Re: DVD legal maneuvers (decss and the lawyers)

[Vangelis <vangelis@qnis.net>]

At 02:02 AM 12/30/99 -0800, John Gilmore wrote:
>Even properly-agreed-to licenses that purport to use copyright laws to
>deny people rights that copyright laws do not control, have been ruled
>unenforceable by US courts -- see Sega v. Accolade in the 9th Circuit.
>In that case the court ruled that a license prohibition on
>reverse-engineering was unenforceable, because the copyright law
>underlying the license gives the seller no control over whether the
>buyer is permitted to reverse-engineer.

Um, are you *positive* of that?  Cuz I worked at Accolade, and the 
restitution payments being made to Sega over that incident were common 
knowledge internally.  Perhaps the ruling was later successfully appealed 
by Sega?  Case law null and void then, I believe.

/\oO/\
Vangelis <vangelis@qnis.net> - Life is my religion; the world is my altar.
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