Because hacking by itself cannot violate copyright. Copyright is an entirely different thing. Once you own something, you can do with it as you please. (Well, mostly, but it's still not a violation of copyright.)Well, there are restrictions on what you can do if your tools can be used to violate copyright. But that's not what happened with geohot, the tools he released did not enable you to violate copyright directly; it would take a significant amount of extra work to do that. There DMCA has a bunch of provisions that allow you to do various amounts of hacking and trying to break crypto for 'research' purposes.
(2. Except in the cases referred to in article 11, this Directive shall leave intact and shall in no way affect existing Community provisions relating to:Now, it has been argued that the EUCD anti circumvention provisions may still be applied to video games, as those consist of not only computer software but also other assets such as graphics and music.
(a) the legal protection of computer programs;
(50) Such a harmonised legal protection does not affect the specific provisions on protection provided for by Directive 91/250/EEC. In particular, it should not apply to the protection of technological measures used in connection with computer programs, which is exclusively addressed in that Directive. It should neither inhibit nor prevent the development or use of any means of circumventing a technological measure that is necessary to enable acts to be undertaken in accordance with the terms of Article 5(3) or Article 6 of Directive 91/250/EEC. Articles 5 and 6 of that Directive exclusively determine exceptions to the exclusive rights applicable to computer programs.Now, what does the computer program directive say? The pertinent part is the reverse engineering provisions in article 6:
Article 6So, the reverse engineering and decompilation of the PS3 software is legal. The EULA isn't relevant here because you cannot forbid reverse engineering by contract (article 8). This covers only the reverse engineering, not creation of custom firmware, which may be forbidden by specific contractual provisions. Since contract law is not harmonised that means that your position as a consumer will depend on which member state you're in.
Decompilation
1. The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are
indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:
(a) those acts are performed by the licensee or by another person having a right to use a copy of a program, or on their behalf by a person authorised to do so;
(b) the information necessary to achieve interoperability has not previously been readily available to the persons referred to in point (a); and
(c) those acts are confined to the parts of the original program which are necessary in order to achieve interoperability.
2. The provisions of paragraph 1 shall not permit the information obtained through its application:
(a) to be used for goals other than to achieve the interoperability of the independently created computer program;
(b) to be given to others, except when necessary for the interoperability of the independently created computer program;
or
(c) to be used for the development, production or marketing of a computer program substantially similar in its expression, or for any other act which infringes copyright.
[...]
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posted by eyeballkid at 11:22 AM on February 24, 2011