MIDI card and Sibelius

Surely you are only “passing off” if you sell the patched version as a new product of your own. If you sell existing unsold licensed copies of the software ‘as is’ with a separate patch routine supplied to run once installed there is no “passing off”.

Passing off is technically a misrepresentation, which while often used against clones and knock-offs, could apply if what’s being offered is not what it is supposed to be.

That said, EU law is somewhere between vague and complicated on this point…

• Whereas (15) The unauthorised reproduction, translation, adaptation or transformation of the form of the code in which a copy of a computer program has been made available constitutes an infringement of the exclusive rights of the author. Nevertheless, circumstances may exist when such a reproduction of the code and translation of its form are indispensable to obtain the necessary information to achieve the interoperability of an independently created program with other programs. It has therefore to be considered that, in these limited circumstances only, performance of the acts of reproduction and translation by or on behalf of a person having a right to use a copy of the program is legitimate and compatible with fair practice and must therefore be deemed not to require the authorisation of the rightholder. An objective of this exception is to make it possible to connect all components of a computer system, including those of different manufacturers, so that they can work together. Such an exception to the author’s exclusive rights may not be used in a way which prejudices the legitimate interests of the rightholder or which conflicts with a normal exploitation of the program.
• Article 5, 1. In the absence of specific contractual provisions, the acts referred to in points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) shall not require authorisation by the rightholder where they are necessary for the use of the computer program by the lawful acquirer in accordance with its intended purpose, including for error correction.
  {Article 4 a/b refers to reproduction/adaption}
• Article 6, 2 2. The provisions of paragraph 1 shall not permit the information obtained through its application: (a) to be used for goals other than to achieve the interoperability of the independently created computer program; (b) to be given to others, except when necessary for the interoperability of the independently created computer program

Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32009L0024

My personal non legal interpretation of this is that it should not present a problem to supply the original software as it is normally packaged and distributed, alongside a patch program (or in nemo’s case, a fancy module ;-) ) to modify the software to work as it is supposed to on the newer architecture RISC OS machines. However, it is important that such modification does not touch, in any way, whatever form of copy protection that might be in place.

My personal non legal interpretation of this is that it should not present a problem to supply the original software as it is normally packaged and distributed, alongside a patch program (or in nemo’s case, a fancy module ;-) ) to modify the software to work as it is supposed to on the newer architecture RISC OS machines.

Essentially the legislation says you can reverse engineer the software to determine what alteration is required to make it operate correctly on your machine (or some competent person may do that on your behalf)¹ and take sufficient action to ensure the required alteration but you may not supply in a manner that denies the original author of their right to payment.

However, it is important that such modification does not touch, in any way, whatever form of copy protection that might be in place.

Of course if the protection system does not work on your system then it too falls into the category of alteration required for interoperability.
Note that altering the protection so it works on your system is a legitimate action, removing the protection is not a legitimate action.

¹ Accidentally did that to a Win95 targetted copy of the SPSS stats package that had been moved to a WinNT4 system a fortnight before. Certain bits didn’t work (like the start up) so I dug a little, found the registry keys being read, and (cough) amended things and everything worked just fine.
Well, except for the bit that noted when the annual licence period had expired thus requiring a renewal to continue use and popped up a message informing the user rather than starting the main program.
Longer story, but the company did accept that what I’d done was legitimate, but they had just released an NT compatible version we could have for free provided I never revealed the means of by-passing the limit (or existence of a licence at all)

Some slight confusion over terms.

Copyright – literally the right to make copies. Copyright resides with the original author unless transferred to some other party by an Assignment Of Copyright agreement. If I write a book about OS_ReadLine, only I have the right to make copies of it, by printing for example.

Distributors only gain the right to distribute the copies they have legally acquired. If I sell (or more likely give) 50 copies of my 1000 page opus on textual input APIs to the local shop, they have the right to distribute those copies, but not to make any more.

Things get slightly blurry with digital products distributed through the internet, as every downloaded ‘copy’ is a new copy… which is a copyright infringement. So if I grant someone the right to distribute the PDF of ‘500 Things You Didn’t Know About INPUT’, that relates to a nominally finite number of copies (definitely very finite). Technically the copyright holder has ‘made’ the copies, the site is merely distributing them.

Passing off is an unrelated issue, related to TradeMarks, trade names, branding and logos. If a consumer could be confused into thinking that Rick’s ‘500 Things You Didn’t Know About MIDI’ was a follow-up to the previous best-seller by your truly, he would be guilty of passing off. This is one of the reasons why I shouldn’t call the new book ‘OS_ReadLine for Dummies’.

The copyright holders of Sibelius have granted all and sundry the right to distribute copies of the demo. Under European Law one is entitled to reverse engineer that in order to write a piece of software that interacts with it – in order to allow it to work on more modern version of the OS for example. The author of that work can therefore distribute both parts, but not in a way that implies the new work is part of the old work – that could be seen as passing off.

a book about OS_ReadLine […] my 1000 page opus on textual input APIs […] 500 Things You Didn’t Know About INPUT

Uh… Am I the only one who kind of wishes these were real?

Am I the only one who kind of wishes these were real?

The gold edition has pictures of “nemo’s cat” on even numbered pages. :)

For those interested in Sib – found this site:-

http://www.notation.de

I seem to remember a program that loaded Sib files for further processing – anyone come up with a name for it?

A further note – I think APDL did a prog that recorded Key-Mouse movments – anyone remember the name of it?

Thanks

My thanks for the various replies re my concerns, been reassured. The idea of a patch program makes sense.

R-Comp currently have a way of getting it working on VRPC not sure it works on ARMX6 though.

I have been lurking in the forums for some time, might start posting more now.