This is a mistake programmers often make. Our code of laws is not a proof, or a program, or a set of logical axioms. It's interpretations, often conflicting, of legislature. It also takes into account intent and subject matter and various other things.
It doesn't matter that ad block is logically equivalent to bookmarklets. If elected judges determine it's illegal, none of these "nerd" defenses will work. The only defense is to vote in legislators who will pass laws protecting it.
What? Executive orders has been around since forever, and has been one of the main sources of law until very recently (in historical terms). Unless you're alluding to something completely different.
In my youth when I was quite the "pirate", I used to tear the pages out of magazines I had purchased that had only ads on both the front and back of the page. (A kind of compression algorithm for which I got no patent, BTW.)
> computer programs are treated as literary works under the Copyright Act
So this applies to published adblockers and things, I guess. You could roll your own, just like you could tear pages out of a book you bought. You could mod a game privately.
If the adblocker-or-whatever is published, it's like publishing a mod to somebody's book. Like a script you point at an ebook that changes it. Is that considered the same as publishing a copy the book with small parts changed? Why?
The article highlights the line in the German copyright act about exclusive rights to "the translation, adaptation, arrangement and other modifications of a computer program". I'm unclear on the scope here. I don't think this applies to people making edits to copyrighted programs in private.
IIRC there has been a case in Germany where it was ruled that opening devtools is hacking and therefore illegal intend. A person found a vulnerability by looking at the website source (using devtools) and informed the company. They then sued him using the "Hackerparagraph" (§ 202c StGB) for use of hacker tools.
"(1) Any person who prepares a criminal offence [Wer eine Straftat nach] pursuant to Section 202a or Section 202b by: 1. passwords or other security codes that enable access to data (Section 202a (2)), or 2. computer programs whose purpose is to commit such an act, manufactures, procures, sells, transfers to another, distributes or otherwise makes available, shall be punished with imprisonment of up to two years or with a fine. (2) Section 149 (2) and (3) shall apply mutatis mutandis."
Not sure how this is twisted into opening devtools.
"Among other things, criminal charges were filed against the Federal Office for Information Security, as the office allegedly violated the law itself." But were dropped. Sounds like this is a vague law that can lead to a lot of harassing intimidation, followed by cases being dropped.
Substitute later parts with earlier parts they refer to and it's much clearer: "computer programs whose purpose is to" "enable access to data", when used "[to prepare] a criminal offense". I guess it depends on what the vulnerability was.
Shit... sometimes I am so happy of living in my lawless 3rd world country. Between the USA crazy Nazism and Europe crazy GDPR and Germany's stupid laws.
Apparently 1st world countries have solved all other problems and are splitting hairs looking for stupid things to legislate.
You literally just compared the GDPR to Nazism. Which, besides making me reluctant to take you seriously, also happens to be illegal in Germany, punishable by jail time. :)
Comparing the USA to Nazism is allowed, since that actually is Nazism.
Most companies tolerate them, sometimes encourage them, as long is it is not disruptive. Cracks and cheats however are definitely illegal and companies often take action against people who write or use such tools, usually account bans, but there have been some lawsuits the game company won.
Fundamentally, there is no difference between a cheating tool and a harmless mod, and many mods are baltent copyright infringement using assets without a license. But because mods are generally beneficial to the company, they have no intention to use legal means to stop them.
In the United States, it's legal to modify your machine to interpret the programs running on it other than the way intended by the machine creator and the program author (Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc, 1992). But every nation has its own system of laws and the precedents of one aren't binding on another (and I don't, personally, know if the Galoob v. Nintendo precedent extends to modifying the data on a PC or only protects the far-more-complicated approach of intermediating between PC storage and the CPU).
To my perception, the position of mods in the gaming ecosystem is mostly, for want of a better term, a "gentleman's agreement" or "gentleman's understanding." An awful lot of game devs got started by modding other games, and they feel more than zero empathy for the folks who are basically learning to be the next generation of developers, if not future employees. It's a bit akin to Adobe's position on cracked copies of Photoshop: they reserve the right to sue so companies can't just thumb their nose at their IP rights and use their product with no remuneration, but individual non-corporate users of pirated copies are, at worst, unpaid advertising for the product and, at best, future customers. Some game dev houses are exempt from this "empathy rule;" Nintendo is famously litigious (although even then, they tend to target projects that are, whether the developer knows it or not, in direct competition with Nintendo; AM2R puttered along happily for years until Nintendo decided to release their own Metroid 2 remake).
Questionable. It certainly prohibits people from selling modified versions of the work, but it's doubtful whether that prohibition can extend to you choosing to modify it yourself.
1. using antivirus software to infringe on copyright of viruses
2. using any bookmarklet
3. scratching out typos in a book you're reading
4. game mods