Recently Google was served with a takedown notice under the US’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) alleging that the free software project CoreAVC-for-linux contained code owned by the company CoreCodec:
Re: Illegal Materials Hosted on and/or Linked To From Site Hosted by Google
To Whom It May Concem:
I represent CoreCodec, Inc. (”CoreCodec”), which owns the copyrights in CoreAVC, (”Software”). It has come to my attention that a web site hosted by Google Inc., http://code.google.com/p/coreavc-for-linux/ (”Site”), hosts and/or contains links to material that infringes CoreCodec’s copyrights in the Software. This correspondence is a formal takedown notice being sent to you pursuant to Tile 17 United States Code Section 512, et seq.
The details are as follows:
Infringing Materials Hosted on and/or Linked To From the Site. The Site hosts and/or contains one or more links to CoreAVC, which contains CoreCodec’s copyrighted Software. We have directly verified by downloading the file from the Site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec’s copyrighted Software…
As with any legal action against an free or open source software project, the story soon appeared on Slashdot accompanied by the usual voluble booing from the commenting community. The dust had barely had time to settle when CoreCodec backed down, apologised to the project’s author and asked Google Code to reinstate the project. Some of the thought processes behind this can be examined by reading the relevant thread on Core Codec’s community web forum. The representative of the company (posting as betaboy) starts by defending CoreCodec’s actions then gradually backs away from them until he has agreed to get the project reinstated and even to help the project overcome some technical difficulties they had been having with interlacing (the project’s function is to make a commercial video decoding component written for windows by CoreCodec function under Linux).
So what caused this extreme turnaround? Well it certainly seems that the takedown notice itself was faulty, and that (by CoreCodec’s own admission) the CoreAVC-for-linux distribution did not in fact contain any code belonging to CoreCodec. Potentially the author of CoreAVC-for-linux could have taken action against CoreCodec for stating incorrect information in the takedown notice. As for the issue of reverse engineering that betaboy brings up in the forum thread, it is certainly true that the DMCA contains limited exemptions for certain kinds of reverse engineering conducted purely for the purposes of interoperability. Still, as is so often the case these days, what the bare law permits the End User License Agreement (EULA) takes away:
(III) You are also expressly prohibited from reverse engineering, decompiling, translating, disassembling, deciphering, decrypting, or otherwise attempting to discover the source code of the Licensed Works as the Licensed Works contain proprietary material of Licensor. You may not otherwise modify, alter, adapt, port, or merge the Licensed Works.
(from the EULA for CoreAVC)
So the author of CoreAVC-for-linux may have been in violation of this license agreement when they created the software, and so were not covered by the grant of licence in the same document. This would make certain actions that are necessary for running the program - such as copying it into memory - violations of the code owner’s copyright. Of course, in the end CoreCodec decided to permit the project to continue despite any possible claims relating to EULA violation, and it seems likely that the publicity backlash generated by the original takedown may have had something to do with this.
In a related story, Blizzard Entertainment, astonishingly successful producers of the networked fantasy game World of Warcraft (WoW) are trying to suppress a ‘cheating’ tool by arguing that running a program once you’ve violated the EULA is copyright infringement. WoW involves building up an online character by fighting monsters and completing quests. To achieve the highest levels a very large amount of time is required. To ease the burden of this so-called ‘grinding’ (repetitive monster-slaying and treasure-seizure) third party application developers have created tools that will run alongside the WoW program and interact with it as though they were the player themselves, allowing the player to accrue in-game goodies while they sleep or are otherwise engaged. Now while there’s very little doubt that these programs unbalance the game, allowing large returns for minimal effort, it is less clear that they are actually illegal. Blizzard are arguing that - because their EULA forbids the use of automated tools for playing - any user who employs one is infringing on their copyright when the game is copied into memory to be run. After all, the EULA is the agreement which permits this action and if the end user is in violation of it then their rights granted under it will lapse. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes freedom in the digital sphere has warned that this case risks setting a dangerous precedent - that buyers of software have no rights as owners but merely rights as licensees, to be terminated if they do not use the software as envisaged by its owners. While the decision itself - whatever it is - will be of no legal moment here in Europe, there are good reasons for watching the treatment of this case closely. Software is a global market, and software manufacturers exert strong pressure on national governments to legislate in line with the decisions most favourable to their business wherever they may be.
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