PROMs and Copyrights...

[Greg Hermann]

>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.
>
Yep--what the chip makers are doing is a much closer analogy to what the
writer of a system extension or patch is doing than to theft. Simply
changing the way something runs from the original.

Regards, Greg