[Premium-Rx] Firmware postings

[Peter Gottlieb]

AFAIK, and IANAL, this is still an evolving area of law and there are a lot of 
grey areas.  For example, manufacturers' rights are different when items have 
been designed under government contract where development was paid for by the 
taxpayer.  The most classical form of copyright, of the printed word, when made 
into a technical manual for a piece of equipment, is freely copyable and 
downloadable from government sites.  I believe this falls under the "work for 
hire" area where the payer who ordered the work done has the copyright.  How 
many of our premium receivers only exist due to government contract?

In any case, there are provisions in the law, such as "takedown notices" where a 
manufacturer who believes (right or wrong) that their intellectual property is 
available improperly can demand that such material be removed from public access 
until the issues are resolved.  I am sure should any manufacturer request such 
an action from the Premium-Rx site it would be executed immediately.

Peter


Geoff Fors wrote:
> It pains me somewhat to say this, but I feel I should point out to the 
> list membership in the USA that the firmware in the CPU and/or ROM chips 
> involved in premium receivers, and of course everything else using these 
> devices, is intellectual property owned by the manufacturer and not the 
> radio owner.  As such, it is illegal to retrieve, decompile or otherwise 
> create a record of that code with the intention of transferring it to 
> another party.
>  
> The reason I mention this at all is that some manufacturers actually do 
> actively monitor newsgroups looking for keywords such as "firmware" in 
> order to take legal action against hobby "hackers" and "crackers."  
> There are currently several cases now in litigation brought by Ford 
> Motor Company against persons posting firmware data over on one of the 
> electronic fuel injection newsgroups, and Motorola has sued several 
> persons regarding sale or transfer of radio service software and 
> personality firmware from their two way radios, using information they 
> obtained from newsgroups, eBay and so forth.   Yes, I know that 
> technically you are entitled to make one backup copy of whatever 
> software or firmware you legally have in your equipment, and modify it 
> as you see fit, but how many of us are interested in spending a couple 
> hundred thousand in legal fees to prove it ?  The current trend is for 
> manufacturers to vigorously attack anyone attempting to obtain source 
> code, firmware dumps, and so forth.  
>  
> Most premium receiver manufacturers are defense contractors with deep 
> pockets, and posting messages about cracking their firmware and so forth 
> would seem unwise, even on obsolete products.  Those that are out of 
> business would seem fair game, however!
>  
> Geoff Fors
>  
> 
> 
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