How much reverse engineering is a crime?

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Reverse engineering is the practice of opening a new technology and seeing how it works "under the table" (not necessarily producing some profitable content with this knowledge). But I see, in my day to day, several elements that came from reverse engineering.

One example is Sony’s official control for the Playstation 2 and its numerous similar, or the famous "hacks" for games.

Despite this, I have never seen a producer of "similar" controls or hacks for singleplayer games being arrested.

There is also the case of the Polystation, which, despite coming from reverse-engineered NES, and sometimes not even own the original components, is considered piracy, rather than "similar".

To what extent, in general, I can explore other people’s technology (opening, testing, and seeing how it works "behind the scenes") without this being considered a crime?

language-independent reverse-engineering
  • 5

    It’s an intriguing question, but I have my doubts as to whether this falls within the scope of the site, such as the discussion of licenses. It is something that can directly impact the programmer, but the answer has a legal/criminal nature, being necessary to consult a lawyer or similar profession.

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It is a crime to inflict the laws of personal code or imagine I work on a project for 2 to 3 years in a software and suddenly the guy applies reverse engineering in his work and steals functions and study enhancement of its functions and architecture of his program. Ex (Voce dedicate and compile a file and suddenly the guy comes up with a program like ollydbg or others and steals his codes with a good and sometimes damn ctrlc + ctrlv to take advantage of his work without permission.

If I’m not mistaken, if you haven’t changed the laws of the world, reverse engineering can only be used for study in databases and not for archival copying. In Brazil these studies could only be studied for a month in the student’s computer.

  • 4

    "These studies in the past could only be studied."That didn’t make sense here. And taking advantage of his reply, he could base his reply with official sources or official documents that support the answer, not only on achism?

  • So, for example, if I applied reverse engineering techniques to a game in Java, like Minecraft, to understand how the randomized world-creation algorithm was made, I could, but if I copied that code for personal gain, or distributed it on the Internet would be a crime, that?

  • 2

    @Arthursiqueira The worst problem is: first you use only for study, then you have a "brilliant idea" from that knowledge and create another game. To what extent did you commit a crime, given that without "illegal" access to privileged information you would never have this idea?

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