On escaping copyright by rewriting everything

[tiger]

Contrary to what has been said here several times, and that I even thought to be true, you cannot easily escape copyright infringement by taking a program and rewriting small pieces of it one by one until everything has been rewritten.

from this: http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise27.html

"Many people have reimplemented computer programs by rewriting them to replace the source code with code of their own writing. There is no reason to believe that this would not be a copyright infringement, particularly if the reimplementer had access to the source code of the original program, even if none of the original source code remains.

When the first segment of code is rewritten, the new code will be an infringing work if it is substantially similar to the original code, or may be an infringing derivative work if it is a reimplementation in a different programming language. That reimplemented first segment is combined with the remaining parts of the original program to form an intermediate version. Subsequent modifications produce another work. So when you have completed the piecewise reimplementation, you have a set of works, each of whose creation infringes the exclusive rights of the owner of the copyright of the original program.

As an analogy, consider the translation of a novel to a different language, something that would clearly be a derivative work. It makes little difference that none of the original words remain, or that the translation was done a little at a time. The resulting translation is still an infringing derivative work.

Even if you completely replace the program with new code, nonliteral elements also protected by the original program’s copyright are likely to remain and infringe – elements like the overall program structure or architecture and data structures that are not dictated by external or efficiency considerations. Although there is no case law on this point, it would seem that the only way to break the chain of infringing works is by some extraordinary act, such as a clean room implementation."


I suggest to anybody interested in copyright infringement amongst computer chess programs to read the page linked above and the related pages.



// Christophe

[Uri Blass]

I reject the analogy

Ideas of a novel are protected and not only the expression of the ideas so you cannot express the novel by a different language.
Ideas of GPL programs are not protected.

Notice also that there is no case law on this point.

Uri

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

You will never give up Christophe,won't you

[bob]

I reject the analogy

Ideas of a novel are protected and not only the expression of the ideas so you cannot express the novel by a different language.
Ideas of GPL programs are not protected.

Notice also that there is no case law on this point.

Uri

Actually I believe there is. AT&T originally developed unix and released the source. And their license was rather restrictive, and for commercial users, pretty expensive. The linux project came along and implemented a semantically equivalent operating system, but with no borrowed code. Seems to me there was a suit over the licensing issues, perhaps involved with Novell but I am not sure... And I believe that the linux GPL stood up against the AT&T license and copyright...

[tiger]

I reject the analogy

Ideas of a novel are protected and not only the expression of the ideas so you cannot express the novel by a different language.
Ideas of GPL programs are not protected.

Notice also that there is no case law on this point.

Uri

I don't understand what you are trying to say. Ideas are not protected by copyright laws anyway.



// Christophe

[BubbaTough]

Apple sued Microsoft over Windows (which it turned out had a lot of obvious cut and past from Apple OS including comments and spelling errors) and Apple lost. I remember seeing a number of other similar but less dramatic cases that all lost. My impression is that very rarely do code copying lawsuits win, in US anyway. And I don't think I have ever heard of a case being brought by anyone not associated with producing the code in question (which is quite unlikely to happen in situation most recently/frequently discussed).

In my mind the question raised is NOT WHAT IS LEGAL. It is more about what is moral (usually a tough question for everyone to agree on) and/or what is acceptable to the community. The community seems to have 4 interested parties:

1. Testers. Well, in the case most frequently discussed, the tester community seems pretty unified. They hate clones, but are quite lenient regarding the definition of 'derived'.
2. Tournament runners. Have not heard much from them (if you don't count testing tournaments). I would expect they would fall closer to the tester community in perspective on this issue. Unless the tournament runner is also a programmer, in which case perhaps they fall into the chess programmer field.
3. Chess programmers. Not at all unified...but seems to be a trend where people who publish their code have more stringent standards regarding code copying (with a number of exceptions of course) free or private engine writers that don't publish code much less stringent standards (with some exceptions) and commercial stays mostly quiet (with some exceptions) as is perhaps appropriate for those with a possible financial interest in the outcome of the most current debate.
4. Casual engine users. Similar to testers, but more so. They just want strong cool engines (with some exceptions).

