On 8/6/07, Stefan Dösinger stefandoesinger@gmx.at wrote:
Am Montag, 6. August 2007 21:02 schrieb James Hawkins:
"The reverse engineer is required to ask permission first, however."
...good luck with that.
Asking is easy :-)
Does the reverse engineer have to get permission? If he does need the blessing of the creator of the reverse engineered software/device, then the whole interoperability clause would be pointless. (note that I didn't read the DMCA, nor that page since disassembling Windows is pointless for me and I do not really speak assembler)
While living in America and going to school seeking a computer related degree, I had to take an ethics class on the industry. I did a presentation on the DMCA. Yes, the DMCA seems to be written such that any reverse engineering has to be done with the permission of the author or done in a very academic sense. Definitely no black hats...
Now, where the DMCA concerns us, is whether you engage in circumvention technology. As far as Wine as concerned, it is not being written for that, and we don't really engage in reverse engineering in the sense of the way the DMCA is written for or against. But then again a court can totally change the meaning here.