Re: [NTLK] Hacked WiFi driver

From: James Grubic <jgrubic_at_bozeman.k12.mt.us>
Date: Tue Jan 09 2007 - 11:50:15 EST

Here's my take.

The driver is the intellectual property of Hiroshi and is under his
copyright until he specifies otherwise. This means that hacking or
reverse engineering the driver is illegal.

However, because he has apparently disappeared off the face of the
Earth, there would obviously be little challenge to a hacked driver.
Legal challenges need to be made by lawyers and lawyers typically need
to be paid a lot of money, unless you are in Electronic Frontier
Foundation territory.

The ethical challenge is that there is a need for this driver, and
reality dictates that people will hack, scratch and claw their way to
solutions. It's like a cold fusion solution being available, but off
limits legally due to the copyright holder being on vacation in the
Bahamas. Ethics tend to go out the window when needs arise.

This is part of the reason why I admire the open source movement and as
stated by Einstein, "..the profit of the community to which your later
work belongs."

James

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Received on Tue Jan 9 11:50:18 2007

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