Skype Is Working To Defeat the Reverse Engineering 169
ndogg writes "Michael Larabel of Phoronix was emailed a response to the reverse engineering of the Skype protocol from the VP of Skype's PR company, who said that the reverse engineering was done for the use of spam/phishing, and that it's an infringement of their IP, and that they are working to defeat it."
Re:Skype Skype (Score:4, Informative)
I'm British, I have friends all over the country and no-one has ever used or heard this term being used as you describe it. I think you've either mixed Britain up with a very small regional part of Britain or have the wrong word.
Re:Skype on Linux (Score:5, Informative)
its theirs to do with as they please and restrict how they see fit.
To an extent, perhaps. In terms of the code comprising the software, their rights exist today solely because of copyright; it is the rights granted to them by the law of copyright which establishes what they have. Indeed, copyright works by establishing a right over a fixed expression, and making that right a property right - a right of personalty. However, unlike the majority of the personalty rights, a property right of copyright is for a temporary (if legislatively extensible) period, and only reserves the performance of certain acts to the holder. Acts which do not fall within these reserved rights are outside the scope of the copyright limitations, although an owner might attempt to increase the scope of restrictions by virtue of contract - although this is only effective in the situation where the person in question agrees to be bound by those additional limitations.
Personalty through copyright, then, is not absolute - it is a restricted, time-limited right. Within the scope of the reserved rights, they are, subject to the below, free to do with it what they wish. If they wish to restrict things more widely than their rights under copyright, they need to establish a basis for those restrictions, with contract being the most likely option. Alternatively, they might look to other forms of intellectual property right, to gain additional coverage - for example, a patent covering certain aspects of functionality - or quasi rights, such as trade secret.
Not only are the ownership rights not absolute, one might also view them as Swiss cheese - full of holes, with the cheese representing the rights reserved to the owner, and the holes acts which can still be undertaken. (One could view carve-outs to reserved rights as simply areas not covered by the reserved rights in the first place, but, that's rather an academic issue here.) Under European law, for example, there is a right to study the operation of the computer program for the purpose of determining the ideas and principles which underlie the program (Art. 5(3), directive 2009/24/EC). Similarly, a licensor of a computer program has a right to reproduce and translate (acts which are otherwise reserved) relevant parts of that computer program, where such actions are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs - Art. 6(1), dir. 2009/24/EC.*
Whether there is the equivalent of these rights under US law, I am not sure, although I'm sure someone with greater knowledge of US copyright law could assist here. Similarly, I've not paid much attention to the subject of the piece, in terms of determining which jurisdictions might be applicable...
Outside the scope of copyright law, one might also look into the regulatory framework of communications services, to determine that, whilst a network might be created by someone, it does not mean that their rights are unlimited, nor that they can not be mandated to provide interoperability. Again within Europe, see, for example, Art. 12(1)(e) of directive 2002/19/EC, which provides that, amongst other things, a national regulatory authority may require an operator to grant open access to technical interfaces, protocols or other key technologies that are indispensable for the interoperability of services, or, by virtue of Art. 12(1)(g), to mandate an operator to provide specified services needed to ensure interoperability, thus taking the obligation further than merely provision of interface information.
There's nothing to suggest that a regulator has imposed such obligations on Skype**, nor that it is obligations of this nature at issue here, but it supports the point that, whilst intellectual property might grant some rights, they are not limitless, and, whilst, by definition, the rights are exclusionary, the scope of the exclusionary effect is regulated. Intellectual property exists as a matter of public benef
Re:Skype on Linux (Score:5, Informative)
So yes, Skype is trying to preserve its revenue stream, which is secured only by secrecy of the protocols used by the proprietary Skype software.
Not at all. Afaik, their revenue stream comes from upsell services tied to POTS interfacing and voicemail. Just because you know the client protocol does not mean you can access those services for free; they're tied to account balances that Skype maintains outside of the client connectivity.