Are my assumptions about clean-room reverse engineering and copyright of computer programs correct?
<p>Recently, the people behind the re3 project (public decompilation of the games GTA III and GTA Vice City) were served a civol lawsuit by Take Two, the owning company of the games.</p>
<p>What the group did was run the binaries through decompilers, such as IDA, and making a recreation of equivalent high-level C++ source code.</p>
<p>From my underdstanding of law and jurisprudence, this would not breach copyright law. My reasoning is the following:</p>
<p>Computer programs are only covered by copyright because their source code is, therefore so is the resulting object code. However, the processes and sequences of operations that make the program do what it does aren't copyrightable (a patent would be better suited for those things).</p>
<p>Taking that into account, by decompiling the object code into new, re-arranged source code, the only elements that would remain are the specific sequences and processes that are represented by it. No copyrighted works remain, neither the object code nor the original source code the engineers wrote and later compiled.</p>
<p>I have what I believe to be a good analogy to explain it better.</p>
<p>Suppose there is a recording (object code/binary) of an orchestral performance (original source code) of a song that is in the public domain (processes/sequences of operations)
Wouldn't the decompilation project be the equivalent of me running the recording through a program which would recognize the individual notes and throw together a music sheet? The recording and performance are copyrighted, but the core concept in which they are based on is not (in this case because the song is on the public domain, however keep in mind I only used this to have an example of an &quot;non-copyrighted&quot; thing. processes/sequences of operations can never enjoy copyright protections at all)</p>
<p>While of course noting that we cannot predict the future: could this argument hold up? If not, what are its flaws?</p>

<p>I think that both your examples would be considered, if not outright copies, then at the very least <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work" rel="nofollow noreferrer">derivative works</a> of the originals.  Under US law, the copyright holder of a work has the <em>exclusive</em> right to prepare derivative works.  So anyone who prepares such a work without the authorization of the copyright holder is infringing their copyright and will be liable for such infringment.</p>
<p>The US Copyright Office, in their <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Circular 14</a>, explicitly includes &quot;a new version of an existing computer program&quot; as an example of a derivative work.  That would certainly seem to cover the GTA folks.  The concept that derivative works generally include &quot;translations&quot; might capture them, too.</p>
<p>Your example of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_(music)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">transcribing</a> a musical performance isn't explicitly mentioned, but I think your sheet music would likewise be a derivative work of the performance: it includes all the editorial and arrangement choices made by the orchestra.  Of course, both the performance and your transcription are derivative works of the original composition, but since the composition is out of copyright, there's no legal problem with that aspect.</p>

<h2>No</h2>
<p>Translations are covered by copyright.</p>
<p>The original high-level code is translated to binary by an automated process and then translated back into another (or the same) high-level language also by an automated process.</p>
<p>This is equivalent to running an English novel through Google Translate to French and then running the French through again into Spanish (or back to English).</p>
<p>Both are copyright violations.</p>
<p>Although the results from the latter are <a href="https://youtu.be/2bVAoVlFYf0?t=48" rel="nofollow noreferrer">much</a> <a href="https://youtu.be/ur560pZKRfg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">funnier</a>. Specifically, these automatic translations aren't copyright violations because the transformative nature and artistic endeavour involved make it Fair Use.</p>
<p>This is also explicitly <strong>not</strong> clean-room reverse engineering. CRRE is looking at the input and output, writing software specifications from that without ever decompiling the code and using those to develop the software.</p>

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