Court Blesses Decompiling To Fix Bugs

Description

A screenshot of a German tech article is shown on a white page with the headline "EuGH: Recht auf Reverse Engineering zur Fehlerkorrektur." The subheading says the lawful buyer of a computer program may fully or partly decompile it to fix functional errors, and the page also shows "Lesezeit: 3 Min.," sharing/print/comment icons, and a blue circuit-board image with a circular copyright-like symbol. The post metadata provides the English translation: the European Court of Justice decided that a rightful software buyer is allowed to decompile a program fully or partially to correct errors, making the technical joke less about piracy and more about legally sanctioned debugging when source is unavailable.

Common Tags

ReverseEngineering Decompilation BugFixing Debugging SoftwareLicensing IntellectualProperty ProprietarySoftware SoftwareMaintenance CodeMaintenance SoftwareBugs PatchManagement

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick Some bugs are so closed-source that the debugger needs a lawyer before it gets a stack trace.

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

Some bugs are so closed-source that the debugger needs a lawyer before it gets a stack trace.
@wolfltd 4y

Wow I love this
Deleted Account 4y

But I'm no longer under the ECJ jurisdiction 😭
@semjonsona 4y

This is in fact fantastic!
@DetOfVice 4y

YEAAAAAH!
@ZgGPuo8dZef58K6hxxGVj3Z2 4y

Wait wait wait wait.... So now I am officially allowed to decompile windows 10 mobile and fix its bugs? Can I redistribute those patches?
1. @SamsonovAnton 4y
  
  Here in Russia, we always had this right (to modify legitimately owned software in any way necessary to be able to run it), however for personal use only - no redistribution allowed.
  
  @sylfn 4y
  
  redistribution of what? modified sources, modified executables, how-to guides?
  
  @SamsonovAnton 4y
  
  The subject of copyright, that is program code in any form (binary, source) and/or other resources. Whether a how-to may infringe some copyright, is a topic for another law, I guess. But as long as it only covers patching for newer hardware or bug fixes, it is less likely to attract copyright holder layers attention, unless they purposely introduce defects to older versions getting out of support to force the customers to upgrade.
  
  @sylfn 4y
  
  > unless they purposely introduce defects to older versions getting out of support to force the customers to upgrade. This should be illegal
  
  @ZgGPuo8dZef58K6hxxGVj3Z2 4y
  
  Oh thats actually cool