rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (11/17/88)
Gene Spafford: Publishing the code is not illegal in any way... Rahul Dhesi: I suspect it is. The worm code is an unpublished work, and Robert Morris is the copyright owner. Gene Spafford: You are correct. I meant to say "publishing any reverse-engineered code is not illegal..." I think you're still wrong. Decompiling an object file would be considered a translation, and therefore still subject to copryight. Also check out the flack with Phoenix/Microsoft/IBM and attempts to clone the BIOS in the IBM-PC firmware. HOWEVER, since there was no copyright in the code, and since it was NOT distributed to a small number of sites, and since the perpetrator (whoever it is) did not make any attempt to retrieve the copies but just stopped further propogation, I believe that the author of the worm has effectively relinquished the copyright on his or her program. /rich $alz -- Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.
ralph@laas.laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek) (11/25/88)
In article <1209@fig.bbn.com>, rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes: | HOWEVER, since there was no copyright in the code, and since it was NOT | distributed to a small number of sites, and since the perpetrator (whoever | it is) did not make any attempt to retrieve the copies but just stopped | further propogation, I believe that the author of the worm has effectively | relinquished the copyright on his or her program. So then it's effectively public domain! I don't want to reopen the dissemination question. -- Ralph P. Sobek Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own. ralph@laas.laas.fr Addresses are ordered by importance. ralph@lasso.uucp, or ...!uunet!mcvax!lasso!ralph If all else fails, try: SOBEK@FRMOP11.BITNET sobek@eclair.Berkeley.EDU