An injunction against Fortinet for GPL violations

An injunction against Fortinet for GPL violations

Posted Apr 15, 2005 6:47 UTC (Fri) by freddyh (guest, #21133)
In reply to: An injunction against Fortinet for GPL violations by chbarts
Parent article: An injunction against Fortinet for GPL violations

I'm probably being irrationally paranoid, but this smells like a case where the DMCA could easily be abused. If Fortinet claims that their encryption is an anti-piracy measure, whoever cracked it could be facing some serious shit.

Luckily, under German law you *are* allowed to do reverse engineering if the thing you are reverse engineering includes your own work. I would guess this clause is available in other jurisdictions as well, although I am not sure. I would also guess that in the US you're simply not at all allowed to do this.

Obviously this is still a problem because you don't know yet if it's your work until you've reverse engineered it... So, if you finally conclude that the product doesn't include your work then there is no law-suit, and the company doesn't have to know you've reverse engineered in the first place ;)

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