On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 10:39:02PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 10:29:40PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 04:12:08PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > > I freely admit that this analysis is grounded on U.S.-centric notions of > > > reverse engineering and "originality" as a relevant concept to > > > copyright. In other jurisdictions, copyrights more closely resemble > > > patents, and independent innovation is no defense to a claim of > > > copyright infringement. > > > > Good grief, there are jurisdictions where copyright law follows the > > first-finder-is-keeper system used by patents? I'm not sure that free > > software can work at all with laws like that. > > > > Do you have a list? I want to avoid visiting such countries. > > I thought basically every place outside the U.S. was like that. Several > times when the U.S. Supreme Court decision of _Feist v. Rural Telephone > Service Co._ has come up, it's been ridiculed by some Europeans.
[I can't think of anything in UK copyright law that would behave this way for software]. I'm pretty certain that reverse engineering is explicitly permitted by an EU directive nowadays, which would trump any freaky national laws like that. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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