy of it, not decompiling the original software, there is no access control on the interface, no encryption, no handshake, no EULA on the hardware itself.

Seems that I'm in the clear from what I can tell.

I've gotten enough of the commands documented that I've been able to write a library based on what I've learned, and I'm hoping to publish my documentation and the code soon. It's been quite fun to figure out how it works so I and others can actually use these things in other software :)

[1] http://dl.ubnt.com/newsletters/0112.html

Re: Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

#29

Post by xai3luGi »

shmerl wrote: post #15
ck2 wrote: post #13

Has EFF ever addressed if we have the right to root our phones? Because smartphones are getting more and more locked down, they have reached the point in late 2014 where many models simply cannot be rooted by 3rd parties. Note I am not talking about carrier unlocking, I mean root. I want full control over any device I use. It is like buying a car but not being allowed into the trunk.

It would depend on what exactly prevents you from getting root rights on your device. If it's DRM, to address that you'll need to fix DMCA-1201. Or more precisely, allow breaking DRM for any non infringing purpose. Right now it forbids it, and instead provides idiotic method of Librarian of Congress deciding what exceptions to grant. This corrupted law was passed undemocratically using backdoor method of WTO trade ag…

> allow breaking DRM for any non infringing purpose

Why not just make building DRM into a consumer product illegal?

Re: Coder's Rights Project – Reverse Engineering FAQ

#30

Post by shmerl »

xai3luGi wrote: post #29
shmerl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would depend on what exactly prevents you from getting root rights on your device. If it's DRM, to address that you'll need to fix DMCA-1201. Or more precisely, allow breaking DRM for any non infringing purpose. Right now it forbids it, and instead provides idiotic method of Librarian of Congress deciding what exceptions to grant. This corrupted law was passed undemocratically using backdoor method of WTO trade ag…

> allow breaking DRM for any non infringing purpose Why not just make building DRM into a consumer product illegal?

That's perfectly fine with me, I view DRM as unethical. But trying to propose banning all DRM will more likely to fail than proposing to allow breaking it for non infringing purposes.
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