This is actually legal under US copyright law. There was a case involving the Game Genie which Nintendo sued to stop distribution of, in which it was ruled that modifying a program for personal use was fair use. If your EULA forbids you from decompiling, that's still binding because the EULA is the only thing that authorizes you to use the software to begin with.
The problems creep in where if you, say, decompile Windows to fix bugs in it, and then go to work on the Linux kernel (or other core system component). You are now tainted and probably shouldn't work on code similar to Windows because you can't prove that you didn't copy Windows code from your head into the new code.
because the EULA is the only thing that authorizes you to use the software to begin with
Do you have a source for this claim? I'd say that the primacy of having (legitimate) access to the software trumps any EULA provision concerning its use. The logical consequence of your assertion would be that software without an EULA can never legally be used.
Under US law, EULAs are binding per Vernor v. Autodesk. This does not apply to the EU which may forbid certain restrictions in EULAs.
Generally US law gives primacy to contractual agreements, and the EULA is a contract in which you give up some of your rights in exchange for not being sued for copyright infringement for copying the software from disk into RAM. This is copying under copyright law and the 1976 Copyright Act does not protect copies made for personal use.
Note that this does not apply to open source software; OSS licenses are bare licenses under common law and do not have the force of contract.
Proprietary software without an EULA cannot legally be used except by the copyright owner. That's why EULAs exist.
>the EULA is a contract in which you give up some of your rights in exchange for not being sued for copyright infringement for copying the software from disk into RAM. This is copying under copyright law and the 1976 Copyright Act.
That sounds ludicrous, I can't believe it. Is there a precedent of this argument being used in court that you know of?
IIRC it has come up in various Blizzard lawsuits around bots and cheat software.
From MDY Industries v. Blizzard:
> As with most software, the client software of WoW is copied during the program's operation from the computer's hard drive to the computer's random access memory (RAM). Citing the prior Ninth Circuit case of MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511, 518-19 (9th Cir. 1993), the district court held that RAM copying constituted "copying" under 17 U.S.C. § 106.[4]
That one is more about another program accessing the ram and reading it (the act itself meaning that data in memory is "copied" again) but it's not a big jump to apply the same logic to a regular player's usage of the game.
You have done so if the painting is under the copyright of someone else, surely?
I’m afraid the argument that copyright is infringed when a copy is made within computer memory has long standing in the courts & is well established at this point in time (to my lay legal understanding).
Presumably you meant under US copyright law. This based on my observation that only people referencing that particular jurisdiction would write as though there were only one. It's particularly galling in comments on an article about EU laws.
It's difficult for me to imagine how this would work in my country's case. As a user of a product, you can't just say that the law doesn't apply to you even if the vendor wants you to say that.
> in exchange for not being held liable under other laws
This is pretty standard for trespassing. It’s illegal to be on someone’s private property if they don’t want you there. “Wanting you there” can very much be conditional on other agreements.
That's not suppressing the law, though. That's just using it the way it's written. And definitely doesn't qualify as an example of a threat of "being held liable under other laws" IMO.
Galoob v. Nintendo is so narrow in scope that it probably doesn't even cover games made today. Hell, people trying to resell Duke Nukem mods tried to rely on it and the courts said no.
Nowadays the business model for most games is not to sell the game, but to sell unlock keys or other subscription items that could be trivially unlocked with a cheat device. Furthermore, just using that cheat device almost certainly requires defeating a DMCA 1201 technical protection measure. So my gut feeling is that it's probably already been overturned simply by shifting business practices and changes to the law.
"Tainting" isn't necessarily how the law works, either. The standard for copyright infringement in the US is access plus substantial similarity. If you have access, then you need to make sure any code you write is different enough (as determined by a jury) from what you've seen. Merely having seen NT kernel code doesn't mean you legally can't write any kernel code at all - you don't have to prove a negative of "well I didn't remember X". The court (and jury) is going to look at what you wrote and what Microsoft alleges you copied, and then try to determine if it's actually a copy or not.
> the EULA is the only thing that authorizes you to use the software //
Piffle. The seller had an offer of sale, so I purchased the product outright - easy to tell as otherwise it would have been a lease or limited license agreement rather than a sale - I purchase it and have rights to use it (as I see fit) as long as they don't infringe the law.
Sure, they can choose to make a further contract, and I can sign that and return it if I wish to be bound by it.
Companies need to be brought to heel. I don't know why we play along with their nonsense.
> You are now tainted and probably shouldn't work on code similar to Windows
This doesn't make sense to me. If I "decompile" my Toyota, should I never work on cars because I now know what Toyota did to make mine? Of course not. That's absurd. I'm not sure how it being Software changes that.
It makes even less sense when you consider that people working with the actual source code of the software can (and do) just go and work for another company making similar software anyway. Same goes for your car analogy.
The problems creep in where if you, say, decompile Windows to fix bugs in it, and then go to work on the Linux kernel (or other core system component). You are now tainted and probably shouldn't work on code similar to Windows because you can't prove that you didn't copy Windows code from your head into the new code.