6 ms·

Because I had a similar thought when Twitch's code "leaked" and I never got round to asking: is it illegal under US law to download such a leak for private insp

Because I had a similar thought when Twitch's code "leaked" and I never got round to asking: is it illegal under US law to download such a leak for private inspection? That is, illegal in a way beyond copyright violation, such as being party to an act of espionage. (This leak doesn't interest me at all, but if ever the source for QBasic leaked, say.. well I might like to read it without becoming a wanted fugitive ;-))

leeter 5y ago
IANAL, the risk is generally not in the downloading per-se but the distribution and use. The copyright owner can sue for use or distribution of the IP. So you might be able to download and look but that would then basically prohibit you from making your own compatible QBasic interpreter. You're better off clean rooming it generally speaking. So it's basically poisoned, you can look but as soon as you do you can't touch anything to do with that area again until you can plausibly say you forgot everything you saw.
- Anunayj 5y ago
  So this technically makes piracy legal, as losing as I'm not distributing the material, (or seeding it's torrent).
  - monkeynotes 5y ago
    This is the case in Canada, at least.
    - Biganon 5y ago
      Switzerland, too.
  - leeter 5y ago
    IANAL, but no. You can still get sued.
    - razakel 5y ago
      You can be sued for anything. I could sue you for farting in an elevator. You have to actually show damages, and nobody is going to care about personal research into obsolete software.
      - retrocryptid 5y ago
        except oracle.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    IANAL. If you pirate without distribution (so torrents are out of the question) and don't circumvent any DRM mechanisms (cracks, keygens) then I don't think there's a legal basis for a lawsuit. However, most games and software come with some form of DRM which you need to bypass to pirate them, and that's often banned explicitly in copyright legislation. It is under the American DMCA laws and, as far as I know, under European copyright laws, but your mileage may vary. But yes, as far as I can tell, if someone shares their Good Old Games setup files with you and you download them, you're not breaking the law (though the person sharing the content obviously is). Regardless of actual legality, you can still expect a lawsuit if your company pirates software and defending against that usually costs more than actually buying the software.
    - addaon 5y ago
      Downloading a file which contains copyrighted data is creating a copy (you now have that sequence of bits in memory or on disk on a device you control) without the right having been granted, no?
      - jcranmer 5y ago
        The person running the server is the one who is creating the copy and doing the distribution, not you the user.
        jl6 5y ago
        Dubious, when the user is the one initiating the copy (by requesting the download) and the one benefiting from the copy.
        addaon 5y ago
        Even if you argue that the initial copy of the work in RAM in your network stack was created by the server operator, you're likely to make copies from there: copies in RAM if your network stack is not zero copy; copies to disk if these pages swap; and copies to disk if you save the files. See e.g. https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602&context=lawreview https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602...
  - kmeisthax 5y ago
    Not necessarily. The reason why torrent seeding is so perilous is because P2P is a privacy nightmare, not because they forgot to say the word "download" in the law. If you want to sue people who are copying your work, BitTorrent makes it very easy to get enough information to demand dox from an ISP. For a "mere downloading" case to even occur, you first need to compromise (legally, of course) the host of some direct-download site, subpoena their logs, subpoena a bunch of ISPs, get dox from that, and then sue that class of users. Usually at that point the copying has stopped anyway, which is enough to get a copyright owner to back off. If such a suit were to happen, the argument would probably boil down to where the infringement actually occurred. Does the server infringe when it sends copyrighted material (because that's where the copy is made), or does the client infringe when it requests said material (because they asked for an infringing copy)? Courts might accept both arguments and just decide everyone is liable. Also all of that is for copyright, which (usually) covers published works. Trade secrets, which cover things not ever intended to be published, would just call both sides guilty of "misappropriating" the trade secret.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  I would add that if you make a competing product to Microsoft, and they find out that you looked at their source code, they might use that as justification to open up a lawsuit to check if you copied their code at all. Or if they open a lawsuit to see if you copied code, the fact that you looked might be used against you. IANAL so I could be wrong...
johannes1234321 5y ago
> but if ever the source for QBasic leaked QBasic? - Why that modern thing. Just use the proper BASIC: https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC ;)
- petercooper 5y ago
  Haha, yes. When that came out I asked the guy at MS if QBasic was on the cards next and I seem to recall he said something about it being problematic and not super likely. I spent 1000x longer with QBasic though (QB4.5 and PDS 7.1 technically.)
sixothree 5y ago
If you want anything clean room related in your career, I wouldn't read any of it.
- hughrr 5y ago
  If it was like the mainsoft leak, I learned a hell of a lot about what not to do reading that.
kmeisthax 5y ago
The repo would be a trade secret and downloading it could potentially be construed as misappropriation of such. However, I know of no case in which someone decided to sue every individual who downloaded a leak out of curiosity. Usually you'd only bother for large businesses that could actually gain a competitive advantage from that data. Of course, the flip side of that is that anyone who has ever touched the leak is persona non grata in that industry. So if you're interested in learning how QBasic works, and you ever want to touch anything that interprets scripting code, don't touch those leaks. FWIW disassembling QBasic (instead of obtaining leaked source) would be an absolute defense against a trade secret claim, but in terms of copyright you now have "access", and need to avoid "substantial similarity" in any source code you write. You aren't strictly-speaking "tainted" (clean-room is not a legal requirement), but if someone actually sued you for copying QBasic you'd better have a good legal argument for why every line of your code does not infringe upon the code you disassembled.
- petercooper 5y ago
  but if someone actually sued you for copying QBasic Not to take away from your useful points, but that would be quite the case in 2022! :-)
aaron695 5y ago
op00to 5y ago
I would not download a code leak for a few reasons. First, I want to be able to contribute code to open source projects, and I feel like seeing some "leaked" code could somehow taint me in a way that makes this more tricky for me. Second, my employer expects me to act in a manner that reflects positively upon them. I don't think it's fair business dealings to read stolen code from someone who might be a competitor.

leeter 5y ago

IANAL, the risk is generally not in the downloading per-se but the distribution and use. The copyright owner can sue for use or distribution of the IP. So you might be able to download and look but that would then basically prohibit you from making your own compatible QBasic interpreter. You're better off clean rooming it generally speaking. So it's basically poisoned, you can look but as soon as you do you can't touch anything to do with that area again until you can plausibly say you forgot everything you saw.

