PROMs and Copyrights...

Roger Heflin rah at horizon.hit.net
Mon Jan 25 02:00:17 GMT 1999



On Sun, 24 Jan 1999, Dave Williams wrote:

> 
>  By US law copying, modifying, and reselling code is a Federal crime.
> Several states also have anti-hacking and anti-piracy laws that cover
> this.
> 
>  Hypertech and others get away with their practices because the OEMs
> have chosen, for whatever reasons, not to take them to court.  There
> aren't any Copyright Police looking around for violations; GM or Ford or
> whoever has to set the ball rolling.
> 
>  Just because Hypertech and others are not being prosecuted doesn't make
> what they're doing legal - all any OEM would have to do is file, and it
> would an open-and-shut rubber stamp trial.  There are ample precedents
> on the subject of piracy of ROM code - IBM, Apple, and Phoenix BIOS all
> filed suit against code pirates and won.
>

There is a additional issue here.  IBM, Apple, and all of them the
others were copying and putting someone elses prom with their own
hardware. I don't think IBM or Apple would have messed with someone
taking one of their proms changing it and reselling it so long as 1
IBM or Apple prom was bought for each one sold, ie a license for the
original code. And each piece of GM hardware you would suppose would
have one license to run the GM code included with it.  Now if one of
the aftermarket companies made their own computer (or copyied someone
elses) and were making those and selling them with GM (or someome
elses code) then things would be pretty clear.  The derivative work
works so long as the person making the derivative has the proper
number of licesnes for all of his derivatives sold.  In most of the
aftermarket prom business that is the case.

 
>  I've discussed this subject with several chip vendors, who all seem to
> engage in the same kind of wishful thinking as Hypertech.
> 
>  Personally, I don't think the chip vendors are hurting anyone, and by
> some lights they might even be doing the OEMs a favor.  But the law says
> what the chip vendors are doing is unlawful and actionable, and
> pretending it isn't is merely self delusion.
> 
> ==dave.williams at chaos.lrk.ar.us======================================
> I've got a secret / I've been hiding / under my skin / | Who are you?
> my heart is human / my blood is boiling / my brain IBM |   who, who?
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> 




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