Funny how you missed them and require reposting of them.
If I tried to follow every thread that appeared on the board, I'd still be catching up to stuff that was posted in March. (-:
Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc.This was the case in which Nintendo sued Galoob over the Game Genie, claiming the device was an infringement of copyright. This is very similar to Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd., in which Quaid circumvented Vault's copy protection through reverse engineering. In both cases, the courts decided in favor of the defendants, establishing that reverse engineering does not constitute infringement of copyright.
It's worth noting that circumventing copy protection, as of 1998's
Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
is now illegal, but that applies to digital rights management specifically. Reverse engineering in and of itself was unaffected by the decision.
MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.In this case, MGM and their posse of media companies took to peer-to-peer file sharing networks, insisting that those networks themselves be held responsible for any infringing acts of its users. The court decided that such networks
can be held liable for the actions of its users, but only if the infringing activity is encouraged by the network. This is, to a T,
precisely what happened to Megaupload last year. You couldn't ask for a more perfect example of what the MGM-Grokster case was about.
I don't think anyone is arguing that distributing copyrighted works isn't illegal. As it pertains to City of Heroes, the issue involves reverse engineering, not content distribution.
Arizona Cartridge Remanufacturers Association Inc. v. Lexmark International Inc.Wikipedia's page on this case misses the mark; click the above link for the actual opinion. "Opening the box" doesn't really have anything to do with the lawsuit.
ACRA made all of its money refurbishing used printer cartridges, while Lexmark historically only made its money selling printers and new cartridges. That changed in 1997, when Lexmark began selling new cartridges under their so-called "Prebate" program, where customers would receive a discount for the cartridge purchase under the condition that they would return the empty cartridge to Lexmark for refurbishing. This was extraordinarily beneficial to Lexmark's business, and the long and short of it is that ACRA didn't want the competition, so they sued Lexmark saying that their actions were in violation of California's competition laws. The court ruled in favor of the defendant, stating (and I might be paraphrasing this a bit) "ACRA hasn't provided jack beans worth of evidence to support its claims."
I, um... I don't think I'll be returning my used City of Heroes to NCsoft for refurbishing.
Universal City Studios, Inc. v. ReimerdesThe defendants of this case, who were not big-money-making figureheads or anything, were sued for promoting the use and distribution of
DeCSS--software which decrypts DVD videos, an activity prohibited by the DMCA. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff citing the DMCA, which of course raised controversy on the grounds of violating freedom of speech.
In other words, circumventing copy protection under the DMCA is illegal
for real. City of Heroes doesn't have any copy protection.
A & M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.This one was all over the news because it was the first big event surrounding the legal issues behind file sharing. Since Napster's servers were presented in such a way as to provide accommodations for its users to commit copyright infringement (song listings, etc.), the court ruled that Napster itself could be held liable for any acts of infringement committed by its users. This takes a similar tone to what later happened with the MGM-Grokster case, as it boiled down to whether or not the network was encouraging its users to commit copyright infringement.
Reverse engineering City of Heroes still isn't related to distributing City of Heroes game content. To clarify, the precursor to SEGS found themselves with a cease-and-desist order from NCsoft on the grounds of
content distribution, but not for reverse engineering the software.
UMG v. MP3.com - (
Alternate source)
Don't you love lawyer language? This case is all about semantics. Basically what MP3.com was doing was allowing users to upload their legally-purchased CDs to MP3.com, as MP3s, which they could then download elsewhere. The court ruled that MP3.com was guilty of copyright infringement on the grounds of the fact that it was making a "functionally equivalent" copy of the user's CDs, converting them to some other format, then redistributing that copy without authorization.
Again, this is content distribution, not reverse engineering.
Applied Info. Mgmt., Inc, v. IcartThis one was quite a convoluted case. Basically what happened was that Applied Information Management, Inc. (AIM) entered an agreement with Brownstone Agency, Inc. (an insurance broker) in which AIM would provide computer hardware, software and support to Brownstone. After several years, Brownstone terminated the agreement. In the middle of it all, AIM hired developer Daniel Icart, trained him in the underlying architecture of their software, and then Icart later went on to work for Brownstone and upgraded Brownstone's AIM software using what he'd learned at AIM. The reason it was an issue is because Brownstone was under the impression that the software was being sold by AIM, while AIM contests that the software was merely licensed. AIM's argument was that Brownstone was guilty of copyright infringement while Icart was guilty of "misappropriation of trade secrets" among other things. The case was dismissed because it couldn't be proven one way or another that either side was correct.
If we can take anything away from this, it's that software purchases versus licenses is something to bear in mind, but in cases where there's no paper trail, enforcement may be difficult if at all possible. For City of Heroes, our licenses have no paper trails, so I would put it into the "don't worry about it" category. Heck, for years it was possible to play the game while bypassing the user agreement altogether.
MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc.This one's kind of funny. The gist of it is that Peak Computer, Inc., an IT support company, did unthinkable acts of copyright violation with MAI software: 1) they made copies of the MAI operating system in computer RAM by way of turning on the computers, and 2) they ran MAI diagnostic software despite not being a licensee. The court astonishingly ruled in favor of the plaintiff, but then Congress turned around and amended Title 17 (aka the Copyright Act) in order to make a provision in response to this exact case.
So the moral of the story is, it's legal to make copies of software in RAM in order to use that software, since that's exactly how your computer runs software. Way to go, legal system!
