4 ms·

>when re3 was sued The day reverse-engineering legal protections failed.

by hd4 3y ago

bigstrat2003 3y ago
Not really. No legal protection is able to stop an overzealous litigant from suing you. The real test is whether they win the case, not whether they can file one. Unfortunately, most people don't have the means to defend such a lawsuit, so they get bullied out of their legal rights.
- flykespice 3y ago
  This These companies know very well these independent groups, even if it's on their legal bounds, can't afford a legal defense team and actively exploit that to abuse them away.
kevinmchugh 3y ago
re3 is a very dubious legal case. They decompiled the game with debug symbols and then did a (aiui) non-clean room reimplementation of the code, based on the decompilation. It is protected legal activity to decompile a binary and study the source. It is protected legal activity to study some source code, describe it, and have someone who never saw the source reimplement the code described. It is straightforwardly illegal to decompile source code, recompile it, and the distribute the recompiled binary. re3 is somewhere between the latter two, and (again aiui from looking into it 2 years ago) they didn't have a clean room step. It's probably a good thing no one will litigate it. It seems highly likely to be illegal and reasonably do. It would be a bad thing to spend money on.
- hd4 3y ago
  "It is straightforwardly illegal to decompile source code, recompile it, and the distribute the recompiled binary." According to what? If the rules are so poorly defined that way then maybe it's not a bad thing to disregard them. Because simply decompiling source code and then recompiling it isn't a simple one-step thing in the way you suggest, not even close.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    Next you will suggest that stealing original artwork and laundering copyright through generative art ML systems is not illegal...
    - yard2010 3y ago
      Well, you wouldn't steal a car /s
    - yard2010 3y ago
      Well, you wouldn't steal a car /s
    - hd4 3y ago
      false equivalence
  - kevinmchugh 3y ago
    It's the distribution step that's illegal, since you don't own the original binary. If you can't distribute the original binary, why can you distribute a modified version of it? If you wrote a bash script which decompiled and recompiled the original binary, that would be your property to distribute as you like
    - immibis 3y ago
      Decompilation is also illegal in broken countries (which is most of them)
      - ungamedplayer 3y ago
        I find this hard to believe..
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  > It is straightforwardly illegal to decompile source code, recompile it, and the distribute the recompiled binary. But it is not straightforwardly illegal (according to Microsoft et al) to decompile source code, train an LLM on it, generate the source code, recompile it, and then distribute the recompiled binary. One easy 947 quadrillion tensor-operations lifehack

>when re3 was sued The day reverse-engineering legal protections failed.

by hd4 3y ago

>when re3 was sued The day reverse-engineering legal protections failed.

bigstrat2003 3y ago

Not really. No legal protection is able to stop an overzealous litigant from suing you. The real test is whether they win the case, not whether they can file one. Unfortunately, most people don't have the means to defend such a lawsuit, so they get bullied out of their legal rights.

flykespice 3y ago
This These companies know very well these independent groups, even if it's on their legal bounds, can't afford a legal defense team and actively exploit that to abuse them away.

kevinmchugh 3y ago

re3 is a very dubious legal case. They decompiled the game with debug symbols and then did a (aiui) non-clean room reimplementation of the code, based on the decompilation. It is protected legal activity to decompile a binary and study the source. It is protected legal activity to study some source code, describe it, and have someone who never saw the source reimplement the code described. It is straightforwardly illegal to decompile source code, recompile it, and the distribute the recompiled binary. re3 is somewhere between the latter two, and (again aiui from looking into it 2 years ago) they didn't have a clean room step. It's probably a good thing no one will litigate it. It seems highly likely to be illegal and reasonably do. It would be a bad thing to spend money on.

hd4 3y ago
"It is straightforwardly illegal to decompile source code, recompile it, and the distribute the recompiled binary." According to what? If the rules are so poorly defined that way then maybe it's not a bad thing to disregard them. Because simply decompiling source code and then recompiling it isn't a simple one-step thing in the way you suggest, not even close.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  Next you will suggest that stealing original artwork and laundering copyright through generative art ML systems is not illegal...
  - yard2010 3y ago
    Well, you wouldn't steal a car /s
  - yard2010 3y ago
    Well, you wouldn't steal a car /s
  - hd4 3y ago
    false equivalence
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  It's the distribution step that's illegal, since you don't own the original binary. If you can't distribute the original binary, why can you distribute a modified version of it? If you wrote a bash script which decompiled and recompiled the original binary, that would be your property to distribute as you like
  - immibis 3y ago
    Decompilation is also illegal in broken countries (which is most of them)
    - ungamedplayer 3y ago
      I find this hard to believe..
formerly_proven 3y ago
> It is straightforwardly illegal to decompile source code, recompile it, and the distribute the recompiled binary. But it is not straightforwardly illegal (according to Microsoft et al) to decompile source code, train an LLM on it, generate the source code, recompile it, and then distribute the recompiled binary. One easy 947 quadrillion tensor-operations lifehack