bart@reed.UUCP (Bart Massey) (12/16/85)
> On the other hand, there is no legal commercial market for defeating hardware > copy protection systems that do not otherwise impede normal work, as there is > for software copy protection. You will NOT see any "KeyCopy II Mac" sold > legally, simply because it could be proved that any attempt to use such a > product constitutes an attempt to make an unauthorized copy. I wonder. The rationale I've heard for one of these is that if one has purchased the key (a reasonable assumption), one has the right to make as many backup copies of the key as one wants for one's own personal use. A hardware key would probably be much less likely to fail than a floppy disk, and much harder to provide an "automatic" means of duplicating, but I believe the legal rationale is the same. Isn't it true that I can make as many copies of any patented/copyrighted/trade-secreted item I've purchased as I want for my personal use, as long as I don't give one to anyone else? In fact, the legal situation seems somewhat worse, as "skeleton keys" sold by third-parties would be very unlikely to resemble the original key in anything except function, and I don't believe it's possible to patent black-boxes (i.e. "I want to patent all machines that given this set of inputs, generate that set of outputs, regardless of how they work"), much less copyright or trade-secret them... Of course this is not intended to condone software piracy -- I'm just curious about the legal issues involved... Curiously Yours, Bart Massey ..tektronix!reed!bart "With this machine, I'm going to SUCK UP ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD!!" -- Simon Bar-Sinister