Is this legal?

[hightower 8]

In reading many EULA's, most authors, if not all, spell out the laundry list of what can not be done with their FS creations whether it be in modeling, panel, sound, texture, gauge etc., without the express consent of the author. A question in regards to this.1. Would this apply to altering or modifying a file within a program for one's own personal use, with no further intentions for sharing this file with anyone else? Reason I ask is that I have two particular programs, one panel and one gauge, that I think would yield a VERY nice result, but it would require repositioning and mixing of individual gauges to an already modified panel by another 3rd party author.I have sent an e-mail of request to that author but have had no reply.Really desiring to tinker with this, if I go ahead and do it but don't share it with anyone, am I still violating the spirit of the EULA where the gauge author states no modification is allowed without his/her express consent? Thanks

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I believe making such modifications ("reverse engineering") for personal use is allowed under most copyright law. The key word is personal--the minute the mods escaped one's grasp, then likely they'd be in violation. If it were my work, I really wouldn't care what you had done to it if it was for your own entertainment or education.-John

[hightower 8]

Thanks John for the insight. I kind of suspected that would be the intent of most EULA's so long as a modification remained "personal" and not re-distributed.I'm going to pursue my "tinkering" and if my mod comes out the way I think it will, I will e-mail the author(s) and ask them if they would be interested in seeing the results. Who knows where it might go from there.Thanks

[Guest Mathias]

I agree with John's view, for your own personal use you can basically do what you want with such gauges, panels, etc. But it MUST NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE WHATSOEVER become avaiable to others, not even your best friends without prior consent by the author. Now if said author can no longer be contacted that complicates the story to a point I am not really sure how to deal with it ...

[mgh 89]

Under UK (EU?) copyright law it's generally an offence to do anything with copyright material without the copyright owners permission. As well as the obvious things like copying it's an infringement to make an adaptation. There are no general exeptions for private use except fair dealing for private study or non-commercial research. However, decompling computer programs is not fair dealing.So basically anything you do to a copyright work is legally an infringement of copyright unless you have the copyright owner's permission. In reality in the FS world, there is not much that a copyright owner can or would want to do about infringement, except if it has commercial implications. This makes it a moral matter. I've used 3rd party gauges without permission for aircraft for my own use but I wouldn't upload them as freeware without obtaining permission. I've also used default gauges and I'd probably also upload them without Microsoft's permission. Should payware developers should obtain Microsoft's permission?Incidentally, under UK (EU?) law Lawful users of computer programs can do the following acts:1 make any back up copy of it which it is necessary for him to have for the purposes of his lawful use2 convert it into a version expressed in a higher level language provided it is necessary to decompile the program to obtain the information necessary to create an independent program which can be operated with the program decompiled or with another program3 observe, study or test the functioning of the program in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any element of the program if he does so while performing any of the acts of loading, displaying, running, transmitting or storing the program which he is entitled to doNote the emphasised limitations, must be a lawful user, decompilation must be to create an independent program, and observing etc can only be done by using the program normally. Incidentally, these three acts cannot be prohibited by the EULA because any term or condition purporting to prohibit or restrict them is void.

[Guest iholrf]

Ahhh, aren't social constructs fun? Under most civilized countries laws fair use allows you to do just about anything you want to your copy in so long as you are the only one doing it to only your copy and in no way distribute it or the knowledge gained by it. While the software may be licenced, it interacts with equipment you own, and thus affords you some rights, like the right to examine anything that may effect said personal equipment for flaws that relate to security (wether it be personal or data loss).Many copyright extensions and so called "intellectual property" laws are being challenged in courts in those countries with constitutionalized privacy rights.CSS (the dvd encryption scheme) was reverse engineered and released to the world. CSS's inventors tried to have the "cracker" jailed... they did not succeed. Nor did they succeed in their attempts at civil action.Most civilized places in the world are reasonable in their interpretation of what constitutes fair use, and are slowly recognizing that further restrictions are not benificial to anybody but large rich corporations who are now not protecting content so much as their profit margins. A current example of this is the furor over Sony Corp's copyright "rootkit" that is installed like a trojan (invisible to the user and impossible to remove with out breaking your system) when you insert a new Sony CD. It interfears with the system, and causes slowdowns and prevents effective copying of non-copyrighted CD's. Sony may well have actually helped push more people to pirate by turning the otherwise honest consumer into a "potential criminal" simply by making it impossible for them to use the product they bought in anyway but those "approved" by Sony corp. This is backfiring on Sony in a big way.So, what I am saying is, if you had said nothing, and just played with your stuff, nobody would have ever known, and frankly knowbody would have really cared. Now that the world knows you want to reverse engineer stuff, just make sure you don't do it in the US or UK (recall the UK is the only major country in the world to actually jail people for watching broadcast TV illegally-- http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/international/bbc.html --and the US is temporarily insane). ;)CheersShad

[mgh 89]

The UK jails people for not buying a licence - not for watch TV. It also jails people who drive without a licence, as do most countries.

[Guest iholrf]

>The UK jails people for not buying a licence - not for watch>TV. It also jails people who drive without a licence, as do>most countries.Isn't that what I said? ;) "jail people for watching broadcast TV illegally"CheersShad