RE: A86: ROM Images (legal battle thread)
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RE: A86: ROM Images (legal battle thread)
>At 06:15 PM 11/17/98 -0400, you wrote:
>>>Frankly, your arguments would never hold up in a court room. The facts
>>>are that the TI ROM is copyrighted material and you can't distribute it.
>>>
>>Right. You _can_ make a copy for personal use, but without TI's permission,
>>it's illegal to distribute it for any purpose.
>
>How do you know that my arguments won't hold up in a court room? They are
>sound arguments legally based on the national copyright law. Only the
>Supreme Court could possibly overrule "programming research" by a change in
>the law. I have proven my point in many various ways and I seem to have
>come out on top every single time. I have replied to every e-mail that has
>been sent and still proven "programming research" and the distribution of
>ROM images under the copyright law exception to be completely and utterly
>legal. I may have seemed redundant at times, but that was to emphasize my
>point. You have all presented very good arguments against "programming
>research." However, I wouldn't have initially replied if I hadn't thought
>the whole thing through in the first place.
>
Look, you can NOT put the thing up on the web for whatever purpose. Sure,
under copyright law, title 17, section 107 (I think) you can distribute it
for research purposes. But that's open to interpretation. And one of the
factors they list in deciding about fair use is the nature of the work. And
I kind of think they'd be more stringent about software. Most software says
explicitly in the license that reverse-engineering, disassembling, or
otherwise making the thing readable for whatever purpose is not allowed. So
I think that would influence the interpretation of fair play.
I'm not arguing that you can't distribute the ROM for research purposes.
But do you _know_ that the person you are sending it to wants it for
research purposes? And putting it on the web, no matter how you do it,
constitutes public display and is therefore illegal. You _might_ be able to
make some kind of argument for it from the stuff under section 110 (?), but
I agree with Bryan, it's clearly TI's property, the argument wouldn't hold
up in court.
Sorry this isn't more specific, I haven't read the copyright law in a long
time. If anyone's interested in reading it, you should be able to find it
at the Library of Congress <http://lcweb.loc.gov>, pick Search the Site,
look through the C index listing for US Copyright Office. should be there.
. .
Now can we drop this thread? The ROM is TI's, they're a big company, if
they choose to make an issue of it, they can probably make more trouble
than any of us can take, regardless of what we're doing is illegal or not.
Although I don't think that's very probable. :-) Lighten up already!
--Joshua
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