Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!chasm From: chasm@killer.UUCP (Charles Marslett) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Jos Vermaseren - Posting GEMDOS ... (illegality) Summary: Disassembly is legal (back in the USA) . . . Message-ID: <4640@killer.UUCP> Date: 29 Jun 88 05:06:14 GMT References: <8806211323.AA02010@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <343@forty2.UUCP> Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas Lines: 41 In article <343@forty2.UUCP>, poole@forty2.UUCP (Simon Poole) writes: ] ] ] In article <8806211323.AA02010@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> U0179@DGOGWDG5.BITNET ("GWDGV1::WHUEBNER") writes: ] .... ] >>2: a book that was recently published in Germany with a discompilation of ] >> of GEMDOS. This last thing seems to be fully illegal to me. Is one really ] >> allowed to do this? ] .... ] >As one of the three authors (part AHDI) of the book "Das TOS-Listing - ] >BIOS/GEMDOS/VDI (Kramer,Riebl,Huebner) I have to answer your question ] >with Y E A H . ] .... ] >We are really allowed to publish this book with a written permission ] >of ATARI-Deutschland. ] ] All under the assumption that Atari Germany is actually the copyright ] holder for GEMDOS and VDI (which Atari Germany is NOT as far as I know, ] but this is naturally for DRI and Atari to fight out.......). ] -- ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ] UUCP: ...mcvax!cernvax!forty2!poole Simon Poole ] BITNET: K538915@CZHRZU1A ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- By the way, there was a recent posting to the effect that it is illegal in the US to prohibit disassembly of code sold or licensed if the disassembly was for the purpose of using the software (do you do anything that is totally useless?) -- a reasonable extrapolation is that it would also be legal to sell a copy of the disassembly to someone who wanted to use the disassembled software -- though I'm not sure about how reasonable a bunch of lawyers would be! [I am refering to the Quaid Software case.] In that case, Atari and DRI have no say on the issue. As a corrilary, many years ago a company published a disassembly of the TRS-80 ROMs, printing only text (no hex codes) so as to avoid "translating" the contents of the copyrighted ROMs -- neither Microsoft nor Tandy did anything about it, so there is some precident (again in the USA -- German law may be quite different). Charles Marslett chasm@killer.UUCP