Chris Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > AFAIK there is no "perfect" regime in the world, and the political > situation in many countries wrt. crypto (for example) is rather > unstable. For example, the LinuxDVD code is probably only illegal in > the UK, since the "rip" of the encryption algorithm was only illegal > under Britain's copyright law.
IANAL but I'm pretty certain that one is completely within one's rights in reverse engineering things in the UK. Patents could be used to restrict those rights, except that we don't recognise software patents in the UK. Copyright has nothing to say about a work that involved a comparable effort to produce as the ``original'' that inspired it, because copyright for the facsimile would reside with the person that made it. I don't know the details of this case, but I doubt very much that its anything other than a large company unleashing their rabid lawyers, and if it ever gets near a court in the UK, it will be thrown out. That said, there are occasional rumblings of silly encryption laws being introduced in the UK, but at present stand.org.uk seem to be blocking that pretty effectively. In conclusion, you could do a lot worse than the UK, and we've got loads of bandwidth. Cheers, Phil.