Anunayj 5y ago
So this technically makes piracy legal, as losing as I'm not distributing the material, (or seeding it's torrent).
- monkeynotes 5y ago
  This is the case in Canada, at least.
  - Biganon 5y ago
    Switzerland, too.
- leeter 5y ago
  IANAL, but no. You can still get sued.
  - razakel 5y ago
    You can be sued for anything. I could sue you for farting in an elevator. You have to actually show damages, and nobody is going to care about personal research into obsolete software.
    - retrocryptid 5y ago
      except oracle.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  IANAL. If you pirate without distribution (so torrents are out of the question) and don't circumvent any DRM mechanisms (cracks, keygens) then I don't think there's a legal basis for a lawsuit. However, most games and software come with some form of DRM which you need to bypass to pirate them, and that's often banned explicitly in copyright legislation. It is under the American DMCA laws and, as far as I know, under European copyright laws, but your mileage may vary. But yes, as far as I can tell, if someone shares their Good Old Games setup files with you and you download them, you're not breaking the law (though the person sharing the content obviously is). Regardless of actual legality, you can still expect a lawsuit if your company pirates software and defending against that usually costs more than actually buying the software.
  - addaon 5y ago
    Downloading a file which contains copyrighted data is creating a copy (you now have that sequence of bits in memory or on disk on a device you control) without the right having been granted, no?
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      The person running the server is the one who is creating the copy and doing the distribution, not you the user.
      - jl6 5y ago
        Dubious, when the user is the one initiating the copy (by requesting the download) and the one benefiting from the copy.
      - addaon 5y ago
        Even if you argue that the initial copy of the work in RAM in your network stack was created by the server operator, you're likely to make copies from there: copies in RAM if your network stack is not zero copy; copies to disk if these pages swap; and copies to disk if you save the files. See e.g. https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602&context=lawreview https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602...
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  Not necessarily. The reason why torrent seeding is so perilous is because P2P is a privacy nightmare, not because they forgot to say the word "download" in the law. If you want to sue people who are copying your work, BitTorrent makes it very easy to get enough information to demand dox from an ISP. For a "mere downloading" case to even occur, you first need to compromise (legally, of course) the host of some direct-download site, subpoena their logs, subpoena a bunch of ISPs, get dox from that, and then sue that class of users. Usually at that point the copying has stopped anyway, which is enough to get a copyright owner to back off. If such a suit were to happen, the argument would probably boil down to where the infringement actually occurred. Does the server infringe when it sends copyrighted material (because that's where the copy is made), or does the client infringe when it requests said material (because they asked for an infringing copy)? Courts might accept both arguments and just decide everyone is liable. Also all of that is for copyright, which (usually) covers published works. Trade secrets, which cover things not ever intended to be published, would just call both sides guilty of "misappropriating" the trade secret.
phendrenad2 5y ago
I would add that if you make a competing product to Microsoft, and they find out that you looked at their source code, they might use that as justification to open up a lawsuit to check if you copied their code at all. Or if they open a lawsuit to see if you copied code, the fact that you looked might be used against you. IANAL so I could be wrong...

johannes1234321 5y ago

> but if ever the source for QBasic leaked QBasic? - Why that modern thing. Just use the proper BASIC: https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC ;)

petercooper 5y ago
Haha, yes. When that came out I asked the guy at MS if QBasic was on the cards next and I seem to recall he said something about it being problematic and not super likely. I spent 1000x longer with QBasic though (QB4.5 and PDS 7.1 technically.)

sixothree 5y ago

If you want anything clean room related in your career, I wouldn't read any of it.

hughrr 5y ago
If it was like the mainsoft leak, I learned a hell of a lot about what not to do reading that.

kmeisthax 5y ago

The repo would be a trade secret and downloading it could potentially be construed as misappropriation of such. However, I know of no case in which someone decided to sue every individual who downloaded a leak out of curiosity. Usually you'd only bother for large businesses that could actually gain a competitive advantage from that data. Of course, the flip side of that is that anyone who has ever touched the leak is persona non grata in that industry. So if you're interested in learning how QBasic works, and you ever want to touch anything that interprets scripting code, don't touch those leaks. FWIW disassembling QBasic (instead of obtaining leaked source) would be an absolute defense against a trade secret claim, but in terms of copyright you now have "access", and need to avoid "substantial similarity" in any source code you write. You aren't strictly-speaking "tainted" (clean-room is not a legal requirement), but if someone actually sued you for copying QBasic you'd better have a good legal argument for why every line of your code does not infringe upon the code you disassembled.

petercooper 5y ago
but if someone actually sued you for copying QBasic Not to take away from your useful points, but that would be quite the case in 2022! :-)

aaron695 5y ago

op00to 5y ago

I would not download a code leak for a few reasons. First, I want to be able to contribute code to open source projects, and I feel like seeing some "leaked" code could somehow taint me in a way that makes this more tricky for me. Second, my employer expects me to act in a manner that reflects positively upon them. I don't think it's fair business dealings to read stolen code from someone who might be a competitor.