It is too bad the current debate is shaped around an individual engine, one much beloved, because I think the community would greatly benefit from a clear set of globally accepted and well articulated guidelines about what is allowable, what is not, and community consequences (again, not legal, but will testers test your engine, will sites put your engine up for download, will you be able to participate in tournaments, will you be allowed to post in forums, or whatever). There may be some that argue that everything is already clear, from what is allowable, to what the consequences are. But these lengthy discussions indicate that things are not clear or universally accepted, and are not likely to become clear or universally accepted as long as the debate centers around a rightfully beloved program by a rightfully respected author instead of being pursued in the abstract.

-Sam

[GenoM]

Many people have reimplemented computer programs by rewriting them to replace the source code with code of their own writing. There is no reason to believe that this would not be a copyright infringement, particularly if the reimplementer had access to the source code of the original program, even if none of the original source code remains.

When the first segment of code is rewritten, the new code will be an infringing work if it is substantially similar to the original code, or may be an infringing derivative work if it is a reimplementation in a different programming language. That reimplemented first segment is combined with the remaining parts of the original program to form an intermediate version. Subsequent modifications produce another work. So when you have completed the piecewise reimplementation, you have a set of works, each of whose creation infringes the exclusive rights of the owner of the copyright of the original program.

Nice elegant logic.

[jdart]

AT&T originally developed unix and released the source. And their license was rather restrictive, and for commercial users, pretty expensive. The linux project came along and implemented a semantically equivalent operating system, but with no borrowed code. Seems to me there was a suit over the licensing issues, perhaps involved with Novell but I am not sure... And I believe that the linux GPL stood up against the AT&T license and copyright...

The history is more complext. AT&T was involved in a license dispute with Berkeley, where the BSD variant of Unix was developed. AT&T lost the case. One key factor was that they relied not just on copyright but on protection by means of trade secret (IIRC); but they had very widely distributed Unix source and not always been careful about controlling access to it. Plus, key algorithms from Unix had been published in journals and books. So the BSD code basically became free software under the very liberal BSD license. But not so the original code from the pre-BSD days and its derived code that AT&T continued to own.

Recently there has been a whole spate of lawsuits over alleged use of Unix code in Linux. SCO claimed ownership of the Unix copyrights (AT&T had sold them, but the ownership history is complex) and sent letters demanding license fees to many prominent Linux users. They also sued IBM and Novell for copyright infringement and breach of contract. In IBM's case they alleged IBM had copied code from their licensed deriviative of AT&T Unix (AIX) into Linux.

Interestingly, SCO alleged both literal and non-literal copying, as has been discussed widely in this forum. Their claims of non-literal copying were controversial.

The Novell case is now more or less concluded. It is a very complex case. But basically, SCO lost. Their copyright claims were rendered moot when the court decided that the rather murky agreements that transferred rights to them (via a complex chain of ownership) from AT&T did not convey the copyrights. So they didn't own them: in fact, Novell did.

(Aside from this though SCO was conspicuously unable to show much if any similarity between AT&T Unix and Linux, or between AIX and Linux. What similarity there was came from both following published standards or algorithms. Also it was pointed out in trial that SCO itself had distributed and contributed to Linux. So they had not just allowed but encouraged the very behavior they were suing about. So if it had turned out to be a copyright similarity case, they would probably have lost still).

In the end, SCO owes Novell money, for distributing and licensing code Novell owns (as part of SCO's Unix business) without remitting the necessaryfees back to Novell. It is not clear Novell will see any money because SCO is in bankruptcy.

Still pending is the IBM litigation. This looks very bad for SCO because IBM has counter claims that allege SCO made false statements about them, interfered with their legitimate Unix business, etc., which it certainly appears they did. So they could be on the hook for substantial damages.

It is quite an interesting story and I have left out a number of details. But it is isn't very relevant to this discussion except maybe for the arguments at trial regarding non-literal copying.

[Bill Rogers]

In reference to Apple vs Microsoft. It was proved in court that Apple did not develope window or should I say the icons to launch programs that code was developed years earlier by another software giant.
Bill

[bob]

In reference to Apple vs Microsoft. It was proved in court that Apple did not develope window or should I say the icons to launch programs that code was developed years earlier by another software giant.
Bill

I assume that would be Xerox? They did this years before apple. Of course the X project predated apple "just a bit" as well.