> Eric, what the country you are living on ? I ask my question because you
> tell
> that you may freely modify licensed code and resell that device under
> your
> trade mark. BTW in the Russia (pirate country in mind of americans) this
> action
> are called piracy and may result to large fines or something worst ...
> ;-)

No, you misunderstood.  I can buy one copy, modify that copy, and sell it to
another party.  I am left with zero copies.  I haven't created any new copies,
except possible a transient copy that was necessary to the process of
modification.

If I want to sell two modified copies, I have to buy two copies to modify.

Also, I did not adress the issue of trade marks at all.

If I buy a Sony VCR, hack the firmware, and resell it under the Sony
trademark, Sony would sue me for trademark infringement.  I would have to
use a different trademark, although I could say that it is based on a Sony
device.

I wrote:
>> The reason that I bring all this up is to point out that while code
>> protection bits are obviously attractive to developers, they are actually
>> contrary to the intent of intellectual property law, and to the benefits
>> of society as a whole.

> I disagree. If consumer buy a device under special condition it will receive
> original sources too. But I see no reason to give allthing around ability to
> read my source code if I not wish to allow this. I'm not sure if you wish to
> allow allthing make money with your firmware without any compensation.

Why should you make money forever on your firmware?  Or Microsoft on
Windows 95?  As I described in my post, the very idea of copyrights is that
they eventually expire and the works become public domain.  I'm not saying
that you shouldn't make money on your product for a fairly long time.

Publishers are always lobbying Congress to extend the duration of copyrights.
The last attempt of which I am aware would have extended the duration for
works of corporate authorship from 75 years to 95 years.  If they had their
way about it, they would make it forever.  We wouldn't have any books or
music in the public domain.  Goodbye, Illiad.  Goodbye, Beethoven's Fifth.

It may be that by the time copyright expires on today's firmware, no one will
care anyhow.  Personally I am interested in historical preservation, and
code protection guarantees that once the bits leak out of the EPROM in a
microcontroller, there will be no way to repair the device in which it is
contained, because it was not possible to make a backup while it still worked.
Several of the early microcomputers in my collection would have already become
just so much junk if I hadn't gone to the trouble of backing up the EPROMs.

Anyhow, I'm not arguing that you shouldn't be allowed to use code protection.
I'm arguing that I shouldn't be prevented from attempting to defeat the code
protection, and use or modify the code for lawful purposes that do not
infringe your ownership rights.

Eric