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